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past,” Callista replied in a voice as passionless as Leonie’s own, “nor did Andrew
    seek to seduce me; he has offered honorable marriage.”

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    Leonie gave a slight shrug. “It is all one,” she said. She was silent for a long time, the silence stretchinginto minutes, and again Callista felt that Leonie was willing her to lose control, to plead with her. But Callista waited, motionless, and it was again Leonie who had to break the silence.
    “Is this, then, how you keep your oath, Callista of Arilinn?”
    For a moment Callista felt pain clutch at her throat. The title was used only for a Keeper, the title shehad won at such terrible cost! And Leonie looked so old, so sad, so weary!
    Leonie is old , she told herself.   She wishes to lay aside her burden, give it into my hands. I wastraind so carefully, since I was a child. Leonie has worked and waited so patiently for the day Icould step into the place she prepared for me. What will she do now   ?

    Then, instead of pain, anger came, anger at Leonie, for playing so on her emotions. Her voice was calm.
    “For nine years, Leonie, I have borne the weight of the Keeper’s oath. I am not the first to ask leave to
    lay it down, nor will I be the last to do so.”
    “When I was made Keeper, Callista, it was taken for granted that it was a lifetime decision. I have borne
    my oath lifelong. I had hoped you would be willing to do no less.”
    Callista wanted to weep, to cry out I cannot   , to plead with Leonie. She thought, with a forlorndetachment, that it would be better if she could. Leonie would be readier to believe her unfit, to free her. But she had been taught pride, had fought for it and armored herself with it, and she could not nowsurrender it.
    “I was never told, Leonie, that I must give my oath lifelong. It was you who told me that it is too heavy a
    burden to be borne unconsenting.”
    With stony patience, Leonie said, “That is true. Yet I had believed you stronger. Well, then, tell meabout it. Have you lain with your lover?” The word was scornful; it was the same she had used before,meaning “promised husband,” but this time Leonie used the derogatory inflection which gave it, instead,the implication of “paramour,” and Callista had to stop and steady her voice before she could summon upcalm enough to speak quietly.
    “No. I have not yet been given back my oath, and he is too honorable to seek it. I asked leave to marry,
    not absolution for betrayal, Leonie.”
    “Truly?” Leonie said, disbelief in the word, and her cold face scornful. “Having resolved to break your
    oath, I wonder you waited for my word!”
    It took all of Callista’s self-control, this time, to keep from bursting into angry defense of herself, of Andrew—then she realized that Leonie was baiting her, testing to see if she had indeed lost control of hercarefully disciplined emotions. This game she knew from her earliest days at Arilinn, and relief at thememory made her want to laugh. Laughter would have been as unthinkable as tears in this solemnconfrontation, but there was merriment in her voice, and she knew Leonie was aware of it, as she saidwith calm amusement, “We keep a midwife at Armida, Leonie; send for her, if you wish, and let hercertify me virgin.”
    It was Leonie who lowered her eyes, saying at last, “That will not be necessary, child. But I came hereprepared to face, if need be, the knowledge that you had been raped.”

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    “In the hands of nonhumans? No, I suffered fear, cold, imprisonment, hunger, abuse, but rape I was
    spared.”
    “It would not really have mattered, you know,” Leonie said, and her voice was very gentle. “Of course, a Keeper need not, in general, have to fear rape very much. You know as well as I that any man who lays hands on a Keeper trained as you have been trained takes his life in his hands. Yet rape is possible. Some women have been overpowered by sheer might, and some fear at the last moment to