Free The Warrior Who Carried Life by Geoff Ryman Page A

as white as a frog’s belly, and the fringe of hair was not silver but uncoloured, like a cobweb, or the hair of an albino or someone who has recovered from fever. The face was squinting with pain at the light, but with a swelling of certainty and purpose and relief Cara saw that it was indeed Galo gro Galu, the Worm in the Flower, the destroyer of her family. She would have her chance, her magic year would not be wasted or forlorn. Her joy was fierce beyond disguise. She grinned and bowed, and grinned and bowed, and the Galu gave her a mocking salute. Galad looked away from her, pondering.
    The evening meal was held in the same chamber, with even more ceremony. Flutes played, and at the entrance there were bowls of lemon water which the Angels and their women patted on their foreheads and wrists. There were new flowers on the table and new flowers in the hair, and sheaths of gold cloth over the white robes. As the Angels marched into the chamber, fresh from bathing, Cara heard the distant sound of raucous laughter from the other Schools, and loud rough singing and cheers—the loutish awkward joy of soldiers released like gawping boys from discipline. She looked at the faces around her that were tense and bitter, and she understood that here was no release from discipline, no relenting control, no revealing of any weakness.
    “You looked slow today,” one of them said to another.
    “Speed is not strength,” was the reply. “But I understand that difference is difficult for you to appreciate.”
    “Hello, dear friend,” said an Angel, perhaps too loudly, clasping the back of his companion’s neck. “Surely, you could not have said the things about Haliki that Bovik tells me you have said?”
    The returning smile was as sharp as a knife. “I do not know what Bovik told you. But I do know that one often hears what one wished to say oneself, rather than what has actually been said.”
    This is a dreadful place , thought Cara. How like the respectable grandmothers of the village they were, pretending to confide and comfort, while all the time trying to establish their higher rank. She found herself a place at table, and people moved away, further down the bench. Cara looked around anxiously for Stefile. Would she come at all?
    The bondwoman came from the interior entrance, from the rooms where the Angel wives had hidden away from the sun. At first Cara did not recognise her. Stefile strode in, holding herself tall, carrying her pride as if it were an egg that could drop and break. Somehow she had beaten her road weary dress until it looked new—the dirt between the thick wool threads was gone—and she had flattened it somehow so that there was not a ruck in it. Her hair, by some peasant trick, had been braided and then woven into a perfect sculpture of a flower, a land lily, a graceful horn of glossy black. Tenderly, Cara arranged food near them so that they would not have to ask for any. Back erect, like a princess, Stefile scornfully lowered herself beside Cara, her glaring eyes daring anyone in the room to comment.
    “Some bread, Lady?”
    “Thank you, Sir.”
    It was a frugal meal. Crusty bread and water and bean paste and a clove of garlic. As they began to eat, one of the warriors rose, with a lyre, and said, “A Song.” There was light applause. He began to sing in a high, pure voice, songs of death and murder and all manner of defacement and maiming. “We hung their guts like garlands about the trees. We made their voices wail. All the riches of their bodies spilled like treasure to the ground.” Cara pushed her plate away from her. The song went on and on.
    “How many of you!” Cara suddenly shouted. “How many of you have ever even seen a battle?”
    The singer faltered, and lapsed into silence. There was a horrified pause, because that question had only one answer.
    “I’ll tell you! None of you have! Not one. There has been no killing here since the fall of Gara han Gara, and that was only the