Certain Symmetry is dedicated to:
Angela Gradillas, SinCitian
Adventures in the Liaden Universe #4
“WELL, HERE’S AN improvement,” the magician said to his apprentice, watching her walk the red wooden counter across the backs of her fingers. The counter reversed itself, returned along the thin, ringless fingers to the end of the hand, over the side, to be deftly caught by that same hand before it had fallen an inch.
Moonhawk looked up with a grin, as proud of mastering this minor bit of hand-skill as she had ever been of learning any of the true-spells taught in Temple. It had taken days of almost constant practice to teach her muscles the rhythm required to move the counter smoothly across her own skin. It was the sort of thing one might do while walking, which was Lute’s stated reason for teaching her this skill first. They had been walking for two days.
“I do believe you are ready to learn something a little more difficult,” the magician said now, and looked around him.
The road was empty. The road—the track, really, Moonhawk thought—had been empty for two days. Of all the people on Sintia, only Lute and Moonhawk found the village of Karn a destination of interest.
“The season is early,” Lute murmured, seeming, as he so often did, to be reading her very thoughts. “When summer is high, this road will be crowded with folk who have business in Karn.”
“It will?” Moonhawk frowned after her Temple lessons, recalling the long tales of provinces and products she and the rest of the Maidens had been obliged to memorize. Karn had certainly not been on any of those lists.
She sighed and looked up. Lute was watching her with that particular expression that meant he was receiving the Goddess’s own pleasure from her ignorance, which he would not, of course, enlighten until she asked him.
“Very well,” she said crossly. “Whatever comes out of Karn, Master Lute, that the world should walk for days to have it?”
“Wine, of course,” he answered, setting his bag down in the road with a flourish. “The best wine in all the world that is allowed to those not in Temple.”
She blinked. “Wine? But wine comes from Mandnel and Barbary…”
“From Astong and Veyru,” Lute finished. “Fine vineyards, every one. But the Temples are thirsty. Or greedy. Or both. No drop of wine from those four provinces escapes to a common glass. That wine comes from Karn."
Almost she frowned again, for it was not his place to pass judgement on the Temples—and by extension the witches who served the Goddess there. But she remembered another lesson from her days as a Maiden in Temple. The wine cellars at Dyan Temple were large and an accurate inventory of vintage and barrel very close to the heart of Merlot, the Temple steward. Inventory was considered the sort of practical, useful work most needed by Maidens who were, perhaps, just a bit prideful of their magics. There had been one season when Moonhawk had spent a good deal of time in the wine cellars, inventory list to hand.
“Attend me now,” Lute said, tossing his cloak behind his shoulders.
Moonhawk moved a few steps closer, her irritation forgotten.
“Perhaps you think you have mastered the counter, but the counter may yet be the wiser, eh?” He smiled, but Moonhawk didn’t see. All her attention—and all her witch sense—was focused on his long, clever hands.
“Now we enter the realm of magic, indeed. I am about to reveal to you the method for making a counter disappear.” He extended his empty right hand, frowned and flexed the fingers.
“First, naturally enough, one must make a counter appear.” And there, held lightly between his first and second fingers was a bright green counter. How it had come there, Lute and his skill knew. Certainly, Moonhawk did not, having neither seen the movement that would have retrieved a cleverly hidden counter nor felt the surge of power that would have been necessary to create a counter. Or the illusion of one.
Lute extended his hand. “Please verify that this is indeed a common wooden counter, such as might be found in any gaming house on Sintia.”
She took the disk, felt the smoothness of the paint, the rough edge of wood where the caress of many fingers had worn the paint away. No illusion, this. She handed it back.
“I find it a common wooden counter,” she said, for she must also practice the eloquence of his speech, which served, so he said, to divert the attention of an audience and give a magician valuable seconds in which to work. “Such as might be found in any gaming house on the planet.”
“Excellent,” he said, receiving the token on his callused palm.
“A common counter.” He tossed it lightly into the air, caught it on the back of his hand and walked it negligently across his fingers.
“Behaving commonly.” He flipped his hand, caught the counter between thumb and forefinger and held it high.
“Now, behold its uncommon attribute.”
Moonhawk stifled a curse: There was nothing between the magician’s thumb and forefinger but sunshine and cool spring air.
Lute lowered his hand and smiled. “Another lesson that may be practiced as one walks. Though we haven’t far to walk now. Tonight, we shall eat one of Veverain’s splendid dinners, sample somewhat of last year’s vintage and sleep wrapped in soft, sweet-smelling blankets.”
Moonhawk stared from him to the red wooden counter in her hand.
“I’m to practice? Pray what am I to practice, Master Lute? I saw neither pass nor Witch power.”
Lute smiled. “You saw that it was possible.” He bent and retrieved his bag. “Come. Veverain’s hospitality tugs my heart onward.”
THE TRACK CURVED ’round a grove of dyantrees, and there was Karn, tidily laid out along two main streets and a marketplace. To the east of the village lay the fields; to the west, the winter livestock pens. Behind the village rose a hill, showing terrace upon terrace of leafless brown vines.
There were folk about on the streets, and Lute’s stride lengthened. Moonhawk stretched her own long legs to keep the pace, the red counter forgotten for the moment in the pocket of her cloak.
“Ho, Master Lute!” A stocky man in a leather apron raised a hand. “Spring is here at last!”
“And not a moment too soon,” Lute agreed with a smile, crossing the street to where the man stood in the tavern’s doorway, Moonhawk a step behind him. “How came the village through the winter?”
The man looked sober. “We lost a few to the cold—oldsters or infants, all. The rest of us came through well enough. Except for—” The man’s face changed, and Moonhawk caught the edge of his distress against her Witch sense.
“You’re bound for Veverain’s?” he asked, distress sharpening.
“Of course I am bound for Veverain’s! Am I a fool, to pass by the best food, the snuggest bed and the most gracious hostess in the village?”
“Not a fool,” the man returned quietly, “only short of news.”
Lute went entirely still. Moonhawk, slanting a glance at his face, saw his mouth tighten, black eyes abruptly intense.
“Our Lady of the Snows has taken Veverain?” he asked, matching the other’s quiet tone.
The man moved his hand—describing helplessness. “Not—That is to say—Veverain. Ah, Goddess take me for a muddlemouth!” He lifted a hand and ran his fingers through his thinning hair.
“It was Rowan went out to feed the stock one morning in the thick of winter, and when he didn’t come back for the noon meal, Veverain went out to find him.” He paused to draw a deep, noisy breath. “He’d never gotten to the pens. A tree limb—heavy, you understand, with the ice—had come down and crushed him dead.”
Lute closed his eyes. Moonhawk raised her hand and traced the sign of Passing in the air.
“May he be warm, in the Garden of the Goddess.”
The tavern-keeper looked at her, startled. Lute opened his eyes, hands describing one of his elegant gestures, calling attention to her as if she were a rare gemstone.
“Behold, one’s apprentice!” he said, but Moonhawk thought his voice sounded strained. “Moonhawk, here is the excellent Oreli, proprietor of the justly renowned tavern, Vain Disguise.”
Oreli straightened from his lean to make a somewhat inexpert bow. When he straightened, his eyes were rounder than ever.
“Lady.”
Moonhawk inclined her head. “Keeper Oreli. Blessings upon you.”
He swallowed, but before he could make answer, Lute was speaking again.
“When did this tragedy occur, Friend Oreli? You give me to believe the house is closed. Is Veverain yet in mourning?”
“Mourning,” the other man repeated and half-laughed, though the sound was as sad as any Moonhawk had ever heard. “You might say mourning.” He sighed, spreading his hands, palm up, for them both to see.
“Rowan died just past of mid-winter. Veverain… Veverain shut the house up, excepting only the room they had shared. She turned us away, those of us who were her friends, or Rowan’s—turned us away, shunned our company and our aid. And she just sits in that house by herself, Master Lute. Sits there alone in the dark. Her sister’s man tends the animals; her niece tilled the kitchen garden and put in the early vegetables. They say they never see her; that she will not even open the door to kin—and you know, you know, Master Lute!—that Rowan would never have wanted such a thing!”
“A convivial man, Rowan,” Lute murmured. “He and Veverain were well-matched in that.”
“Is she still alive?” Moonhawk asked, somewhat impatiently. “Her kin say that they never see her, that she will not open the door. How are they certain that she has not been Called, or that she has not taken some injury?”
“We see the hearth smoke,” Oreli said. “We—the care basket is left full by the door in the morning. Some mornings, the basket and the food is still there. Often enough, the basket is empty. She is alive, that we do know. Alive, but dead to life.”
Moonhawk frowned. “She has been taking care baskets since Solstice?”
Oreli raised a hand. “A long time, I know. The baskets usually are not sent so long. Forgive me, Lady, but you are a stranger here; you do not know how it was… how Veverain cared for us all. When our daughter was ill, we had some of Veverain’s baskets—hot soup, fresh bread, tiny wheels of her special cheese—you remember Veverain’s cheeses, eh, Master Lute?”
“With fondness and anticipation,” Lute replied, somewhat absently. He glanced at the sky. “The day grows old,” he murmured.
Abruptly, he bowed to the tavern-keeper, cloak swirling.
“Friend Oreli, keep you well. I hope to visit your fine establishment once or twice during our stay. Immediately, however, the duty of friendship calls. I to Veverain, to offer what aid I might.”
“You must try, of course,” Oreli said. “When she turns you away, remember that the Disguise serves a hearty supper. And that Mother Duneper will gladly house you and your apprentice.”
Lute inclined his head. “I will remember. But, first, let us be certain that Veverain will refuse us.” He turned, cloak billowing, and strode off down the street down the street at such a pace that Moonhawk had to run a few steps to catch him.
VEVERAIN’S HOUSE was at the bottom of the village; a long, sprawling place, enclosed by a neat fence, shaded in summer by two well-grown dyantrees. The trees, like their kin at the bend in the track, showed a pale green fuzzing along their limbs; at the roots of each was a scattering of bark and dead branches—winter’s toll. When the dyantrees came to leaf, then it would be spring, indeed.
Lute pushed open the whitewashed gate and went up the graveled pathway, Moonhawk on his heels. The yard they passed through seemed neglected, ragged; as if those who had care of it had not come forth with rakes and barrows to clear away the wrack of winter and make the land ready for spring.
There were some indications that neglect was not the yard’s usual state; Moonhawk spied mounds which surely must be flower-beds under drifts of dead leaves, more leaves half-concealing a bird-pool, rocks set here and there with what might prove to be art, once the debris was cleared away.
Gravel crunching under his boots, Lute strode on, to Moonhawk’s eye unobservant. He was also silent, which rare state spoke to her more eloquently of his worry than any grandiose phrase.
The path curved ’round the side of the house, and here were the neat rows of the kitchen garden put in by the niece, a blanket over the more tender seedlings, to shield them from the cold of the coming night.
A few steps more, and the path ended at a single granite step up to a roofed wooden porch. A black-and-white cat sat tidily on the porch, companioning a basket covered with a blue checked cloth. Lute paused on tine step, bent and offered his finger to the cat in greeting.
“Tween, old friend. I hope I find you well?”
The cat graciously touched his nose to the offered fingertip, then rose, stretched with languid thoroughness, and yawned.
“Tween?” Moonhawk asked quietly. Often, over the months of their travel together, she had deplored the magician’s overfondness for words; yet, confronted now with a Lute who walked silent, she perversely wished to have her light-tongued comrade of the road returned.
Lute glanced at her, black eyes hooded. “It was Rowan’s joke, see you. The cat is neither all black, which would easily allow of it being named Newmoon; nor all white, which leads one rather inescapably to Snowfall. Indeed, as Rowan would have it, the cat lands precisely between two appropriate and time-honored cat names—an act of deliberate willfulness, so Rowan swore—and thus became Tween.” He looked down at the cat, who was stropping against the care basket.
“Rowan loved a joke—the more complex the jest, the louder he laughed.”
He shook himself, then, and mounted the porch, stooping to pick up the basket. The cat followed him to the door, tail high. Lute put his hand on the latch, pushed…
“Locked.”
“Surely you expected that,” Moonhawk murmured and Lute sighed.
“A man may hear ill news and yet still hope that it is untrue. Optimistic creatures, men. I did not hope to find Rowan alive, but…” He let the rest drift off, raised his hard and brought sharp knuckles against the wood, then drifted back a step, head tipped inquisitively to one side. The cat settled beside him and began to groom.
At respectful intervals, Lute leaned forward to knock twice, then three times. The door remained closed.
“Well, then.” He set the care basket down, slipped his bag from its carry-strap and shook it. Three spindly legs appeared, holding the bag at a convenient height. Moonhawk watched closely while he opened the clasp and put his hand inside: Lute’s magic bag held such a diverse and numerous collection of objects that she had lately formed the theory that it was not one bag, but three, attached in some rotating, hand-magical manner undetectable to her Witch senses.
“What are you going to do?” she asked. “Break the lock?”
He looked at her. “Break the lock on the house of one of my oldest friends? Am I a barbarian, Lady Moonhawk? If things were otherwise, it might have been necessary to resort to lockpicks, but I assure you that my skill is such that the lock would have suffered no ill.”
She blinked. “Lockpicks? Another hand-magic?”
“A very powerful magic,” Lute said solemnly, and withdrew his hard from the bag, briefly displaying a confusing array of oddly contorted wires. “By means of these objects, a magician may learn the shape and secret of a strange lock and impel it to open.”
“It sounds like thieves’ magic to me, Master Lute.”
“Pah! As if a thief could be so skilled! But no matter, we need not resort to lockpicks for this.” He replaced the muddle of wires in his bag.
“No?” said Moonhawk, eyebrows rising. “How then will you open the door? Sing?”
“Sing? Perhaps they sing locks at Temple. I have a superior method.” He snapped his bag shut and hung it back on the strap.
“Which is?”
“A key.” He displayed it; a rough iron thing half the length of his hand.
“A key,” she repeated. “And how came you by that?”
“Veverain gave it me. And Rowan gave me leave to use it, if by chance I should arrive during daylight and find the door locked.” He gestured, showing her the lowering sun. “It is, I see, still daylight. I find the door—alas!—is locked. Bring the basket.”
He stepped up to the door, key at ready. Moonhawk bent and picked up the care basket, settling it over her arm. A sharp snap sounded, Lute pushed the door open and stepped into the house beyond, the cat walking at his knee.
With a deep sense of foreboding, Moonhawk followed.
“VEVERAIN?” LUTE’S VOICE lacked its usual ringing vitality, as if the room’s dimness was heavy enough to muffle sound. “Veverain, it’s Lute!”
Moonhawk stood by the door, letting her eyes adjust; slowly, she picked out a table, benches, the hulking mass of a cold cookstove.
“Let us shed some light on the situation,” Lute said. A blot of darkness in the kitchen’s twilight, he moved surely across the room. There was a clatter as he slid back the lock bars and threw the shutters wide, admitting the day’s last glimmer of sun.
Details sprang into being. Dusty pots hung neatly above the cold stove; spice bundles dangled from the low eaves; pottery was stacked, orderly and cobwebbed, on whitewashed shelves. The table was dyanwood, scrubbed white; the work surfaces were tiled, the glaze dull with dust.
“Well.” Face grim, Lute shed cloak and bag, and dropped them on the table. Crossing the room, he pulled a lamp from its shelf and carried it and a pottery jug to a work table.
Moonhawk walked slowly forward. Despite the light from the windows, the room seemed—foggy. It was also cold—bone-chilling, heart-stopping cold. She wondered that Lute had put aside his cloak.
She set the care basket on the table and pulled her own cloak tighter about her. Lute had filled the lamp and was trimming the wick with his silver knife. Moonhawk shivered, and recalled the neat stack of wood on the porch, hard by the door.
“I’ll start the stove,” she said to Lute’s back. He looked ’round abstractedly.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“No,” said another voice, from the back of the room. “I will thank you both to leave.”
Moonhawk spun. Lute calmly finished with the wick and lit it with a snap of his fingers, before he, too, turned to face his hostess.
“Veverain, have I changed so much in one year’s travel? It’s Lute.”
“Perhaps you have not changed,” the woman in the faded houserobe said, with a lack of emotion that raised the fine hairs along the back of Moonhawk’s neck, “but all else has. Rowan is dead.”
“Yes. I met Oreli in the High Street.” Lute went forward, hands outstretched. “I loved him, too, Veverain.”
She stared at him, stonily, and neither moved to meet him, nor lifted her hands to receive his. Lute stopped, hands slowly dropping to his sides.
“Leave me,” the woman said again, and it seemed to Moonhawk that her voice carried an edge this time, as if her stoniness covered an emotion too wild to be confined for long.
Perhaps Lute heard it, too, or perhaps his skill brought him more subtle information. In any wise, he did not leave, but stood, hands spread wide, and voice aggrieved.
“Leave? Without even a cup of tea to warm me? You yourself said that I should never want for at least that of you. The thought of taking a cup of tea at your table has been all that has made the last day’s walking bearable!”
“Have you not understood?” And the untamed grief was plain to the ear, now. “I say to you that Rowan is dead!”
“Rowan is dead,” Lute repeated gently. “He is beyond the comforts of tea and the love of friends. We, however—” He gestured ’round the room, a simple encircling, devoid of stage flourish, and Moonhawk was absurdly relieved to find herself included—“are not.”
There was a long moment of silence.
“Tea,” Veverain said, and her voice was stone once more. “Very well."
“I’ll start the stove,” Moonhawk said for the second time, and went out to fetch an armload of wood.
When she came back to the kitchen, some minutes later, Veverain was in Lute’s arms, sobbing desperately against his chest.
MOONHAWK IT WAS who made tea in Veverain’s kitchen that evening, and served it, silently, to the two who faced each other across the table. She carried her own mug to a wall-bench and sat, quietly watching and listening.
“I cannot,” the woman was saying to Lute, “I must not forget. I—Rowan—we swore that neither would ever forget the other, no matter what else the future might destroy.”
“Yes,” Lute murmured, “but surely Rowan would not have wanted this—that you lock yourself away from kin, take from your neighbors’ kitchens and give nothing—not even thanks!—in return. Rowan was never so mean.”
“He was not,” Veverain agreed, her fingers twisting ’round themselves. “Rowan was generous.”
“As you are. Come, Veverain, you must stop this. Open your house again to your well-wishers. Tend the garden your niece has started for you, clear the flowerbeds and rake the gravel. Soon enough, the vines will need you, too. It will not be the same as if Rowan worked at your side, but—I promise!—these familiar things will soothe you. In time, you will—”
“In time I will forget!” Veverain interrupted violently. “No! I will not forget! Every day, I read his journals. Every day, I sit in his place in our room and I recall our days together. Everything, everything… I must not forget a syllable, the timbre of his voice, the lines of his face—”
“Veverain!” Lute reached for her hands, but they fluttered away from capture.
“You do not understand!” Her voice was shrill with agony. “Before you first came to us there was in this village a woman called Redfern, her man—Velix—and their babe. That summer, there was an illness in the village—many died, among them Redfern’s man and babe, she grieved and would speak to no one, though she accomplished all her usual business. In the fall, she shut up her house and went to her sister in another village. Two years later, she returned to us, with a new babe and a man she had taken in her sister’s village.” Veverain’s fluttering hands lighted on the cooling mug. Automatically, she raised it to her lips and drank.
“I saw Redfern in the street,” she continued, somewhat less shrill. “We spoke of her babe, and of how things had changed in the village in the years she had been gone from us. I mentioned Velix, and she—she stared at me, as if I spoke of a stranger. She had forgotten him, Master Lute! It chilled me to the heart, and I vowed I would never so dishonor my love.”
“Veverain, this is not the way to honor Rowan.” Moonhawk had never heard the magician’s voice so tender.
Veverain turned her face away. “You have had your tea,” she said, hardly. “There are houses in the high village who will be happy to guest you.”
Moonhawk saw Lute’s shoulders tense, as if he had taken a blow. He sat silent for a long moment, until the woman across from him noticed either the absence of his voice or the presence of himself, and reluctantly turned her face again to his.
“Lute—”
He raised a hand, interrupting her. “How,” he said and there was an electric undercurrent in his voice that Moonhawk did not entirely like. “How if you were shown a way to return to life at the same time you honor your vow to remember?”
There was hesitation, and Moonhawk saw, for just a instant, the woman Veverain had been—vibrant, strong and constant—through the diminished, grief-wracked creature who sat across from Lute.
“Can you work such a magic?” she asked.
“Perhaps one of us can,” Lute replied and stood. “Excuse me a moment, Housemother. I must consult with my apprentice.”
“FORGET?” LUTE REPEATED. “But it is the possibility of forgetting that is terrifying her out of all
sense!”
“Nonetheless,” Moonhawk said, with rather more patience than she felt, “Forgetfulness is all I have to offer. I know of no spell or blessing that will insure memory. I only know how to remove such pain as this, which is become a threat to a good and decent woman’s life, she suffers much, and I may ease her—will ease her, if she wishes it. But I think she will choose instead to honor her vow.” She hesitated, caught by a rare feeling of inadequacy. “I am sorry, Master Lute.”
“Sorry mends no breakage,” Lute snapped. Moonhawk felt a sharp retort rise to her tongue and managed, just, to keep it behind her teeth. After all, she reminded herself, Lute, too, had taken losses—not only Rowan, but Veverain, was gone beyond him.
“Your pardon, Lady Moonhawk,” his voice was formal, without the edge of irony that often accompanied his use of her title. “That was ill-said of me. I find the Goddess entirely too greedy, that she must always call the best so soon. How are the rest of us to find the way to grace, when our Rowans are snatched away before their teaching is done?” He sighed. “But that is matter between myself and the Goddess, not between you and I.”
Moonhawk inclined her head, accepting his apology. “It is…” she sand formally, and bit down on the last word before it escaped, silently cursing herself for fool.
“Forgotten,” Lute finished the phrase, tiredly, and looked past her, up into the starry sky. “There must be something,” he murmured, and then said nothing more for several minutes, his eyes on the clear glitter of stars, for all the world as if he had entered trance.
Finally, he shook himself, much as a Witch might do when leaving trance, to re-acquaint herself with the physical body. He brought his eyes down to her face.
“I must try,” he said, soberly. “Rowan would want me to try.” He extended a hand and touched her lightly on the sleeve. “You are a Witch and have the ear of the Goddess. Now would be a good time to pray.”
VEVERAIN SAT AT the table where they had left her, hands tucked around the empty tea cup, shoulders slumped. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks shining with tears in the lamplight.
Seeing her thus, Lute paused, and Moonhawk saw him bring his hands up and move them in one of his more grandiose gestures, plucking a bright silk scarf from empty air. Another pass and the scarf was gone. Lute took a breath.
“There is something that may be attempted,” he announced, and it was the Master Magician’s full performance voice now. “If you are willing to turn your hand to magic.”
Veverain opened her eyes, looking up at him. “Magic?”
“A very old and fragile magic,” Lute assured her solemnly. “It was taught me by my master, who had it from his, who had it from his, who had it from the Mother of Huntress City Temple herself. From Whose Hand the lady received the spell, we need not ask. But!” He raised his hand, commanding attention. “For this magic, as for any great magic, there is a price. Are you willing to pay?”
Veverain stared into his face. “I am,” she said, shockingly quiet.
“Then let it begin!” Lute’s hands carved the air in the same eloquent gesture that had lately summoned the scarf. Stepping forward, he placed an object on the table: a small, extremely supple leather pouch. Moonhawk had seen thousands like it in her life—a common spell-bag, made to be suspended from the neck by a ribbon, or a leather cord.
“Into this bag,” he intoned, “will be placed five items evocative of Rowan. No less than five, no more than five.” He stepped back and looked sternly into Veverain’s face. “You will choose the five.”
“Five?” she protested. “Rowan was multitudes! Five—”
“Five, a number beloved of the Goddess. No more, no less.” Lute was implacable. “Choose.”
Veverain pushed herself to her feet, her eyes wide. “How long?” she whispered. “How long do I have to choose?”
“Five minutes to choose five items. Listen to your heart and your choices will be true.”
For a moment, Moonhawk thought the other woman would refuse, would crumple back onto the bench, hide her face in her hands and wail. But Veverain had been woven of tougher cord than that. She swayed a moment, but made a good recover, chin up and showing a flash, perhaps, of the woman she had been.
“Very well,” she said to Lute. “Await me here.” She swept from the room as if her faded houserobe were grand with embroidery and the stone floor not thick with dust.
When she was gone, Lute looked up at the beam with its dangling bunches of herbs, reached up and snapped off a single sprig. It was no sooner in his hand than it vanished, where, Moonhawk could not hazard a guess.
That done, he went over to the table, pulled out the bench and sat, his hands flat on the table, apparently content to await Veverain’s return in silence.
Moonhawk drifted over to the wall bench and settled in to watch.
“HERE,” VEVERAIN SAID, and placed them, one by one, on the table before her: a curl of russet-colored hair, a scrap of paper, a gray and green stone, a twig.
“That is four,” Lute said, chidingly.
“I have not done,” she answered and raised her hands to her neck, drawing a rawhide cord up over her head. Something silver flashed in the lamplight; flashed again as she had it off the cord and placed by the others.
“His promise-ring,” she said quietly. “And that is five, Master Lute.”
“And that is five,” he agreed, hands still palm-flat against the table-top, in an attitude both quiescent and entirely un-Lute-like.
“What will you do now?” Veverain inquired. Lute raised his eyebrows.
“You misunderstand; it is not I who will do, but you. If you expect that you will sit there and be done to, pray disabuse yourself of the notion.”
“But,” she stared at him, distress growing, “I am no Witch. I have no schooling, no talent. How am I to build a spell?” Moonhawk could only applaud the housemother’s good sense. By her own certain reckoning, it required some number of years to become proficient in spell-craft.
Lute, however, was unworried on this point.
“Have I not said that I have the way of it from my master and all the way back to she who first received the gift of the Goddess? I am here to guide you. But it is you who must actually perform the task, or the spell will have no power.”
“I will—put these things in that bag?” Veverain asked. “That is all?”
“Not quite all. Each item must receive its charge. The best technique is to pick up a single item, hold it in your hand and recall—in words or in thought—the connection between Rowan and the object. In this manner, the spell will build, piece by piece, each piece interlocked with and informed by the others.”
Which was as apt a description of spell structure as she had ever heard, thought Moonhawk. But Veverain had no glimmer of Witch-sense about her and the tiny flickerings of talent she sometimes caught from Lute were not nearly sufficient to build and bind the spell he described.
Even if such a spell were possible.
At the table, Veverain glanced down among her choices, and put forth a hand. Moonhawk leaned forward, witch-sense questing, shivering as she encountered the raging gray torrent of Veverain’s grief.
Veverain’s hand descended, taking up the bright lock of hair.
“This is Rowan’s hair,” she said tentatively, and Moonhawk felt—something—stir against her witch-sense. “When we had kept household less than a year, he was chosen by the Master of the Vine to work a season at Veyru, in exchange of which we received a vineman of Veyru. The Master of the Vine came with a delegation and petitioned my permission for Rowan—as if I would have denied him such an opportunity! We had been together so short a time, and Veyru is no small journey—I joked that I would not recognize him when he returned. In answer, he cut off this curl and told me that I should always know him, by the flame that lived in his hair.”
Carefully, she put the lock into the small leather bag. Lute said nothing, sitting still as a statue of himself.
Veverain chose the gray and green rock.
“When Rowan left home for that season in Veyru he bore with him this stone from our land, so that, wherever he was, he would always be home.”
The stone joined the lock of hair in the bag and there was definitely something a-building now. Moonhawk could see two thick lines of flame, intersecting at a right angle, hanging just above Veverain’s head. She held her breath, staring, and Veverain picked up the scrap of paper.
“The winter after Rowan returned from Veyru was a bitter one. We spent the days in the window, a book between us, while I taught him his letters. He learned to read—and write!—quickly, nor, once he had the skills, did he rest. He read every book in the village, and came back from the vineyards one evening to tell me that he had determined to write a book on the lore of the vine, so that the young vinemen would have a constant teacher and the old a check to their memories. He wrote that book, and others, and kept his journals. More, he passed his skills to other men of the village, who have taught their sons, so Karn need not forget the cure for a vine blight encountered in my mother’s time.” She hesitated, fingers caressing the scrap.
“This paper bears his signature—the very first time he signed his name.”
Lingeringly, the scrap of paper went into the bag and Moonhawk very nearly gasped. The third interlock was a bar of flame as thick as her arm, burning a pure, luminous white.
Carefully, Veverain picked up the scrap of wood.
“This is a piece from our vines on the hill. Rowan loved the vines, the grapes, the wine.”
A fourth bar of fire joined the first three, blazing. Stretching her Witch-sense, Moonhawk found the other woman’s grief significantly calmer, less gray, melting, like heavy fog, in the brightness of the spell she built.
For the last time, Veverain reached to the table, and picked up the scarred silver band.
“This is Rowan’s promise-ring,” she said, so quietly Moonhawk had to strain to hear. “He wore it every day for twenty-five years. If anything on this earth will remember Rowan, this will.”
The fifth bar of fire was so bright, Moonhawk’s Witch-sense shied from it, dazzled. So, the thing was built, and a powerful spell it was, too. But it wanted binding and it wanted binding now, before the heat of it caught the timbers of the house.
At the table, Lute moved. His right hand rose, the fingers flickered, and there between finger and thumb was the twig he had broken from the herb bundle.
“Rosemary, Queen of Memory,” he intoned, solemn as a prayer, “keep Rowan close.” He placed the sprig in the bag. Reaching out, he took up the rawhide cord on which Veverain had worn Rowan’s ring, and began to tie the spell-bag shut.
“In love, memory; in life, love.” His hands moved more complexly now, creating two elaborate knots, and half of a third. Sternly, he looked at the woman across from him.
“Once this bag is sealed with the third knot, the spell is made. Once made, it cannot be unmade.” He extended the bag, the final knot incomplete, the spell burning, dangerously bright, above the woman’s head.
Veverain took the cord in her two hands, and with infinite care made the final knot complete.
“Sealed with my heart, that I never forget,” she said, and pulled the cord tight.
Above her head, invisible to all but the staring Witch, the flaming bars wheeled, blurred and vanished, leaving behind, for those who could hear such things, the definitive snap of a spell sturdy-built and bound.
“Stand,” Lute said, doing so himself. Veverain rose and he set the bag on its rawhide cord about her neck. “Wear it. And never forget.”
From the floor, a flash of white-and-black ascended, landing light-footed on the table. Tween the cat bumped against the housemother’s arm, tail held joyously aloft. Veverain smiled.
“HAVE YOU MASTERED the counter yet?” the magician asked his apprentice as they walked toward the high village in the morning. Behind them, their hostess was already engaged with broom and dust rag, the windows flung open to receive the day.
“You know I haven’t!” his apprentice retorted, hotly. “If you must know, Master Lute, I don’t think you ever made that counter disappear in the first place—you merely entranced me into believing you had done so!”
“Ah, very good!” Lute said unexpectedly. “You have learned a basic truth of our trade: People make their own magic.”
Moonhawk faltered, thinking of what had gone forth last night. “Master Lute, the spell you made last night for Veverain…”
“An illustrative case,” he said, refusing to meet her eyes.
“No,” she said, and put a hand on his arm, stopping him. Determined, she waited until he met her eyes, though she did not compel him do so—indeed, she was not certain that she could compel him to do so, Witch though she was.
The black eyes were on hers.
“I wanted you to know—the spell you made for Veverain was true. I saw it building; I saw its binding.” She took a breath. “It was well done, Master Lute.”
“So.” He sighed, then shrugged. “But that does not change the original premise—people do make their own magic, just as many see only what they wish to see. Now, about the disappearing counter….” He flipped his cloak behind his shoulders and showed her his hands.
“If you wish to make counters appear and disappear, you would do well to supply yourself with several of the same color and hide them about your person. I, for instance, keep several green counters behind my belt—” A flourish, in the grand style, and there they were—four green counters held between the fingers of his left hand.
“Your belt!” protested Moonhawk. “You never—”
“I also,” Lute interrupted, implacable, “keep several behind my collar.” Another grand flourish and there were four more—yellow this time—between the fingers of his right hand.
“Master Lute—”
“And when you are done with them, why, it’s a simple thing to put them away.” A shake of both hands and the counters were gone.
Moonhawk drew a deep breath.
“Of course,” said Lute, “it is often wise to keep a counter or two elsewhere than upon one’s person. Like the one I store behind your ear.”
“Behind my ear!” she cried, but there was Lute’s hand, brushing past her cheek, and then reappearing, triumphantly displaying a red counter.
Moonhawk sighed.
“Master Lute?”
“Yes, Lady Moonhawk?”
“You’re a dreadful master.”
“And you,” Lute said, turning toward the village, “are an impertinent apprentice. It is a good thing, don’t you think, that we are so very well matched?”
THE MORNING OF the sixth and final day of Little Festival dawned in pastel perfection, promising another pellucid day of pleasure for festival-goers.
Pat Rin yos’Phelium, Clan Korval, a faithful five-day attendee, had failed through press of pleasure to greet the dawn from the near side—and likewise failed of observing it from the far side, as he was most soundly asleep, and remained so for some hours beyond.
When he did rise and betake himself to his study, he found the day’s letters and packets piled neatly to hand, the screen displaying his preferred news service, and a pot of tea gently steaming next to a porcelain cup.
Pat Rin poured for himself and settled into his chair, rapidly scanning the news summary.
The results of yesterday’s skimmer races at Little Festival were, inevitably, top news. It could not be otherwise, with both the thodelm of yos’Galan and the nadelm of Korval entire in participation.
Pat Rin sighed, gently, and sipped his tea. One’s mother was annoyed, however courteously she had accepted one’s cousin’s instruction in the matter. He sipped again, savoring the blend, and allowed his gaze to wander from the screen for a moment.
One’s cousin had proven… unanticipated. One encountered an edge—and a precision of cut—which had not been noted before cousin Val Con’s departure for the Scouts. It might be that scout training had produced this surprising alteration in the unassuming—even shy—halfling Pat Rin recalled. Or, as one’s mother contended, it might simply be that Val Con was coming into his own, that genes would tell, and by the gods it had seemed for a long and telling moment as if her brother Daav himself had stood before her.
Well.
Pat Rin had some more tea, and set the cup aside. He would need to acquaint himself with this new iteration of Val Con. No doubt this skimmer race victory would bring to him any number of gentle inquiries as to the… availability… of the nadelm. He made a note to speak—unofficially, of course!—to cousin Nova regarding Val Con’s current standing with regard to the marriage mart. In the meanwhile, his own business beckoned.
He brought his attention once more to the news screen, noted that several of his more minor investments were performing with gratifying efficiency; read with bored interest the listing of contract-marriages negotiated and consummated; learned of a brawl in mid-Port between the crews of a Terran freighter and a Liaden tug; scanned the list of performances, contests and displays scheduled for this, the last day of Festival, and—blinked.
Fal Den ter’Antod Clan Imtal had died.
Pat Rin called for more information and quickly learned that Fal Den’s kin had published a suicide to the council of clans and had declined, as was their right, to provide particulars. Business partners and allies of Clan Imtal were advised that the Clan was in full mourning; that the viewing box and pleasure tents held by Imtal would be closed for the remainder of the season, and that those who had been engaged in Balancing accounts with Fal Den should soon find themselves satisfied.
Pat Rin closed his eyes.
He could not name himself a close friend of Fal Den ter’Antod, but he had certainly known the man, and had placed a certain value upon him. Neither a great beauty nor a great intellect, Fal Den possessed charm and an engaging forthrightness of manner that made him an agreeable and even welcome companion. His faults included a belief in the forthrightness of others and a rather thin skin, yet despite these he capably managed both an impeccable melant’i and the not-inconsiderable interests of his family on the Port. To believe that Fal Den was dead, and by his own hand…
Pat Rin opened his eyes, reached out and touched the discreet pearly button set into his desk.
Fal Den dead. He had seen him only three days past, on the arm of Hia Cyn yo’Tonin, which was deplorable of course, and had Fal Den been the sibling Pat Rin did not possess, he would have been moved to whisper a word in his ear…
The door to his office slid open and the excellent pel’Tolian, his general man, stepped within and bowed.
“Good day, Lord Pat Rin.”
“Alas, I must disagree,” Pat Rin returned. “I find it thus far a singularly distressing day.”
“Perhaps matters will improve, as the hours move on,” Mr. pel’Tolian suggested.
“Perhaps they will. Certainly, it is possible. In the meantime, however, I must request you to procure a mourning basket and have it delivered to the House of Imtal. I will write the card myself.”
“Very good, sir.” The man bowed. “Shall you wish to partake of a meal?”
“A light nuncheon. And a glass of the jade.”
“Very good, sir,” Mr. pel’Tolian said again and went away, the door sliding silently shut behind him.
Pat Rin sat with his eyes closed for perhaps the count of twelve, then turned to deal with his mail.
There were four letters and two packets. Two letters were solicitations of funding for ventures so wonderfully risky that to describe them as “speculative” was to overreach the facts by several magnitudes of wishful thinking. Such letters originated with the same sort of person who thought it… fitting… to invite him—as multi-season champion at pistol and short arms at Teydor’s—to join hunting parties on distant outworlds where he might slog through underbrush for days and fire mini-cannons at blameless creatures while enjoying the company of those to whom nothing was more pleasurable…. He dropped both solicitations into the recycler.
Next was an invitation from Eyan yo’Lanna to make one of her house party, proposed for the middle of next relumma. That was good—sufficient time to have the tailor produce something new and appropriate, perhaps involving the yo’Lanna colors. The sudden fashion of declaring a party within hours or even minutes—the “express” mode, as it was called—made it difficult for one to plan ahead even as it made judging the party’s… desirability… all but impossible.
Eyan’s parties, however, were often amusing, correct without being stifling, and always informative. Pat Rin reached into the right hand drawer of the desk, pulled out a stiff ivory card with Korval’s Tree-and-Dragon embossed on the front, opened it and wrote the appropriate graceful acceptance. He slid the card into an envelope, penned the direction with his own hand, affixed one of Korval’s postage coupons, and placed it in the carved wooden tray that served as his outbox.
The fourth letter was from his foster father, Luken bel’Tarda, begging the pleasure of his company that evening for a private dinner at Ongit’s.
Pat Rin smiled. The invitation to Ongit’s was a joke, by which Luken meant to convey that Pat Rin was arrears in visits. In which complaint, he thought, glancing at the calendar, Luken was entirely justified.
He pulled out a sheet of paper bearing only his name, wrote that he would be pleased to dine with his foster father this very evening and begged his pardon for being a light-minded flutter-about-town. He signed himself “Your affectionate son,” sealed, directed, stamped, and placed the completed billet in the wooden tray.
The door of his study opened to admit Mr. pel’Tolian, bearing the requested light nuncheon and glass. This, he disposed upon the small table to Pat Rin’s left, then picked up the completed mail and, cat-footed, departed.
Pat Rin turned his attention to the first of the two packets. The postage was Aragon’s. He had shared several delightful and adventurous Festival hours with a daughter of the House only yesterday. As the adventure had been at the lady’s initiative, Pat Rin assumed the packet to contain a Fairing—a gift of gratitude. He broke the seal, unfolded the box, shook out the silken garment enclosed—and very nearly groaned.
He had expected Shan and Val Con’s escapade to result in a rash of monstrosities aping Val Con’s innovative cloak, the so-called “skimmer” he’d used to such astonishing effect in yesterday’s races. He had simply not expected the fashion to have taken so quickly.
Aragon’s third daughter had sent him a skimmer—blue, where Val Con’s original had been warning light orange—which modification was not, Pat Rin thought, as pleasing as one must have assuredly assumed that it would be. The name of the tailor was impeccable—in fact, his mother’s own tailor—and the material flawless. Nor did it seem at all unlikely that the silk had been chosen to precisely match the color of his earring, of which the lady had been most fond. Ah, youth.
He sighed and folded the wretched thing onto his keyboard, and turned back to the opened box. There was no note, which was proper, and told him that Aragon’s daughter had breeding, if not taste.
He picked up the second packet, frowned at Imtal’s postal mark, broke the seal, and for the second fine in a hour found himself at Point Non Plus.
For the packet contained a leather book no larger than Pat Rin’s hand, stamped with the sigil of Clan Imtal. Foreknowing, he opened the volume to the first page and verified that what he held was indeed Fal Den ter’Antod’s personal debt-book.
There was no note, as of course there would not be, the Code being explicit upon this point. By the act of sending this book, Fal Den had chosen the executor of his will. He, Pat Rin yos’Phelium, was to tend all accounts left unBalanced at the time of Fal Den’s death, paying justly where the fault had been Fal Den’s; collecting fully where the debt was owed. No light task, this, nor deniable.
And he had precisely thirty-six hours in which to complete it, assuming that all debts were on-planet, which seemed likely.
He did not read past the first page. Not yet. With the patience of a true gambler he closed the book and settled back into his chair.
First, something to eat, and some wine. His day would no doubt be full.
IN ANOTHER PART of the city of Solcintra, a second late-rising young gentleman rang for his morning-wine and likewise sat down to review his letters and the news.
His correspondence was sparse—two pieces only. The first was a terse page from his man of business, noting receipt into his lordship’s portfolio of a substantial gift of stocks and other assets.
The second note was scarcely less terse, and its subject remarkably similar. Betea sen’Equa wished to know when the consideration she had earned would be forthcoming. Happily the young gentleman had lately expended some thought upon just this subject, and knew precisely how to answer her.
From the bottom drawer in his desk, he withdrew a blank sheet of thin paper, of the sort provided to the guests of Mid-Port hotels. On it, he scrawled a few lines with his off-hand, not forgetting to omit his name, nor the sixth-cantra required to hold the reservation, sealed it and slid it into his pocket.
That done, he sipped his wine and perused the news.
His preferred service concerned itself not at all with Port news, so he lacked the account of the disagreement between the Terran and Liaden crews; nor was his latest investment, which had done very well indeed, of the sort to make the board at the Exchange.
Fal Den ter’Antod’s suicide, though—that news he did take in common with the other tardy young gentleman. He, too, blinked upon encountering the unexpected headline, for he had lately been at pains to become intimate with Fal Den and would not have wagered upon finding him thus weak-willed. In point of fact, he had erred in precisely the opposite direction.
The young gentleman sighed sharply, vexed; the note he had written to Betea sen’Equa absurdly heavy in his sleeve-pocket. He drank off the rest of his wine and sat in his chair, hands folded beneath his chin, staring sightlessly at the news screen.
Long minutes passed, with the gentleman sunk deep in his thoughts. Eventually, he blinked, and sighed a second time, considerably less vexed, and owned that his plans might go forward, unimpeded. The lack of Fal Den was—naturally!—a blow, but life, after all, went on.
Just so.
Satisfied in his reasoning, the young gentleman cleared the news screen, and filed away the letter from his man of business.
The note from Betea sen’Equa he carried over to the recycler. Reaching into inside pocket he withdrew one of his special sort of cigarillo, and sucked on it twice to light it. He puffed for a moment or two, tasting of the invigorating smoke, until the central embers came to red. Then he touched the tip of the cigarillo gently to one edge of the paper and held it gingerly by the opposite corner, when the quick flames licked toward his fingertips, he dropped the thing into the unit, which extinguished the flames and proceeded to process the carbon.
He puffed again, the sweet smoke rising to join that of the paper and disguise its odor. The cigarillo followed in a few moments; ashes to ashes, to further muddle any trail.
Satisfied with his morning’s work, the young gentleman left his rooms, lightfooted and whistling.
“THAT’S PREPOSTEROUS.” The man who said so was some years Pat Rin’s elder; a tea merchant who owned a comfortable establishment in the High Port. Neither Shan nor Shan’s father, Er Thom yos’Galan—master traders, both—had been strangers in this place, and Bed War tel’Pyton welcomed Pat Rin in the names of his cousins.
“Alas,” Pat Rin said gently, and bowed.
Master tel’Pyton had recourse to his teacup.
“By his own hand? Forgive me, sir, but that’s powerful hard to accommodate, for the Fal Den ter’Antod I knew was no such fool.”
“I understand your perplexity,” Pat Rin murmured. “Indeed, I share it. And yet it is truly said that we cannot know the necessities of another’s secret heart.”
“True,” said the master. “Very true.” He sighed, gustily. “So, doubtless you’ve fallen heir to Fal Den’s debt-book, by which circumstance we find him once again to fail of foolishness. Pray name the price of my transgression.” He tipped his head, apparently considering this. “I suppose it must have been my transgression, though I’ll own there’s nothing in my book under Fal Den’s name. However, I’ll bow to his judgment, for he was nice—very nice—in his measurements.”
Pat Rin inclined his head and brought the book from his inner pocket. Carefully, he opened to the proper page—an early entry—and read out the recorded circumstances.
“In the fourth relumma of the year called Tofset, I misspoke in consultation with Master Tea Merchant Bed War tel’Pyton. This misinformation was the direct cause of the master ordering far too many tins of Morning Sunrise tea, which purchase greatly reduced the profits of his business. This fault is mine, and shall be Balanced at my earliest opportunity.”
Master tel’Pyton blinked.
“Are you certain—I mean no disrespect!—that this is the matter that lies between myself and Fal Den? For I’ll tell you, the incident was trivial when it happened—the tea was stasis sealed for one matter, and for another your cousin Er Thom was trading on port at the time and placed the overbought handily, to his own profit and to mine.”
“This entry is the only time that your name appears within the debt-book,” Pat Rin said delicately.
“Perhaps there is another matter..?”
“Not a bit of it,” the tea merchant said sturdily. Abruptly, he bowed, deep and excruciatingly proper. “Fal Den leaves me in perfect harmony, sir, saving only in the matter of his death itself, which cheats me of a friend and a valued colleague. Pray tell his delm so, on my behalf, and write ‘paid’ to the debt as recorded.”
Pat Rin also bowed, closing the battered little book and slipping it away. “I will do so, sir,” he said, and added the phrase the Code demanded of those who held this particular death-duty: “Balance has been served—and preserved.”
THE SECOND YOUNG gentleman of leisure spent his day profitably in the City, meeting with certain of his business associates, of whom every one was delighted to learn of the increase in the young gentleman’s estate. He was pleased to learn, at a certain, of course impeccable, clerical service that his invitations had been dispatched in accordance with his very explicit instructions. Later in the day, he dined with friends, after which he accompanied them to an exclusive club as their guest, where his luck held at cards and he lost only a very little at dice.
“AND HOW DID you find Little Festival this year, boy-dear? A tedious bore, or a grand adventure?” Luken refilled their glasses from a bottle of Ongit’s superlative red.
Pat Rin tipped his head, considering. From anyone else, the question might have been intended as a barb. From one’s foster father, it surely sprang from a filial interest in himself—and gave one pause. Luken bel’Tarda was not a great intellect, but his melant’i was spotless, and he possessed a sweet, sure subtlety that Pat Rin found he treasured more deeply as the years passed. It behooved one, always, to give serious consideration to Luken’s questions.
So: “I found Little Festival to be… largely agreeable,” Pat Rin said, slowly. “Though I will own to some moments where one’s mind wandered from the pure pursuit of pleasure to matters of business. And of course, some bits were nothing short of terrifying.” He picked up his glass and swirled the wine, idly, eyes on the movement of the dark red liquid. “Of course, you’ve heard of Shan and Val Con’s victory at the skimmer field?”
Luken grinned. “From the newspaper and from your mother, too. She predicts a wastrel lifetime for both, sinking ever further from Code and kin.” He sipped his wine. “No fear there, I think. Young Val Con tells me he’s no intention of continuing along the line of skimmers—too wearing by half! And Shan has put the craft up for sale, now that his point’s been taken.”
He did not say, as one’s mother would assuredly have done, ‘No doubt with his eye already upon some other mad enterprise.’
“You’ve seen Val Con, then?” This was interesting; had the young cousin left the wiles of Festival to do family duty?
“Oh, aye, he was by this morning. We shared a bite of breakfast and a catch-up.” Luken sipped.
Last seen, Val Con had been engaged to attend a piece of business that must assuredly have kept him until very late in the evening, if Pat Rin had read the set of the lady’s face a-right. To have arisen from the double exertions of the race and the pleasure tents early enough to share breakfast with dawn-rising Luken—well. Surely, the young cousin became a paragon.
“He’s a good lad,” Luken said comfortably. “The Scouts agree with him, which was the same with his father.”
“One’s mother swears him the spit of her brother.”
“Does she, now?” Luken paused, doubtless considering the issue from all sides, and finally moved a hand in negation. “I won’t say there isn’t an edge here and there—especially upon an ascent to the boughs, you know—but I do believe Er Thom has achieved other than a facsimile of Daav. No disrespect meant to your mother, dear.”
Pat Rin smiled. “Certainly not.”
The service door opened at that juncture, admitting their waiter, bearing deserts. By the time these were accommodated, and the finishing wine poured, Luken had introduced the subject of Pat Rin’s current projects.
He sighed. “Alas, I’ve been named an instrument of Balance.”
Luken looked at him, glass arrested half-way to his lips. “I wonder that you took the time to dine with me. You could have set another day, boy-dear. Thirty-six hours is little enough to right all the wrongs that might be made in a lifetime.”
“Happily, I’m set to Balance the life of a meticulous man,” Pat Rin said. “There were only four outstanding debts, and I’ve managed to lay three today.” He inclined his head, self-mocking. “Behold me, industrious.”
“I allow that to be tolerably industrious,” Luken said, apparently quite serious. “Most likely you’ll stop on your way home this evening and put paid to the last.”
“Would that I were that fortunate. The fourth is likely to be the end of my own melant’i, if you will have it.”
“As knotty as that?” Luken put his glass aside. “You might honorably consult an elder of your Clan. I happen to be an elder of your Clan, in case you had forgot it.”
“Yes, very likely. In the meanwhile, I’ve no idea how knotty the thing may be, the notation being somewhat… murky. You might say I should simply throw myself upon the honor of the debt-partner, which I might do, had I one idea of who she may be.”
“Surely you’ve checked the Book of Clans—ah!” Luken caught himself up. “Perhaps the lady is Terran, boy-dear. You’ll want the Census.”
“The lady’s name appears to be Liaden,” Pat Rin said, “though I do have a request in to Terran Census, so every wager is covered.” He pulled Fal Den’s debt book from his sleeve pocket and flipped to the page.
“Betea sen’Equa is the person for whom—” He glanced up at a slight sound from Luken, who seemed to have lost color. “Father?”
“For whom do you Balance?” Luken asked, and his tone was much cooler than Pat Rin was wont to hear from his foster father.
“For Fal Den ter’Antod, Clan Imtal, found dead by his own hand last evening. The book arrived in this morning’s mail.”
“Hah.” Luken relaxed visibly. “I had read that. Bad business. And he notes a Balance with sen’Equa? Boy-dear, I must ask if you are certain of the notation.”
Wordlessly, Pat Rin handed him the debt-book.
For several heartbeats, Luken frowned down at the note, then sighed, closed the book and handed it back.
“Betea sen’Equa, certain enough, though how one of Imtal came to—there, it’s none of mine. And distressed I am to find it one of yours, lad.”
“I apprehend that you are familiar with the lady—or at the least, the lady’s kin.”
“Oh, I know who they are— there was a time when everyone knew who they were, though I see that’s no longer the case. They had used to be Terran—I recall being told that the family name is ancient Terran—Seneca. They set up in Port, and carried on just as if they were still on any Terran world you like—which meant they married oddly, mostly of Terrans, you see, and took no care to establish their Clan.”
“Which is why I don’t find them in the Book of Clans.”
“Nor in Terran Census, either.” Luken sighed. “In anywise, boy-dear, if it’s sen’Equa you want, it’s to Low Port you’ll go.”
“Ah, will I? How delightful.” Pat Rin slipped Fal Den’s debt book into his sleeve and absently took up his wine glass. “I wonder what trade it is that Family sen’Equa follows?”
Luken moved his shoulders. “Why, they began in mechanical and electronics repair, with a side in the gaming business. The repair work led them to vending machines, you see, and an exclusive contract with dea’Linea. Then, when dea’Linea incepted that tedious scandal and got ruined by way of it, sen’Equa sued for such holdings as remained—in payment of their contract. I was myself involved as a trustee of the dissolution, and saw the paperwork. Sen’equa received only the most meager of settlements—well, they had no one to speak for them. So, unless they have moved far forward—or backward—sen’Equa owns properties in Mid-Port and in Low-Port, in the form of several small gambling houses.”
“Oh,” Pat Rin said, and very nearly smiled. “Do they?”
SHE HAD READ the letter thrice, more alarmed each time. A party, here, at House of Chance? Worse, a party composed, or so he would have her understand, entirely of those who made High Port—aye, and the city beyond it—their home? All very well and good to bring in one or three at a time, filling the private rooms, to her profit. But, a party of three to four dozen lord-and-ladyships? It was…
… frightening.
Betea sen’Equa was not a woman of fragile nerve, nor was hers an imaginative nature. Yet this latest letter from Hia Cyn—this proposed—engaged—event—felt wrong. Gods’ mercy that her grandmother was dead, and Betea did not have to go before her with such feeble misgivings in her heart.
“Hitch your fortune to the High Port,” that redoubtable old lady had been wont to say, “and the cantra will flow into your pocket.”
Which had doubtless been true in the old days, when her grandmother, with the assistance of various patrons, added three houses to the sen’Equa holdings—one in High Port itself.
Grandmother’s wisdom had likewise served Betea’s mother, who had added another Mid-Port house to the chain before a drunken quarrel with her latest patron left her dead.
After that came Betea’s aunt, who decreed that sen’Equa had no need of patrons; that sen’Equa houses would henceforth pay for themselves, with no dependence on those who sat high.
It had been a worthy dream, Betea thought so even now. But her aunt in her grief over the loss of her sister had reckoned without worldly realities. Sen’equa had no standing among the Clan-bound, nor ever had. Oh, they paid taxes, in return of which they were guaranteed the protections and services of the Port. But they had no social standing, and no one was obliged to either sell, or treat with them at fair cost.
Or pay a death-price, for kin who were murdered.
It had been fair market prices and rent that the names of the wealthy patrons had purchased for sen’Equa, and by the time her aunt realized that, the house in High Port had faltered and was closed.
Her aunt then did what no other of their family had done—she left the Port and went into the city, to apply for a Name from the Council of Clans.
But to become a Name, there must be a Name willing to sponsor the applicant to the Council. A patron, in fact—and Betea’s aunt would have none of patrons.
So, now it was Betea and two houses left—their starting place in Low Port, where uncle Tawm ruled, and the House of Chance in the Terran section of Mid-Port. Terrans scarce cared what your name was—or if you had a name at all, so long as your cantra was good. They sold to Betea as they would to any other business on the street—yes, and came by in the evening or ahead of their morning shifts, to wager a bit on the wheel, perhaps, or buy into a game of cards.
She’d been doing well enough, or so she told herself now, and had no need to return to the patron model. Only that the loss of those two houses in her aunt’s time and another on her aunt’s death—had eaten at Betea and made her dream, too, dream of the days when sen’Equa held five houses and there was talk of building a sixth…
Betea sighed, dropped the letter to her desk for the fourth time, slipped the sixth-piece into her pocket, and, restless, went down the ramp into the main room, to see how the play went on.
Which is how she came to be there when he walked in the door: High Port, sure enough, with his pretty brown hair and a blue gemstone in one ear; dressed in a sober, expensive jacket and shiny boots. She saw the hint of the pistol beneath the jacket and approved his good sense, even as she went forward to intercept him.
“May I assist you, lordship?” she inquired, coming up on him from the right, her hands plainly in sight, out of respect for the pistol.
Velvet brown eyes considered her at some length, and then he inclined his head, very slightly.
“Do you know, perhaps you can?” he said, and his voice was pleasant on the ear. “I am looking for Betea sen’Equa."
Her stomach clenched, but she put the silly start of fear aside and bowed deeply, which the high ones cared about.
“You have found her,” she said. “How may I assist you?”
“I am here on a matter of Balance,” the pretty man told her, “which stands between yourself and Fal Den ter’Antod.”
Betea felt the blood drain from her face. She might have known that the game would fold someday, and one who was perhaps a little bolder than the others would send his man of business, or his delm, or his elder kinsman to Balance the matter—with her. She touched her tongue to lips suddenly gone dry.
“Why does he not come himself?” she asked.
“Because he is dead,” the other said, and moved a hand, showing her the ramp up to the office in her own establishment. “Perhaps this is not a discussion you wish to continue on the open floor?”
Dead? But… Betea clutched at her disintegrating courage, straightened her back and looked boldly into the man’s dark eyes.
“Please come with me,” she said, and turned away without looking to see if he followed. Somehow, she didn’t doubt that he would.
THE OFFICE WAS comfortably appointed, the screens that monitored the playing floor set into the wall above the manager’s cluttered desk.
A quick and subtle glance at the clutter revealed to Pat Rin the sorts of papers one might find on the desk of any manager, high port or low—invoices, bills of lading, lists, and the various correspondence of business. A handwritten letter on plain paper lay askew in the center of the desk, as if it had been flung down in haste. A blank comm screen sat to the right of the general disorder, the keyboard shoved away beneath.
At the center of the room, Betea sen’Equa turned to face him. She was tall, Pat Rin noted—a little above his own height, though nothing near Shan’s—and lithe, with a girl’s pretty, soft face. Her eyes were as blue and as ungiving as sapphire—and it was to the woman who had earned those eyes that he made his bow.
“I am Pat Rin yos’Phelium Clan Korval. I come to you as the instrument of Fal Den ter’Antod’s will. Your name is written in his debt-book. It falls to us to Balance that which lies between you.”
The hard blue eyes considered him, emotionless; the round, girl’s face betrayed only youth.
“Please tell me how Fal Den came to die,” she said, and her voice did waver, just a little. “I saw him only days ago…”
“He died by his own hand,” Pat Rin told her and used his chin to point at the dark screen. “If you permit, I will call up the report from news service.”
She glanced at the screen, and stepped to one side. “If you please.”
He moved to the desk, tapped the power key, called up the public archive, and stood aside.
Betea sen’Equa came forward, frowned at the synopsis, reached down and called for more information, then stood looking at it for far longer than it should have taken her to read it. Eventually, however, she recalled herself and turned to Pat Rin, her face somewhat paler than it had been.
“What is written next to my name,” she asked steadily, “in Fal Den’s debt-book?”
She had offered him neither a chair nor refreshment, which discourtesy was irritating. Pat Rin discovered himself more inclined to believe the debt lay on the lady’s side, which did no honor to his duty. If Fal Den himself had not known which of the two of them was owing and owed…
Pat Rin inclined his head. “I regret, only your name appears. It is the very last notation in the book, written on the day of his death, and it is very possible that the process that ended with his self-murder was even then at work.”
She stared at him, eyes and face without expression.
Pat Rin sighed. “Perhaps if we speak together of your dealings with Fal Den on the occasion of your last meeting, we may discover between us both the fault and the Balance owed.”
Still she stared at him, and she was not, by Pat Rin’s judgment, either a half-wit or a fool…
“Self-murder,” she said abruptly. “Are they certain of that?”
He frowned. “It is what his kin has sworn to the Council. Have you reason to believe that Fal Den came by his death in another fashion?”
“Perhaps. I don’t…” She spun aside, rudely, and paced to the far end of the room, where she stood for the slow count of six heartbeats, facing the wall, showing him her back.
At last, she took a deep breath, turned and walked back to the center of the room, she stopped several paces away and looked boldly into his eyes.
“I know why my name is written in Fal Den’s book,” she said, and her voice was as hard as her eyes. “I know who owes and who is owing. I will tell you these things. For a price.”
“A price?” Pat Rin raised his eyebrows. “Madam, your name is written in a dead man’s book. You do not bargain price with me.”
“But I do,” she said sharply. “You may be bound to play by High Port rules, lordship, but I am not. My mother died at the hand of a High Port lord. She had no book nor no other high friends to call in her debt, and the lord himself said the thing was outside of lawful Balance, for she had no Name to protect her.” She crossed her arms under her breasts and now the bold gaze was a glare. “I am selling the information you need. You will buy it, or you will not.” She inclined her head, brusquely. “Your throw, lordship.”
It was on the end of his tongue to tell her that he had no need to buy anything from her—but that was only pique, such as would make Luken laugh and bid him to climb down from the high branches.
Mastering his irritation, he looked at her, standing tall and stern before him.
The lady has the winning hand, he told himself, wryly, which rubbed ill against his pride as a gamester. And he was not come here, he reminded himself, as a gamester, but as the agent of Fal Den’s will, upon which the petty prides and irritations of Pat Rin yos’Phelium had no right to intrude.
He bowed to the lady, very slightly.
“What is your price?”
VIEWED CORRECTLY, Pat Rin thought, shaking his lace into order and frowning at his reflection in the dressing-glass, the situation was piquant. Indeed, one was persuaded that ore’s deplorable cousin Shan would find it rich in hilarity. And, to be just, had it been Shan dressing just now to attend, of all things, an express, Pat Rin might have found himself more inclined toward laughter.
His partner in this evening’s enterprise could not be dislodged from her conviction that he attended such affairs as a matter of course on every quarter-day, nor from the equally demented belief that his very presence held her proof against whatever predations she imagined that Hia Cyn yo’Tonin intended to visit upon her.
Though, Pat Rin allowed, fixing the sapphire in his ear, to be wary of Hia Cyn yo’Tonin proved Betea sen’Equa to be a woman of sense, however late in her life.
It had taken all of his powers of persuasion, and not a little High House hauteur, to wring the information he required from Betea after he had given his word to attend this evening’s festivities.
The tale she had told was a simple one, nor was Fal Den the first to come away from an acquaintance with Betea sen’Equa lighter by certain equities and certificates of stock.
It would have seemed simple thievery, and the lady herself the final culprit, yet there was another player in the game, whose presence muddied the score considerably.
As Betea told it, her first meeting with Hia Cyn yo’Tonin was mere chance. Pat Rin, who knew the man, doubted this, but had not thought it appropriate to interrupt the lady’s account with his private speculations.
In any case, Hia Cyn, through design or mischance, came into the orbit of Betea sen’Equa and very quickly showed her how she might increase profits. Betea had ambitions, Pat Rin learned, but not much understanding of the ways of what she termed ‘the high world’.
Hia Cyn brought to her young people—mostly young men—who were slightly in awe of the gaming world, and slightly in awe of her, she who was tall and exotic, and who held modest court within her own houses.
The games were—initially—honest, with small friendly wagers. But after a time, the stakes would alter, in the private parlors, the victims would play for small sums until some point of melant’i or other would be brought into the conversation and slowly the net would be drawn about them. Carefully, then, while served sympathetic portions of wine, or perhaps one of Hia Cyn’s special cigarillos, the mark would be brought to promise against their quartershare, or against their inheritance. Especially, Hia Cyn liked them to promise something that would come to them only when the person immediately before them in their Clan’s line of succession came to die.
Thus the stakes were things like quitclaims to islands, access codes to small and private lodges, the desperately secret formula of some proprietary process.
This, she learned later; she had delivered the first few keywords and certificate numbers to Hia Cyn without ever knowing what they were, earning thereby what he was pleased to call a “finder’s fee”. In cash.
No one ever came back to her and confronted her with their loss, which for a time fed the comforting illusion that what she dealt in were “might-happens” of no value.
Alas, she was not a lady who allowed herself to repose long in ignorance. If what she gained for Hia Cyn was worthless, she reasoned, why then was she paid to procure it?
And so she finally learned that these items promised at late night in the heat of play were more than a gambler’s losses. They became the very evidence of a threat—perhaps a mortal threat!—to a person of melant’i. As such, they were bought back with ridiculous ease, often with items or in amounts the victims themselves suggested—things that were in one way or another extremely liquid and little prone to tracking.
Knowledge should have set her free, for surely even Nameless Port-folk might report larceny to the Proctors. However, Betea weighed the risk of being implicated along with Hia Cyn and the all-too-probable outcome of being found the sole offender, and did not call the Proctors. In any wise, she said, the trade was slowing down. Indeed, for several relumma, Hia Cyn introduced her to no one new.
And then, at the beginning of the present relumma, he had brought Fal Den ter’Antod to her attention.
“And now he has died,” Betea had said, stone-faced in the office above her modest gambling house. “None of the others cared so much.”
She had named those others in the course of her narration and Pat Rin had taken those names to the redoubtable dea’Gauss, Clan Korval’s man of business, who was even now in the process of checking accounts with various of the masters of the Accountants Guild.
Which left Pat Rin free to attend a party in the deplored and deplorable express mode, with only six hours left him to correctly place and Balance the error that had brought Fal Den to his death.
It was well here to reflect upon Fal Den, Pat Rin thought, and the nicety of his honor, which had not allowed him to place a debt of which he was uncertain.
Pat Rin sighed and gave his lace a last, unnecessary, shake. Time and past time to get on with the pursuit of pleasure.
Express, indeed.
THE ADDRESS WAS in Solcintra Mid-Port, on a street well-known to a certain set of self-styled adventurers and high rollers. An adventurer he was not, but in the course of learning to be a high roller, it had sometimes been necessary for Pat Rin to attend parties on this street. Now an acknowledged player, he still received invitations to such parties, but of late he had more and more often discovered himself, regretfully, with a conflicting engagement. To be seen in the area during a business day was unexceptional, of course, but to be seen here in the evening, dressed in all his finery….
At least he was not alone. He saw several vaguely familiar faces in the distance, all of them younger than he, each carrying their sealed red packet inscribed with the legend, “To Be Opened Expressly at the House of Chance.”
He bowed distantly in the direction of a young lady whose name escaped him—her face notable in that Pat Rin had witnessed the end of a match at Teydor’s in which this gentle became the dozen dozenth of the current year’s list. Pat Rin sighed—no doubt he would be singled out during the Express to give hints and best wishes, if not to lend countenance to the rather interesting costume that the lady had found appropriate to wear to an event that might turn out to be nothing more than an evening of light play.
Indeed, she gained his side as he came up to the gaudily painted doorway, and just in time he recalled her name—Dela bel’Urik, Clan Shelart.
Together, they entered the sen’Equa’s House of Chance, he in his evening lace, and she as she might appear for an evening among friends to her house; or even friends to her bed. Assuredly, someone ought to speak to the lady regarding the attire generally held to be proper for public outings — but it would not be he.
A servant, bland-faced, admitted them to the house, and waved them to a small room to the right of the entranceway.
“You may open your envelopes and don your accessories in this chamber,” he said. “After you have appropriately adorned yourselves, you may find the rest of the guests in the larger room. Buffets will be laid in the private parlors at mid-revel.”
It was at this point that Betea sen’Equa herself appeared, slightly breathless, as if she had run down from her office the moment the monitor showed his arrival. Immediately was Dela bel’Urik’s costume discovered to be mere commonplace, quite cast into the shade by Betea’s choice of flame red shirt, cut low across her breasts, form-fitting leather trousers, and soft-soled leather house-boots.
Nor was the young bel’Urik’s address sufficient to assure her place at Pat Rin’s side. Betea swept forward, using her height much as he sometimes used his, to clear a path through a crowd and arrive at his destination unrumpled and unimpeded.
“He has not yet arrived,” she said, leading the way into the accessory chamber. Pat Rin followed, but not without a wistful thought to the bel’Urik.
“I have been through our records,” she said, pulling what appeared to be a small square of leather from between her breasts. “Never has the House of Chance hosted such an event. Why must it be here—”
“… Is something that we shall perhaps discover of Hia Cyn, when we have an opportunity to speak,” Pat Rin interrupted, striving for patience. He was here, he reminded himself, as an instrument of Balance. His personal pets and peeves had no brief here. Looking down, he broke the seal on his Express packet, and, wonderingly, pulled out a folded bit of leather, much like the one Betea had…
The leather unfolded, revealing its form: A half-mask in supple black leather, with ribands of the same color.
Betea’s mask was flame red. As he watched, she tied it into place and let the ribands fall over one shoulder, the tasseled ends kissing the swell of her breast.
Pat Rin’s uncle, Daav yos’Phelium—Val Con’s very father—had once told Pat Rin a story about a world where all went masked and revealed themselves only to their most intimate kin. The story had turned upon a man with whom Uncle Daav had sworn to be acquainted, who had one day formed a desire to go about his daily business unmasked, and the unlooked-for and increasingly distressful situations that arose from taking that single, seemingly correct, decision.
The story had a lesson at its heart, of course—a scout lesson, with which one’s mother most emphatically disagreed. The lesson was that custom was arbitrary and oft-times nonsensical, and that the superior person was one who was not shackled by the custom of his homeworld, but moved freely from one set of traditions to another, without offense to any.
To wear a mask on Liad was, of course, to be very wicked. Masks were erotic, intoxicating and entirely outside of Code.
“Well?” Betea sen’Equa asked, not a little snappish. “Are you going to put that on, or are you not?”
THE HOUR WAS growing late.
Not that the young gentleman of leisure was at all concerned for the final outcome of the evening, he only wished that Betea would approach him so that the matter could be settled, finally and for all. She oversaw for a time the room’s small spin-wheel, and joined a party at cards, making certain that the money and the drink flowed, as a proper hostess must do.
Indeed, he would quite miss Betea, and where he would find another cat’s paw so perfectly situated, he could not predict. However, he was a young man of an optimistic cast of mind and rarely allowed the problems of tomorrow to oppress him today. He did not doubt for a moment that Betea would find herself able to accommodate the arrangements he had made for her. After all, what could it matter to a Clanless where she lived or to whom she owed duty?
If only she would she would stop circulating and come within his orbit so the evening could go forward…
IT WAS… DISCONCERTING… to enter a room filled with people dressed with entire propriety, saving only that their features were masked. Pat Rin, master of any social situation described in the Code, felt ill-at-ease, which sensation he found unsatisfactory in the extreme.
By contrast, Betea strolled into the room as if she had gone masked all her life, moving among people whose motives and desires were hidden from her. Which, Pat Rin thought, the echoes of Uncle Daav’s old story suddenly ringing in his ears, perhaps she had.
He raised his head and moved into the room, ignoring, as best as he was able, the supple caress of leather against his cheeks. A masked servant offered him wine from a tray, which he accepted, and, sipping, moved even further into the room.
Betea, he saw, was well advanced of him, her crimson shirt a beacon among the pastel evening colors of the Festival season.
Strolling through the room, Pat Rin recovered somewhat of his equilibrium. He had a good ear for voices, and he found that he recognized the accents of more than one social acquaintance in conversation, mask to mask.
So acclimated did he become, in fact, that, when hailed by a yellow-haired lady in an emerald green mask, he inclined his head gravely and murmured, “Good evening, Eyan. I hope I find you well?”
The lady gave a startled laugh and moved forward to lay her hand on his arm.
“Quick, my friend. Very quick. A word in your ear, however: We name no names here.”
Pat Rin sipped his wine. “Whyever not?”
“Oh, it adds to the mystery, the intrigue, the naughtiness! Is it not absurd?”
“Perhaps. But it is possible that you will change my mind. I am not accustomed to finding you engaged in the absurd."
“Prettily said,” smiled the lady. “Alas, I am here at the whim of a friend, who had heard of such affairs being all the rage from her cha’leket. I must seek her soon, to find if the telling matches reality, or if we may go and find a less… melant’i challenging… gathering.” She had recourse to her own glass, eyes quizzing him over the crystal rim. “But how do I find you present at such an exercise? Pay-off on a wager? Never say that you lost!”
Pat Rin inclined his head. “I find my situation similar to your own; and am here at the necessity of another.” He swept a glance across the room, looking for the crimson shirt—and failing to find it.
“Pat Rin?” Her hand was on his sleeve once more. “What’s amiss?”
“I—am not certain,” he replied, and turned sharply on his heel. “Perhaps nothing is amiss. Your pardon, Eyan…” He moved off into the crowded room, leaving her frowning behind him.
IT HAD BEEN absurdly easy. Betea had all but literally walked into his arms, and it had been simplicity itself to guide her into the parlor where his business associate awaited them.
“This is she?” The man behind the table asked, while Hia Cyn held Betea firmly by her arm.
“It is,” he said, adroitly avoiding the kick she aimed at his shins.
“And you have the right to sell her into indenture?”
“Sir, I have,” said Hia Cyn. “There is a debt between us of long standing, which she makes not the slightest push to settle. I certainly—”
“That,” snarled Betea, twisting against his grip, “is a lie! I owe you nothing!”
“Yes, well…” Hia Cyn shifted his grip and got her arm up behind her, hand between her shoulder-blades, which quietened her quick enough. “I have the papers, sir, which you’ve seen. The Council itself acknowledges my right to redeem my money through the sale of this woman’s work for a period of seven standard years.”
“He’s a wizard with papers, this one!” Betea snarled. “Look twice at any signatures he shows you, lordship—Ah!”
“Respect for your betters, Betea,” Hia Cyn said pleasantly, but the man behind the table frowned.
“She’s worth less to me with a broken arm,” he said, sternly. “Nor do I wish to buy at hazard.”
“Sir—”
“You are wise,” came a cool voice from behind. “Sir, release that woman. She is neither your chattel nor your debtor.”
The man behind the table moved a hand, beckoning. “Who are you, sir?”
Pat Rin yos’Phelium stepped into the room, impeccable in high-town lace; his face covered by a supple black mask; blue gem blazing in his right ear.
“I was told we name no names here, sir,” he said calmly. “However, I have business and a name for the man who has attempted to sell you that which does not belong to him.” He turned and raised his hand, pointing.
“Hia Cyn yo’Tonin, release that person, and prepare to answer me in a matter of Balance.”
“Balance?” Hia Cyn’s grip loosened, from pure amaze, so Betea thought, though she was quick to take advantage of his lapse. “We are in the midst of social pleasure,” Hia Cyn protested. “How may Balance go forth here?”
“Balance goes forth in the name of Fal Den ter’Antod, whom your actions slew. Do you deny that you are Hia Cyn yo’Tonin?”
“I neither deny nor acknowledge! You, sir, are not anonymous. I know your voice. I know that ear-stone—as who does not? I’ve seen you deep in the cards—and shooting, at Teydor’s!”
Betea, forgotten in the argument, moved swiftly to the side, raised her hand and pulled the bright ribands.
“What!” Hia Cyn raised his hand too late. The mask had slipped, fallen, and was held useless in his left hand. He stood revealed, his face seeming curiously naked, the skin slightly damp where the leather had cuddled his cheeks.
Pat Rin raised a hand, showing the battered debt-book, Imtal’s sigil to the fore.
“I have a book from the hand of a dead man, Hia Cyn yo’Tonin. Balance goes forth, here and now. What Balance is just, for the loss of a life?”
“I repudiate this. I will not accept Balance from a masked robber.”
“But do you know,” said a feminine voice from the door, “I think you will?” A smallish lady with gray hair, and wearing a mauve mask stepped into the room, closely followed by Eyan yo’Lanna’s emerald. The mauve mask inclined her head to Pat Rin.
“I have only this afternoon had a message from dea’Gauss, sir. I believe I am in your debt for the very welcome information he imparted.” She raised a hand. “Your duty takes precedence over my own. Pray continue. I believe we may be in a situation where witnesses may be… appropriate.”
Pat Rin inclined his head. “Ma’am.” He looked again to Hia Cyn yo’Tonin, and it was anger he felt. Anger, that this man lived where Fal Den ter’Antod—twelve dozen times more worthy!—had died. Died for the cause of this man’s greed. And he was to Balance this wrong? There was no Balance fitting. Even death…
The man behind the table cleared his throat.
“I do not wish to trespass into a private affair,” he said calmly. “However, I think it relevant to point out to those concerned that I came here to buy seven years’ of hard labor in my company’s mine. It matters not at all to me whose labor I buy, so long as the contract is valid.”
Pat Rin turned and looked at the man behind the table.
“Seven?”
The man inclined his head. “The contract can, of course, be renewed, at seller’s option. I am limited to the purchase of seven year blocks.”
“I see.” Pat Rin held looked again at Hia Cyn yo’Tonin, pale and sweating. “Let us say seven years initially, renewal to depend upon Fal Den ter’Antod’s delm.”
“The Council!” yelped Hia Cyn.
“I don’t think that the Council will find it difficult to name you beholden,” the lady in the mauve mask said. “And if Imtal does not impose additional terms of service, you may warm yourself by the certainty that you will have pel’Varn to reckon with on the day your indenture is done.”
It was too much. Hia Cyn spun, knocking Eyan aside, and vaulted into the main room, Betea in hot pursuit.
“Card-sharp!” she cried. “Stop him!”
The pleasure-seekers—gamesters and High Houselings alike—turned to stare at the one so hideously accused; several young gentlemen were seen to cast down their dice or their cards and move in pursuit.
Hia Cyn slammed to a halt, staring at the room full of masks, the avid eyes focused on him. He glanced down at his left hand, fingers still uselessly clutching his mask. Revealed, he thought. Revealed and ruined.
“Do not run from the lordship’s Balance, Hia Cyn,” Betea’s voice was quite near. He jerked his head up and stared at her. “It was wrong, what we did. And now a man has died of it.”
“A fool has died of it,” he snarled, snatching his hidden pistol free. “And not the only one.”
He raised the weapon and pulled the trigger.
Betea fell, someone in the crowd of pleasure-seekers screamed; someone else shouted. And Hia Cyn turned, seeking the way out—
And found instead a tall man dressed all in evening lace and jewels, the blue stone in his ear blazing. He was showing empty hands, which marked him a third fool.
“Put the gun aside,” Pat Rin said, pitching his voice for gentleness. “Put the gun aside and stand away. Hia Cyn. You hold no winning cards here.”
“No?” The gun came around, the eyes wild and the face aflame with some fever of madness.
There was no time to warn the crowd, no time to think. Pat Rin brought his right hand down, felt the little gun slide into his palm. The target…
Hia Cyn fired as he fell; the pellet from Pat Rin’s palm gun had already shattered his heart.
There was silence among the pleasure-seekers, and Pat Rin, shaking, slipped his weapon away. Several of the young gentlemen were bending over what was left of Hia Cyn yo’Tonin. He went to kneel beside Betea sen’Equa, discovering a heartbeat, and a wound to the upper arm. She opened her eyes as he bent over her.
“Lord,” she said breathily to Pat Rin as he stooped near her, “the masks!”
“Yes.”
It was absurdly difficult to untie the ribands that held his own mask in place. If only his fingers wouldn’t shake so…
Finally, the thing was done and he stood, raising his hand for silence against the sudden storm of chatter: “yos’Phelium!” “Suicide to draw against a yos’Phelium!” “He must have been in his cups!” “Card-sharp! The hostess herself accused him!”
Someone—he thought it was Dela bel’Urik—called, stridently, for silence.
It fell, and Pat Rin cleared his throat.
“If someone would be so good as to call the Port Proctors? Also, it would be well to remove your masks.”
These things were done, and when the Proctors did arrive, in goodly time, since they also knew the street, the only mask in the room was held in the death grip of Hia Cyn yo’Tonin.
IMTAL HERSELF RECEIVED the debt-book from his hands, riffled the pages, and read the four accountings, lingering over the fourth. She lay the book aside.
“Our House is honored,” she said, bowing.
“It was an honor to serve,” Pat Rin replied, properly, and bowed even lower.
“Hah.” She considered him out of tired brown eyes. “And what else do you bring me, child of Korval?”
Pat Rin moved his hand and Betea came forward, bowing as he had shown her.
“This is Betea sen’Equa; her name appears in the last entry in the book. Alas, Fal Den wrote neither a plus nor minus beside her name, nor any other elaboration; and I am unable to precisely reconstruct his will regarding her.”
The brown eyes narrowed. “I have read the last entry, and found it unilluminating. ‘In consideration of the melant’i of all involved, all debts in this pairing must be considered satisfied, pending the delm’s acceptance of the matter’.”
Pat Rin bowed acknowledgment. “Just so. Betea took part in the scheme which caused Fal Den’s death; it was something in which I feel she was also a victim. Your kinsman could not himself squarely place the debt, nor can I. The best Balance I may craft is to suggest that you speak with this person, candidly and at length, and that a new Balance be struck if need be, to Balance the loss of Fal Den’s worth.” He paused, then added, with utmost delicacy.
“I also suggest that you consult most closely with your business advisors about the matters this woman may reveal before setting that worth. Had it not been for the unfortunate public suicide of Hia Cyn…”
“Yo’Tonin. I have heard the news of that, and I have—as you may understand—heard other news of that. I would not have had such a necessity forced upon you.”
“The necessity was mine, Imtal. I could hardly have refused to serve Fal Den’s wishes.”
There was a short silence, then an inclination of the head. “As you say. I assume that this is the young person who was wounded in the service our House?”
“Imtal, it is.”
“Hah.” The brown eyes now frankly swept Betea. “My father knew your Grandmother. Well.”
Betea managed a strong voice: “My grandmother knew many people. Well.”
It was the correct response. Imtal smiled. “Assuredly, we shall need to talk—candidly and at length.”
To Pat Rin and inclined her head. “My thanks for your service to our House."
That was a dismissal. Pat Rin bowed. “My thanks for the forbearance of the House. I grieve for your loss, as well as my own.”
That said, and most properly, he allowed himself to be ushered from the room.