Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

Tharius Don’s frantic message came to Bans at first dark. Each evening at this time, Threnot went for a walk along the parklands. From time to time on such forays she encountered wanderers who might, perhaps, have been accounted a little furtive if anyone had been inclined to care who a servant talked with during her frequent strolls. The wanderer encountered this night was less furtive and more in a hurry than most. Threnot returned swiftly to the Tower. Only an hour or so later, she might have been seen to leave once more, going down to the town on some errand, her veils billowing in the light wind. The flier detailed to watch such comings and goings nodded, half-asleep. When Threnot was later seen to leave the Tower yet again that night, the flier scratched herself uncomfortably, for she had not seen the woman return from her second trip. Three trips in one night was not unheard-of, but it was rare. Perhaps she would mention it to the Talkers. Perhaps not. The ancient tension between Talker and flier had in no sense been changed by recent history.

Actually, only the first and third veiled women had been Threnot. The second had been Kesseret herself, fleeing to the house of a Riverman pledged to the cause. Threnot joined her there some hours later, and when dawn came, both women were on a boat halfway to the next town west. In the hours between Kessie’s leaving the Tower and Threnot’s leaving it, word had been spread in the Tower that the lady Kesseret was ill of a sudden fever, that she would stay in her rooms until healed of it, keeping Threnot with her to nurse her. Kesseret’s deputy had been told to take charge of Tower affairs and asked not to bother the Superior for five or six days at least.

“I have taken water and food and all things needful to her rooms, Deputy,” Threnot had said in her usual emotionless voice. “The Superior is anxious the Tower should avoid infection.” “Infection” was a word generally used to mean any of several nasty River fevers that were occasionally epidemic and frequently fatal.

“She asks to be left alone until she is well recovered, which I have no doubt will occur in time.” Threnot looked appropriately grave, and the deputy—not an adherent of the cause— entertained thoughts of a possible untimely demise and his own ascension to the title.

Therefore, on the morrow when Jondarites came bearing orders for Kessie’s arrest (emanating from Gendra, but countersigned by the general), the officious deputy told them of the Superior’s illness in such terms as did not minimize the likelihood the sickness might prove fatal. The word “infection” was used several times again, at which the Jondarites had second thoughts and departed. They would return, they said, in a week or so. Nothing in their instruction had indicated sufficient urgency in the matter to risk infecting a company of troops.

On board the Shifting Wind, the lady Kesseret, Superior of the Tower of Bans, became simply Kessie, marketwoman, one of the hundred thousand anonymous travelers on this section of River and shore. Her hair was not braided in the Awakener fashion; her clothes were ordinary ones long laid by for such a need; when she looked in the mirror, she did not see the lady Kesseret. If Gendra had looked her full in the face, she would not have seen Kesseret, either.

And Kessie amused herself bitterly, hour on hour, wondering whether Tharius Don would recognize her if he ever saw her -again.

Rumor spread through the palace like a stain of oil on water, at first thick and turgid with unbelief, becoming thinner and brighter with each retelling, until at the end it was a mere rainbow film of jest, an iridescent shining upon the surface of the day.

The general, accompanied by a woman? The general’s weehar ox harnessed with another? His banner companied with another banner? Laughter burst forth at the thought, jests abounded, giggling servitors lost their composure when confronted by glum-faced Jondarites, themselves privy to the rumor but unable, because of the exigencies of discipline, to show any interest in it.