Free Glory Season by David Brin Page B

been more than a hundred distinct visages to know while growing up.
    For the first time, they tasted what life might be like if their secret scheme succeeded. Although they were humbly dressed, some vars they encountered stepped aside for them in automatic deference, as if they were winter-born. “I knew it!” Leie whispered. “Twins are rare enough that people simply jump to the wrong conclusion. Our plan can work!”
    Maia appreciated Leie’s enthusiasm. Yet, she knew success would count on filling in countless details. They shouldn’t spend their free moments playing games, she insisted, but combing the port for useful information.
    Unfortunately, the town was a babble of strange tongues. Whenever clone-sisters met on the street, they often spoke an incomprehensible rasp of family code, handed down by hive mothers and embellished by their daughters for generations. This frustrated Leie at first. Back in easy-going Port Sanger, common speech had been the norm.
    Then Leie grew enthusiastic. “We’ll need a secret jarg too, when we start our own clan.”
    Maia neglected to remind her sister that as little girls they
had
experimented with codes, cryptograms, and private jargon, until Leie grew bored and quit. Privately, Maiahad never stopped making anagrams or finding patterns in letter blocks scattered on the crèche floor. It might even have been what first triggered her interest in constellations, for to her the sparkling stellar patterns always seemed to hint at the Creator’s private code, one that was open to all who learned to see.
    Strolling the grand plaza in front of Lanargh’s city temple, the twins watched a group of kneeling sailors receive blessing from an orthodox priestess wrapped in burgundy-striped robes. Raising her arms, the clergywoman called for intercession from the planet spirit, its rocks and air, its winds and waters, so that the men might reach safe haven at their journey’s end. The singsong benison finished with a favorite passage about the sanctity of comradeship amid shared danger. Yet, the holy woman’s quavering delivery showed that clerics, too, had a “language” all their own, especially when quoting the mysterious Fourth Book of Scriptures.
    “
Soto their ships ontime ofneed kaul uponthat whichishidden
 …”
    No wonder Book Four was popularly known as the Riddle of Lysos. It even had its own eighteen-letter alphabet, which used to bring Maia pleasurable diversion during long weekly services in the Lamatia chapel, silently puzzling over cryptic passages incised on the stone walls.
    Leie glanced at the clock set in the Temple’s face and sighed. “Oops, sorry. Gotta get back to work now.”
    Maia blinked. “What? On first day?”
    “Ain’t it var’s luck? Mop an’ pail duty. Our chief wants ol’
Zeus
to get more customers than Wotan, even though it all goes to the same owners and guild.” She grimaced. “Are your bosuns as awful as ours?”
    Maia wouldn’t have used that word. “Hard,” maybe, and quick to catch when you were inattentive. But she was learning a lot from Naroin and the others, and growing stronger by the day. Anyway, Leie was clearly fibbing.Maia bet her sister was on punishment detail, probably for mouthing off when she should have kept quiet.
    Despite that, Maia grunted sympathetically. “Unloading coal for a living. Huh. I guess the mothers’d be proud of us for starting at the bottom.”
    “Not for long, though!” Leie answered. “Someday we’ll sail back into Port Sanger with enough coin sticks to buy the place!” She laughed, and her cheerfulness forced Maia to smile.
    It felt different walking through town alone, and not simply because no one stepped aside for her anymore. Maia had enjoyed pointing things out to Leie, sharing the sights. It had been comforting knowing another person in this sea of strangers was an ally.
    On the other hand, the town seemed more
vivid
this way. Sound and smell and vision felt sharper as she grew more