The Stone Dogs (10 page)

She turned through the open glass doors to the ground-level terrace instead, and reached overhead to grip the steel bar just outside. Moodily she began a series of chin-lifts, stopping at fifty to hang with her knees curled close to her chest and controlling her breathing to a deep steady rhythm. Bruiser said it was the best way to clear your mind for thinking: let the muscles soak up and burn the hormonal juices the body tried to cloud your mind with.
It's a good remedy for confusion,
she thought wryly.
If I
could be sure what I'm confused about.

"Hio,'Landa." The terrace outside her rooms ran all along the west front of the building, but her section was separated by a carved-stone screen that ran out to the low balustrade.

Myfwany's face leaned around it, smiling. "Want company, or yo'

set on devolvin' into a gibbon?"

"C'mon ovah," Yolande said. She raised herself to chest-height against the bar, counting twenty slow breaths, then dropped to the ground, acutely conscious of her rumpled state. "Everythin'

all right?"

"Better than that," Myfwany said, swinging around the balustrade. "Been lookin' forward to seein' yo' homeplace quite some time, now. Can't know a person till you've seen where they come from, hey?"

The other girl had shot up these last six months, and flat-footed on the tile pavement Yolande's eyes were level with her nose. She had changed already, into a round-necked cream-silk sleeveless shirt and fawn trousers; there were bracelets in the form of curled snakes pushed up on her upper arms, and a fillet of the same silvery metal holding back the red curls that fell to her neck. They walked to the balustrade together, leaning on the stone and looking down. Yolande cast a covert eye to her side, admiring the way the platinum snakes seemed to ripple as the muscle moved beneath the freckled skin of Myfwany's arms.

"Utilities an' such?" the redhead asked, nodding downslope.

The hill fell away gently to the northwest. There was a strip of lawn three meters below them, then terraces behind low brick retaining walls, flowerbanks and cypresses, fountains and stairways. At the base of the slope the buildings began, two rows of them built back into the slope so that the pale yellow tile of their roofs made steps leading down to the pool at the bottom.

They were half-hidden from here by the trees planted about them, chestnuts and oaks.

"House stables, toolsheds, garages, some sleepin' quarters,"

Yolande answered. Most of the housegirls bunked in the attics, but not the garden staff. The plantation's transformer was down there, too; electricity came in by underground cable, brought down from the hydro plants in the mountains. She laid a hand on Myfwany's. "Thanks… thanks fo' comin' along, Myf. Missin'

goin' to yo' home, and all. Would've been lonely, without."

Myfwany turned her hand palm-up and squeezed for a moment before releasing the other girl's fingers. "No great sacrifice," she said quietly, not looking around; she smoothed the wind-tossed hair back from her face. "Got to get it cut… My stepmother an' me don't get on so well, anyhows."

Yolande tried to imagine what it would be like, for her mother to die and a stranger take her place, and shivered. "Come on, there's time for a swim befo' lunch."

There was a shout from the pool. Johanna Ingolfsson looked up from her papers, and saw her daughter balanced on her red-haired friend's shoulders. The other girl reached up; they clasped wrists and Yolande did a slow handstand, grinning downward through dangling strands of wet blond hair.

"Now!" she said.

Myfwany pushed up and Yolande twisted, doing a complete 360 turn before arrowing into the water headfirst. Johanna nodded approvingly as the sleek body eeled along the bottom of the pool for a dozen meters before breaking surface and crawl-stroking for the far end. Myfwany followed. They paused for a moment, treading water and hyperventilating, then dove for a game of subsurface tag. Johanna quirked a lip.
Not the only
type of touching friend Myfwany has in mind, if I can still read
the signs,
she thought.

"Looks like my youngest might make a pilot; got the reflexes, at least," she said musingly. "About time, the first three bein' in the ever-lovin'
infantry
of all things."

Rakhsan chuckled; she was sitting on a cushion at the bottom of the lounger, embroidering a circle of silk held in a wicker frame. "Mebbeso she pick the Navy, eh, Mistis?"

Johanna snorted and reached for the glass of cooler. The outdoor pool was set along the eastern flank of the Great House, along the outer rim of the terrace built up and out from the hillside. It had been convenient; the space beneath provided room for things best tucked away, the heat-pump system, the fuel-cell for the war-shelter deep in the rock beneath the manor, the armory, a laundry… a pleasant place for an outdoor lunch, as well. One hundred meters by twenty-five, with a basic pavement of black onyx marble they had gotten cheap after the War, stripped from ruined palazzi in Sienna. The rough stone of the wall behind them was overgrown with bougainvillea, bright now with pink-purple garlands; low limestone troughs held banks of clematis, pearl rhododendrons, azaleas; there were stone bowls with topiaries and small trees, or lilac bushes for the scent.

The older Draka returned her attention to the documents.

There had been
another
change in the League accounting procedures for olive-oil delivery, specifically the extra-virgin first pressing Tuscan that Claestum produced for the restaurant trade. The Landholders' League bureaucrats never seemed to tire of searching for the perfect paperwork solution.

"Lady Freya bless," she muttered. "Some day the civil service will grow right over the Domination like-so coral on a reef, an'

we'll all freeze in place." She made a notation, signed and snapped her fingers. "Guido, take these an' give them to the bookkeeper; we have to have written acknowledgment from the Florence office, tell her that." Next thing would be to do a check on the irrigation piping in the orchards, hands-on work, but that could wait until after lunch.

Stretching, she looked back at the pool. Yolande was sitting on the edge of the little island at its center; there was a two-meter high alabaster vase in the center of that, with water cascading down from a spout in its center. She was smiling and swinging her legs, talking to Myfwany as she floated nearby; Johanna could hear their laughter over the sound of the fountain. Her mother turned her head to the other lounger where… Mandy Slauter, that was her name. Lying up on one elbow under the dappled shade of the pergola, fanning herself with her hat; a nice enough girl, a bit citified, but it was good that Yolande was making friends outside Landholder circles.

Some people liked to pretend it was still 1860, but the Domination had changed; unless you were prepared to rusticate all your life, connections in the urban classes were essential.

Johanna nodded in the direction of the pool. "They two seem to get on very well," she said. Mandy nodded. "Are they sleepin'

together yet?" she continued casually.

Mandy blinked and coughed, would have squirmed if etiquette permitted. "Ah, Miz Ingolfsson, they, ah, that is—"

Johanna's cousin spoke without raising her eyes from the book in her lap. "Gods, Jo, y' always were as subtle as a steamtruck. Spare the girl's feelin's, hey?"

Johanna chuckled; adolescent affairs were a long-standing tradition for Citizen-class women, but there was an ancient convention of not mentioning them before adults. Probably a survival from times when such things were strongly frowned upon, but it had been silly even in her youth. "Younger generation's less discreet than we was, Alicia," she said. To Mandy: "Hard though it is to imagine, girl, I went to school, too.

Jus' inquirin'."

"Ah, no. I don't think so," Mandy said. Under her breath:

"Moo."

"Well, as they please," Johanna said contentedly.

Yolande had never been very popular at school in her younger years: too much the loner and dreamer. It was reassuring to see her fitting in so well and making friends. A lover was only to be expected given her age, although Johanna had never thought much of the hothouse-romance atmosphere of Senior School herself. In theory it was supposed to be emotional training for adulthood, but she had never seen the point in falling in love with someone you couldn't marry. Not that school sweethearts necessarily drifted out of touch; ex-lovers who were godmothers and unofficial aunts to each other's children were a staple of Draka life… But it was all no preparation for how
different
men were.

Well, I was always eccentric,
she mused comfortably.

Deciding who you were going to marry at
sixteen was
decidedly unusual, even if he was a neighbor's son.
She smiled down at Rakhsan; that was an entirely different matter, of course. As the Roman poet had said, it was pleasant to have it friendly, easy, and close at hand… friendly especially, otherwise it just wasn't worth the trouble, usually.

Rahksan smiled back, laying aside her embroidery. "Yo' got anythin' fo' me to do, next hour or two, Mistis?" she asked.

"No, not particular, Rahksi. Why?"

"That boy of mine," she said. "Wants particulah to have a talk with me, says it impo'tant. Allah, most of the time he don' give me the time of day, an' now he jus'
has
to have a chat."

Johanna pursed her lips; Rahksan's son was a classic pain in the fundament. Spoiled from house-rearing, restless as a cat on hot tiles, and sullen; a lot of young serfs went through a stage like that, particularly the males, but he was considerably worse than average. It was no help that Ali had been sired by Tom.

Contraception had been more difficult then, and Rahksan careless about it; the three of them had been play-pleasuring, and the Afghan had decided to keep it on impulse. Not that half-Draka bastards were uncommon, but mostly they grew up in Quarters and it made no particular difference. Ali had run tame in the manor; looking at it from his point of view, she supposed it was natural enough for him to be more discontented than most. To make it worse, he was completely besotted with Colette, her son John's new French concubine.

Who is a gorgeous mantrap and a teasing bitch of the first
water,
Johanna thought sourly. The wench had been a present from her cousins Tanya and Edward, who had a plantation west of Tours in the Loire valley; John certainly hadn't complained—he indulged the wench—but his mother was beginning to think her kin had unloaded a troublemaker.

Tanya's bloody sense of humor
, she mused.

"Rahksi, that boy needs some serious talkin'-to," she said.

"Half a dozen times I've talked Tom out of kickin' his butt good an' proper. Fightin', drinkin'; he's first-rate with the horses, but he's back-talked the head groom enough to get anyone else triced up to the frame fo' ten-strokes-an-' one. Freya, honeybunch, I cain't let him ruin discipline." Bending the rules too far for a favorite was an invitation to trouble.

"Ah knows, Mistis." A deep sigh, and the serfs brows drew together. "Blames myself, really do. Too easy on that chile; I get set to rake him down, an' then remembers him so little an' sweet.

He too land treated, never reminded strong of his place; it better iff'n y' learns that young."

Rahksan looked suddenly older; Johanna sat up and gave her a gentle squeeze on the shoulder. "Isn't easy bein' a mother, Rahksi. Don't worry, we'll straighten him out."

The Afghan shrugged and smiled ruefully. "I'll tells him yo'

threatenin' to sell him to the mines," she said.

Johanna snorted. "Bettah use somethin' he'll believe," she replied. The Ingolfssons and her own von Shrakenberg clan had definite ideas about managing their serfs; they did not sell them to strangers, except as punishment for some gross crime like child-abuse. Such extreme measures had not been necessary on Claesrum since the brutal days of the settlement, right after the War. Besides which it would break Rahksan's heart, which was not to be contemplated.

"Say we might send him down to the boats fo' a year," she continued. Claestum had a part-share in a tuna-fishing business on the coast, run in cooperation with a half-dozen neighboring estates. The Landholders oversaw their hired managers carefully, but it was rough work.

Rahksan winced slightly and made a palms-up gesture. "Tell yo' true, Mistis, I've thought on that. Might do him good't'see how soft he's had it, an' get him away from his momma's skirts.

But—"

"I know, he's yo' own and yo'd miss him." Johanna rested one of her own hands on the serfs. "Look, Rahksi, this just an idea.

Tom was sayin' Ali makes a terrible houseboy but might do well as a soldier; we could get him a Janissary postin', if he volunteered."

And it would be just what he needs to make something of
himself
, she thought.
The boy's strong an'
smart enough, it's the
attitude's the problem
. An induction camp's hard-bitten Master Sergeants had no interest in the anguished sensitivities of the adolescent soul, or anything else beside results.

"Eehh." Rahksan bit her lip. "That generous, but they mighty rough an' he ain't nohow used to it." A talented serf could rise far in the military. Not just to non-commissioned rank in the subject-race legions; Janissaries had opportunities for education, training of every sort. There were ex-Janissaries throughout the serf-manned bureaucracies that ran the Domination, below the level of the Citizen aristocracy. "Though…

I wouldn't see him much, that way," she finished softly.

"Rahksi," Johanna said seriously. "He's not yo' little boy no'

mo'. Ali's a grown buck, an' he has to learn to look his fate in the eye. He cain't hide behind yo' fo'ever. Else he'll do somethin' we can't overlook, an'…" She shrugged. "Ahhh, well, run along an' try reasonin' with him. But think about it. Well talk it ovah mo'

tonight."

Johanna put the matter out of her mind as Rahksan left; time enough later. She could hear Olietta directing the wenches setting the table behind her, and glanced at her watch. 1258