A Liaden Universe® Constellation, Volume 4

by Sharon Lee

  “I have, I assure you, perused the Book of Clans. It reveals to me that Clan Telrune is seated upon Echieta, a world which appears to exist to offer repairs to ships in . . . reduced circumstances. It is, perhaps, an unsavory world; nor does Clan Telrune appear to stand high among the Clans seated there.”

  “Alas, there are many such worlds, and stations, as Echieta, which pursue their lives as they find best, away from the luminous oversight of the homeworld,” Petrella said, perhaps not as gently as she might have done. Indeed, the editor’s lips parted. Petrella raised her hand, and spoke on.

  “Your question, however, has to do with the personal history of yos’Phelium’s contracted spouse. Fer Gun pen’Uldra is the grandson and only surviving heir of Arl Fed pen’Uldra, who had been for many years an influence in the so-called Divers Trade Association. He served two terms as one of the twelve seated commissioners—six Liaden, and six Terran—and served also for many years as one of the twenty-four ombudsmen, as well as standing Thirteenth—the tie-breaking vote—for three cycles of the council.

  “At one time, Arl Fed pen’Uldra owned, with his lifemate, a fleet of four small traders.”

  Finlee as’Barta stared at her.

  “I would ask for documentation, as the Book of Clans has failed me.”

  “The information is largely found in the trade histories. It will be my pleasure to send the cites to you.”

  “I thank you. One does wonder what became of the traderships, the grandfather, and the spouse’s parents.”

  “The tale turns bitter, I fear,” Petrella said. “This information will of course be included in the cites. In short, the success of the Divers Trade Association made its members targets of pirates and other unsavory persons. Captain pen’Uldra lost his ships, his lifemate, and his children. With the one grandchild remaining to him not yet a Standard old, he sought refuge with his cousins in Clan Telrune, the better to hide the child from those who would murder him for his birthright. Captain pen’Uldra died very soon after going to ground on Echieta, and the child, now yos’Phelium’s spouse, was raised by Telrune.”

  “A touching history,” Editor as’Barta murmured. “Pilot pen’Uldra is fortunate that Korval was aware of his circumstances. Of course, he is a pilot to behold?”

  “By all accounts, he is,” Petrella acknowledged.

  “Which must of course, Korval being Korval, carry all before it.”

  Editor as’Barta turned to survey Chi and her spouse, who were receiving congratulations from Azia pel’Otra Clan Elarnt, a solid trading family long affiliated with Korval in general and yos’Galan in particular.

  “Quite young, too,” as’Barta said, which was merely spite, “and one assumes, easily guided.”

  “That has not been my experience of the pilot,” Petrella answered sweetly.

  “I must excuse myself,” she added. “Be assured that I will send the cites to you this evening.”

  She bowed, and as’Barta did, and Petrella walked away, seething, to greet the other guests.

  • • • • • •

  It was done.

  Well, no, Fer Gun corrected himself; the signing and the reception, and the displaying of manners only recently learned to persons he had never thought to meet, even if he had known of their existence—that was done. He hoped he did not flatter himself, to think that it had been done, if not well, at least credibly.

  He had found it . . . astonishingly easy to fall into Lord ter’Meulen’s suggested mode of soft-voiced modesty, and allow his spouse to carry all before her. It was entirely possible that he had learned some important and interesting things during his tour of the gather-room on Chi yos’Phelium’s arm. His grandfather had told him that information was a coin with limited value, until it was paired with another, like, coin.

  His grandfather had said other things, too, most of them doubtful, if not outright daft. But the importance of holding on to scraps of information until all the pieces came together to form a quilt—that Fer Gun had found to be apt. Trader Yinzatch aboard Selich, where he’d hired on directly after school—Trader Yinzatch held to a similar understanding of data and its relationships, and had in addition been a wizard in matching edges. It had been an education to watch the trader at work, even for a pilot.

  For now, though . . .

  For now, he was at liberty, having been shown to the apartment which was to be his during the time he guested in Korval’s house—another named as if it were a ship: Jelaza Kazone.

  They were pleasant rooms, much less grand than those he had lived in at Glavda Empri, which was, he admitted to himself, a relief.

  He took some moments to explore, after he had removed his loaned finery, and placed the ring and earrings into the plain box atop the dresser. He frowned on finding several rings, and earrings, a handful of jeweled pins, and glittering chains in the box when he opened it. He took a breath, to cool the flicker of temper. The contract, he reminded himself, stipulated that he might be required to attend several more gathers in support of his spouse. It would not show well on her, if he appeared each time in the same coat—which was why there were six made in his size hanging in the closet. It would show equally ill on her, if he repeated today’s jewels—or wore those which were his in truth—a pair of silver earrings set with ruby, which his grandfather had told him had belonged to his mother, and a silver bracelet which had, according to grandfather, belonged to his mother’s mother.

  After he had explored the apartment, he looked in the tiny kitchen. He had eaten little at the luncheon, and only sipped the wine, feeling the need to have such wits as he owned well about him. Nor had he done justice to the breakfast he had been offered at Glavda Empri.

  He ought, he reasoned, be hungry; it had been a long day and difficult, and by no means over yet. A perusal of the various small foods and vintages in the kitchen, however, failed to turn up anything that tempted, and in the end he drew a glass of cold water, and went to stand in the window and look down at a tangle of vegetation through which a slender walk could barely be seen.

  He knew little about growing things or gardens. The disorder of this one appealed to him, though, and he was drawn to the colors of the many flowers.

  He glanced upward, but the angle of the window foiled any sighting of Korval’s Tree, the top of which he could see quite clearly from his rooms at Glavda Empri.

  After a time, his water finished, he left the window, and glanced to the bookcase, not so that he might know which titles were available to him, but that he might see the small clock set on one of the shelves.

  His stomach tightened, and his chest cramped. In an hour, he was to meet his wife in the contract-room, there to perform such duties as had been laid out in the contract.

  Deliberately, he closed his eyes, and ran one of the mental exercises which were taught to pilots, to ensure that their minds were clear and their energy levels high.

  His breathing smoothed; his muscles relaxed.

  Yes, he told himself, that’s more the mode; it’s a risky flight, but you’ll do well so long as you mind your board.

  Well.

  With another glance at the clock, he went to ready himself for duty.

  • • • • • •

  He arrived in the contract room early, so not to keep his wife waiting—which was respectful, according to the sections of Code Lady yo’Lanna had him Learn, and then discussed with him over the morning meal, in order to set the material in his mind.

  Respectful it may have been, but it did nothing for his nerves to be alone with the ornate bed, a living vine growing up the posts and across the headboard, the flowers nodding heavily and giving up their scent to the room.

  He regretted now, his failure to eat; he had wanted to keep a clear head, but the flowers would have him muddled before ever the business was well underway.

  Stepping away from the bed, he opened the window, filling his lungs with cool air lightly scented with loam and green growing things and flowers of a . . . less
complex nature.

  He leaned closer into the window, closed his eyes—and snapped upright, eyes open, as he heard a door open.

  Chi yos’Phelium, his contracted wife, glided silently toward him on naked feet. She wore, as he did, a long silk robe, belted at the waist. His robe was black, painted red flowers extending from his left shoulder, across his chest, down, and all around the hem. Her robe was green, patterned with small blue birds—or small blue dragons—and the belt was tied loosely, indeed.

  He swallowed, hard, and recalled himself, a bare relumma in the past, rough and angry in a low port bar, thinking that certainly he would bed the elder pilot, if she was prepared to buy herself some fun, and maybe he would keep her on his string, too, since he’d had no other means to eat.

  That Fer Gun pen’Uldra, he thought now, had been an idiot. A swaggering port-tough who had no idea of real danger.

  This Fer Gun pen’Uldra, contracted to give the fine elder pilot before him a child . . . recognized every one of his failings in an instant; his lack of finesse or any other bed-skill, save, perhaps, endurance, and even that, he thought, as she crossed the room like a tigress, might fall before her.

  She was good to look upon, too. Elder pilot, indeed, he sneered at his past idiot self. Oh, she was older than he was, in years, in guile, in polish. She might undertake to teach him his own name, and he would learn from her lesson. He was not her match—not near her match, in any thing—and it was far more likely that she would have kept a brash pilot on her string for exactly so long as she had use for him, had their first meeting gone as he had predicted, and cast him away with nothing when she was done.

  The green robe clung to every line of her long, strong frame. The skin revealed by the loosened knot was pure gold, and so smooth his fingers, still rough despite Lady yo’Lanna’s lotions, would surely catch and scratch her.

  She came to stand beside him, and turned her face to the window, smiling into the soft breeze.

  “The inner court at this hour is splendid, is it not?” she said in the comfortable mode of Comrade.

  “The breeze is refreshing,” he offered in turn, marking the unsteadiness in his own voice.

  “That it is,” she said, apparently noting nothing amiss.

  She stepped slightly away from the window, turning so that they faced each other.

  “I have a gift for you,” she said; “may I give it?”

  His victory was that he did not look immediately at what the robe revealed, but kept his eyes on hers.

  “I . . . have no gift for you,” he said, around a feeling of strong dismay. The giving of contract-room gifts had not been among those customs he had Learned. Had he given offense already? Perhaps it might soothe the feelings of his past self, that at least it had not been for his performance in bed.

  “There is no reason why you should have any gift for me, other than yourself,” Chi yos’Phelium was saying, with a smile. “It is a whim—I fear that you will find me whimsical.”

  She paused, head tipped to one side.

  “May I give the gift?”

  He drew a breath, seeking calm, and managed to meet her smile with one of his own.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Excellent.”

  She raised the hand she had kept slightly behind her; he took the card from between slim fingers—and only just managed to swallow a curse.

  “My license!” he said, staring at her.

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “Is the gift inept?”

  He drew a breath, folding his hand around the card in sudden fear that she might snatch it back. Whimsical, indeed.

  “The gift is appreciated,” he said choosing his words with as much care as he was able. “But, Pilot—I was to have stood, wingless, a year. At the end of our contract, you had promised to come with me to the Guild and speak for my good name. That,” he concluded, somewhat breathlessly, “was the agreement.”

  “Well, so it was,” she said. “But you will need your license and your wings if we are to take our partnership forward in the matter of the small trader, and so I said to the Guild Master. He was much struck.”

  She bought your card back for you, Fer Gun told himself. Gods alive, she bribed the guildmaster. He ought to have cared, indeed, the risk of it chilled him, but very nearly all of his thought was for the license in his hand, which he would not relinquish again for anything he could name.

  “We also reviewed the matter which had brought you to the attention of the port proctors and so the Guild,” Chi said, turning toward the small table that held a pitcher of wine and a plate of cheeses and small breads.

  Fer Gun swallowed.

  “And?” he said.

  Her eyebrows rose again.

  “Why, the guildmaster agreed that your cousins are very clever. Will you have wine?”

  He blinked. That was twice she had commented on the cleverness of his cousins. There was something there, and he too thick-headed to see it—and the lady had asked him a question.

  “Wine,” he said careful again. “I would prefer not. The flowers . . .”

  The flowers were making him queasy, and his head was beginning to ache with their stench. If he was to do her any good at all this night . . .

  “Ah.”

  She inclined her head.

  “They are rather insistent, are they not?” she said and walked past him to push the window wide.

  Pausing there, she looked down into the garden, then turned again to face him.

  “I should like to go for a walk in the garden,” she said. “It is my habit of an evening, and I have not had an opportunity, amid all the brangle and the bowing. How if you put your ticket safely away, and accompany me? It is a very fine garden, despite its disreputable habit.”

  “I—” he stammered to a halt. “What does one wear, to ramble through a garden at night?”

  She glanced down at herself, and then to him.

  “These will do,” she said. “Will you come?”

  “Yes,” he said, and bowed. “I will only be a moment.”

  • • • • • •

  It was much pleasanter in the garden than inside, Chi thought; and the lad—she stopped herself. She needed to stop thinking of him in quite that way. Yes, she could give him a dozen years or more—yet he was a man grown, who held a Jump pilot’s license, and had managed, against considerable odds to the contrary, to survive his childhood, the death of his sole protector, and the particular attentions of his so-clever cousins.

  Thrust into a game the rules of which he could not hope to master, yet he had managed to keep himself in good order, without exposing vulnerability or weakness to those who might be expected to exploit such things. He had learnt the lessons he had been set to, and Ilthiria had not spared him, for either his youth or his upbringing.

  “Who cares for all of these?” he asked now.

  She glanced over to him—very nearly, he matched her own height, a novelty of its own—and moved her shoulders.

  “In theory, I do,” she said, wry in the face of his earnestness. “In truth, there is Master Gardner Byneta with whom I confer, and who will occasionally allow me to weed out a planting, but does not, I fear, quite trust me with a landscape knife.”

  He frowned at her.

  “You were a Scout, Lady yo’Lanna told me.”

  “Oh, indeed. A captain of Scouts, as it came about, and to the astonishment of everyone, including myself.”

  “Then you’re surely safe with a landscape knife,” he pursued.

  She grinned.

  “As you know and I know. However, those who recall the days when one was scarcely safe with a rubber ball, and liable to stab one’s own hand with a butter knife . . .”

  She smiled, inviting him to acknowledge the joke, and after a moment had the pleasure of seeing a smile that actually reached those space-black eyes, and very nearly thawed them.

  “In any case, it is Master Byneta who cares for the garden, as I do not dare go again
st her wishes.”

  The path they were following all but disappeared beneath an overgrown bank of viburnum. She stepped ahead of him, slipping her hand into his as she passed. She felt his fingers twitch in shock, but he did not withdraw, and she tugged him after her, around the path’s last curve, and into the Tree Court.

  She paused at the very end of the path to allow him to see what it was he approached. His hand, she kept firmly in hers and he did not withdraw, nor even seem to know that they were linked.

  Herself, she felt the Tree’s regard focus upon her, and a greenly sense of welcome. Excellent, her throw had not gone awry.

  “Korval’s Tree,” she said, quietly, to her husband. “My favorite place in all the inner garden.”

  “It is less grown over, here,” Fer Gun said, soft-voiced, as if he sensed something sleeping, and did not wish to wake it. “But . . . more wild.”

  “That would be the Tree’s influence,” she said. “It likes its comfort, be certain of that, and makes certain that all and everything in this court is arranged to its best liking. Come, let us introduce you.”

  She stepped forward, walking carefully over the surface roots, the grass cool and damp against naked feet. He came willingly, still with his hand in hers.

  “You would introduce me to a . . . tree?” Fer Gun asked, when they had achieved the trunk and she had placed her hand palm first against the rough, warm bark.

  “It likes to meet people,” Chi told him. “There are not many new faces come to speak with it in the Tree Court, and it does not itself, you know, travel very well.”

  She heard a chuckle, then, and pleasant hearing it was, low and honestly amused.

  “I can see that travel might present problems,” he said. “What am I to do? Bow?”

  “Indeed not. Merely put your hand, so, against the trunk, and let us see what will happen.”

  • • • • • •

  The garden breeze brought immediate relief to his aching head and queasy stomach. He considered the plants that grudgingly allowed their passage along the stone walk with grateful benevolence. It occurred to him that he had not been at ease—truly at ease—since he had been picked up by the port proctors for holding a piece of paper for his cousin Jai Kob, and thereby lost his wings.