Dedicated to Andre Norton, Grandmaster of Science Fiction
Adventures in the Liaden Universe #8
2002
ISBN 1-58787-214-5
“Naratha’s Shadow” originally appeared in Such a Pretty Face, edited by Lee Martindale, Meisha Merlin Publishing, 2000
For every terror, a joy. For every sorrow, a pleasure. For every death, a life. This is Naratha’s Law.
“Take it away!” The Healer’s voice was shrill.
The scout leapt forward, slamming the lid of the stasis box down and triggering the seal in one smooth motion.
“Away, it is,” she said soothingly, as if she spoke to a child, instead of a woman old in her art.
“Away it is not,” Master Healer Inomi snapped. Her face was pale. The Scout could hardly blame her. Even with the lid closed and the seal engaged, she could feel the emanation from her prize puzzle—a grating, sticky malevolence centered over and just above the eyes, like the beginnings of ferocious headache. If the affect was that strong for her, who tested only moderately empathic, as the Scouts rated such things, what must it feel like to the Healer, whose gift allowed her to experience another’s emotions as her own?
The Scout bowed. “Master Healer, forgive me. Necessity exists. This… object, whatever it may be, has engaged my closest study for—”
“Take. It. Away.” The Healer’s voice shook, and her hand, when she raised it to point at the door. “Drop it into a black hole. Throw it into a sun. Introduce it into a nova. But, for the gods’ sweet love, take it away!”
The solution to her puzzle would not be found by driving a Master Healer mad. The Scout bent, grabbed the strap and swung the box onto her back. The grating nastiness over her eyes intensified, and for a moment the room blurred out of focus. She blinked, her sight cleared, and she was moving, quick and silent, back bent under the weight of the thing, across the room and out the door. She passed down a hallway peculiarly empty of Healers, apprentices and patrons, and stepped out into the mid-day glare of Solcintra.
Even then, she did not moderate her pace, but strode on until she came to the groundcar she had requisitioned from Headquarters. Biting her lip, feeling her own face wet with sweat, she worked the cargo compartment’s latch one-handed, dumped her burden unceremoniously inside and slammed the hatch home.
She walked away some little distance, wobbling, and came to rest on a street-side bench. Even at this distance, she could feel it—the thing in the box, whatever it was—though the headache was bearable, now. She’d had the self-same headache for the six relumma since she’d made her find, and was no closer to solving its riddle.
The Scout leaned back on the bench. “Montet sig’Norba,” she told herself loudly, “you’re a fool.”
Well, and who but a fool walked away from the luxury and soft-life of Liad to explore the dangerous galaxy as a Scout? Scouts very rarely lived out the full term of nature’s allotted span—even those fortunate enough to never encounter a strange, impulse powered, triple-heavy something in the back end of nowhere and tempt the fates doubly by taking it aboard.
Montet rested her head against the bench’s high back. She’d achieved precious little glory as a Scout, glory arising as it did from the discovery of odd or lost or hidden knowledge.
Which surely the something must carry, whatever its original makers had intended it to incept or avert.
Yet, six relumma after what should have been the greatest find of her career, Montet sig’Norba was still unable to ascertain exactly what the something was.
“It may have been crafted to drive Healers to distraction,” she murmured, closing her eyes briefly against the ever-present infelicity in her head.
There was a certain charm to Master Healer Inomi’s instruction to drop the box into a black hole and have done, but gods curse it, the thing was an artifact! It had to do something!
Didn’t it?
Montet sighed. She had performed the routine tests; and then tests not quite so routine, branching out, with the help of an interested, if slightly demented, lab tech, into the bizarre. The tests stopped short of destruction—the tests, let it be known, had not so much as scratched the smooth black surface of the thing. Neither had they been any use in identifying the substance from which it was constructed. As to what it did, or did not do…
Montet had combed, scoured and sieved the Scouts’ not-inconsiderable technical archives, she’d plumbed the depths of archeology, scaled the heights of astronomy, and read more history than she would have thought possible, looking for a description, an allusion, a hint. All in vain.
Meanwhile, the thing ate through stasis boxes like a mouse through cheese. The headache and disorienting effects were noticeably less when the thing was moved to a new box. Gradually, the effects worsened, until even the demented lab tech—no empath, he—complained of his head aching and his sight jittering. At which time it was only prudent to remove the thing to another box and start the cycle again.
It was this observation of the working of the thing’s… aura that had led her to investigate its possibilities as a carrier of disease. Her studies were—of course—inconclusive. If it carried disease, it was of a kind unknown to the Scouts’ medical laboratory and to its library of case histories.
There are, however, other illnesses to which sentient beings may succumb. Which line of reasoning had immediately preceded her trip to Solcintra Healer Hall, stasis box in tow, to request an interview with Master Healer Inomi.
“And much profit you reaped from that adventure,” Montet muttered, opening her eyes and straightening on the bench. Throw it into a sun, indeed!
For an instant, the headache flared, fragmenting her vision into a dazzle of too-bright color. Montet gasped, and that quickly the pain subsided, retreating to its familiar, wearisome ache.
She stood, fishing the car key out of her pocket. Now what? she asked herself. She’d exhausted all possible lines of research. No, check that. She’d exhausted all orderly and reasonable lines of research. There did remain one more place to look.
THE LIBRARY OF LEGEND was the largest of the several libraries maintained by the Liaden Scouts. The largest and the most ambiguous. Montet had never liked the place, even as a student Scout. Her antipathy had not escaped the notice of her teachers, who had found it wise to assign her long and tedious tracings of kernel-tales and seed-stories, so that she might become adequately acquainted with the Library’s content.
Much as she had disliked those assignments, they achieved the desired goal. By the time she was pronounced ready to attempt her Solo, Montet was an agile and discerning researcher of legend, with an uncanny eye for the single true line buried in a page of obfusion.
After she passed her Solo, she opted for field duty, to the clear disappointment of at least one of her instructors, and forgot the Library of Legends in the freedom of the stars.
However, skills once learned are difficult to unlearn, especially for those who have survived Scout training. It took Montet all of three days to find the first hint of what her dubious treasure might be. A twelve-day after, she had the kernel-tale.
Then, it was cross-checking—triangulating, as it were, trying to match allegory to orbit; myth to historical fact. Detail work of the most demanding kind, requiring every nit of a Scout’s attention for long hours at a time. Montet did not stint the task—that had never been her way—and the details absorbed her day after day, early to late.
Which would account for her forgetting to move the thing, whatever it was, from its old stasis-box into a new one.
“This is an alert! Situation Class One. Guards and emergency personnel to the main laboratory, caution extreme. Montet sig’Norba to the main laboratory. Repeat. This is an alert…”
Montet was already moving down the long aisle of the Legend Library, buckling her utility belt as she ran. The intercom repeated its message and began the third pass. Montet slapped the override button for the lift and jumped inside before the door was fully open.
Gods, the main lab. she’d left it, whatever it was, in the lab lock-box, which had become her custom when she and the tech had been doing their earnest best to crack the thing open and learn its inner workings. It should have been… safe… in the lab.
The lift doors opened and she was running, down a hall full of security and catastrophe uniforms. She wove through the moving bodies of her comrades, not slackening speed, took a sharp right into the lab’s hallway, twisted and dodged through an unexpectedly dense knot of people just standing there, got clear—and stumbled, hands over her eyes.
“Aiee!”
The headache was a knife, buried to the hilt in her forehead. Her knees hit the floor, the jar snapping her teeth shut on her tongue, but that pain was lost inside the greater agony in her head. She sobbed, fumbling for the simple mind-relaxing exercise that was the first thing taught anyone who aspired to be a Scout.
She crouched there for a lifetime, finding the pattern and losing it; and beginning again, with forced, frantic patience. Finally, she found the concentration necessary, ran the sequence from beginning to end, felt the agony recede—sufficiently.
Shaking, she pushed herself to her feet and faced the open door of the lab.
It was then she remembered the stasis box and the madcap young tech’s inclination toward explosives.
“Gods, gods, gods…” She staggered, straightened and walked, knees rubbery, vision white at the edges—walked down the hall, through the open door.
The main room was trim as always, beakers and culture-plates washed and racked by size; tweezers, blades, droppers and other hand tools of a lab tech’s trade hung neatly above each workbench. Montet went down the silent, orderly aisles, past the last workbench, where someone had started a flame on the burner and decanted some liquid into a beaker before discovering that everything was not quite as it should be and slipping out to call Security.
Montet paused to turn the flame down. Her head ached horribly, and her stomach was turning queasy. All praise to the gods of study, who had conspired to make her miss the mid-day meal.
The door to the secondary workroom was closed, and refused to open to her palmprint.
Montet reached into her utility belt, pulled out a flat thin square. The edges were firm enough to grip; the center viscous. Carefully, she pressed the jellified center over the lockplate’s sensor, and waited.
For a moment—two—nothing happened, then there was a soft click and a space showed between the edge of the door and the frame.
Montet stepped aside, lay the spent jelly on the workbench behind her, got her fingers in the slender space and pushed. The door eased back, silent on well-maintained tracks. When the gap was wide enough, she slipped inside.
The room was dim, the air cool to the point of discomfort. Montet squinted, fighting her own chancy vision and the murkiness around her.
There: a dark blot near the center of the room, which could only be a stasis box. Montet moved forward, through air that seemed to thicken with each step. Automatically, her hand quested along her utility belt, locating the pin-light by touch. She slipped out out of its loop, touched the trigger—and swore.
The stasis box lay on its side in the beam, lid hanging open. Empty.
Montet swallowed another curse. In the silence, someone moaned.
Beam before her, she went toward the sound, and found the charmingly demented lab tech huddled on the floor next to the further wall, his arms folded over his head.
She started toward him, checked and swung the beam wide.
The thing, whatever it was, was barely a dozen steps away, banked by many small boxes of the kind used to contain the explosive trimplix. The detonation of a single container of trimplix could hole a spaceship, and here were twelves of twelves of them, stacked every-which-way against the thing…
“Kill it,” the tech moaned behind her. “Trigger the trimplix. Make it stop.”
Carefully, Montet put her light on the floor. Carefully, she went out to the main room, drew a fresh stasis box from stores and carried it back into the dimness. The tech had not moved, except perhaps to draw closer round himself.
It was nerve-wracking work to set the boxes of trimplix, gently, aside, until she could get in close enough to grab the thing and heave it into the box. It hit bottom with a thump, and she slammed the lid down as if it were a live thing and likely to come bounding back out at her.
That done, she leaned over, gagging, then forced herself up and went over to the intercom to sound the all-clear.
PANOPELE SETTLED HER feet in the cool, dewy grass; filled her lungs with sweet midnight air; felt the power coalesce and burn in her belly, waking the twins, Joy and Terror. Again, she drank the sweet, dark air, lungs expanding painfully; then raised her face to the firmament, opened her mouth—and sang.
Amplified by Naratha’s will, the song rose to the star-lanes, questing, questioning, challenging. Transported by the song, the essence of Panopele, Voice of Naratha, rose likewise to the star-lanes, broadening, blossoming, listening.
Attended by four of the elder novices, feet comforted by the cool, dewy grass, strong toes holding tight to the soil of Aelysia, the body of Panopele sang the Cycle down. Two of the attendant novices wept to hear her; two of the novices danced. The body of Panopele breathed and sang; sang and breathed. And sang.
Out among the star-lanes, enormous and a-quiver with every note of the song, Panopele listened, and heard no discord. Expanding even further, she opened what might be called her eyes, looked out along the scintillant fields of life and saw—a blot.
Faint it was, vastly distant from the planet where her body stood and sang, toes comfortably gripping the soil—and unmistakable in its menace. Panopele strained to see—to hear—more clearly, hearing—or imagining she heard—the faintest note of discord; the barest whisper of malice.
Far below and laboring, her body sang on, voice sweeping out in pure waves of passion. The two novices who danced spun like mad things, sweat soaking their robes. The two who wept fell to their knees and struck their heads against the earth.
Panopele strained, stretching toward the edge of the song, the limit of Naratha’s will. The blot shimmered, growing; the malice of its answering song all at once plain.
Far below, the body of Panopele gasped, interrupting the song. The scintillance of the star-lanes paled into a blur; there was a rush of sound, un-song-like, and Panopele was joltingly aware of cold feet, laboring lungs, the drumbeat of her heart. Her throat hurt, and she was thirsty.
A warm cloak was draped across her shoulders, clasped across her throat. Warm hands pressed her down into the wide seat of the ancient wooden Singer’s Chair. In her left ear the novice Fanor murmured, “I have water, Voice. Will you drink?”
Drink she would and drink she did, the cool water a joy.
“Blessings on you,” she rasped and lay her left hand over his heart in Naratha’s full benediction. Fanor was one of the two who wept in the song.
“Voice.” He looked away, as he always did, embarrassed by her notice.
“Will you rest here, Voice? Or return to temple?” That was Lietta, who danced, and was doubtless herself in need of rest.
Truth told, rest was what Panopele wanted. She was weary; drained, as the song sometimes drained one; and dismayed in her heart, she wanted to sleep, here and now among the dewy evening. To sleep and awake believing that the blot she had detected was no more than a woman’s fallible imagining.
The voice of Naratha is not allowed the luxury of self-deceit. And the blot had been growing larger.
Weary, Panopele placed her hands on the carven arras of the chair that dwarfed all present but herself and gathered her strength. Her eyes sought the blue star Alyedon: The blot approached from that direction. That knowledge fed her strength and resolve. Slowly she leaned forward and, as the chair creaked with her efforts, pushed herself onto her feet.
“Let us return,” she said to those who served her.
Lietta bowed, and picked up the chair. Fanor bent to gather the remaining water jugs; Panopele stopped him with a gesture.
“One approaches,” she told him. “You are swiftest. Run ahead, and be ready to offer welcome.”
One glance he dared, full into her eyes, then passed the jug he held to Darl and ran away across the starlit grass.
“So.” Panopele motioned and Zan stepped forward to offer an arm, her face still wet with tears.
“My willing support, Voice,” she said, as ritual demanded, though her own voice was soft and troubled.
“Blessings on you,” Panopele replied, and proceeded across the grass in Fanor’s wake, leaning heavily upon the arm of her escort.
THERE WAS OF COURSE nothing resembling a spaceport on-world, and the only reason the place had escaped Interdiction, in Montet’s opinion, was that no Scout had yet penetrated this far into the benighted outback of the galaxy.
That the gentle agrarian planet below her could not possibly contain the technology necessary to unravel the puzzle of the thing sealed and seething in its stasis box, failed to delight her. Even the knowledge that she had deciphered legend with such skill that she had actually raised a planet at the coordinates she had half-intuited did not warm her.
Frowning, omnipresent ache centered over her eyes, Montet brought the Scout ship down. Her orbital scans had identified two large clusters of life and industry—cities, perhaps—and a third, smaller, cluster, which nonetheless put forth more energy than either of its larger cousins.
Likely, it was a manufactory of some kind, Montet thought, and home of such technology as the planet might muster. She made it her first target, by no means inclined to believe it her last.
She came to ground in a gold and green field a short distance from her target. She tended her utility belt while the hull cooled, then rolled out into a crisp, clear morning.
The target was just ahead, on the far side of a slight rise. Montet swung into a walk, the grass parting silently before her. She drew a deep lungful of fragrant air, verifying her scan’s description of an atmosphere slightly lower in oxygen than Liad’s. Checking her stride, she bounced, verifying the scan’s assertion of a gravity field somewhat lighter than that generated by the homeworld.
Topping the rise, she looked down at the target, which was not a manufactory at all, but only a large building, and various outbuildings, clustered companionably together. To her right hand, fields were laid out. To her left, the grassland continued until it met a line of silvery trees, brilliant in the brilliant day.
And of the source of the energy reported by her scans, there was no sign whatsoever.
Montet sighed, gustily. Legend.
She went down the hill. Eventually, she came upon a path; which she followed until it abandoned her on the threshold of the larger building.
Here she hesitated, every Scout nerve a-tingle, for this should be a Forbidden World, socially and technologically unprepared for the knowledge-stress that came riding in on the leather-clad shoulders of a Scout. She had no business walking up to the front door of the local hospital, library, temple or who-knew-what, no matter how desperate her difficulty. There was no one here who was the equal—who was the master—of the thing in her ship’s hold. How could there be? She hovered on the edge of doing damage past counting. Better to return to her ship, quickly; rise to orbit and get about setting the warning beacons.
…and yet, the legends, she thought—and then all indecision was swept away, for the plain white wall she faced showed a crack, then a doorway, framing a man. His pale robe was rumpled, wet and stained with grass. His hair was dark and braided below his shoulders; the skin of his face and his hands were brown. His feet, beneath the stained, wet hem, were bare.
He was taller than she, and strongly built, she could not guess his age, beyond placing him in that nebulous region called “adult”.
He spoke; his voice was soft, his tone respectful. The language was tantalizingly close to a tongue she knew.
“God’s day to you,” she said, speaking slowly and plainly in that language. She showed her empty hands at waist level, palm up. “Has the house any comfort for a stranger?”
Surprise showed at the edges of the man’s face. His hands rose, tracing a stylized pattern in the air at the height of his heart.
“May Naratha’s song fill your heart,” he said, spacing his words as she had hers. It was not quite, Montet heard, the tongue she knew, but ’twould suffice.
“Naratha foretold your coming,” the man continued. “The Voice will speak with you.” He paused, hands moving through another pattern. “Of comfort, I cannot promise, stranger. I hear a dark chanting upon the air.”
Well he might hear just that, Montet thought grimly, especially if he were a Healer-analog. Carefully, she inclined her head to the doorkeeper.
“Gladly will I speak with the Voice of Naratha,” she said.
The man turned and perforce she followed him, inside and across a wide, stone-floored hall to another plain white wall. He lay his hand against the wall and once again a door appeared. He stood aside, hands shaping the air.
“The Voice awaits you.”
Montet squared her shoulders and walked forward.
The room, like the hall, was brightly lit, the shine of light along the white walls and floor adding to the misery of her headache. Deliberately, she used the Scout’s mental relaxation drill and felt the headache inch, grudgingly, back. Montet sighed and blinked the room into focus.
“Be welcome into the House of Naratha.” The voice was deep, resonant, and achingly melodic, the words spaced so that they were instantly intelligible.
Montet turned, finding the speaker standing near a niche in the left-most wall.
The lady was tall and on a scale to dwarf the sturdy doorkeeper; a woman of abundance, shoulders proud and face serene. Her robe was divided vertically in half—one side white, one side black—each side as wide as Montet entire. Her hair was black, showing gray like stars in the vasty deepness of space. Her face was like a moon, glowing; her eyes were dark and sightful. She raised a hand and sketched a sign before her, the motion given meaning by the weight of her palm against the air.
“I am the voice of Naratha. Say your name, seeker.”
Instinctively, Montet bowed. One would bow, to such a lady as this—and one would not dare lie.
“I am Montet sig’Norba,” she said, hearing her own voice thin and reedy in comparison with the other’s rich tones.
“Come forward, Montet sig’Norba.”
Forward she went, until she stood her own short arm’s reach from the Voice. She looked up and met the gaze of far-seeing black eyes.
“Yes,” the Voice said after a long pause. “You bear the wounds we have been taught to look for.”
Montet blinked. “Wounds?”
“Here,” said the Voice and lay her massive palm against Montet’s forehead, directly on the spot centered just above her eyes, where the pain had lived for six long relumma.
The Voice’s palm was warm and soft. Montet closed her eyes as heat spread up and over her scalp, soothing and—she opened her eyes in consternation.
The headache was gone.
The Voice was a Healer, then. Though the Healers on Liad had not been able to ease her pain.
“You have that which belongs to Naratha,” the Voice said, removing her hand. “You may take me to it.”
Montet bowed once more. “Lady, that which I carry is…” She grappled briefly with the idiom of the language she spoke, hoping it approximated the Voice’s nearly enough for sense, and not too nearly for insult.
“What I carry is… accursed of God. It vibrates evil, and seeks destruction—even unto its own destruction. It is—I brought it before a… priestess of my own kind and its vibrations all but overcame her skill.”
The Voice snorted. “A minor priestess, I judge. Still, she did well, if you come to me at her word.”
“Lady, her word was to make all haste to fling the monster into a sun.”
“No!” The single syllable resonated deep in Montet’s chest, informing, for a moment, the very rhythm of her heartbeat.
“No,” repeated the Voice, quieter. “To follow such a course would be to grant its every desire. To the despair of all things living.”
“What is it?” Montet heard herself blurt.
The Voice bowed her head. “It is the Shadow of Naratha. For every great good throws a shadow, which is, in its nature, great evil.”
Raising her head, she took a breath and began, softly, to chant. “Of all who fought, it was Naratha who prevailed against the Enemy. Prevailed, and drove the Enemy into the back beyond of space, from whence it has never again ventured. The shadows of Naratha’s triumph, as terrible as the Enemy’s defeat was glorious, roam the firmament still, destroying, for that is what they do.” The Voice paused. The chant vibrated against the pure white walls for a moment, then stopped.
This, Montet thought, was the language of legend—hyperbole. Yet the woman before her did not seem a fanatic, living in a smoky dream of reality. This woman was alive, intelligent—and infinitely sorrowful.
“Voices were trained,” the Voice was now calmly factual, “to counteract the vibration of evil. We were chosen to sing, to hold against and—equalize—what slighter folk cannot encompass. We were many, once. Now I am one. Naratha grant that the equation is exact.”
Montet stared. She was a Liaden and accustomed to the demands of Balance. But this—
“You will die? But by your own saying it wants just that!”
The Voice smiled. “I will not die, nor will it want destruction when the song is through.” She tipped her massive head, hair rippling, black-and-gray, across her proud shoulders.
“Those who travel between the stars see many wonders. I am the last Voice of Naratha. I exact a price, star-stranger.”
Balance, clear enough. Montet bowed her head. “Say on.”
“You will stand with me while I sing this monster down. You will watch and you will remember. Perhaps you have devices that record sight and sound. If you do, use them. When it is done, bring the news to Lietta, First Novice, she who would have been voice, say to her that you are under geas to study in our library. When you have studied, I require you to return to the stars, to discover what has happened—to the rest of us.” She paused.
“You will bring what you find to this outpost. You will also initiate your fellow star-travelers into the mysteries of Naratha’s Discord.” The wonderful voice faltered and Montet bent her head.
“In the event,” she said, softly, “that the equation is not—entirely—precise.” She straightened. “I accept your Balance.”
“So,” said the Voice. “Take me now to that which is mine.”
THE VOICE STOOD, humming, while Montet dragged the stasis box out, unsealed it and flipped open the lid. At a sign from the other woman, she tipped the box sideways, and the thing, whatever it was, rolled out onto the grass, buzzing angrily.
“I hear you, Discord,” the Voice murmured, and raised her hand to sign.
Montet dropped back, triggering the three recorders with a touch to her utility belt.
The Voice began to sing.
A phrase only, though the beauty of it pierced Montet heart and soul.
The phrase ended and the space where it had hung was filled with the familiar malice of the black thing’s song.
Serene, the voice heard the answer out, then sang again, passion flowing forth like flame.
Again, the thing answered, snarling in the space between Montet’s ears. She gasped and looked to the Voice, but her face was as smooth and untroubled as glass.
Once more, the woman raised her voice, and it seemed to Montet that the air was richer, the grassland breeze fresher, than it had been a moment before.
This time, the thing did not allow her to finish, but vibrated in earnest. Montet shrieked at the agony in her joints and fell to knees, staring up at the voice, who sang on, weaving around and through the malice; stretching, reshaping, reprogramming, Montet thought, just before her vision grayed and she could see no longer.
She could hear, though, even after the pain had flattened her face down in the grass. The song went on, never faltering, never heeding the heat that Montet felt rising from the brittling grass, never straining, despite the taint in the once clean air.
The Voice hit a note, high, true and sweet. Montet’s vision cleared. The Voice stood, legs braced, face turned toward the sky, her mighty throat corded with effort. The note continued, impossibly pure, soaring, passionate, irrefutable. There was only that note, that truth—nothing more—in all the galaxy.
Montet took a breath and discovered that her lungs no longer burned. She moved an arm and discovered that she could rise.
The voice sang on, and the day was brilliant, perfect, beyond perfect, into godlike, and the Voice herself was beauty incarnate, singing, singing, fading, becoming one with the sunlight, the grassland and the breeze.
Abruptly, there was silence, and Montet stood alone in the grass near her ship, hard by an empty stasis box.
Of the Voice of Naratha—of Naratha’s Shadow—there was no sign at all.
HE WOKE, PANTING, out of a snare of dreams in which he over and over ran to succor a child, hideously suspended over a precipice, the slender branch clutched in terrified small fingers bending toward break beneath the slight weight—while he ran—ran at the top of his speed. And arrived, over and over, full seconds after the branch gave way and the tiny body plummeted down….
He opened his eyes—not too far—and swallowed as the dim light assaulted him. Lashes drooping, he took careful stock.
The dream—it had somehow become the dream of late it seemed—was both frequent and bothersome enough that he’d considered once or twice taking it to the Healers.
On other mornings, those not quite so fraught with physical complaints, his considerations had always led him to reject the notion that the dream was prophetic, for hadn’t he been tested by the dramliz, several times over, at the order of the Delm-in-Keeping as well as at the order of his mother? And the dream never gave face to child, nor location to tree or cliff….
The dramliz tests were remarkably similar to the piloting tests—somehow he always managed to fail without knowing exactly what it was expected of him. Of course the wizards claimed they weren’t expecting anything of him, but neither his mother nor anyone else seemed pleased by the results—not fast enough for pilot, nor possessed of whatever something the dramliz probed for—
Well, and he had long ago understood that neither the clan’s ships nor the clan’s allies among the Healers or the dramliz would provide his sustenance, and he had begun casting about for what he could do to support himself, for he was a young man, holding in full measure all the stubborn pride of his House. He would take not a dex from the clan that could not use him. His quartershares could accumulate in his account until the cantra overran the bank and flowed down the streets of Solcintra.
So he had cast about. He could shoot, of course, but one could scarcely make a living as a tournament shooter. Uncle Daav’s happy experiment of giving him a gun and target practice at Tey Dor’s had brought him close to the gaming set, who had no qualms about dealing with someone not a pilot, or not able to tell the future through true prophecy…
Early last evening, however, he had a moment of prophecy. It came when he overheard his mother speaking with Guayar Himself. It seemed that Guayar knew a certain house which had need of one well-placed, and well-taught, and well-versed in the Code, and able to travel with a group of children, teaching as well as protecting, she’d suggested that she knew of just such a person.
Travel with children?
He had been on his way out, intending to stop at the parlor only long enough to take graceful leave of his parent and exchange pleasantries with her guest. Rag-mannered though it was, he allowed himself to forgo these duties and instead left immediately by a discreet exit that did not require him to pass the occupied room.
Once outside, he had gone, not to Tey Dor’s, which had been his first, and perhaps best, inclination, but to a minor establishment which catered to the aspiring gamester. There he had accepted most of the proffered beverages, which was not his habit.
Now, his head hurt abominably, of course, and his stomach was uneasy, though not quite in revolt. Mixed fortune, there. He supposed he should rise, shower and prepare himself to meet the dubious pleasures of the day. After all, it wasn’t as if he had never been drunk before.
In truth, he was rarely drunk, being a young man of fastidious nature. Certainly, he was never drunk while gaming, and last night’s losses at the piket table were ample illustration of his reasons, thank you.
Sighing, he raised his hands and scrubbed them, none-too-gently, over his face, relishing the friction.
Gods, what a performance! He was entirely disgusted with himself, and not the most for his losses at cards. At least he had retained sense enough not to enter the shooting contest proposed by pin’Weltir!
At least—he thought he had. His memory of the later evening was, he discovered to his chagrin, rather… spotty.
His stomach clenched, and he took a deeper breath than he wanted—and another—forcing himself to lie calmly, to wait for the memories to rise… There.
He had turned pin’Weltir down, and when the man insisted, he had refused even more forcefully—by claiming his cloak and calling for a cab. He remembered that, yes. Too, he remembered entering the cab, and the driver asking for his direction. He remembered saying, “Home,” an idiotic reply emblematic of his state, and the driver asking again, doggedly patient, as if she dealt with drunken lordlings every night—which, he thought now, in the discomfort of his bed, she might very well.
After that, he remembered nothing, though he supposed he must have managed to give her the direction of his mother’s house—and if his mother had been late at her studies and had observed his return. He wondered if people died of hangovers, and, if so, how he might manage it.
A spike of red pain shot through his head and he twisted in the bed, gagging, eyes snapping open to behold—Not the formal bedchamber he occupied in his mother’s house, but the badly shaped, sloped ceiling chamber where he had spent many peaceful childhood nights.
Despite the headache, Pat Rin smiled. Drunk into idiocy he may have been, but his heart had known the direction of home.
SOME WHILE LATER, showered and having taken an analgesic against the headache, he glanced at last night’s bedraggled finery, flung helter-skelter on the simple, hand-tied rug. He bit his lip, ashamed of this further untidy evidence of his debauch, then gathered it all up and took it into the ’fresher, where he bundled the lot into the valet to be cleaned and pressed.
Returning to his bedroom, he paused at the old wooden wardrobe, coaxed open the sticky door and was very shortly thereafter dressed in a pair of sturdy work pants and a soft, shapeless shirt.
Closing the wardrobe, he considered himself in the thin mirror: A slender young man, dark of hair and eye, cheekbones high, brows straight, chin pointed, mouth stern. In his old clothes, he thought he looked a laborer, or a dock worker, or a pilot at leave—then he glanced down at his long, well-kept hands and sighed.
Looking back to the mirror, he frowned at the mass of wet hair snarled across his shoulders. The torentia was all the kick this season, and Pat Rin yos’Phelium Clan Korval, apprentice at play, naturally wore his hair so, spending as much as an hour a day combing and curling the thick, unruly stuff into the long, artful chaos fashion demanded.
But not today. Today, he turned ’round, snatched a comb up from the low bureau and dragged it ruthlessly through the tangled mass until it hung, sodden and straight. Putting the comb aside, he raised both hands, pulled his hair sharply back, holding the tail in one hand while he rummaged atop the bureau, finally bringing up a simple wooden hair ring, which he snapped into place.
The lad in the mirror presented a more austere face, now, without the fall of hair to soften it. Indeed, he might have been said to be quite fox-faced, were it not the general policy in the circles in which he lately moved that Pat Rin yos’Phelium was comely.
Poppycock, of course, and tiring, too. Almost as tiring as Cousin Er Thom insisting upon endless repetitions of tests taken and proved—
No.
He would not think of Cousin Er Thom—of Korval-pernard’i. And he assuredly would not think of tests.
In fact, he would go downstairs to tell Luken that he was to house.
“Good morning, boy-dear!” Luken said, looking up with a smile. The manifest he had been studying lay on the tabletop amidst the genteel ruins of a frugal breakfast, the tree-and-dragon—Korval’s seal—stamped in the top left corner of the page.
Despite everything, Pat Rin smiled, and bowed, gently, hand over his heart. “Good morning, father,” he replied, soft in the mode between kin. “I trust I find you well?”
“Well enough, well enough!” His foster father waved a ringless hand toward the sideboard. “There’s tea, child, and the usual. Have what you will and then sit and tell me your news.”
His news? Pat Rin thought bitterly. He turned to the sideboard, taking a deep breath. Luken, alone of all his relatives could be trusted to honestly care for Pat Rin’s news, and to take no joy in his failures.
He poured himself a glass of tea, that being what he thought he might coax his stomach to accommodate, and returned to the table, taking his usual seat across from Luken, there in the windowed alcove. Outside, the sky shone brilliant, the sun fully risen. Odd to find Luken so late over breakfast, dawn-rising creature that he was.
“Are you quite well?” Pat Rin asked, around a prick of panic. “I had looked to find you in the warehouse….”
Luken chuckled. “Had you arisen an hour earlier, you would have found me precisely in the warehouse,” he said. “What you see here is a second cup of tea, to aid me in puzzling out just what it is that Er Thom means me to do with these.” He picked up the manifest and rattled it gently before dropping it again to the table.
In addition to his melant’i as Korval-in-trust, Er Thom yos’Galan wore a master trader’s ring. Interesting goods, therefore, had a way of coming into his hand, and it had long been his habit to send the more interesting and exotic textiles to Luken’s attention.
Pat Rin assayed a tiny sip of tea, eyeing the manifest half-heartedly. “Sell them?” he murmured, that being the most common outcome of rugs sent by Er Thom, though two, to Pat Rin’s knowledge, were on display in museums, and one covered the white stone floor of the Temple of Valiatra, at the edge of the Festival grounds.
“Not these, I think,” Luken said picking up his tea glass. “It seems that the clan is divesting itself of the Southern House and the place is being emptied—including the back attics, which I daresay is where these were found.”
Korval was selling the Southern House? Not a heartbeat too soon, in Pat Rin’s opinion. He had been to the place once, and had found it dismal. Nor was he alone in his assessment. While most of Korval’s houses enjoyed more-or-less steady tenancy, the Southern House most often sat empty, undisturbed by even the housekeeper, who had his own quarters in another building on the property.
“Perhaps Cousin Er Thom wants a catalog made?” Pat Rin offered, taking another cautious sip of tea. Though rugs Luken dismissed as back attic fare hardly seemed likely candidates for cataloging and preservation.
“He doesn’t write. Only that the house is being cleared, and that these might interest me.” Luken sipped his tea, and moved a dismissive hand. “But, enough of that. Your news, boy-dear—all of it! I haven’t seen you this age. Catch me up, do.”
It hadn’t quite been an age, the two of them having dined together only a twelveday ago, though there was, after all, the news which was no news at all….
Pat Rin looked down into his glass, then forced himself to raise his head and meet Luken’s gentle gray eyes.
“Korval-pernard’i bade me take the test again, yesterday.” He felt his face tighten and fought an impulse to look away from Luken’s face. “I failed, of course.”
“Of course,” his foster father murmured, entirely without irony, his expression one of grave interest.
“I don’t know why,” Pat Rin sand, after a moment, “I can’t be left in peace. How many times must I fail before they will understand that I am not a pilot, nor ever will be?” He took a breath, and did glance down, his eye snagging on the manifest, the upside down tree-and-dragon, sigil of the clan in which he was second of two freaks, his mother being the first. “If I am asked to take the test again, I will not,” he stated, and raised his glass decisively.
“Well,” Luken said after a moment. “Certainly it must be tedious to be asked to take the same test repeatedly, especially when it is so distressful for you, boy-dear. But to speak of turning your face aside from the word of Korval-pernard’i—that won’t do all. Husbanding the clan’s pilots falls squarely within his duty—and determining who might be a pilot, as well. He doesn’t send you to the testing chamber only to plague you, child. If you were feeling more the thing, you’d see that.”
It was gently said, but Pat Rin felt the rebuke keenly. Yet Luken, as nearly all the rest of his kin, was a pilot. Granted, a mere third-class, and there had lately been a time when he would have given all of his most valued possessions, had he only been given in exchange a license admitting that Pat Rin yos’Phelium was a pilot, third class.
He told himself he didn’t care; that five failures would teach him the lesson Cousin Er Thom refused to learn.
He told himself that.
“Child?” murmured Luken.
Pat Rin looked up and smiled, as best as he was able around the headache.
“I hope I didn’t disturb your rest when I came in last night,” he said softly.
Luken moved his shoulders. “In fact, I had been late in the showroom, and was just coming up myself when you were dispatched from your cab.”
Blast. He didn’t remember that. Not at all.
“I’m afraid that I was a trifle disguised, last night,” he said, around a jolt of self-revulsion.
“A trifle,” Luken allowed. “I guided you to your room, we said our sleepwells and I retired.”
None of it. Pat Rin bit his lip.
“I made rather a fool of myself last night,” he said. “Not only did I fall into my cups, but then I was idiot enough to play cards—and lost most wonderfully, as you might expect."
“Ah.” Luken finished off his tea and put the glass aside. “You also told me last night, as we were negotiating the stairway, that you had come away early because a certain—pin’Weltir, I believe?—had become boorish in his insistence that you shoot against him, then and there, which is not, perhaps, entirely idiot.”
He had already determined that for himself, but a part of him was eased, that Luken thought so, too.
“Some things,” he admitted, “I did correctly.” He tipped his head, then, and shot a quick glance into Luken’s face, where he found the gray eyes attentive
“Do you care, father? The trade I have set myself to learn, that is.”
Luken spread his hands. “Why should I care? From all I understand, it’s a difficult study you undertake in order to ascend the heights of a profession which is exhilarating and not without its moments of risk.” He smiled. “I would expect, of course, that you will rise to become a master, if masters of the game there be.”
“Not—by that name,” Pat Rin said, thinking of those who had undertaken his education. “But, yes. There are masters.”
“And you aspire to stand among them?”
Well of course he did. Who of Korval, present or past, had not sought to stand among the masters of whatever profession or avocation they embraced? Certainly not Luken.
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
“It is well, then,” his foster father judged. “That you will mind your melant’i and keep the honor of your House pure, I have no need to ask.”
He paused for a moment, reaching absently to his empty glass, and letting his hand fall with a slight sigh. Pat Rin got up, bore the glass to the sideboard, refilled it and brought it back.
“Gently done,” Luken murmured, his thoughts clearly somewhere else. “My thanks.”
“It is my pleasure to serve you, father.”
“Sweet lad.” He had a sip from the refilled glass and looked up.
“I wonder if you’ve given thought to setting up your own establishment,” he said. “It occurs to me that bin’Flora has a townhouse for lease in a location near the High Port.”
Most of Solcintra’s gambling houses were located at the High Port. There were several residential streets just beyond the gate, none of them unsavory, though one or two not as… fashionable… as they might be.
Bin’Flora traded in textile-bolt goods more usually than rugs—and the present master of the house, one Sisilli, and Luken had enjoyed a friendly rivalry for possibly more years than Pat Rin had been alive. Therefore, it was likely that the house in question was on—
“Nasingtale Alley,” Luken murmured. “Third house on the right, as you walk out from the High Port.”
Pat Rin sipped tea. “Rents on Nasingtale Alley are certainly above my touch,” he said to Luken. “I am yet a student.”
“Yet an able student, for that,” Luken said. “And the rent may not be… quite ruinous."
“Ah.” He considered the face across from him thoughtfully. “Shall I set up my own establishment, father?”
Luken sighed. “It’s a prying old man, to be sure,” he said. “But I will tell you what is in my heart, boy-dear.
“Firstly, and true enough, I worry about you, walking about the port with large amounts of coin on you.” He raised a hand. “I know your reputation with the small arms, but it would be best not to employ them.”
“I agree,” Pat Rin murmured, and Luken inclined his head.
“Too, it makes sense to hold a base near your daily business, and this house bin’Flora offers is certainly that.
“And lastly…” His voice faded and he glanced aside.
Pat Rin felt his stomach clench.
“You know your mother and I have no love lost between us,” Luken said slowly, “despite that which the Code tells us is due to kin. And you know that, as a youngling, you were moved from your mother’s care into mine, by the word of the Delm.”
The Delm. That would have been Daav yos’Phelium, his mother’s brother, gone from the clan these years, on a mission of Balance. There had been no love lost between his mother and her brother, either, Pat Rin knew, though as a child he had adored his tall, easy uncle.
“I confess that I was a bit puzzled when you went to live with your mother, after your schooling was done.” He raised a hand. “I don’t ask your reasons, boy-dear, though I know you had them. Nor will I speak ill of your mother to you. I will say that, drawing on my knowledge of you—and of her—perhaps you might consider if you would be more… relaxed in your own small establishment.”
That he certainly would be, Pat Rin thought, for his mother was a high stickler and kept stringent Code. He supposed that was inevitable, given her reputation as Liad’s foremost scholar of and expert on the Code. She also held rank among Solcintra’s leading hosts, and it was for that reason that Pat Rin, returning home from university and fixed upon the trade that he would follow, had taken up residence with his parent, rather than moving back into his comfortable place with Luken.
Kareen yos’Phelium could—and did, for who knew better what was due the heir of a woman of her impeccable lineage and melant’i?—launch him into society. Luken cared little for society, though his clientele came largely from the High Houses. And Pat Rin had needed the final polish and the ties to the High which only his mother could give him.
He wondered, here and now, sitting in Luken’s sunny alcove, if he would have chosen differently, had he known the cost beforehand. For life with his mother was not easy, or comfortable, though he was surrounded by every luxury. He was required to live to his mother’s standard, and to study the Code until he was very nearly an expert himself. He studied other things, as well, so that he would have a store of graceful conversation available; he attended all the fashionable plays, patronized his mother’s excellent tailor, wore gems of the first water, and was never seen at a stand.
The one… relaxation he allowed himself was target practice every other morning, on the lifetime membership to Tey Dor’s club which uncle Daav had given to him.
Of course, he saw now—had seen last evening with sudden clarity—that his mother had never believed his assertions that he intended to make his way without recourse to the funds of the Clan. She had heard him, for she was a courteous listener, precisely as the Code instructed—heard him, but did not believe. And he had never quite seen that there would need be an after to his plan.
“Pat Rin?” Luken murmured.
He blinked back into now, and inclined his head.
“You understand,” he said slowly. “That I attempt to… produce a certain, and very specific, affect. Produce, and sustain it.”
Luken smiled. “I am not quite an idiot, boy-dear.”
“Of course not,” he murmured, more than half caught in his calculations. “So, the question before me now is whether the affect will remain fixed, should I retire to my own establishment.”
“I should think,” Luken said, “that the key would be not to retire, but to continue as you have been, only from the comfort of a bachelor’s dig.”
A townhouse on Nasingtale Alley could scarcely be called a ‘dig’—and Luken, as he so often was, despite one’s mother’s contention that the rug merchant was no more nor less than a block—Luken was right. Pat Rin had only to carry on as he was. The invitations would continue to arrive—and he might even host a small entertainment or two, himself. The gods knew, he had assisted with enough of his mother’s entertainments to know how the thing was done.
“Please consider,” Luken said carefully. “You are now well known among the Houses. Your melant’i is your own, no matter that it in some measure reflects your mother’s, and your Clan’s, as it must. But—it would hardly do for you to regularly best your mother’s houseguests while you yourself sleep under her roof. Nor would it be best for you, seen among the elders of many a House as a biddable young man always at your mother’s call, to have to rigorously make a point…”
Pat Rin grimaced at this description of himself, while allowing that, from the outside, it might appear thus.
“…as I say, if you need to press an honest advantage across a table, it might be best if you do it first among the lesser members of the Houses until Lord Pat Rin is more fully known as himself. If being Lady Kareen’s son is not your occupation, my boy, then having your own place will afford you both more flexibility in your evenings and more company in the mornings. I say this as one who was, alas, once young myself.”
Seated, Pat Rin bowed the bow of apprentice to master.
“It might do,” he said, and glanced to Luken’s face. “If bin’Flora’s rate is possible.”
Luken smiled. “Please, know that there are two partners in every trade. The place would have been rented anytime the last two relumma were the matter simply one of cash flow. Not all would-be renters are High House, my boy. Nor,” he said with sudden emphasis—“are all High House equally acceptable. Whatever the Code may teach.
“I will mention your interest to Sisilli,” Luken concluded, and drank off the rest of his tea. “As much as I enjoy your company, child, I am afraid that I must leave you for an appointment.”
Pat Rin inclined his head, his gaze snagging on the manifest, lying forgotten on the table. He extended a slender hand and plucked the page up, running an eye trained by Master Merchant Luken bel’Tarda down the list of items.
“Shall I inventory these, while you are gone?” he asked Luken. “That will have to be done, whatever else Cousin Er Thom intends.”
“So it will,” Luken said, coming to his feet. “If you have the leisure, boy-dear, the work would be appreciated. You’ll find the lot of them in the old private showing room. And also, since you will wish to have clear sight if not a clear head, I suggest you make use of some of the tea you will find there. It will have Terran wording on it—McWortle’s Special Wake-Up Blend—and it should be taken just as the directions instruct. Shall we plan on dining at Ongit’s this evening?”
“I would enjoy that,” he said truthfully. “Very much.”
“Then that is what we shall do,” Luken declared. “Until soon, my son.”
“Until soon, father,” Pat Rin responded and rose to bow Luken to the door.
IT APPEARED THAT Luken had been correct in his assessment of the lot of rugs from the Southern House, as well as in his understanding of the utility of McWhortle’s Special Wake-Up Blend.
The tea was surprisingly tasty for something avowedly of Terran extraction, and equally efficacious.
The rugs… He sighed. Not all of the pilots of Korval—put together!—knew what Luken did of rugs, and some had, alas, displayed an amazing lack of both color sense and fashion awareness. The first rug, indifferently rolled and protected by nothing more than a thin sheet of plastic, was synthetic. He threw it across the flat onto the show-zone, where the mass and size were automatically recorded—the overhead camera recorded detail, but really—there wasn’t much to say for it. Machine stamped in a small, boring floral pattern, backed with nothing more than its own fibers, with a density on the low side, it might as well be sent as a donation to the Pilot’s Fund used-goods outlet in Low Port.
Pat Rin dutifully entered these deficiencies into his clipboard, slotted the stylus, and touched a key. The clipboard hummed for a moment, printing, and a yellow inventory tag slid out of the side slot. Pat Rin picked up the stitch gun and stapled the tag to the corner of the rug, before rolling it, bagging it in a bel’Tarda-logo light-proof wrapper, and dragging the sorry specimen over to the storage bin which he had marked with Cousin Er Thom’s number and the additional legend, “Southern House.”
Straightening, feeling somewhat better for the tea and in fact much more clear eyed—he looked suddenly to the shelf above the bin, where a long-haired white cat with excessively pink ears lounged, very much at her leisure. Likely she’d been there the while; that he hadn’t noticed her was a further testament to his excesses of the evening before.
“Niki,” Pat Rin murmured, extending a finger, but not quite touching the drowsing animal.
Her eyes slitted, then opened to full emerald glory. Yawning, she extended a pink-toed and frivolously befurred foot to wrap around his fingertip, her claws just pricking the surface of his skin.
Pat Rin smiled and used his free hand to rub the lady softly beneath her delicate chin. Niki’s eyes went to slits again and her breathy purr filled the air between them. The claws withdrew from his captive finger and he let the freed member fall to his side, while moving his other hand to her ears. His exertions there were shortly rewarded with an increase in her audible pleasure, and he smiled again.
One’s mother did not keep cats, or any other domestic creature, aside the occasional servant. It made for an oddly empty feel about the house, even when it was full with guests.
“Thank you,” he whispered, giving her chin a last rub and stepping back. Niki squinted her eyes in a cat-smile, purring unabated.
Pat Rin turned back to his work.
The next rug was intriguingly and thickly wrapped in what must have been a local newspaper. He fussed the sheets off and found the rug rolled backing out, tied at intervals with what might have once been elegant hair-ribbons. He sat on his heels and smiled. This, he would examine last. It had good weight and somehow the smell of a proper rug—and would be his reward for doing a careful inventory of the rest of the obviously unsuitable specimens tumbled about them.
He used a utility blade to slit the plastic sealing the next rug, noting the ragged jute backing, and unrolled it onto the scale with a casual kick before bending to retrieve the clipboard.
The work was—comforting. Despite that Kareen yos’Phelium had declared that she would not have her heir made into a rug salesman—had in fact complained of him coming up with callused hands—Luken had trained him well, and he knew himself to be the master of the task he had set for himself. It could not be said that he completely shared his foster father’s ecstatic enthusiasm for carpets, or his encyclopedic knowledge of their histories, but he owned to a fondness for the breed, and knew a certain pleasure in being once more among them.
The unrolled carpet was a geometric, hand-loomed in bronzes, browns and dark greens, with pale green fringe along the two short sides. It glistened in the light, inviting him to believe that it was silk. But he had seen the backing and was not taken-in.
As counterfeits went, it was rather a good one. The traditional Arkuba pattern had been faithfully reproduced, the measurements precisely those to which all Arkuba carpets adhered, to the very length of the pale fringe, and the vegetable-dyed thread. Alas, the luster which would, in the genuine article, be testimony to the silken threads that had gone into its manufacture, was in this case misleading. Rather than silk, the carpet before him had been woven with specially treated cotton thread.
A perfectly serviceable and attractive rug, really, setting aside for the moment those issues surrounding a counterfeit hall mark. Pat Rin merely hoped that the nameless ancestor who had purchased the thing had known it for what it was and had paid accordingly.
He entered his observations, tapped the stylus against the print button, and slid it into its slot while the clipboard hummed its tuneless tune and in the fullness of time extruded an inventory ticket which he stapled to the corner of the rug before bagging and dragging it over to the bin.
Niki was still on the shelf overhead, profoundly asleep. He smiled, but did not disturb her.
The protective plastic over the next carpet had been torn at some time—possibly as recently as the move from the southern House to Luken’s warehouses. Pat Rin slit what was left of the sheet, approving, as he did so, the plentitude of painstakingly tied knots along the carpet’s underside, and the foundation of wool.
Once more, a kick sent the rug rolling out—and he sighed aloud. Insects had gotten in through the breached plastic. The wool in spots was eaten down to the backing, leaving the skeleton of a handsome rectilinear design he did not immediately recognize. No, this damage had not occurred in the warehouse, being both too extensive and too old.
Sighing yet again, he reached for the clipboard to record the loss—
“Cousin Luken?” The voice was clear and carrying—and unfortunately familiar.
Pat Rin closed his eyes, there where he rested on one knee beside the ruined rug, and wished fervently that she would overlook this room. There was little chance that she would, of course. His cousin Nova was nothing if not thorough. Unnaturally thorough, one might say.
“Cousin Luken!” she called again, her voice nearer this time.
Pat Rin opened his eyes, picked up the clipboard, fingered the stylus free and entered a description of the damage. The mechanism hummed and in due time a red tag emerged. He reached for the stitch gun—
“Oh, there you are, cousin!” Nova said from the doorway at his back.
Amidst the sound of approaching light footsteps, Pat Rin stapled the red tag to a corner of the ruined rug.
“Father sent me to help you catalog the rugs from the—” She stopped, aware, so Pat Rin thought, that she had made an error.
Gently, he placed the stitch gun on the floor next to the clipboard, and turned his head slightly so that she could see the side of his face.
“Cousin Pat Rin!” she exclaimed, with a measure of astonishment that he found not particularly flattering.
He inclined his head. “Cousin Nova,” he stated, with deliberate coolness. “What a surprise to find you here.”
The instant the words left his lips, he wished them back. He had spent the last year and more deliberately honing his wit and his tongue until they were weapons as formidable as the palm pistol he carried in his sleeve. Surely, it was ill-done of him to loose those weapons on a child.
“Is cousin Luken to house?” she asked stiffly.
He rose carefully to his feet and turned to face her.
Nova’s twelfth name day had been celebrated only a relumma past, and already she showed warning of the beauty she would become. Her hair was gilt, her eyes amethyst, her carriage erect and unstrained. She had, so he heard, passed the preliminary testing for pilot-candidate, an unsurprising fact which had nonetheless woken a twist of bitterness in him.
Today found her dressed in sturdy shirt and trousers, well-scuffed boots on her feet, passkey clenched in one hand, and a glare on her face for the ill-tempered elder cousin—for which he blamed her not at all.
“Alas, one’s foster father is away on an appointment,” he said, moderating his tone with an effort. “May I be of service, cousin?”
Her glare eased somewhat as she glanced about her.
“Father sends me to help Cousin Luken sort the carpets from the Southern House,” she said tentatively. “However, I find you at that task.”
It was not meant to be accusatory, he reminded himself forcefully. She was a child, with a child’s grasp of nuance.
Though she had grasped the nuance of his greeting swiftly enough. He had the acquaintance of adults who would have not have taken his point so quickly—if at all.
So—“Cousin Er Thom had not written us to expect your arrival and assistance,” he answered Nova, deliberately gentle. “I happened to be at liberty and took the work for my own.”
She blinked at him, jewel-colored eyes frankly doubtful.
“You are aware, are you not,” Pat Rin said, allowing himself an edge of irony, “that I am Luken’s fosterling?”
“Ye-e-s-s,” Nova agreed. “But cousin Kareen—I heard her speaking with my father and she…” Here she hesitated, perhaps nonplussed to discover herself admitting to listening at doors.
Pat Rin inclined his head. “One’s mother was adamant that I not be trained as a rug merchant,” he said smoothly. “Alas, by the time she recognized the danger, the damage had long been done.”
Nova’s straight, pale mouth twitched a little, as if she had suppressed a smile.
“Will you come into Cousin Luken’s business?” she asked, which was not an unreasonable question, from a daughter of the trade Line. Still, Pat Rin felt his temper tighten, spoiling the easier air that had been flowing between them.
“I’ve gone into another trade, thank you,” he said shortly, and swept his hand out, showing her the pile of rolled rugs waiting to be inventoried. “For all that, I am competent enough in this one.”
He sighed, recalling his mother’s plans for him, and shook the memory away.
“If you like, you may assist me,” he murmured, and that was no more than the Code taught was due from kin to kin: Elders taught those junior to them, freely sharing what knowledge and skill they had, so that the Clan continued, generation to generation, memory and talent intact.
Nova bowed, hastily. “I thank you, cousin. Indeed, I would be pleased to assist you.”
“That is well, then. The sooner we address the task, the sooner it will be done. Attend me, now.”
He moved over to the pile and kicked a smallish roll out into the work area. Dropping to knee, he slit the plastic, revealing a plain gauze backing. A push unrolled it onto the scale, and Pat Rin looked up at Nova, standing hesitant where he had left her.
“Please,” he said, “honor me with your opinion of this.”
Slowly, she came forward, and knelt across from him, frowning down at the riot of woolen flowers that comprised the rug’s design. She rubbed her palm across the surface, gingerly.
“Wool,” she said, which was no grand deduction, and flipped up the edge near her knee. The gauze backing disconcerted her for a moment, then she returned to the face, using her fingers to press into and about the design.
“Hand-hooked,” she said then, and was very likely correct, Pat Rin thought, but as it stood it was no more than a guess. He held up a hand.
“Hooked, certainly,” he murmured. “Where do you find the proof for ‘handmade?’”
Eagerly, she flipped back the edge, and pointed to the row of tiny, uneven stitches set into the gauze.
“Ah.” He inclined his head. “I see that your conclusion is not unreasonable. However, it is wise to bear in mind that carpets are sometimes adjusted—fringe is added, or removed, backings are sewn on—or removed—holes are rewoven. Therefore, despite the fact that someone has clearly sewn the backing on by hand, the rug itself might yet have been made by machine. The preferred proofs are…”
He extended a hand and smoothed the wool petal of a particularly extravagant yellow flower, displaying a stitching of darker thread beneath.
“Maker’s mark.”
Nova bit her lip.
“Or,” Pat Rin continued, flipping the little rug entirely over with a practiced twist of his wrists. He put his palm flat on the backing and moved it slowly, as if he were stroking Niki. He motioned Nova to do the same—which she did, gingerly, and then somewhat firmer.
“What do you feel?” he asked.
“Knots,” she replied. “So it is handmade—I was correct.”
“It is handmade,” he conceded, “and you were correct.” He lifted a finger. “For the wrong reason.”
She sighed, but— “I understand,” was what she said.
“Good. If you will, of your goodness, hand me the clipboard, I will make that notation and then we may proceed with the rest of the inspection.”
She picked up the clipboard in one hand and held it out to him over the rug. He took it, his thumb accidentally nudging the stylus out of its slot, sending it floorward in a glitter of silver—Nova swept forward, her hand fairly blurring as she scooped the stylus out of the air, reversed it and held it out to him.
He blinked. A child, he thought, all of his bitterness rising….
Some part of it must have shown on his face. Nova hesitated, hand drooping.
“I was too fast, wasn’t I?” she said, sounding curiously humble. “I do beg your pardon, cousin. Father is trying to teach me better, but I fear I am sometimes forgetful.”
“Teach you better?” Pat Rin repeated, and his voice was harsh in his own ears. “I thought speed was all, to those who would be pilots.”
“Yes, but one mustn’t be too fast,” Nova said solemnly. “It won’t do to frighten those who are not pilots—or to rush the instruments, when one is at the board.”
He closed his eyes. Five times, since his eleventh name-day. Five times, he had tested for pilot and failed. Always, the tests found him too slow. Too slow—and this child, his cousin, must learn not to be too fast. He tried to decide if he most wished to laugh or to weep and in the end only opened his eyes again and took the stylus from her hand.
“My thanks,” he murmured, and bent his head over the clipboard while he took his time making the initial entry.
“Now,” he said when he could trust his voice for more than a few words. He looked over to Nova. “We must assess general condition, wear patterns, repairs, stains—that sort of thing. What say you?”
Seriously, she scrutinized the gauze backing, then turned the rug over, clumsily, to study the face, her hands chastely cupping her knees.
“Hands,” Pat Rin murmured, “use your hands.”
He demonstrated, elegant fingers—ringless for this work—petting, gripping, pushing—his palms flowing about the top and bindings.
“Feel the nap. Is there a stiff spot which may be a stain invisible to the eye? Pull on the loops—do they hold or come loose? Smell the carpet—is it musty? Sour? All of these details are important.”
She sent him one startled glance out of vivid purple eyes before bending forward, her right hand stroking and seeking. She bent her face closer—and sneezed.
“Dusty,” she said.
He inclined his head.
She continued her inspection with that solemness which was characteristic of her, and at last sat back on her heels and looked at him across the rug.
“The threads are good, the stitches are firm. There is no staining visible to eye or to hand. The carpet is dusty, but fresh.”
“Very good,” he said, and plied the stylus once more.
When the yellow tag appeared, he handed it across to her.
“Use the stitch gun to staple the tag to the near corner.”
He helped her wrestle the wrapper on it, and used his chin to point at the waiting carpets.
“Please choose our next subject and unroll it while I put this in its proper place.”
She rose, a thing of pure, careless grace, and moved lithely to the pile. Pat Rin gritted his teeth and carried the little rug across to the bin.
Niki was sitting tall on the shelf. She blinked lazy green eyes at him as he stroked her breast.
Somewhat soothed, Pat Rin turned back to the work area, expecting to find the next specimen unrolled and awaiting inspection.
Indeed, a rug had been liberated from the pile, and he felt a momentary pang—she had chosen the one he had wanted to study himself. It displayed a promising underside, thick with knots. He sighed, then wondered about the delay.
Knife at her knee, Nova crouched over the roll, head bent above the single corner she had curled into the light. Her shoulders were rounded in an attitude of misery—or defiance.
“Unroll it!” he said, perhaps a little sharply, but Nova only knelt there.
Gods, what ailed the child? Pat Rin thought, irritably, and moved forward.
“Don’t…” Nova moaned, “I know this rug!”
But that was nothing more than nonsense. Likely the thing had been away rolled in a dusty attic for a dozen dozen Standards….
He moved down the cylinder, pulling the ribbon ties rapidly.
“Nova, help me roll this out.”
She crouched lower, fingers gripping her corner…
Pat Rin delivered a smart kick and the thing unrolled with alacrity, as if the carpet had been yearning for its freedom.
Beside him, cowering now, head even closer to the floor and the corner of carpet she clung to, Nova gasped.
He looked down at the top of her bright head, frowning. Nothing he knew of Nova encouraged him to believe that she was a malingerer. Nor was it possible to imagine Cousin Er Thom or his lady wife, Cousin Anne, tolerating this sort of missish behavior for anything longer than a heartbeat.
“Are you ill?” he asked. “Cousin?”
She shuddered, and raised her head as if it were a very great weight.
“No,” she said on a rising note, as though she questioned her answer even as she gave it. “I… beg your pardon, cousin. A passing—a passing stupidity.” She rose, slowly and with a quarter of her previous grace. “Pray… do not regard it.”
He considered her. Carpets woven of certain esoteric materials did sometimes collect ill humors in storage. It was doubtful that this rug, which he had already tentatively classified as a Tantara of some considerable age, woven with vegetable dyed zeesa-wool thread that wore like ship-steel, had collected anything more than a little must, if that.
He glanced from her pale face to the rug. Yes—certainly it was an older Tantara, a geometric in the ivory-and-deep-green combination which had been retired for a dozen-dozen Standards, and in an absolutely enviable state of preservation, saving a stain on a wide section of the ivory-colored fringe.
Bending, he ran his hand over tine nap near the stain—stiff fibers grazed his palm. Whatever the substance was, it had gotten into the rug, too, which meant that there would be more to repairing the damage than simply replacing the fringe. It was odd that the carpet had been rolled away without being cleaned—and unfortunate, too. Most stains could be eradicated, if treated when fresh. A stain which had set for dozens of years, perhaps—it might be impossible to entirely remove the mar.
“We will need the kit for this,” he said briskly, straightening. “I’ll fetch it while you do a preliminary inspection.”
“Yes,” she whispered, and he sent another frown into her pale face.
“Nova,” he said, touching her hand. “Are you well?”
“Yes,” she whispered again, and turned away to find the clipboard.
Irritated, he strode off to the supplies closet.
The diagnostic kit was hanging in its place on the peg-board wall. Despite this, Pat Rin did not immediately have it down and hurry back to the work area. The stained rug had languished for years without care. A few heartbeats more would do it no harm.
Leaning against the wall, he closed his eyes and took stock. The headache was the merest feeling of tightness behind his eyes, his stomach was empty, but unconcerned. In all, he had managed to come out of last evening’s adventures in fairly good order. His present irritability was not, he knew, the result of overindulgence, but rather the presence of one of his pilot kin, innocent herself of any wrong-doing—and a poignant reminder of all that he was not. Nor ever would be.
“Be gentle with the child,” he said to himself. “Did Luken show temper with you, thrust upon him unwarned and very likely unwanted?”
But, there. Luken was a gentle soul, and never showed temper, nor ever raised his voice, no matter how far he was provoked. He had other means of exacting Balance.
Pat Rin took another deep breath—and another. Opening his eyes, he could not say that he felt perfectly calm—but it would suffice. He hoped.
One more inhalation, for the luck. He had the kit off the peg and headed back to the workroom, and his assistant, and was brought up short on the threshold.
Nova stood in the center of the rug, shoulders and chin thrust forward in a distinctly truculent attitude, surveying the pattern.
“It is a beautiful rug, indeed,” she said nastily, as if speaking to someone who stood next to her rather than one on the other side of the room.
“Indeed, show off the pattern. Tell us that it is an antique Quidian Tantara, unblemished, heirloom of a clan fallen on hard times, a clan of rug dealers who have kept this treasure until the last, until your wonderful trading skills brought its true glory to us! And how like you to bring it here as subterfuge, hiding the truth of it, magnifying yourself to the detriment of others, and to the Clan. Almost, you got away with it….”
What was this? Was she speaking to him, after all? Had she discovered a pedigree card tucked into the end of the rug? In fact, from his view now, it might well be a Quidian, the rarest of…
She turned and stared directly at him.
“How many times more will you fail?” she shouted.
Pat Rin froze, caught between astonishment and outrage. How dare—
“One failure should certainly have been enough,” he said, struggling to keep his tone merely courteous and his face smooth. “That there are more can be laid to your father’s account.”
“Kin will suffer for your lapses!” Nova snarled, moving forward one slow, threatening step.
“Yes, very likely!” he snapped, all out of patience. “But never fear, cousin. The clan will not suffer because of me. I will make my own way.”
“You fail and fail again, always blaming others,” ranted the girl on the rug, as if he hadn’t spoken. “You will die dishonored and your kin will curse your name!”
Now that, Pat Rin thought, his anger abruptly gone, was coming rather too strong. It wasn’t as if Korval had never produced a rogue. Rather too many, if truth were told—and most especially Line yos’Phelium. Taking up trade as a gamester was the merest bagatelle, set beside the accomplishments of some of the honored ancestors.
He came to the edge of the rug. Nova continued to stand at menace in the center, her attitude too—old, somehow. Too tense. And now that he brought his attention to it, he saw that her face was tight with an adult’s deep and hopeless grief—and that her eyes were black, amethyst all but drowned in distended pupils.
Too, she stood in something very close to a fighter’s stance… and was not quite looking at him.
Pat Rin frowned. Something decidedly odd was going on. Perhaps she was acting out some part from a melant’i play? Though why she should do so, here and now, was beyond his understanding.
He held the diagnostic kit up before those pupil-drowned eyes.
“Come now!” He said, with brisk matter-of-factness. “We’ll be at work into the next relumma if we stop every hour to play-act!”
The blind, grief-ridden face turned away from him.
“How many times will you fail?” she whispered—and the voice she spoke in was not her voice.
Pat Rin felt a frisson of horror. He cleared his throat.
“Nova?”
“Die dishonored,” she mourned and sagged to her knees, palms flat against the carpet. “Cursed and forgotten.”
He caught his breath. This was no play-acting. He couldn’t, off-hand, think of any swift-striking disease that caused hallucination. There were recreational pharmaceuticals which produced vivid visions, but—
“Cursed,” Nova moaned, in the voice of—The Other. And there was no drug that Pat Rin knew of which would produce that effect.
Come to that, it was not unknown for Korval to produce Healers, though such talents usually did not manifest until one came halfling. Not that this… fit… bore any resemblance to his limited experience of Healer talent.
Dramliza?
But those talents, like Healing, usually came with puberty. And, surely, if one were dramliza….
Crouched on the rug, Nova looked distinctly unwell. Her grief-locked face was pale, the black eyes screwed shut, now; and she was shivering, palms pressed hard against the carpet.
Clearly, whatever the problem was, she needed to be removed from the carpet, and brought away to a place where she might lie down while he called a medic to her—and her father.
Pat Rin put the diagnostic kit on the floor and went forward. When he reached the grieving girl, he knelt and put his hands, gently, on her shoulders.
“Nova.”
No reply. Her shoulders were rigid under his fingers. He could see the pulse beating, much too fast, at the base of her slender throat.
Fear spiked Pat Rin—the child was ill! He made his decision, braced himself, slipped his arms around her waist and rose, lifting her with—
The quiescent, grieving child exploded into a fury of fists and feet and screams. He was pummeled, kicked, and punched—one fist landing with authority on his cheek.
Pat Rin staggered and went down on a knee. Nova broke free, rolled, and snapped to her feet, the carpet knife held in a blade-fighter’s expert grip.
Blindingly fast, she thrust. Pat Rin threw himself flat, saw her boots dance past him and rolled, coming to his feet and spinning, body falling into the crouch his defense teacher had drilled him on, ready to take the charge that did not come.
Nova looked at him—perhaps she did look at him—and tossed the blade away, as if it were a stylus or some other harmless trifle, ignoring it as it bounced away, safely away, across the rug and onto the workroom floor. Niki, brought down from her comfort-spot by the noise, stalked it there, tail rigid, and smacked it smartly with a clawed paw.
Slowly, Pat Rin straightened, forcing himself to stand at his ease.
Something terrible was happening, and he was entirely out of his depth. He should, he thought, call the Healers now. And then he thought that he should—he must—get her off of the rug.
Perhaps persuasion would succeed where force had failed. He took a breath and shook the hair that had come loose from the tail out of his face. His cheek hurt and he would make odds that he would have a stunning bruise by evening. No matter.
He cleared his throat.
“Nova?”
No answer. Pat Rin sighed.
“Cousin?”
She raised her head, her eyes were pointed in his direction.
Ah, he thought. Now, how to parley this small advantage into a win?
He shifted, and looked down at the carpet. An old carpet, a treasure—a Quidian Tantara, the pattern as old as weaving itself. How Luken would love this rug.
Alas, he sorely missed Luken and his endless commonsense just now. What would he do in this eldritch moment? Cast a spell? Trap the offending spirit in a tea box?
Pat Rin looked up.
“Cousin,” he said again, to Nova’s black and sightless eyes. “I… scarcely know you. If you must treat with me this way, at least show respect to our common Clan and tell me clearly which melant’i you use.”
He bowed flawlessly, the bow requesting instruction from kin.
Something changed in her face; he’d at least been seen, if not recognized.
“Melant’i games? You wish to play melant’i games with me? I see.”
Chillingly, she swept a perfect bow: Head of line to child of another line.
“Lisha yos’Galan Clan Korval,” she said in that strange voice, and bowed again, leading with her hand to display the ring it did not bear. “Master Trader. It is in this guise, Del Ben, that I became aware of your perfidy in dealing with bel’Tarda.”
Del Ben? The name struck an uneasy memory. There had been a Del Ben yos’Phelium, many years back in the Line. Indeed, Pat Rin recalled, there had been three Del Ben yos’Pheliums—and then no more, which was… peculiar… of itself. He remembered noticing that, during his studies of the Diaries and of lineage. And he remembered thinking it was odd that a yos’Phelium had died without issue, odder still that the death was not recorded, merely that Del Ben vanished from the log books between one page and the rest.
Nova’s black eyes flashed, she laughed, not kindly. “Look at you! Hardly sense enough to see to your wounds! Well, bleed your precious yos’Phelium blood out on the damned rug if you will, and live with the mark of it. This—I am old. I am slow. I could never have touched the man you wish to be. But you—always, you do just enough to get by, just enough to cause trouble for others, just enough—
“Bah,” she said, interrupting herself with another bow: Cousin instructing cousin. “This one? Well, cuz, I had thought myself well beyond the time of my life where I must marry at contract. But not only will I wed a bel’Tarda because of you, I will bring them into the Clan because of you.”
Pat Rin froze—what was this?
She swept on, a child chillingly, absolutely convincing in the role of Clan elder.
“Ah, yes, smirk. I have seen the contracts. Tomorrow, I will sign them. Do you know that the dea’Gauss and bel’Tarda’s man of business met this week? No—you might have, had you checked your weekly agendas, but when have you ever done so? Did you know that, between them, they decided that your life was insufficient to Balance the wrong done bel’Tarda?”
There was a laugh then, edgy and perhaps not quite sane. “Do you know that we are forbidden by Korval to kill you? But no matter, cuz, I am to both carry the bel’Tarda’s heir, who will replace the man who suicided as a result of your extortion, and to oversee the rebuilding of their business—likely here on Liad!—since the heir and his heir died in the fire. The only proper Balance is to offer our protection, bring them into Korval, and insure that their Line lives on. For you—you nearly destroyed the whole of it! And you?”
Another frightening bow, this one so complex it took even Pat Rin’s well-trained eye a moment to decode it: The bow of one who brings news of a death in the House.
Pat Rin, mesmerized, saw the play move on—
“You may see the Delm, if you dare, or you may choose a new name—one that lacks Korval, and one that lacks yos’Phelium. You may eat while you are in this house, you may sleep in this house, you may dress from the clothes you already own—but you will bring me your Clan rings, your insignia, your pass-keys. Bring them to me now. If you will speak to the Delm I will take you, else….
“Hah, and so I thought, “she said, spitting on the rug. “Remove this rug and bring me the items I named… Know that if you leave—if you go beyond the outside door—it will not readmit you.”
With that the girl-woman kicked at the rug and stormed off of it, turning her back and crumpling into the pose Pat Rin had seen before….
“I shall take the rug!” Pat Rin announced with sudden fervor, not certain that she’d heard.
He rolled it quickly, slung it manfully across his back in the carry he had learned so long ago from Luken, and hustled it out into the hall, where he dumped it hurriedly on the back stairs to his loft room, and clicked the mechanical lock forcefully.
He snatched the portable comm from its shelf and rushed back to the door of the display room, where he could see the girl huddled in sobs amid the ribbons that had once bound the cursed rug.
His fingers moved on the comm’s keypad and he wondered who they had called. A faint chime came out of the speaker…. another—and a woman’s voice, speaking crisply.
“Solcintra Healer Hall. Service?”
THE HEALERS—a plump, merry-faced man and a thin, stern woman—arrived. The woman went immediately to Nova where she crouched and wept against the floor. The man tarried by Pat Rin’s side.
“Did you move anything?”
“I took the carpet away, as she commanded,” he said. “I locked the carpet knife in a drawer.”
The Healer inclined his head. “We will wish to see both, later.” He glanced about him and used his chin to point at the ceiling camera. “Is that live?”
“Yes,” Pat Rin murmured. “Shall I—?”
“We will want a copy of the recording, yes, sir,” the Healer said. “If you could have that done while we are examining your kinswoman, it would be most helpful.”
“Certainly,” Pat Rin said, and the Healer patted his arm, as if they were kin, or old and comfortable comrades, and strolled away across the floor.
Glad of being given a specific task, Pat Rin moved to the control desk, keeping an eye on the huddled group. The Healers blocked his sight of Nova, but, still, he was her nearest kin present and the Code was explicit as to his duties—until her father arrived to take them over.
Behind the control desk, he touched keys, taking the current camera off-line and activating the back-up. He accessed the first’s memory, and started the preliminary scan.
Murmurs came from across the room as he worked, but the thin, hopeless sobbing had at last ceased, and Pat Rin drew a deep breath of relief. The Healers were here; surely they would put all to rights—
The sound of rapid footsteps sounded in the hallway, a shadow flickered in the doorway, and Er Thom yos’Galan was in the room, face set and breathing as easily as if he had not all but run down the long hall—and quite possibly all the way from Port. He paused, scanning, discovered the Healers, kneeling together on the show room floor, took a step—and checked, turning slightly until he spied Pat Rin behind the desk.
His mouth tightened and he came forward. Pat Rin touched the ‘pause’ key and drew himself straight.
“Where is your cousin?” Er Thom asked, without greeting, in a voice so stringently calm that Pat Rin felt a small shiver of pity for stern and commonsense cousin Er Thom.
He inclined his head. “The Healers have come. Already, I believe the situation improves."
Er Thom glanced over his shoulder. “Could you not have moved her from the floor?”
“She… did not know me,” Pat Rin said carefully, and put light fingertips against the cheek Nova had punched. “I had tried to move her, earlier, and she fought like a lyr-cat protecting her litter.” He took a breath. “It seemed best not to make a second attempt, with the Healers on the way.”
“So.” Er Thom drew a careful breath of his own. “What do you?”
“The Healers requested a copy of the tape.”
“Tape?”
Pat Rin swept a hand out, encompassing the showroom. “We were making an inventory of the rugs you had sent from the Southern House,” he murmured. “The camera was on, of course.”
“Of course,” Korval-pernard’i said politely, and cast one more look at the Healers.
Pat Rin could all but see his longing to go to his child’s side—and then saw discipline snap into place. A wise man—a man who wished the very best outcome for his wounded child—that man did not interrupt Healers at their work.
Er Thom took a hard breath and stepped ’round the corner of the desk.
“Show me the film,” he ordered.
THE FEMALE HEALER had gone, taking Nova, Er Thom and the copy of the work session recording with her, leaving her partner to examine the carpet knife—which he proclaimed harmless—and the carpet.
“Ah, I see,” he murmured, as for the second time that afternoon Pat Rin unrolled the thing on the showroom floor. The Healer stepped onto the carpet, and Pat Rin tensed, half-expecting to see his face twist into that expression of angry pain.
But whatever haunted the rug appeared to have no hold on the Healer. He knelt, carefully, at a corner and put his hands flat on the ivory-and-green pattern. Closing his eyes, he moved his hands over the rug, walking forward on his knees as he did so, as if he wished to stroke every fiber.
Pat Rin, relieved that there would apparently be no second playing of the tragedy, removed himself to the control desk once more, and began to shut down for the day. He would inventory the remaining carpets tomorrow, he told himself. Alone.
There was a small burble of sound and a flash of fly-away fur. Niki landed on silent pink toes by the control board. Pat Rin smiled and held out his hand; the cat rubbed her cheek against his fingers, then sat down, wrapped her tail neatly ’round her toes and squinted her eyes in a cat-smile, as if to assure him that all was well.
Yes, precisely.
He returned to his task, comforted by the routine and her silent presence—
“What were your plans for that rug?”
“Eh?” Pat Rin blinked, and looked up at the sudden Healer. “Truly, sir, it is not my place to have plans for it. I do not hide from you that it is an extremely valuable carpet, even if the stain cannot be removed, and that it belongs to Line yos’Galan.”
“Stain?” murmured the Healer, tipping his head to one side. “There is no stain, young sir.”
Pat Rin felt the hairs rise along the back of his neck.
“Most assuredly,” he said, moving round the desk and marching toward the rug in question, “there is a stain.”
“Here,” he said, arriving. He swept a hand downward, his eyes on the Healer’s face. “Only look here and you will see where the fringe has—”
The Healer was watching his face, calmly. Pat Rin looked down.
There was no brown stain marring the wave of ivory fringe. He bent, stroked the supple woolen nap which had scant hours before been stiff with—blood. Del Ban yos’Phelium’s blood.
“I believe that the most excellent yos’Galan will not favor this rug, young sir,” the Healer murmured. “Perhaps you might take charge of it.” He raised his hand as if he had heard Pat Rin’s unspoken protest. And perhaps, thought Pat Rin, he had.
“I will speak with your cousin on the matter, for it comes to me that such a rug, gotten at such cost, ought not to be destroyed, no matter the pain it has unwittingly brought to a daughter of the House.” The Healer cocked his head. “Keep it by, do.”
Pat Rin bowed.
“Very well,” the other said, with a sigh. “I leave you now, sir. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
“Wait—” Pat Rin put out a hand as if he would physically restrain the man.
The Healer paused. “Yes?”
“My cousin Nova—what ailed her? Will she mend? How shall—?”
“Peace, peace,” the Healer laughed. “The Masters must have their chance at diagnosis, but it seems to me that your cousin has a very rare talent in the dramliz spectrum.”
Dramliza. Pat Rin closed his eyes. “What talent?” he asked, ’round the pain in his heart.
“Why, she remembers,” the Healer said, as Pat Rin opened his eyes. “That’s all.” He gave the carpet one more long glance. “I really must—ah, a moment, of your kindness!” He leaned forward, and before Pat Rin knew what he intended, had cupped the injured cheek in a warm and slightly moist palm. There was a small tingle—and the pain flowed away, leaving only warmth.
The Healer stepped back, placed his hand over his heart and bowed. “Peace unto you, Pat Rin yos’Phelium. Long life and fair profit.”
“Healer—” Pat Rin began.
But the Healer was gone.
PIN’WELTIR HAD GONE some hours ahead of the rest, pleading another appointment, which seemed odd at that hour of the morning—but who was Pat Rin yos’Phelium to comment upon the arrangements of a mere acquaintance? He did note, privately, that pin’Weltir had not recalled this second appointment until Luken had roundly trounced him at piket, lightening his brash lordship’s purse by a considerable number of coins.
Still, and excusing the early departure of a guest not much missed in his absence, Pat Rin counted this first party in his own establishment a success. He was quite sincerely exhausted by his hostly duties, yet exhilarated.
The last, late-staying guest bowed out, and the door locked, Pat Rin moved down the hall to the room he had made his study. There, as he expected, he found his foster father, seated in Pat Rin’s reading chair, thoughtfully gazing at the ivory-and-green carpet.
Pat Rin hesitated in the doorway. Luken looked up, face roguish in the soft yellow light.
“Well, boy-dear! Well, indeed. A most glorious crush, hosted with grace and style! I daresay you will sleep the day through, now.”
“Not quite now,” Pat Rin murmured.
Luken smiled. “A bit in the upper key, is it? Never mind it—very shortly Lord Pat Rin will find hosting a party three times this to be a mere nothing!”
Pat Rin laughed. “Verily, Lord Pat Rin shall be nothing more nor less than a fidget-about-town. I wonder how you might bear with so slight a fellow.”
“Now, there,” Luken said, with sudden seriousness, “you touch near to a topic I wished to bring before you. I wonder—have you thought of entering the lists at Tey Dor’s?”
Pat Rin blinked, and drifted into the room, across the Tantara, to prop a hip against the desk and looked down into his foster father’s face.
“I had never thought of competing at Tey Dor’s,” he said then. “Should I have?”
“You might find that you will wish to do so,” Luken said, “as you consider the… affect you wish to sustain. For I do not think, boy-dear, that you would do very well in a long-term role either as fidget or as mushroom.”
“Ah.” Pat Rin smiled. “Lord Pat Rin shall be flamboyant, shall he?”
Luken raised a finger. “Lord Pat Rin, if you will permit me, boy-dear, shall be accomplished.”
“I’ll grant that’s a happier thought,” his son said after a moment. He inclined his head. “Allow me to consider the matter, when my head is done spinning.”
“Surely, surely.” Luken paused before murmuring. “I wonder if you have heard that young Nova takes lessons at the dramliz school now—and has passed the preliminary for third-class pilot.”
Pat Rin inclined his head. “She was by a three-day gone, with a gift for the house. We drank tea and she caught me up with her news.”
“Ah?” Luken said. “And how do you find yourselves aligned, if an old man might ask it.”
“We are—comfortable,” Pat Rin said after a moment. “She—I do not know how such a thing might be, but—she remembers both sides of the… incident, and we have, thereby, an understanding.”
There was a small silence. “Good,” Luken said, simply, and pushed himself out of the chair. Pat Rin leapt forward to offer him an arm.
“Must you leave?” he asked, and Luken laughed.
“I daresay the two of us might now repair to the Port for a game or six, were I thirty years younger!” He said, patting Pat Rin’s hand. “But you must have pity on an old man and allow me to seek my bed.”
“Certainly,” Pat Rin replied, walking with him toward the hallway. “I will summon a cab.”
“Assuredly you will, sir!” Luken turned suddenly, face serious. “Lord Pat Rin will have servants to attend to these small matters for him.”
“I daresay he might,” Pat Rin retorted, with spirit, “for those who are merely guests. But if Lord Pat Rin should ever fail of attending the father of his heart personally, I shall know him for a worthless dog, no matter his accomplishments.”
Luken paused, then extended a hand to cup Pat Rin’s cheek. “Sweet lad.” He let the hand fall away and smiled, softly. “Call for the cab, then, and be welcome.”
Quickly, Pat Rin stepped back into his study and made the call. Turning back, he saw Luken framed in the doorway, his eyes dreaming once more upon the Tantara.
“Father?” he said, abruptly.
Luken looked up, face mild. “Child?”
Pat Rin cleared his throat. “I—do you mind?” he blurted. “The carpet—it is yours; the treasure of your Line. It should—”
Luken held up a hand. “Peace.” He glanced down at the ivory-and-green design, smiling slightly as he once again met Pat Rin’s eyes.
“I allow it to be a gem, and everything that is graceful. Even, I allow it to be a family heirloom. Who best to have the keeping of such a treasure, than my son?”
Pat Rin’s eyes filled. “Father—”
“Nay, I’ll brook no argument, willful creature! Hark! Is that the cab?”
It was. Luken fastened his cloak and together they went down the steps to the walk. Pat Rin opened the door and saw his father comfortably disposed. That done, he handed the driver a coin.
“Good-night, boy-dear,” Luken said from the back. “Sweet dreams to you.”
“Good-night, father,” he returned, stepping back from the curb. “Sweet dreaming.”
The cab pulled away, accelerating smoothly down the long, dark street.