“Still, there is a life between us,” Lorill said.
“No, for I failed. My appointed task was to restore the Lady Melora to her kin,” said the Free Amazon.
Rohana shook her head. “You did not fail, Kindra; Melora died free, and she died happy. But it is for me, not you, Lorill, to offer her what extra reward she will ask…!’
Kindra looked up at them both, and moved to Jaelle’s side. “Then, since you both offer a gift,” she said, “I ask this: give me Jaelle to foster.”
Lorill Hastur said, in shock, “Impossible. A child of Comyn blood cannot be reared among Free Amazons!”
Rohana, too, had felt a moment’s shock at this request – such presumption! But Lorill’s words angered her as much as Jerana’s rudeness had done. “Fine words, Lorill. But you were willing to sit uncaring in Thendara, and let her be reared in chains by Jalak.” She beckoned Jaelle to her, and said, “Jaelle, before your mother died, I swore to her that I would rear you as my own daughter, born of my body. I know she meant I should keep you in my house, bring you up as my own child. But you are twelve years old; and if my own daughter, at twelve years old, came to me and said, ‘Mother, I do not want to live with you, I want to be fostered by such and such a one,’ then – if her choice of foster-mother were such a one as I could trust – then I would consider carefully her wishes in the matter. You have heard Kindra ask for you, and” – she looked with angry defiance over Jaelle’s head, at Lorill Hastur – “it is mine to decide. But will you not come with me to Ardais, and be my daughter?” she pleaded. “I loved your mother, and I will be a mother to you as well. You will have my daughter and her friends for playmates and sisters, and you will be brought up as your mother and I were reared, as a Comynara, as is fitting for our caste.”
Jaelle, darling, you are all I have of Melora . . ..
The hard little face was unyielding, strangely set. “And when I am grown, kinswoman?”
“Then, birth or no, Jaelle, I will arrange for you a marriage as good as for my own daughter-” and then she knew, suddenly, that she had lost. Jaelle’s face went cold.
She said, “I want only to live where I will never be in subjection to any man. If Kindra will have me to foster-” She went and laid her hand in the Free Amazon’s, and said, “I do ask it, kinswoman.”
Rohana thought, almost in despair, It is too late to treat her as a little child. She has known so much that would age her before her time.
Still, she was a Comyn daughter, and might have laran. She said gravely, “Kindra, she must not be neutered. Promise me that.”
Kindra’s face held outrage. “I see you have understood all too little of the Amazons, Lady. We do not neuter women.”
“I saw the two of your band-Leeanne and Camilla-”
“We do not neuter our women,” Kindra repeated implacably. “Now and again, a woman will be so maddened with hate for her own womanhood that she will persuade or bribe some healer to break the law for her sake; often they come to us afterward, and we cannot cast them out; there is usually nowhere else they can go, poor souls. But women who come to us first, instead, usually learn self-respect, not self-hate. I do not think-if she is fostered among us-that she will come to such hatred.” She put her arms lightly around the child’s shoulders, turned to Jaelle and spoke directly to her, but not as if she spoke to a child at all; she spoke as if to an equal, and Rohana felt a strange emotion that after a moment, incredulously, she identified as envy.
“You know, Jaelle, you cannot, by the laws of our Guild, be accepted yet as an Amazon; even our own daughters must wait until they are legally old enough to be counted as women, to marry, or to choose. When you are fifteen, you will be permitted to make that choice; until then, you will be only my fosterling.”