So by accident of birth, I’m permanently disqualified from the work I know best, while an idiot like Montray needs a specially qualified linguist to write hit speeches, and two nurses to hold his hand in case he gets lost or has to find his way a hundred meters outside the gates! I should have Montray’s job. He isn’t even qualified for mine!
Montray was shivering: Masda had no sympathy for him. Montray knew what the climate was like; he had authority to dress for it, or modify the official uniform in some more suitable way, but he didn’t even have the imagination for that.
I ought to get right off this damn world. There are plenty of planets where f could do the kind of work I’m best fitted for.
But Darkover is the one I know best. And here. I’m only fit for a woman’s job!
And I can only do even that because I’m a Terran. Darkovan women don’t even do my kind of work!
At the gates of the Comyn Castle, a man in the green-and-black uniform of the City Guard asked their business. He used the derogatory mode, and Magda bristled.
Montray would not have noticed, but Magda told him stiffly that they had been personally summoned by Lord Lorill Hastur. The Guard went away, returning almost immediately; this time he spoke in the respectful mode, saying that the Lord Hastur had given orders for them to be conducted at once into his presence.
The hallways of the Comyn Castle were drafty, cold and all but deserted. Magda knew that at this season of the year, most of the Comyn had withdrawn to their own estates throughout the Domains; they gathered here only in Council Season, near midsummer. The Hastur Domain was far away on the borders of the Hellers; she supposed Lord Hastur had stayed here only because events in the capital city required his presence. She carefully studied the corridors, the hangings and ornaments, wanting to make the most of an opportunity, which, for her, might never come again; no woman could hold an official post on Darkover, and she would probably never again enter the Comyn Castle.
At last they were led into a small audience chamber where Lorill Hastur awaited them: a slight, serious man, with dark red hair *winsed with white at the temples. He greeted them with courteous phrases, which Magda translated automatically. She had seen that the only other person in the room was Lady Rohana Ardais Magda would have said, if asked, that she did not believe in precognition and was skeptical about ESP. Yet the moment she saw the slender, cooper-haired woman, in a dress of violet-blue, seated quietly on a cushioned bench, she knew.
This has to do with Peter . . .
“My kinswoman has made the long journey from Ardais purposely to speak with you,” Lorill Hastur said “Will you explain, Rohana?”
“I came to you from a sense of obligation,” Rohana said, “because you were kind to me when I came to you in deep trouble about my son.” She spoke to Mon-tray, apparently, but it was obvious that the words were meant for Magda.
“My husband and I have just received a message from Rumal di Scarp.”
Magda could not quite control a shudder as she translated. “Sain Scarp is the most notorious bandit stronghold in the Hellers,” she explained to Montray. (As a child, that word had been used to frighten her little friends into good behavior: “The men from Sain Scarp will get you!”)
Lady Rohana continued: “Rumal hates the men of Ardais with a deadly hatred; my husband’s father hanged half a dozen of his men from the walls of Castle Ardais. So now Rumal has sent us a message: that he holds our son Kyril prisoner in the jorst of Sain Scarp; and he has named a ransom which we must pay before midwinter, or Kyril will be sent back to us”- Rohana shivered slightly-“in pieces.”
Montray said, “Lady, my deepest sympathies. But the Terran Empire cannot entangle itself in private feuds-”
Rohana’s eyes blazed. She did not wait for Magda to translate. “I see you still have not understood. When, after I spoke with you, I returned to Castle Ardais, I found my son safe and well at home; he had delayed because of frostbitten feet, and came when he was able to travel. When we received the word from Sain Scarp, he was in the room with us, and he thought it a tremendous joke.”