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was a fight without limit, he expected now to be tortured, humiliated, or
both, and he was making virtue of necessity by refusing to plead for mercy.
I spoke in Terstad now. "You demanded things of me you had no right to demand,
and condemned me for not being what you wished me. If I have insulted you,
it has been because you would not listen to me otherwise. If I have defiled
your name, it is only so that you will face me, me as I am, and not insist
that I wear a mask of your choosing. I wish that this battle of ours may
be non que malvolensa, que per ilh tensa sola.
Therefore I offer you honorable terms either honorable yield or honorable
death, your choice, with first the handshake of peace between us."
It was generous of me by Occitan standards, but my generosity was all
calculated, for if he accepted my offer I would have far outdone him in merce,
and if he refused, though it showed great enseingnamen on his part, my own
merce would still be praised for years to come. In that, it was as cynical a
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bit of career maneuvering as any I had ever done.
"Ages atz infernam,"
he said, firmly.
"Per que voletz."
I strode to him, drew a cord from my belt, and bound his hands,
shaming him by indicating that I did not think he could hold them in that pose
himself.
Then, as the crowd gasped in shock, I jerked down his breeches, forced him
over a bench, and beat his buttocks with my bare hand until I was sure he
would be badly bruised. Then, and it was at this point that Occitan opinion
held that I went too far, I
walked away without giving him the coup de merce, thus not giving him an
excuse to
hide in a hospital for the several days it took to be revived. Let him face,
now, having to stand up, cover himself, and go home. Let him have to keep his
afternoon appointments with the humiliation fresh upon him.
As we sat over lunch later, Margaret stared at her plate and picked
at her food; I
realized how it must have seemed to her. We barely spoke; toward the end of
the meal, Garsenda suggested that she and Margaret might want to go shopping,
and I added one more to the uncountable pile of favors I owed my old
entendedora.
I myself headed up to
Pertz's, now a prominent Interstellar hangout, after buying conservative
street clothing.
No longer dressed like the old vus of me, I wasn't recognized by anyone but
Pertz, and he and I spent a pleasant time catching up on gossip.
Most of the gossip was about people who had hung up the epee and moved from
the
Quartier.
Margaret never really spoke about the fight with Marcabru. I don't
know what
Garsenda said to her, if anything, but a day or so later Margaret seemed the
same as ever.
I freely admit that I lacked the courage to ask.
The day we got on the coaster ferry to go visit my parents in
Elinorien, Garsenda came down to see us at the docks. "By the way," she
muttered in my ear, "I know you wouldn't have believed a thing he told you,
but I wanted the pleasure of saying that
Marcabru made passes at me several times while you and I were in finamor, and
I turned him down every single time."
I grinned at her and said, "I assumed as much."
Margaret and I had a marvelous time taking the coaster up to the little port,
and she got along fabulously with my mother. I spent a lot of time walking
with my father, along the many trails that wove up from the coast to the
mountains, and he even got me to help a bit in the garden. He wanted to know
everything about the mountains and trails of Nansen; it occurred to me, to my
deep surprise, that after all the man was only in his early fifties, and that
if Shan was right and springer prices were low enough for routine tourism ten
stanyears from now, my father and I might yet get a chance to hike through
Sodom Gap together.
Margaret and my mother spent all their time over at the university; my mother
was in fact the only reason anyone knew the name "Leones" in the Inner Sphere,
for she was an authority on archived cultures the groups that had not
been able to raise enough money fast enough to launch colony ships during
Diaspora, and so had been recorded extensively and then quietly, regretfully,
but inexorably assimilated during the Inward
Turn. I had grown up with my mother's constant talking about the Amish, the
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Salish, the
Samoans ... and now every night in the guest bungalow, Margaret seemed to
echo it, though her fascination was more with how the recording had been
done.
It hadn't occurred to me until we'd been there for about a week that my mother
was hinting about the fact that she and my father could not possibly come to
Caledony for the wedding. I thought, for one moment, of saying that after all
we had affianced entirely to get Margaret a ticket here thought about it, and
decided it wasn't true.
It wasn't legally binding, since neither of us was of age under Occitan law,
but we had a very pleasant ceremony in my father's garden, looking out across
the tomato plants down toward the gray sea, just as Arcturus sank into
Totzmare. Garsenda sprang up for it, vowing that she would be at the one in
Utilitopia as well, and put out enough energy
and noise to constitute the whole bride's side by herself. Pertz came, and a
few of my other old jovent friends also, but mostly the occasion was [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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