Glade and Ivory Ch. 15

"We shall be entertaining visitors from a village many days to the north," Dolphin told Glade as they relaxed naked on the shore. The patches of fine sand that adhered to Glade's thighs were made sticky by Dolphin's semen and their shared perspiration.

"Oh yes?" said Glade, who knew that Dolphin would only mention such a routine event if there was good reason.

"The company is of three men and three women," continued Dolphin. "The women will stay with us and we are expected to offer the men three unmarried women from our village. That is the way in which men and women in our tribe get to meet and marry."

"Yes," said Glade who already knew this.

"One of the women is described as having dark skin."

"Dark skin?"

"Like your lover Dignity. I don't think she is a native of our tribe. Do you think she might be one of the Knights you've told me about?"

"I don't know," admitted Glade. "There are many tribes with dark skin. Queen Mimosa's tribe has skin at least as black as the Knights."

However, it was more likely to be a Knight than a Mountain Warrior. Why would anyone who wasn't from the Knights' unwilling diaspora wander so far from the open plains?

Dignity and Macaque were more anxious than Glade about this dark-skinned visitor. This anxiety was shared by all of Glade's company of migrants. Some feared that she might be a secret emissary of the Mountain Warriors. Others worried that another Knight in their midst could upset the delicate balance of tolerance and understanding that had grown between the last remaining Knights and those who had once been their slaves. Dignity hardly considered herself a Knight anymore.

Nevertheless, the mystery of the dark-skinned woman's ethnic origins would soon be resolved. A party would officially welcome the visitors and observe the official exchange of unmarried women. This ceremony caused great excitement amongst the Ocean People. Because of the woman's unusual ethnicity, it was considered appropriate that there should be a representation of the village's very own migrant community. It was believed that their presence would further demonstrate the extent of the village's unprejudiced hospitality and open-mindedness.

However, when the three naked men and three naked women came striding towards the village across the sand, carrying with them gifts of amber, antler and flint, Glade got a shock she had never expected.

The black woman who strode with the others and who laughed and joked with the other two lighter brown-skinned women was quite definitely not an Ocean Person. It was also obvious from her height and build that she wasn't a Mountain Warrior. In fact, now that Glade knew from her long association with Dignity what a Knight looked like when the head was no longer shaved, it was obvious to her that this woman was a Knight.

The long straight hair that obscured the black woman's face didn't cover her body at all. And it was this more than her face that Glade recognised before the three women and their companions were within a hundred strides of the reception party.

Not only was the dark-skinned woman a Knight, she was also the woman who had once been Glade's mistress.

The woman who was about to enter Glade's life once again was the woman she had once known as Lady Demure.