Alliance of Equals

by Sharon Lee

  The personality grid sparkled, reminiscent of the ring; emotions were smooth, if no less complex; the energy that had informed the tangled coil of worry and distraction had been properly redirected to focusing the intellect; the soul was calmed, and there was about the whole a subtle aroma of joy.

  The Healer met the Trader’s eyes.

  “What is done, is done,” they said, together, and did not add, for good or ill.

  Each opened their arms. Stepping forward, they embraced into oneness.

  Shan opened his eyes to the comfortable sight of his office, and a priority message on his screen, informing him that the shuttle bearing Third Mate Tiazan, Comm Tech Triloff, and Trader yos’Galan had been cleared for lift from Chesselport.

  —•—

  Padi sat in the jump seat, but for once her attention was not on the screens or the pilot’s boards. Her eyes were turned inward, all of her attention on the necessity of containing the conflagration within her.

  She was angry. Well, who wouldn’t be angry, to have their profit stolen, and their trade made into dust—less than dust! For an incompleted trade did not count toward the total of successful trades that would move her from ’prentice to trader.

  But there was even worse.

  Worse than the anger, somehow feeding it…was the fear.

  The images the guard had given her of herself falling, the jerk, the snap as the rope halted the fall, and her feet moving in protest until they stopped and there was only the broken body, brown hair tangled over her downturned face, swinging, softly swinging, as if prompted by the gentlest breeze.

  Her throat closed, and her stomach clenched; her heart pounded in her ears, her fingernails digging into her sweaty palms.

  She had known herself for craven, a coward unworthy to stand in the ranks of Korval pilots. But, this…this was terrible beyond anything she had previously experienced…

  She needed to dance, to dance the fear into the place she had built for it, deep inside herself, where it would never be found, or seen, even by Healer eyes. There was no room on the shuttle, and she feared—yes, she feared!—that the anger might consume her into ash, before they gained the Passage.

  She clenched her muscles and tucked her head, teeth grit—and felt someone touch her arm.

  Fiery anger coalesced; if she breathed out, she would breathe fire, and destroy whomever dared to—

  “Padi?”

  She recognized Sally Triloff’s voice and gasped, sucking living flame down her throat, whimpering at the pain.

  Arms closed around her; she shook her head, not daring to open her mouth, and Sally rubbed her back.

  “Oh, sweetie, go ahead and cry. I bet even the master trader would cry, if he’d been treated like that. The least they could have done was return your goods!”

  It was perhaps the ridiculous notion that Master Trader yos’Galan would have, under any circumstances, allowed his profit to be stolen from him—

  Or perhaps it was the offer of a temporary bond of kinship; a place no larger than the circle of Sally’s arms, in which it would be…not improper to indulge in emotion.

  Or, perhaps, she was simply that tired.

  Whichever, and entirely to her own astonishment, her face pressed against Sally’s shoulder, Padi did, indeed, begin to cry.

  —•—

  Shan stood with Priscilla in the docking area antechamber, his hand in hers.

  “I’m to tell you that you will need your Moonhawk in all her aspects,” he murmured, surprising both of them. He hadn’t intended to tell Priscilla about his encounter in Healspace—at least not until they were alone and very private.

  Her head turned sharply, and she looked directly into his eyes.

  “From Lute?”

  “Yes, from Lute, meddling creature. He would also advise me that I’m going to need him, soon or late.”

  “That’s fair warning, then,” Priscilla said.

  “Fairer had he said which it was,” Shan muttered, and Priscilla might perhaps have answered that, save the light over the shuttle bay door went from ruby to emerald.

  First through the door was Third Mate Tiazan, calm and forthright as ever. He bowed, precisely, to the captain’s honor, and murmured, “Captain. I will have a report.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But tell me first, are you harmed, or in need?”

  “I am well. The young trader…” He stopped short, as if catching himself on the edge of an infelicity, and looked to Shan. “The guards were not above playing games, and I fear the young trader took some of their…less savory tales to heart. Certainly, the disposition of her trade angered her.” He hesitated, and inclined his head.

  “Comm Tech Triloff offered a comrade’s care during the lift,” he concluded. “It may be done with, now.”

  “Thank you,” Shan said, “for your care.”

  Dil Nem bowed. “Captain. Master Trader.”

  He took himself off down the hall, as Comm Tech Triloff approached, anger glowing orange in the region of her heart. Walking beside her, seeming slightly subdued, was Padi.

  Shan considered her on all the levels available to him as a Healer.

  On the surface, he saw the sweet pale greens and blues of utter calmness, which was…startling. He tried to recall where Sally Triloff had ranked in empathy, but even if she were a full Healer herself, he would still have expected to see—

  There. Beneath the damp pastels that might well denote a good cry, he found scorch marks along her matrix; remnants of an incandescent anger.

  That was more in keeping with the nature of events, he thought, relieved. After all, the child had seen her profit cruelly taken from her, and been arrested; these things sit ill with traders as a class, and those of Korval, more so.

  He transferred his attention to Sally Triloff, whose emotive grid was still ablaze with fury.

  “Thank you,” he said gently, “for your care of my child.”

  She blinked, perhaps not expecting him to take that road. Sally had been with the Passage—worked with Liadens—long enough to have a feel for melant’i. She would have expected him to be the master trader in the matter, as Padi had been acting as trader herself. A comrade’s care, though—that was personal, which perhaps Sally hadn’t thought about.

  “You’re welcome,” she said now. “It wasn’t right, what happened to her—to her cargo.”

  Ah, Terrans and their touching notion of right.

  Shan smiled.

  “Sadly, this sort of thing does happen, from time to time. Not often, but infuriating all the same.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sally returned the smile tentatively, and went on to speak with Priscilla.

  Padi looked up at him.

  “I lost my profit,” she said, merely stating a fact.

  “So I’ve heard. You must tell me all about it. In fact, I wonder if you would share a private nuncheon with me, so that you may tell me all about it.”

  She took a hard breath, and he tasted anger and loss—which were expectable—and…resignation…which was not.

  He waited, showing her a calm face, sternly refusing to reach out and hug her.

  “I’d be pleased to report on my trade,” Padi said properly, her voice at least revealing nothing save what might have been an entirely reasonable weariness.

  “Splendid!” he said, showing broad pleasure. “Let’s walk together, shall we?”

  —•—

  The last few shifts had been quiet. Not that Jemiatha Station sat at the crossroads of the universe, or anything like that, but they had their regulars—and their usual traffic.

  ’Course part of that usual traffic had been the Tinker, who’d come in three, four times a cycle, and not always more trouble’n she was worth. Had an eye for interesting tech, did the Tinker, and she’d taught him a thing or two about microrepairs, which he hadn’t thought nobody could’ve done.

  Stew blew his breath out in an impatient huff. Not going to be seeing the Tinker anymore at Jemiatha
’s, thanks to Admiral Bunter.

  The rest of the regulars, though…

  Word would’ve got out, Stew thought, staring at his diagnostic screen glumly—about the Tinker. That was worrisome, but—flip side—it was a relief. Station needed its regulars, sure, and truth was there wasn’t much but Jemiatha’s out here, given the way most of the small-routes run, which was another way of saying the regulars needed the station. They’d have to come back, eventually.

  It was eventually Stew’d been counting on. Time. Time enough for one or t’other of the experts to get their duffs out here and either talk some sense into the Admiral or take him off-line.

  Time was running out, though. The regulars—yeah, they’d run out of avoid soon enough.

  The crews, that was another thing. He wasn’t in any way trigger-happy, and Vez—Down-Shift manager, Vez was, his opposite number and junior to him by just ten hours…

  He could trust Vez to follow chain of command, and he was senior. What he couldn’t trust her to do was see Admiral Bunter as anything more than a parlor trick—half comedy and all stupid.

  Despite what’d happened with the Tinker.

  And the crews? There was talk ’mong the crews about cobbling up some cannon. He’d disallowed that, on Up-Shift. Vez, though, she’d let her crew go ahead with it as a side project, so long as reg’lar work was done and the materials draw was strictly from declared derelicts.

  Cannon. Stew shook his head.

  A surprise attack. He sighed.

  Problem with cannon and that surprise attack was that neither took into account the nature of a mind rooted in comps ’stead of human flesh.

  Vez was smart. Vez was a damn good tech.

  But Vez didn’t believe in independent logics. She was a tech. A machine was a machine to her.

  And all the time, there was Admiral Bunter, keeping station, protecting Jemiatha’s from pirates, the gods of space help ’em all, and inclined to view any attempt to differentiate between the Tinker’s petty thievery and real pirates as pretty dern near piracy, itself.

  Stew had backed off of that conversation the minute he realized how the Admiral was processing his explanation, and he had an uneasy feeling that he was now a suspect character.

  So far, they’d been lucky, that’s what it was, Stew thought, and jumped when the diagnostics beeped twice for done.

  Within tolerances, he thought, running a practiced eye down the column; plenty good enough to go into the used inventory. He punched a button to print out a ticket, and another to enter the part into the catalog.

  Lucky, he repeated to himself. They couldn’t depend on staying lucky, that was the thing.

  Repairs wasn’t the only department running nervous and thinking about ways to rid themselves of Cap’n Waitley’s gift. Stationmaster was getting nervous, starting to listen to advice from chancy quarters, and it was all Stew could do, to talk him into waiting just a little bit longer.

  For the specialist…

  Cap’n Waitley’d sent for a specialist before she ever left system. Trouble being, they’d never shown up.

  Hadn’t seemed urgent, and Stew’d been willing to wait a little more.

  Then…

  Well, then Admiral Bunter’d fragged the Tinker’s ship, and Tinker inside it. That’s when Stew’d put in a call to his own expert. Pinbeam; he’d sent it with his own hands. Got the ack.

  But no expert on that side, either.

  Last time they’d talked, he’d asked the stationmaster for fifteen more Standard days, for a solution to arrive, in the form of specialists.

  There were eight days left on that grant o’time, and what Jemiatha’s Jumble Stop was gonna do if no experts ever did show up was more’n Stew could figure.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dutiful Passage

  “…which means that my research was sound; there is profit to be made in milaster on Chessel’s World,” Padi said warmly, eyes flashing with triumph, her soup forgotten on the table before her. Abruptly, her shoulders sagged, and she averted her face.

  “Only, one is not allowed to keep it, which seems, someway…less satisfying than no profit at all.”

  “Also,” she said, putting her spoon down with the air of one who has no appetite, “I’ve overspent my spec money. Even if another high-profit deal presents itself, I haven’t enough funds to take proper advantage.”

  “You did take a bold gamble,” Shan said, leaning back in his chair. He was toying absently with a wineglass, all of his attention on Padi. He had several times during the course of the meal perceived anomalies—a smile yoked to a sudden, frigid tremor of fear; a shrug of resignation linked to a flicker of white anger; and, once more, fear, shadowing a bold look of pride.

  “I seem to recall,” he added, when she made no answer nor even looked up, “that we had touched upon the wisdom of committing so much of your cash to one deal.”

  He expected a pretty sparkle of prideful temper, and a sharp reminder that, had Chesselport law not been quite so addlebrained, she would have trebled her funds.

  It was what he would have done, when he was her age. It was what he would have been strongly tempted to do, even now. Padi herself…

  But it occurred to him, watching the subdued halfing across the table, that Padi was not herself.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “I ought to have been more conservative.” And there it was at last, a flare of bright, sharp heat. “But I was right!”

  Energy sparked, and pinwheeled. Padi raised her head, and it was pride and justified anger he saw on her face. He took a firmer hold on his glass, in case she should decide to throw—

  The anger evaporated; the pinwheel of pride fizzled into chill grey. Shan shivered; tasted grit on his tongue, felt stone beneath his palm.

  Across from him, Padi sighed, and shook her head, exhaustion coming off of her in damp waves.

  “I see that your adventures have caught you up,” he said. “Shall we leave the rest until some other time?”

  Curiosity stirred, striking a momentary spark of energy. She asked, “Rest?”

  “Oh, indeed! I understand that you might not like to do the work, but in my judgment as master trader, your research was accurate, your instinct was good, and you trebled your investment. In other circumstances you might have gained your first repeat customer—and a reason for the Passage to include Chesselport among its scheduled stops. The circumstances that parted you from your profit before ever you had it in hand are apart from the transaction itself.”

  He raised the wineglass and sipped, feeling Padi’s attention, and the small beginning of a hope that she might, somehow, come about, despite recent events.

  “Of course, I cannot make a Determination of Completed Trade by myself. I must lay the case before another, unaffiliated master of trade, and abide by their opinion. We would not, after all, wish it to seem that I had shown my apprentice special favor. Your license will rest upon these early transactions. It is best that they are above question.”

  He considered her: face slightly flushed, bright eyes intent on him, no hint of stone in her pattern, weariness burned away by hope.

  “What is it?” she asked, when he paused for another sip of wine. “What work must I do?”

  “Ah, are you interested? What you must do is write an account of your transaction, including your research, the facts of your purchase, and of your sale. You will include copies of the sales receipt, the auction hall’s record of the sale, and the public log entry of the magistrate’s decision. I will tell you that straightforwardness, and solid fact, is more likely to be read favorably than impassioned outrage, and that your facts will be checked, so be very certain that they are correct.”

  “Yes, of course.” She was leaning forward now, watching his face.

  “Yes,” he repeated, and shook his head slightly. “As with all such things, there is a deadline for submission of this report. You have three ship-days to produce your part, as I have three ship-days to produce mine. After we are
finished here, I will contact the guild with the information that we have a case requiring a master trader’s attention. Once our reports have been transmitted, the master trader will have two Standard weeks to render her opinion, which she will send to the guild. The guild will then inform me of the outcome, and I”—he inclined his head politely—“will inform you. If the outcome is as we desire, your trade at Chesselport will be admitted to your record, rated favorably, and become one of the cornerstones of your license.”

  “And…” Padi’s voice squeezed out; she cleared her throat and began again. “And if the master trader should disallow my trade?”

  “Then it is done, and you have only lost what you never held.”

  Her mouth tightened at that, and he tasted the sizzle of anger, but she did not choose to dispute him; after a moment she nodded.

  “I am willing to do the work,” she said.

  “Very well, then, I shall expect your report on my screen in three ship-days. In the meantime, there is one thing that I may do, as master trader on the Dutiful Passage.”

  Padi’s expression took on a certain wariness, for which he didn’t entirely blame her, but she asked him courteously enough.

  “What may you do, sir?”

  “I may bring your spec fund back to pre-milaster levels.”

  She blinked.

  “But…I made the buy; there was no loss there, though I will allow it to have been, perhaps, a little…reckless.”

  “It’s nothing short of astonishing, how often boldness is found to be its own reward. However, this is no act of charity; it is a loan.”

  “A loan?”

  “Exactly. Should the master trader decide in your favor, the guild will reimburse you for half of the lost profit. If that should happen, you will repay me from those funds.”

  “And if the master trader decides that my case has no merit?”

  “Then you will come to me with a plan to pay back the loan by the end of this trade run. Are these terms agreeable?”

  “Yes, Master Trader!”

  “Excellent; we are in accord. Now, may I suggest, as your parent, that you do not begin writing—or researching—your report until you have slept for at least a half-shift?”