She’s young. But I’d better not underestimate her!
A burst of noise from the men around the other fire interrupted her, and she twisted around to look at them. They were drinking hard, passing a bottle from hand to hand and laughing uproariously; loud enough to drown out the howling of the storm outside. She strained her ears to listen, thinking, if they are from Sain Scarp, they might know something of Pedro….
Camilla’s hand came down on her wrist like a vise; Magda almost cried out with the pain of it. “For shame,” said the old Amazon, in a voice that cut like a knife. “Is this how Temora House teaches her daughters to behave, shameless girl, staring at drunken men like some harlot of the streets? Turn your back on them, you ill-mannered brat!”
Magda pulled her hand free of the wiry old fingers. Her eyes filled with tears of outrage and humiliation. She said in a whisper, “I was only wondering if they are bandits . . ..”
“Whatever they are, they are nothing to us.” The old woman spoke with firm finality. Magda rubbed her wrist, wondering if there would be a bruise.
I’m doing everything wrong. I’d better keep my mouth shut, and go to bed as soon as I can. She lay back on her unrolled blankets, pretending sleep. The drunken laughing and singing of the bandits went on. Around the women’s fire there was a little more soft-voiced conversation, some quiet laughing and joking- they were teasing Sherna about something that had happened at midsummer-feast. Magda understood none of it. The women waterproofed their low suede ankle-boots, tidied saddlebags, cleaned and put away eating utensils and began to ready themselves for bed.
Someone said, “I wish Rafi were here with her harp; we could have a song, better than that noise!” She flicked a quick, oblique glance over her shoulder at the drunken crew at the far end, but, Magda noted, did not turn to look. Amazon etiquette?
Camilla said, “Rafi was with me when we punished those two women in Thendara city. You are new-come to us, Rayna, Sherna, you have not heard? You, Margali, you came here from Thendara; has the tale made the rounds yet in the marketplace?”
“What tale?” Magda did not dare to pretend sleep too deep to answer.
“You have not heard, either? Well, it came to our ‘ears that in the Golden Cage-you know of the Golden Cage?” she asked, waiting, and Magda nodded. The Golden Cage was a notorious brothel not too far from the Terran Zone; she knew that it was patronized by spacemen and Empire tourists sometimes.
“It came to us that there were two entertainers”- she spoke the polite term with irony-“who had cut their hair short and were nightly presenting an exhibition of a particularly indecent sort-I am sure that every one of you can imagine the details-which the old freak running the place announced as ‘Love Secrets of the Free Amazons.’ So Rafaella and I-”
“Dear aunt,”, said Jaelle, yawning, “I have known since my fourteenth year, and so have we all, that there are lovers of women in this world, and that there are pretended lovers of women, and that some men have nothing better to do with their manhood than indulge in naughty fantasies about them. Do you think we are so bored that you must entertain us with dirty stories, Camilla dear?”
“Then you haven’t heard how we punished those bitches for pretending to be Amazons, and bringing scandal and disgrace to our name? Can you guess, Margali?”
Magda said “No,” not trusting herself to say any more. This is being told for my benefit. Somehow I’ve given myself away. That old emmasca has eyes like a gimlet.
Camilla said, savoring the words, her eyes lingering on Magda, “Why, Rafi and I went there by night when their leering audience had gone, we dragged those shameless wenches out into the main square, we stripped them naked and shaved their heads bald as an egg, and their private parts, too, and smeared them in pitch, and rolled them in wood shavings.”
“I should have been there,” said Jaelle, her eyes glistening with savage relish. “I would have put a torch to them and watched them sizzle!”