Read Online The Warrior Who Carried Life by Geoff Ryman - Free Book Online Page A

their wives were filtering sedately to places along the benches. They all wore white, spotless white that had been freshly put on. Flowers were entwined in the hair of the women; jewellery, thick plain gold bands in layers, hung around their necks.
    Cara and Stefile found a gap along one of the benches and sat together. The food, raw fish and raw salad in red clay bowls, was out of their reach.
    “Friends or masters, we thank you for the food,” said Cara, with country politeness. No one moved. “We have arrived after a long journey. We have had no breakfast.”
    “Hisho, dear friend, would you like some more fish?” one of the women said to a Warrior across from her.
    “No, Klara, thank you. Would you like some yourself?”
    The woman answered yes, and the bowl was passed to her and glances at Cara carried meaning. She had been given a lesson in manners. Here, one did not ask for anything directly.
    “Dear friend, would you like some more fish?” Cara asked the woman.
    “No, thank you,” replied the woman, with a half-smile, and looked away. She was not going to offer.
    “Then you will not mind if I take some,” replied Cara, and stood up, and arched across the woman and took both bowls.
    As if it had been a signal, everyone else at the table began to pass everything that was on it to Cara, in contempt: flowers, spoons, bowls, the salt keeper, pitchers of water. They pushed the heap forward until some of the pottery spilled on the floor and broke.
    “Is that enough?” the woman asked, with cold amusement.
    “Yes,” replied Cara, and began, out of anger, to eat directly out of the serving bowl with her fingers. The man across from her groaned.
    “We shall simply have to break that too when it is finished,” said the woman, airily.
    “Tell me,” said the man. “What sort of creature eats like that?”
    “The kind that has to sit with its consort at table, because it knows it is out of place.”
    Stefile felt her uncut black hair, stringy with water in front, dry and caked with dust behind, and pulled on it. Very gently, Cara reached up and took her hand, and lowered it again to the table. With exaggerated ceremony, she poured Stefile some water.
    A question seemed to hover in the air between the Angels, and then receive an answer. As one, they stood up, gathering their robes about them, making inconsequential conversation as they moved to other tables. Stefile and Cara ate alone at the long table.
    The Warriors resumed training in the late afternoon when it was cooler, and half the courtyard was in shadow. They rinsed their mouths with mint in milk, and removed their robes and dressed in loose clean garments. They went out into the yard carrying parasols to preserve their complexions. The women hid away from the light, in their rooms. No one spoke to Cara or Stefile, so they sat together under the mulberry, the lowering sun in the eyes.
    “They are pigs! Pigs!” said Stefile, murderously, near tears. “I will kill them!”
    Cara tried to take her arm, but Stefile pulled it away in anger. “No one has ever spoken to me in that way. I tell you I may be a bondwoman who has always lived among bonded people, but I have never seen the lowest of us forget hospitality and true good manners like these people. We always give strangers food if we can. It is a good duty, and if their ways are different from ours, we look at the person beneath them.”
    “We will go,” said Cara, and stood up. “Come on. We cannot stay.”
    “No,” said Stefile giving her head little shakes. “What about what you have to do?”
    “We will find another way.”
    “We will stay and kill their prince, eh?” Stefile’s gaze was intent and fierce. “That will push their beauty back down their gullets. May the Family kill them all in revenge.” Her feelings got the better of her. Her voice began to waver, and she stood up, abruptly, and swept her dress about herself, like the highest lady of the highest house.
    “Thank you,