A Liaden Universe® Constellation, Volume 4

by Sharon Lee

  “Really. ’bout what, exactly?”

  He smiled, feeling sore facial muscles protest.

  “Pain hurts.”

  • • • • • •

  A soft chime sounded in his ear, growing steadily louder. Val Con opened his eyes with a sigh that was not entirely pleasure in the absence of pain. He swung his legs over the side of the autodoc, which satisfied the chime, and sat there, listening to Miri’s song inside his head.

  To his very great relief, she had not chosen to engage with him on the drive home, while he was yet off-balance, and she stood between fear and care.

  Now, though . . .

  Ah, yes. Now, she was in a fine, high, temper, and no mistake.

  Well, and who could blame her? Certainly not her erring lifemate, who had thus far turned his face from both common-sense and her legitimate concerns, showing the flimsiest of excuses as his reasons.

  Excuses that he had been allowed, just so long as he could support himself. Having failed most notably in that endeavor, and having also, to his shame, frightened her, he could expect a splendid row in his very immediate future.

  She would want the truth, to which no one had a better right, and he would look the veriest lunatic, did he tell it to her.

  And yet, he told himself kindly, she had known you for a lunatic when she married you.

  There was, indeed, that.

  And if he did not soon go to meet the tempest, he thought, gauging the impatience that was growing beside her anger, the tempest would assuredly come to him.

  He slid to his feet and reached for the clean clothes that were neatly folded on the table beside the doc.

  Best not to go ungirded into the fray.

  • • • • • •

  Miri had taken a shower, and dressed—house clothes, a comfortable sweater and loose pants. The conversation she was going to have with Val Con—the conversation she shouldn’t have let him dodge for months . . . It wasn’t likely to be pleasant. She hated pushing him into a corner—insisting, but dammit, he could have been killed this morning, just as easy as stumbling on a stone. The jacket wasn’t armor; space leather could be breached, and a shot to the head . . .

  No, she told herself, taking a deep breath. Easy, Robertson; that didn’t happen.

  He hadn’t gotten himself killed, not today. He’d been lucky—well, of course he’d been lucky. Came with the turf. Only sometimes, the Luck, like the family called it, wasn’t real neat.

  And sometimes it failed.

  Another deep breath.

  She’d felt him wake up out of the healing session, though he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get himself up to their suite. Not that she blamed him. He wasn’t a dummy, despite today’s evidence; he’d know he was in hot water, and he’d know she was done being easy on him.

  Still, she thought, he could stir himself to hurry a little, so they could get this over with. She took a step toward the door. Stopped.

  No. She was not going to him.

  She turned, walked across the room, opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the balcony.

  Let the man have a few minutes to collect his thoughts, she told herself, looking out over the inner garden.

  Some of the flowers were still in bloom—the Tree’s influence, both Val Con and the gardener swore. She wasn’t inclined to argue; as far as she’d been able to determine, Korval’s Tree lived to tinker: plants, micro-climates, cats, human beings—it didn’t particularly matter what, only that whatever it was presented a challenge.

  She crossed her arms on top of the railing and deliberately took a breath, drawing the warm—call it less chilly—scented air deep into her lungs.

  Closing her eyes, she brought the Scout’s Rainbow to mind and worked through it more slowly than she was wont to do, seeking a balance between fear, anger, and what you might call necessity.

  The air at her elbow moved; the railing shifted oh-so-slightly, as if someone else had come to lean next to her.

  She opened her eyes, looking down at the garden, and the stone pathway all but overgrown with unruly greenery.

  “So,” she said, soft enough she might’ve been asking herself, “you ready to work with me on this?”

  He sighed, and she tensed for another excuse.

  “Yes,” he said, sounding wry, and tired, and rueful.

  She turned her head to look at him, and met his eyes, green, steady, and very serious. The last of her anger drained away.

  “Good,” she said, and pushed away from the rail.

  “Come on inside; we’ll have a glass of wine and talk about it.”

  • • • • • •

  “Knew it was a bad job when y’took it,” Festina said, as she locked the door behind her, and slid the switch up on the loomerlamp. Slowly, light melted the shadows; a chair came up outta the dim, covered over with a fluffy blanket. Next to it, handy, was a cook-box, and under that was a cooler. Books on the table by the other side, anna ’mergency firestone right there in the center of the floor.

  Cozy ’nough nest; and certain better’n the Watch’s idee of overnight lodgins. Watch was lookin’ for her, natural-nough. Wasn’t a force knowed to man’d keep Ruthie shutup. Pan, he’d lie, good boy that he was, but he’d never got the knack on it, though it was a hard thing to say ’bout her own blood.

  So, anywhose. It was a couple days down in the den, which weren’t so bad. Things’d die down; Watch’d get other worries; she’d gawn home and open back up for bidness.

  Been a stupid thing, anywho, that job, she told herself, as she made sure o’the locks—good locks, all coded and modern, none o’your mechanicals with the spin dials all it needed was a wise way wit’a bolt cutter to solve . . .

  So—stupid thing, takin’ that job. Road Boss—you dint wanna retire the Road Boss. Not really, you dint, though on the face, it looked good for bidness.

  She sat down in the chair, opened the cooler and pulled out a brew.

  Problem was right there—what usetabe good for bidness . . . maybe wasn’t anymore. Boss Conrad’s sweep, the knockin’ down o’the tollbooths, the openin’ up o’the Road, all the way up an’ down the whole of it—

  Couldn’t really argue any of those things was bad for bidness. You looked close, you saw them changes might be good for bidness. Early days, big changes made, bigger changes comin’—it could go either way, with all that in the air. You wanted to be careful of it, somethin’ so big an’ wibbly-wobbly. You dint wanna go breakin’ what wasn’t quite taken shape yet. Had to trust to it, though it went ’gainst the grain—had to trust the Bosses knew what they was aimin’ at, and that it’d be more worse’n better if they missed.

  “Shouldna taken the damn job,” she muttered, cracking the seal and sipping the brew. “Couldn’t turn away from the money, that was it. Slush f’brains, Festina Newark, that’s what you got—slush f’brains.”

  Well, and it was always about the money for her. Two cantra—you dint turn down that kinda cash, not anybody she’d ever met. Not that anybody she’d ever met had ever really been offered that kinda cash . . .

  So, anyways.

  She leaned back in the chair and sipped.

  They’d had ’er sign a paper—that was your Liadens for you, crazy ’bout their papers. Paper said she’d keep on tryin’ ’til the Road Boss—that bein’ him or her, either one, ’cording to what was writ—was dead an proved. Festina figured the client, they’d thought one without the other was good as both dead. Herself, personally, she thought maybe one without t’other was more snow’n anybody could shovel, but it weren’t her place, to be showin’ the client their errors.

  No help for it. Much as it’d hurt, she’d have to refund the money. Less the starter fee, ’course, girl hadda eat, and she’d paid out a little lite upfront to the six of ’em, so’s to put some fire in their stoves.

  Refund the money, that was it, tear up the paper . . .

  An’ don’t be stupid again, Festina, she told herself sternly. You’r
e too old a woman to be makin’ that kinda mistake.

  She sighed and sipped—and then froze, staring.

  There came another knock at the door.

  • • • • • •

  The Road Boss wasn’t exactly doing a lot of business this morning. Despite the minutes of past meetings and the agendas for coming meetings all lined up neat on her screen and ready for review, Miri’d twice caught herself nodding off. That was the thing about sitting in an office all day. The home office was at least at home. She could take a break, walk in the garden—even go down to the gym for a quick dance of menfri’at, or a swim in the pool.

  The Road Boss’s office, well—say it was big enough to do the job, and not much room built in for anything more expansive than behind-the-desk calisthenics.

  After she’d found her head heavy again, she snapped to her feet, crossed the tiny space, and jerked open the door.

  Nelirikk spun ’round in his chair, his reactions a little less quick than normal, too. She grinned.

  “Captain?”

  “I’m up for a walk,” she said. “Clear the cobwebs out. It’s either that or lock the door and put down for a nap.”

  Her aide considered her.

  “A run around the port with a full battle pack?” he suggested.

  “I’m too old for that,” she told him. “But you do what you like. Let’s put up the back in half-hour sign and see if we can make it to Mack’s and back.”

  “The distance, easily,” Nelirikk said, fishing the appropriate sign out of its bin, and looming to his feet. “But if Colonel Mack wants to talk . . .”

  Miri laughed.

  “Be there all day, easy. So we’ll go down the portmaster’s office. C’mon.”

  She opened the door, and stepped out into the day, knowing he was right behind her; took a deep breath of crisp-to-the-point-of-crunchy air, sighed—

  And spun, going low by instinct, grabbing the leading arm before she properly saw it, pivoting, then falling, as her assailant got a boot around her knee, yanking the leg out from under, and they both went down on the tarmac, hard.

  Miri kicked, and twisted, got one arm free and up, just as metal gleamed in the edge of her eye. She grabbed the wrist and kicked again, hard, pitching them over with her on top, banging the wrist against the ’crete until the knife flew away and a hoarse voice gasped into her ear.

  “Good, now, Boss you gotta listen. I’m inna lotta trouble and I need your help.”

  • • • • • •

  “So,” Miri said, “they didn’t let you tear up the paper and walk?”

  “Worse’n that,” said the rangy woman with the black eye, and the field-wrapped wrist. She was holding a cup of coffee in her undamaged hand.

  Miri closed her eyes. The woman had given her name as Tina Newark— “Festina’s the formal, named after my four-times grandma, never could figure out why”—and it was bad enough she’d agreed to take a job getting the Road Boss—one or the other, the client hadn’t been picky, which—retired. Even worse, she’d taken the job from a pair of Liadens, who’d of course insisted on a contract, all right and proper, which o’course Festina had signed, because they were dangling two shiny cantra pieces in front of her eyes like candy, and ’sides, anything written down could be written out.

  “What’s worse?” she asked Festina now.

  “Well, they said they saw I needed more incentive to get the job done, and so they’d bailed Pan—that’s my nephew, all the family I got left—outta the Whosegow, and was giving him hospitality—that’s what they called it, hospitality, until it happens the terms is met.”

  That sounded a little edgier than you’d expect from your plain vanilla Solcintra street Liaden, Miri thought. Could be the DOI’d decided to use local talent—wouldn’t be the first time, in fact.

  Either or any way, though, it had to be taken off at the knees and now, before they lost Tina’s boy, or any other sort-of innocent bystander.

  “You don’t happen to have that contract on you?” she asked.

  Festina grinned, and nodded.

  “Right jacket pocket, Boss. I can ease it out, nice and slow, or your mountain there can do it for us.”

  “Beautiful,” Miri said. “Help Ms. Newark get that paper out of her pocket, please.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  He leaned in, as Miri reached over to the desk and picked up the comm.

  • • • • • •

  “The form is unobjectionable,” Ms. kaz’Ineo murmured, putting the contract on the desk before her, and squaring it up precisely. “The conditions are . . . somewhat stern, even allowing for the natural grief of kin. On Liad, the second party’s qe’andra would have sought softer terms.”

  She turned her head toward the stocky grey-haired customer leaning against the wall of Miri’s office.

  “Your opinion, Apprentice Jorish?”

  “Well, ma’am,” he said slowly; “you an’ me been talking about Balance, and how the best contracts strike fair between the needs of both sides—”

  She raised a hand.

  “Fair is inexact, I think,” she murmured.

  “Could be it is, ma’am,” he said agreeably. “What I’m thinking, though, is about this sternness you was notin’. What I heard was rage and black bitterness. The folks wrote this thing wanted revenge, not Balance.”

  Ms. kaz’Ineo considered him, her head tipped to one side.

  “I believe that I understand you,” she said after a moment. “While a contract is not necessarily an instrument of Balance—you will remind me to revisit the concept and place of Balance with you; we seem to have taken a wrong turning.”

  “Yes’m; not the first time, is it?” he said cheerfully.

  She smiled slightly.

  “No, indeed, it is not. Nor will it be the last. I am, however, confident that we shall navigate these differences, Apprentice Jorish, as we learn, each from the other.

  “For the present moment, allow me to state that contracts are written to provide advantage. The best contracts provide advantage to all members in the agreement. This is not so much Balance as it is mutual profit. While it might be that a contract will be written in order to effect a Balance, you are correct in your conjecture that it ought not promote active harm. This contract . . .”

  She touched the small, squared pile before her.

  “The payoff of this contract is anguish and loss. No one profits—not even the originators. I admit to some surprise, that it has come from the offices of ber’Lyn and her’With, a reputable firm.”

  She paused, staring again at her little space of nothing.

  “Would you have written that paper, ma’am,” asked Jorish, “if they’d come to you?”

  Ms. kaz’Ineo blinked.

  “A provocative question, Apprentice Jorish. It grieves me to say that—I am not certain. One becomes so busy; it is far too simple a thing, merely to follow the forms, and fail to look beyond them.

  “No, I cannot say that I would not have written it. Certainly, had it come to me from the hands of a client, I would have negotiated, and sought softeners. It would not have occurred to me to counsel my client to withdraw. The belief, among qe’andra, is that all is negotiable. We are not accustomed to thinking in such terms as a contract that ought never to have been written.”

  She inclined her head.

  “Thank you, Apprentice Jorish.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “So,” said Miri. “What do you advise?”

  The qe’andra shook her head.

  “I cannot advise. However ill-conceived, the contract has been written; it was presented to the second party, who signed it, thereby signaling her agreement to all terms. We might, on Liad, were the difficulties noted beyond the form, as they have been here, have convened a committee, but, here—?”

  She looked again at her ’prentice.

  “Is there some native protocol, Apprentice Jorish, which addresses such matters?”

 
He grinned.

  “You mean besides me getting my crew together and going against their crew, knuckles-to-knuckles?”

  “We would prefer not to fuel a riot, yes. Also, there is the question of the young man’s safety.”

  She inhaled sharply, and looked to Miri, eyes narrowed.

  “In fact, I may be of some use as a negotiator. There is no provision in this contract which requires the holding of a valuable, or a kinsman, as surety for delivery.”

  Miri considered her.

  “You can get the kid out safe, you think?”

  To her credit, Ms. kaz’Ineo hesitated.

  “There are no certainties in life. However, I believe that the odds of removing the young person from his current situation are with us. They may be misguided, but it would seem that—”

  She flipped the contract over to the signature page.

  “Geastera vin’Daza Clan Kinth and Tor Ish tez’Oty Clan Yrbaiela wish to follow proper form, and to see their complaint honorably retired. They wished there to be no opportunity, within the form, for error.

  “I believe that it may be possible that the taking of the young person into their care was a rash move which they are even now regretting. They need only to be shown how to come back into proper alignment.”

  She looked aside.

  “Apprentice Jorish—your opinion, please.”

  “I think you got the straight of it, ma’am. They got rattled, an’ let scared, mad, an’ tired, push ’em into a power move. Good chances they even knew it was a bad move when they made it, but now they don’t know how to give it back without looking weak—losing face, that would be, ma’am. All’s we gotta do is show ’em how to unkink that bit, and Pan’ll be back home in plenty o’time for supper. But—”

  He hesitated.

  “Yes, Apprentice Jorish? You have another consideration?”

  “Well, only, ma’am, it’s all good, getting young Pan back onto the street—leastwise ’til the Watch picks him up for whatever he’ll bungle next—no offense meant, Tina, but that boy’s got two left feet an’ ten thumbs.”

  “No argument, here,” Festina Newark said equably. “But he’s everything in this cold world I got to call kin.”