Voices by Ursula K. Le Guin Read Free Book Online Page B

come down among them.
    When he leapt back up on the platform and scanned the crowd, Gry made her bird’s whistle, loud and piercing this time. At once he saw her; she nodded to our left; and a few minutes later he met us by the steps of the Customs.
    Now that the soldiers had dispersed, many citizens trailed him, but they were timid, unwilling to press forward. Only one elderly man came up to him, and bowed as we bow in thanks to our gods, deeply, with open hands that hold the gift given and received. “Praise to the maker,” he whispered. He straightened up and walked swiftly away. He was in tears. He was a man who had brought books to the Waylord more than once. I didn’t know his name.
    Orrec Caspro saw us and strode forward. He took both Gry’s hands for a moment. “Get me out!” he said. “Where’s Shetar?”
    “At Galvamant,” she said, pronouncing the name northern-wise. “I am with Decalo’s daughter Memer of Galvamant. We’re to be guests of that house.”
    His eyes widened. He greeted me courteously and asked no questions, but he looked as if he had some.
    “Please excuse me,” I said on the spur of the moment, “I forgot something at the market this morning. You know the way. I’ll catch up.” And I left them. It was true that Ista would need more greens for a stew for eight.
    I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn’t it what all the great wars and battles are fought for—so that at day’s end a family may eat together in a peaceful house? The tale tells how the Lords of Manva hunted and gathered roots and cooked their suppers while they were camped in exile in the foothills of Sul, but it doesn’t say what their wives and children were living on in their city left ruined and desolate by the enemy. They were finding food too, somehow, cleaning house and honoring the gods, the way we did in the siege and under the tyranny of the Alds. When the heroes came back from the mountain, they were welcomed with a feast. I’d like to know what the food was and how the women managed it.
    I saw Gry and her husband at the top of West Street when I started up the hill from the Gelb Bridge. When I came into the kitchen, Sosta and Bomi were all agog, having met the guests, and Ista was on the very edge of a tantrum—“How in the name of Sampa the Destroyer is a woman to feed guests on a scrap of fish and a kale stalk?” The additional greens and celery-root I brought averted disaster. She set to work grating ginger and chopping thessony and ordering Bomi and even Sosta about unmercifully. Galvamand would not scant it’s guests or shame it’s ancestors if Ista could help it. This is part of what I meant about housework. If it isn’t important, what is? If it isn’t done honorably, where is honor?
    Ista could tell us about the banquets for forty in the great dining hall in the old days, but we always ate in what she called the pantry, a large room full of shelves and counters, between the dining hall and the kitchens. Gudit had built a table of pine scraps, and we had found a chair here and a chair there. The Waylord’s longest walk in a day was often from his room, through the corridors, past the staircases and the inner courtyards, to dinner in the pantry. Tonight he came wearing the heavy, stiff, grey robe that was the only fine clothing he had left from the good days. All of us had cleaned up a bit except Gudit, who smelled very much of horse. Gry wore a long red shirt over narrow silk pants, and her husband a white shirt, black coat, and black kilt that left his legs bare below the knee. He was very good-looking in his black, and Sosta goggled at him like the fish on it’s slab in the market.
    But the Waylord was a handsome man too for all his lameness, and when he greeted Orrec Caspro I thought again of the heroes Adira and Marra. Both he and Caspro stood very straight, though it must have cost the Waylord more to do so.
    We sat to table, Gry at