She did not shade her words with the faintest reproof, but Peter recalled that a few days ago she had frowned at him for helping her, unasked, with a heavy load.
He said, “Are you trying to tell me that there is no work which is beyond your strength?”
“No, no indeed!”
“I should think not,” said Peter indignantly, looking at the slender girl. “And what do you do, proud Amazon, when you find something beyond your strength?”
She smiled and said, “Precisely what you do among men, when you find something too heavy to lift, or a task needing four hands to accomplish it. You are not a tremendously strong man, I imagine; when a task demands more strength than you have in your arms, I suppose you simply say to one of the other men, ‘Come here and help me lift this before I strain my guts!’ Well, that is exactly what I do. If I have made it obvious that I do not shirk any work within my strength, then they will help me as they would help another man with a task too heavy for him, and not with any thought of a woman who must be sheltered!”
“I hope you do not always intend to treat me that way!” he said, and she laughed and raised her hand to touch his cheek lovingly.
“When we are alone, beloved, I shall be so fragile and demanding that you will sometimes think I am Lady Rohana herself, who is not by law permitted to move as much as a day’s ride without her maid and her lady companion and half a dozen guards! But you must not expect me to be anything other than I am, my love.” She stood on tiptoe, pulled his head down and kissed him quickly. “Enough for now. Rohana and her women are coming back, and tomorrow we will be in Thendara.”
“And tomorrow night . . .” Peter said, smiling at her, and for a moment she held herself against him, not at all unwilling to let him know she shared his eagerness. Then, sighing, they moved apart as Rohana with her ladies returned to their fire.
They rode down into Thendara a little after noon. Rohana said as they came through the gates, “What will you do now? Jaelle, you must go to the Guild-house, I know, with Margali.”
Magda felt a small clutch of fear. It’s here. There’s no more delaying. Oh, God, I’m frightened!
Certainly, within my lifetime, Darkover will be a part of the Empire, and it will make no difference. The usual time from first contact to affiliation is about fifty years, and that’s almost half over. But will that come too late to do me any good? Must I be exiled from one world to the other?
She thought this, not knowing that Darkover was to prove unique in the history of the Empire, and that not only her own lifetime but many lifetimes would pass before Darkover and the Empire were reconciled. Just the same, the curious little flash of precognition iced her blood again, and she pulled her fur-trimmed riding-cloak-Rohana’s midwinter gift-about her shoulders.
“This is idiotic!” Peter said, looking back to make certain they were out of earshot of Rohana’s women and the guardsmen. “You can’t possibly do that, Magda. Somehow or other, we’ve got to get you out of that nonsense of spending half a year in the Guild-house. I’m sure you’d find it interesting, but we can’t possibly afford to lose our only resident female expert. Come back with me now to the HQ, and let the people there think of some way to get you out of it.”
Magda said, in exasperation, “Peter, you don’t understand. I am oath-bound, and I will honor my oath. I will try, after, to make it right with the Empire authorities; but the obligation must be met nevertheless!”
“Oh, that,” he said in contempt. “You know as well as I do that an oath taken under duress is not valid!”
Jaelle looked at him in shock and dismay; and Magda, with that new, devastating sensitivity to thoughts, knew that Peter had just shocked Jaelle to speechlessness. An oath is sacred. What kind of man could ignore it? And if he had no awareness of what the oath meant to Magda, how could he possibly know what it meant to Jaelle?