Trader's Leap (Liaden Universe Book 23)

by Sharon Lee

  “Why would I do that?” he asked.

  “In the service of your continued good health. You took dire wounds, of a kind which are treacherous and slow to heal. You would do best by being soft with yourself.”

  “Ah.”

  He spun his chair, turning to face the man sitting—seeming to sit—in the chair across the desk from him. A man perhaps of his own age, with a rough-hewn face; dark hair in a neat, long braid; his clothing tidy, if ragged. He was toying with a gaming counter—red, the paint worn off the edges, walking it over the knuckles of his big hand, until it came to an end and—

  Vanished.

  “I’m pleased to see you have that back,” he said, using his chin to point at the counter, which was again walking across the other’s hand. “Keep it, of your kindness.”

  “Now, there’s a rare ill-temper,” said his visitor, whose name was Lute. “You make my point for me, child. Take some rest now.”

  “There is business to be done,” Shan told him, already making a list of research topics.

  “In truth, I don’t dispute it! Only I ask—does it need to be done right now? Will you not benefit from a deep and healing sleep?”

  Shan closed his eyes and rubbed his arm.

  “The Witch had mended that damage, had she not?” Lute asked sharply.

  Shan opened his eyes.

  “What damage would that be?”

  “The gash on thine arm, infant! Which was all but the death of thee.”

  “She did Heal it,” Shan answered, at the same moment becoming conscious of the ache, just there, where she had flayed his skin to the bone.

  He unsealed the sleeve and pushed it up, staring at the angry red scar, the skin around it inflamed and tender.

  “Well . . . ” he murmured, and nearly leapt to his feet in shock as Lute leaned over to take his arm in one gentle, calloused hand.

  “I will do this,” he said. “You will deplete yourself further, do you make the attempt, and the wound will become angrier still. Be still now.”

  Coolness washed over his tender skin. The scar faded; the ache leached away.

  “There. That will keep you. Rise. Yes, and lean on me.”

  He found he needed the support to his bed, where he lay himself down fully clothed.

  “When you wake, betake yourself to your lady, and ask her grace for your stupidity,” Lute said sternly. “Close your eyes.”

  That last hardly needed to be said, Shan thought. The challenge had become to keep them open.

  “You will pursue all necessary tasks tomorrow,” Lute told him. “Nothing will be lost by caring for yourself. Learn some little wisdom while you sleep. You endanger all and everything by ignoring your hurts.”

  A large warm hand was placed on his forehead, and Lute’s voice spoke again, gently but with such power the very air sparked blue.

  “Sleep, Shan yos’Galan. Sleep and heal.”

  V

  In the captain’s office, Priscilla sat back in her chair and closed her eyes.

  She had just concluded a meeting with the Liaison Committee and the Ombudsone, and what she had heard . . . was not good.

  In truth, they’d said nothing she hadn’t already known. Only—she’d been hoping that the malady would heal itself.

  Which, she told herself wearily, they hardly ever do—and who should know it better than you?

  She had allowed the problem to fester, her attention centered on the damage done to Shan, and the riddle that was Padi. She, the captain, had—not quite ignored her crew. But she had allowed them to slip into third place.

  “So,” she said to the empty room. “Let’s review.”

  The death of Vanner Higgs in the performance of his duty had been only one shock visited upon the Passage at Langlast, and it had been severe. They were a tradeship, not a privateer. One did not expect the death of a crewmate; especially not a violent death.

  Nor did one look for the ship to be attacked by planetary administration while peacefully in orbit, nor for the kidnapping and torture of the master trader, or the attempted abduction of the apprentice trader.

  Vanner had been well liked and, as shuttle pilot and security, known to every member of the ship’s complement. Two gatherings had been held, to mark his passing and to celebrate his life, so that all might mourn properly.

  As expected, some had also sought the Healer for assistance in coming to terms with their loss. Additional classes in self-defense had been made available, and seminars reviewing the reasons Clan Korval had been banished from Liad, and the nature of their enemy.

  The crew had known, before the Passage left Surebleak, that they would face challenges on new ports and why those challenges existed. They had signed their contracts fully informed.

  And yet, to meet actual violence, to find a colleague, a friend, a comrade, a lover murdered—it shook the shared soul of the ship. So much the Liaison Committee and the Ombudsone had said. So much she had known for herself and—set aside.

  They were, Priscilla thought carefully, a tradeship. Mutiny was unlikely. So the Liaison Committee had assured her.

  Then there was the problem of their next port.

  They were a tradeship; not unreasonably, the crew expected that they would trade. The contract outlined several payouts to crew if the trade hit certain markers—which had never, in the years Priscilla had been with the Passage, been in doubt. Dutiful Passage was a profitable ship.

  Had been a profitable ship.

  The door chime sounded and she raised her head, feeling his presence on the other side.

  “It’s unlocked,” she said dryly.

  The door whisked open, and a tray was steered into her office by her tall and elegant lifemate. Clearing the door, he paused and straightened.

  “Good my-morning and your-midshift, Captain. Will you join me for a meal? We may call it whatever you like.”

  Priscilla rose from behind her desk.

  “Let’s call it a welcome diversion,” she said, with a wry smile.

  * * *

  Shan parked the cart at the end of the couch. They served themselves and settled side by side, he to break his fast, she to address . . . she supposed it might be lunch.

  “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but what brings you—and the diversion—to me?”

  “Honor,” Shan said solemnly. “One must keep one’s word.”

  “Very true,” she said, matching him for solemnness. “But I don’t recall you promising to bring me—a meal.”

  “Well. The meal is an inspired last-minute improvisation. My word was given to Lute.”

  Priscilla paused briefly in the act of choosing a cheese roll. Shan did not often talk about Lute. Shan did not approve of Lute, though he had, since their first meeting in Weapons Hall, come to tolerate him, while often wishing him—and the game counter that was, in the lexicon of Priscilla’s youth, a sign of divine favor—at the devil.

  Something had changed his attitude, as so many things had changed, at Langlastport. Shan, having seen Vanner murdered and himself held captive by Tarona Rusk, had dispatched Lute to protect Padi, who had been alone and about to be confronted by a team of operatives attached to the DOI.

  “Does Lute think that we need to spend more time together?” she asked lightly.

  “He wouldn’t be the only one of us who did—but no. I had been working late, and was on course for later, when all at once and with no warning, Lute arrived and proceeded to ring such a peal down upon my head you would have thought him my elder kin. He took as his texts the importance of proper convalescence to continued survival, and the wisdom of taking one’s own advice.”

  “I assume he had a reason,” said Priscilla.

  “In fact, he had. I had stupidly reopened a wound, which put him to the trouble of Healing it. To ensure that I would inconvenience him no further—at least, by the same route—he placed me into Heal-sleep. Before he did so, however, he elicited my solemn word that I would, upon waking, seek out my lady to confes
s my errors.”

  He inclined his head.

  “Thus you find me before you, cowed and obedient.”

  In fact, Priscilla thought, considering him with all the senses available to her, he seemed rather more . . . vibrant than at any time since his return from Langlast, when he had been utterly exhausted, and very nearly without color. But, even then, he had not been cowed. The members of Clan Korval might occasionally repent, but they did so with heads high.

  “Am I to take it that you find me insufficiently subdued?” Shan asked. “The silence is rather alarming.”

  She shook her head, smiling.

  “I was lost in admiration of your obedient nature.”

  “As anyone would be,” he said gravely.

  She shook her head again.

  “Which wound did you reopen?” she asked.

  He raised an arm, unsealed the cuff and pushed the sleeve up, so she could see the white scar marring the brown skin of his forearm. It was, she thought, rather more prominent than it had been the last time she had seen it.

  She extended a hand—and Shan pulled back.

  “Do not risk yourself!” he snapped.

  She raised her eyebrows, and considered him for a long moment until, sheepish, he extended his arm once more, murmuring.

  “Your pardon, Priscilla.”

  “Thank you,” she said, bracing his arm along her forearm. “I am scanning for infection, and for deliberate sabotage of the Healing process. I don’t expect to find either, but if I do, my advice will be that you take yourself either to Lina, or to Keriana, as the case requires.”

  “Yes,” he said, and he did, just for an instant, actually sound daunted. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Her scan discovered nothing, save a signature that seemed at first to be Shan’s own. Closer scrutiny revealed a very slight difference in nuance, which would of course be Lute, near enough to be Shan’s elder brother. She did not sigh. It was no easy thing, to be god-ridden. Even the Temple acknowledged that.

  She removed her hand. He withdrew his arm, pushing the sleeve down and sealing the cuff.

  “Shan, you must rest. Access your gift as little as possible. Overstress yourself, and that wound will open again—that particular wound, because it was inflicted on two planes.”

  “I understand,” he said, and failed to look delighted, cowed, or even remotely compliant.

  “I believe,” he said slowly, “that I have found a downside to the Liaden method of conducting ourselves as Healers. We’re taught control, but we’re also taught to use our shields as little as possible, to engage with the wide universe with as many of our senses as we may. We thereby, so we are taught, lead a complete life.”

  Priscilla lifted a hand to his cheek.

  “I know,” she said.

  She had been trained in another tradition. A priestess of the Goddess lived chaste behind her shields, engaging the world with her talents only when it was required. She’d had to learn to remain open all the time, as Shan was accustomed to doing, and she thought that it would be . . . difficult to retreat entirely behind her shields again, now.

  “Try,” she said softly.

  He caught her hand and brought it to his lips.

  “For you, Priscilla, I will try.”

  They returned their attention to breakfast-or-lunch, eating in companionable silence. In good time, Shan leaned back into the cushions; Priscilla put her cup on the tray to snuggle against his side, sighing gently when his arm came around her shoulders.

  “If it can be told, from what knotty problem did my arrival rescue you?”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder.

  “Morale,” she said, closing her eyes.

  “Ah,” he said softly.

  “Had we not lost Vanner, or been attacked while going about our entirely lawful business . . . ” Priscilla murmured. “Coming after Langlast, a side trip to a port where there was no possible profit to be had, and now with the route in doubt—it may be too much . . . ” She let her voice drift off.

  “You spoke to the crew Ombudsone?”

  “And to the Liaison Committee.”

  “Do they offer solutions, or merely complaint?”

  “They . . . ”

  Priscilla raised her head and looked into his eyes.

  “They surprised me. They suggested that the crew be offered the chance to buy out their contracts at the next appropriate port.”

  Shan sighed.

  “If I were inclined to be Liaden about this, I would note that the current crew each signed contracts, including the clause that specifically stated that this was an exploratory venture which would follow no certain route, and because of that might encounter both increased risk and lesser profit.”

  Priscilla stirred. There were Liadens who lived and died by the contract. Shan had never been so rigid. However, a trader must believe in the force of the contract, else he’d lose his profit and his advantage.

  Shan had been known to modify contracts. When she had first come to the Passage, she thought his ability to see contracts as flexible was an artifact of his being a Healer.

  “A Healer lives always in the world,” she murmured now.

  Shan laughed.

  “Perhaps so; though I will point out that my father could very easily think outside of the clauses, and his mother before him. The question, naturally, is when is it advantageous to do so?”

  “Are you,” she asked, “inclined to be Surebleakean?”

  “There is such a thing as going too far,” he murmured, and Priscilla laughed softly.

  “We may, however,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard her, “compromise. My most recent research indicates that Pommier is within reach. One of the claims it makes for itself is that it is a Guild-certified crew reassignment station. Unless there is another port, nearer or more appropriate, I think we have our solution.”

  “The Liaison Committee specifically named Pommier,” Priscilla said. “I haven’t done the research, myself.”

  “If memory serves, which it must at some point, Pommier is quite reasonably civilized; an active port; at the intersection of at least two major trade routes, and a dozen lesser.”

  “Would you like me to pull the World Book entry?”

  “If you have time now, we should review it together.”

  Priscilla rose and went to her desk, Shan following.

  She leaned over her console, tapping keys, then spun the screen so they could both see.

  “A slight course adjustment,” she said, “and we raise Pommier in three ship-days.”

  “Not impossible, though we shall have to bustle. I suggest that we call a meeting of all hands in six hours to remind them of the bailout clause. We are prepared to honor it at Pommier, and we are prepared to pay full wages to that point.”

  Priscilla did some basic arithmetic in her head.

  “That will bring ship’s cash reserves down—significantly.”

  “I’ll supplement the buyout from personal funds,” he said. “The ship needn’t go below prescribed levels for this.”

  Priscilla did another sum in her head; stirred.

  “We can’t afford to lose more than—”

  “Quite right. But I don’t think we’ll see a mass exodus. I may of course be wrong. And if I am wrong, we will consider our course carefully. If Pommier dares to do business with us, we might still come about.”

  “And if Pommier won’t do business with us?” Priscilla asked.

  “They are still bound by Guild law to take distressed crew,” Shan said lightly. “And then—we’ll see what happens.”

  VI

  Shan finished reading the last of his father’s journals, repacked them, locked the box and returned it to the drawer.

  Then, he sat down in his chair and leaned back with his arms crossed under his head, considering the ceiling. His heart was sore, and his thoughts were clamoring.

  For the first time, he considered the possib
ility that the task set to him by his delm—the core of his duty as the clan’s trader; the essence of being a master trader—was something that was beyond his ability to achieve.

  He considered the possibility that he might fail.

  The realization was simultaneously terrifying and liberating.

  Korval contrived, after all. Korval dared. Korval erred, and occasionally made quite horrifying mistakes.

  But Korval did not fail. That . . . was unthinkable.

  And yet, Er Thom yos’Galan had foreseen that he would fail the clan.

  Now, in his turn, Er Thom’s son and heir considered the unthinkable.

  The unthinkable, Shan thought, his eyes on the ceiling, was by definition beyond solution. To think of a thing was to define it, to give it shape.

  To make it vulnerable to solution.

  Very well then. He would think the thought.

  I might fail to construct a viable new trade route.

  There, the thought had been formed; the problem had been named. A solution could now be sought.

  If one failed of constructing a new trade route, what might one do in its place which would achieve the goal of providing cash flow and contacts sufficient to the clan’s needs?

  He took lengthy counsel of the ceiling; and, when they had at last come to an accord, he spun his chair around, reached to the screen, and began to open files. Research, some of it quite unusual—the various trade resources, piloting notifications, Scout reports—to which he added the most recent readouts from the Named Beacons. He became entangled with History, too, which had proved unexpectedly beguiling, until at last, he swept it all away, and called up a blank screen.

  When the screen was no longer blank, and he was satisfied with the results, then he extended a hand, and placed a call to the captain.

  * * *

  “What,” Priscilla asked, reasonably enough, “is the Redland System?”

  “Three worlds,” Shan answered, “collectively called The Redlands, clustered around a red dwarf. Liaden worlds, I should add.”

  They were sitting on the couch in his office, each holding a cup of cold tea. Priscilla was frowning.