She found herself thinking again and again of what Rohana had said about a design in the chain of coincidences that had brought them together; even in the peculiar pattern that had drawn Peter and Jaelle together as” lovers. If the Empire was to remain on Darkover indefinitely, sooner or later there would be-as on all planets inhabited by different groups of humans-entanglements, romances, liaisons, and eventually marriages, even children who belonged to both worlds. And someone had to be the first.
Of course, one day Darkover would be an Empire planet. It was inevitable. The Empire did not conquer; but once the contacted planet saw the pattern of the Galactic Empire, and what it could mean to be part of it, the rulers always asked to be affiliated. When that time came, Terran and Darkovan would all be Empire citizens, and such affairs and romances would concern no one but the two people involved, and perhaps their families. But now it could cause only complications.
Magda hoped their departure would not be too long delayed. Jaelle and Peter were beginning to be a little less careful, and Magda wondered what the end would be. Again and again,’ seeing them together, she felt the small, indefinable pricklings of “hunch”-or precognition. Sooner or later, this meant danger…. Yet how could she speak to Jaelle, warn her, without the younger girl thinking that she was jealous, or grudged her the happiness she had found with her lover? Still less was it possible to remonstrate with Peter. So she only watched them with growing disquiet and anxiety.
In anticipation of their imminent departure she began to sort and put together her possessions; Jaelle found her occupied by this, and suggested that most of their traveling clothes were in need of repair, and that they might profitably spend the day in putting them in order. Magda was surprised to find that Jaelle was an expert needlewoman; somehow this had seemed too feminine an art for an Amazon. Magda herself, accustomed to the readily replaceable, cheap synthetics of the Terran Zone, had never mastered the art; had, in fact, been taught to scorn it as being a pointless way of passing time for women who had no useful work to do.
When she said this to Jaelle, the younger woman laughed. “And so it is, much of the time! Last night in the hall, when Rohana invited us to join her women at the tapestry they were making for the hall chair cushions, I thought I should go mad! I love to embroider,” she added, “but how Rohana can endure it, I cannot imagine! I myself should go mad, to sit there night after night, surrounded by those fools of sewing-women … stitch, stitch, stitch, gossip, gossip, gossip! Rohana runs the whole estate of Ardais, and does it better than dom Gabriel could do, and she sits in Council and gives advice to Hastur, yet there she sits among those foolish girls, and chatters with them as if she had never had a thought in her head more serious than whether to embroider the next cushion with a rainfish or a star-flower! As if it mattered to anyone’s backside what was embroidered on a cushion, as long as it was well stuffed!” But even as she spoke, she was setting small neat stitches in the torn fingers of her glove.
Magda, watching her, thought that it made good sense to learn an art of this kind, on a world like Darkover, where warm and durable clothing was a necessity of life. She said ruefully, looking at the mess she had made of the torn tunic, “I am even less skillful with a needle than a sword!”
Jaelle laughed. “My skill with a dagger is incidental,” she said. “I told you I was no fighter, but for my first year or two among the Amazons I used to work at Kindra’s side. She was my foster-mother and had been a mercenary soldier. And when there was peace in the Domains, she hired herself out as a bodyguard to escort travelers through the Kilghard Hills and the Hellers, and protect them against bandits, catmen and what-have-you. For a few years I worked with her; but I did not really like it, and gradually I discovered my real skill.”