Glory Season Read Online Free

the faraway cities of the west. Perhaps it would ride the Grim Bird along with Maia and Leie … if the workers got it safely to ground first. A gaggle of the sallow-faced, long-fingered Pasargs had gathered below, trilling nervously whenever the sash-horses stamped, setting the cargo swaying overhead. If it crashed, a season’s profits might be ruined.
    To other onlookers, the tense moment highlighted a drab autumn morning. Hawkers-converged, selling roasted nuts and scent-sticks to the gathering crowd. Slender money rods were swapped in bundles or broken to make change.
    “Winter’s comin’, so get yerself a’ready!” shouted an ovop seller with her basket of bitter contraceptive herbs. “Men are finally coolin’ off, but can you trust
yerself
with glory frost due?”
    Other tradeswomen carried reed cages containing live birds and Stratoin hiss lizards, some of them trained to warble popular tunes. One young Charnoss clone tried to steer a herd of gangly llamas past the high wheels of the jiggling wagon, and got tangled with a political worker wearing a sandwich board advertising the virtues of a candidate in the upcoming council elections.
    Leie bought a candied tart and joined those gasping and cheering as the delicately carved spinet narrowly escaped clipping a nearby wall. But Maia found it more interesting to watch the Ortyn team on the back of the wagon, working together to free the jammed winch. It was a rare electrical device, operating on battery power. She had never seen Ortyns use one before, and thought it likely they had mishandled it in some way. None of the clans in Port Sanger specialized in the repair of such things, so it came as no surprise when, without a word or any other apparent sign, the Ortyns gave up trying tomake it work. One member of the team grabbed the release catch while the others, as in a choreographed dance, turned and raised callused hands to seize the rope. There were no cries or shouts of cadence; each Ortyn seemed to know her sisters’ state of readiness as the latch let go. Muscles bunched across broad backs. Smoothly, the cargo settled downward, kissing the wagon bed with deceptive gentleness. There were cheers and a few disappointed boos as money sticks changed hands, settling wagers. Maia and her twin hoisted their duffels once more, Leie finishing her tart while Maia turned pensive.
    The Ortyns almost read each others’ minds. How are Leie and I supposed to fake something like that?
    When they were younger, she and her sister sometimes used to finish each other’s sentences, or knew when and where the other was in pain. But at best it had been a tentative link, nothing like the bond among clones, whose mothers, aunts, and grandmothers shared both genes and common upbringing, stretching back generations. Moreover, the twins had lately seemed to diverge, rather than coalesce. Of the two, Maia felt her sister had more of the hard practicality needed to succeed in this world.
    “Ortyns an’ Jorusses an’ Kroebers an’ bleedin’ Sloskies …” Leie muttered. “I’m so sick of this rutty place. I’d kiss a dragon on the mouth, not to have to look at the same faces till I julp.”
    Maia, too, felt an urge to move on. Yet, she wondered, how did a stranger get to know who was whom in a foreign town? Here, one learned about each caste almost from birth. Such as the willowy, kink-haired Sheldons, dark-skinned women a full head taller than the blocky Ortyns. Their usual niche was trapping fur-beasts in the tundra marshes, but Sheldons in their mid-thirties often also wore badges of Port Sanger’s corps of Guards, overseeing the city’s defense.
    Long-fingered Poeskies were likewise well-suited totheir tasks—deftly harvesting fragile stain glands from cracked stellar snails. They were so good at the dye trade, cadet branches had set up in other towns along the Parthenia Sea, wherever fisherfolk caught the funnel-shaped shells.
    Near cousins to that clan, Groeskies