David Weber: The Service of the Sword

Judith returned Dinah's gaze as levelly as she could, but meeting those steel gray eyes wasn't easy. Judith had been ten when Ephraim had first brought her into his home. For the two years before he had taken Judith as his youngest bride, Dinah had been a surrogate mother to the orphaned girl. The senior wife had been strict, but not cruel, coaching Judith on matters of etiquette, listening to her recitations, and standing between her and the resentment of Ephraim's other wives—all of whom knew perfectly well that he hadn't brought the Grayson girl home out of high-mindedness.

When a few years later, Judith had suffered her miscarriages, Dinah had sided with the doctor who had advised giving the girl a few more years to physically mature. She had held her ground even in the face of cutting remarks from Ephraim, who accused Dinah of envying the younger woman's youth and potential fecundity.

Now, hair as gray as those piercing eyes, her figure spread from the children, living and dead, she had carried in the thirty-eight years of her marriage, Dinah stood as accusing judge of her co-wife. What Judith didn't understand was why Dinah didn't immediately com for Ephraim or one of her sons.

"I wanted to see what it was like," Judith answered lamely. "I saw Zachariah using it and it looked like fun."

As Dinah set the headset in its rack, Judith could swear that the older woman looked at the program list and understood what was written there. But that was impossible, wasn't it?

For the first time in the four years she had lived beneath Ephraim's roof, Judith doubted that she understood how things worked.

"Come away, Judith," Dinah ordered, her fingers tapping the tabs for the shut-down sequence.

These were standard, the same as for every appliance in the house, so Judith shouldn't have been surprised, but something stirred within her, an inkling of an emotion so alien that she had all but forgotten what it felt like.

Hope.

Afraid to feed that strange emotion, Judith bent her head and dutifully trailed Dinah to the private chamber that, as senior wife, Dinah claimed as her right. The other wives slept in dormitories, an arrangement meant to prevent something vaguely referred to as Vice.

Judith had an idea that Vice might involve sex, but nothing in her experiences with Ephraim gave her any idea why this might be something to pursue. She'd filed this away as a piece of useless information, devoting her energy instead into devising ruses for leaving the dormitory unquestioned. During the two years she had resided with the other wives, she had come up with a large number of these and was careful never to use any one too often.

Dinah motioned Judith to a chair, then closed the door.

"Power surge following transit into N-space," Dinah said. "How useful is that?"

Judith actually started to answer, so matter-of-factly was the question put to her. Then she realized what this meant.

"You can read!"

"My father was very elderly when I was born," Dinah said levelly, "and his eyesight was failing. He never cared for the restrictions of recordings, and had me taught to read so that I could read scripture to him. Later, when my meekness and piety caught Ephraim's eye, my father commanded me to forget what I had learned, for it was well-known that the Templetons saw no use for women's education. I, of course, obeyed, never disabusing my lord and master of his assumptions regarding me."

Judith knew that Dinah's family had been poor and not well-placed within the Masadan hierarchy. An alliance with the ambitious Templetons, especially one that also disposed of a useless daughter would have been worth a little lie.

"Did you know that I..." Judith asked, feeling every bit the child, all the confidence of her fourteen years fleeing.

"Could read?" Dinah set an audio recording of chanted scripture playing on her room's system. "I guessed. You were very careful, even when there were no men present. I commend you for that. Even so, there were times your gaze would rest over-long on some printed label or other bit of text. I was certain the day you saved little Uriel from harming himself.

Judith remembered the day quite clearly. Uriel had been a toddler when first she came to Ephraim's house. His mother, Raphaela, was great with child once more and chasing after the boy had been one of the many tasks bestowed on the Grayson captive.

Not able to transfer her hatred of Ephraim to any of his children, Judith's secret and her honor had warred against each other on the day that Uriel had reached for a brightly colored plug that superficially looked like any number of toys scattered about the nursery.

What it was, however, was a partially installed electrical system that a careless technician had not finished sealing.

For a moment that seemed far longer than it had been, Judith had stared at the chubby hand and the plug. Only the writing on the wiring revealed it for the danger it was. If she stopped Uriel, she might give away her secret.

The little hand had barely moved toward the apparent toy when Judith scooped Uriel away. Once she had soothed the screaming child, distracting him with an even more fascinating toy, Judith had returned to put the wires out of reach. Now that she thought back, Dinah had been present, but as the senior wife had made no comment, Judith had thought her too distracted by her own duties.

"That long," Judith said, and her inflection was a question.

"You were very careful," Dinah replied, "and Ephraim never noticed anything odd about you—except, perhaps, for wondering whether your apparent stupidity was a form of rebellion. I assured him that I thought not."

"You protected me," Judith said, almost accusingly. "Then and today. Why?"

"Then, today, and a dozen times since," Dinah answered. "Why? Because you were careful, because you were kind to those you had reason to hate, and because I pitied you. And for one reason more."

Dinah paused for so long that Judith thought she might not finish her thought.

"Yes?" the younger woman prompted.

"And," said Dinah, a strange light shining in her grey eyes, "because I thought you might somehow be the One prophesied, the Moses sent to lead us from this place and into a better life."

That Midshipman Winton was polite and dutiful to a fault, no matter how much work or how many practice sessions the ATO scheduled for him, didn't moderate Carlie's sense of unease regarding her royal charge.

Unless actually on duty, the young man was rarely without a cadre of hangers-on. Two of these—Astrid Heywood and Osgood Russo—had been transferred to Intransigent immediately after Michael's own assignment. The other three had already been assigned to the ship, but that didn't stop them from taking advantage of their proximity to the Crown Prince.

The presence of this cadre had split the middy berth into two groups, for the remaining six members seemed to go out of their way to avoid Midshipman Winton. To make matters worse, even ten days after the last member of the middy berth had reported for duty, Carlie was uncertain whether Michael did or did not encourage his followers. What she was certain of was that he did nothing to discourage them, and in her eyes that was just as bad.

Then there was the problem of Michael Winton's extra duties, duties that required him to spend a great deal of time consulting with the diplomatic contingent that was Intransigent 's reason for heading to the Endicott System. Carlie didn't doubt that once the diplomats had Prince Michael behind closed doors they bowed and scraped to him in the most abject manner. Certainly, Michael seemed even more distant and self-contained whenever he returned from one of these meetings.

That Michael couldn't take his toadies with him to these diplomatic sessions was one of the few good things about them, Carlie thought, but they served even more than his little cadre to emphasize that Michael Winton was someone apart from the rest of the middy berth. Hell, from the rest of Intransigent 's crew.