A Liaden Universe® Constellation, Volume 4

by Sharon Lee

  “If I do not go, I will break faith with the contract.”

  “Surely, the contract does not say that you will accompany him when you are ill, or injured.”

  “It says that I am his to command in all things,” Don Eyr said. “Is he likely to cede me an evening?”

  The chef was silent, and Don Eyr sighed.

  “Yes, far more likely that he will derive a good deal of pleasure from dragging me here and there until dawn, and explaining to all and sundry how I happened to be clumsier than usual this evening.”

  “My friend, this is not a life for you.”

  “I agree,” Don Eyr said. “Of your kindness; may I have a pen and a blank page?”

  • • • • • •

  The note was dispatched.

  At the chef’s insistence, Don Eyr had spent a half-hour with his shoulder in the grip of the kitchen’s first aid kit, which did little more than administer an analgesic, and a therapeutic massage. Had the bone been broken, it might have done more; bruises, though, had to take their own time.

  He showered, and changed his clothes, and was sitting down to a bowl of soup, cheese, and a small bread—Zelli had become proficient with small breads—when there came a clamor at the delivery door, which Vessa scrambled to answer.

  “Don Eyr? There’s a . . . young person wanting to speak with you.”

  A young person?

  He shoved back his stool and all but ran to the back door.

  The child—not Jax Ton, but one of the older children. To his shame, he had not learned their names. He had not thought it would be needful.

  “Forgive me—you are?”

  “Ashti, sir.” She bobbed her head, and swallowed. “Jax Ton sends that Serana had been injured.”

  • • • • • •

  Arba be damned; and Serat, and their soulless, legal contract, too.

  “You have not seen me,” he told his friend the chef. “You have no idea where I am.”

  “He will not ask; but yes—if he does so, that is my tale.”

  Don Eyr bundled Ashti into a taxi, got out when the driver balked at going any further, and fair ran along the broken streets.

  He followed the child up the rattling stairs to the ramshackle suite at the top of the building. She paused at the landing, and a shadow stepped out of darker shadows—Jax Ton, holding his pipe at ready.

  “He came,” Ashti said, and Jax Ton looked beyond her, to his face, his own pale and worried.

  “Go in,” he said, and stepped aside.

  Don Eyr inclined his head, and paused a moment to steady his breathing. Serana was injured; he must not come to her in disorder.

  Calmer, if not calm, he opened the door, and stepped through.

  The first room was crowded with solemn-faced children, who stepped aside to let him through, to the back room, bathed in the uncertain light of emergency dims. There was a long form stretched out on what might easily have been a bed or a table, and another, sitting on the stool beside.

  That figure rose at his entrance, and moved forward, to the place where the light was strongest. She was whip-thin, and dark, wearing the usual Low Port motley, with a soldier’s jacket over all. There were two deliberate, diagonal scars down her right cheek.

  She bowed.

  “I am Fireyn, sir. The medic.”

  A medic. Of course. Serana was wounded. Jax Ton was a sensible lad; he would have called for a medic. Though it made his blood run cold, that she had needed one.

  “How badly . . .” he began, but at that point, the bed spoke.

  “A scratch only, petit; I swear it to you. And my own fault, to add to the sting.”

  “You cannot see around corners,” Fireyn the medic said, in a comfortable, mild way, as if she and Serana were long known to each other. “And it is rather more than a scratch, my friend, though not nearly as bad as it could have been.”

  She stepped aside, and moved a hand, waving him to the bed and the stool.

  “Please—you are Don Eyr, are you not?”

  “Yes. Forgive me. I am remiss.”

  “You are, I expect, worried. Satisfy yourself, I beg. I will be outside, with Jax Ton.”

  The medic left. Don Eyr sank down to the stool she had vacated.

  “So,” he said, his voice shaking, despite an effort to sound appropriately stern. “This scratch of yours.”

  “I was careless, and met paz’Kormit at the corner. He took offense more quickly than I could mount a defense.” She sighed.

  “But as Fireyn says, it is not so bad as it could have been—he was thrusting for the gut, and I made very sure to break his arm.”

  “Serana . . .”

  “Hush, small one; it is done, and already I am mending. Fireyn was trained as a field medic; she is very good.”

  “Where did she come from?”

  Serana smiled at him.

  “Where should she come from, save Low Port? And now it is your turn.”

  “My turn?” He blinked at her.

  “Yes, your shoulder; there is some stiffness there; I marked it when you came in.”

  His shoulder, gods; it seemed a hundred years ago.

  “It is a day to be careless, I suppose. I went to collect the rent today—”

  “Alone!”

  “Of course, alone,” he said gently. “In any case, I went early to Mr. tal’Qechee, who was annoyed by my impertinence, and made me wait until all of last night’s winnings had been counted out to pay me. So that he did not have to open the safe, you see.”

  Serana muttered something in Lutetian under her breath.

  “I object, as it casts curs in a bad light. But, yes; I was therefore late for my second appointment, and was in addition required to soothe ruffled emotions, before I could collect what was owed. Leaving that appointment, I saw that I might almost be on time for the third, if only I hurried . . .”

  “So you hurried, and you did not look.”

  “Exactly. Two in Mr. tal’Qechee’s employ sought to recover the rent, plus a bonus. I disabled the first, but the second had a stick. He was almost too quick.”

  “Almost,” said Serana, with satisfaction.

  “I believe that he has a broken wrist. In any case, I had the stick until I threw it away in Mid-Port.”

  “And your shoulder. Broken?”

  “Merely deeply insulted.”

  She smiled in the dimness.

  “It seems obvious to me, little one, that we each do better when we have the other nearby.”

  “I have also reached this conclusion.”

  He raised his hands; lowered them.

  “Serana, forgive me. I had not meant to leave you alone so long, but Arba has kept me busy every hour since I returned.”

  “It is fortunate that he did not require you tonight,” she said.

  “He did,” Don Eyr said. “But your need was greater.”

  She drew a hard breath.

  “I am flattered, but he will hurt you, little one.”

  “No,” said Don Eyr. “He will not. I am done with this sham. And I will not leave you, Serana. Not again.”

  “Peace.” She placed a hand on his knee. “The children, Don Eyr . . .”

  “I have no notion about the children; my famously twisty mind has failed me.”

  “Then it is fortunate that I have had a notion,” she said. “What is wrong, Don Eyr, with Low Port?”

  “Aside from being lawless and blighted by poverty and ignorance?”

  “You put it so succinctly! Yes, exactly. We can, with these children—we can make a beginning.”

  “A beginning of what?”

  “We may establish a Watch house, in the grand tradition of Lutetia. I may teach; and you may. We shall gather to us also a handful of senior officers . . .”

  “From whence will these senior officers come?” he wondered.

  “As Fireyn, they will come from Low Port. There are those who were abandoned, as she was, by her merc unit, and others, who are not nat
urally lawless, and who resist a devolution into brutes. They are intermittently forces of law, order, and protection, but they perhaps lack motivation, or opportunity to do more.”

  “And we offer them motivation—the children?”

  “Indeed, little one. What master does not wish for an apprentice to carry her work on when it is come time for her to sit on the back porch, drink wine, and tell bawdy stories?”

  He smiled.

  “And you—I have seen how you leap to teach, who rejected the role of a teacher at the Institute. Would it not please you, to teach, as well as to nourish?”

  “You paint a picture,” he said slowly. “But, Serana—in Low Port?”

  “In fact. Fireyn knows of a place—an old barracks, not far from here; perhaps a block nearer the Mid-Port. There is, she tells me, a kitchen, with ovens. She not being a baker or a cook, she cannot tell me if they would meet your needs. In front, there is what had been a recruiting office, which may be well for a bakery. It is tentative; I have not seen it. Indeed, I was on my way to meet her so that I might inspect it today when I fell into error. It is how she came upon me so quickly.”

  “Serana . . .”

  “A scratch, I swear it to you. I will be perfectly fine on the morrow.”

  “More lives than a cat,” he said softly, putting his hand over hers.

  “Just so.”

  “What will happen, now that you have broken Serat’s agreement?” Serana asked after a time.

  “I think . . . nothing,” he said, slowly, the other events of the evening beginning to return to him. “I must, tomorrow, leave you—for a few hours. I sent ’round to Mr. dea’Bon; it is possible that Arba has broken Code, or at least defied the terms of the contract, on the occasions when he struck me. I have had it pointed out to me that he is not my delm, who may kill me as the whim takes him, and nothing in the contract cedes a delm’s authority over me to Arba.”

  “So,” said Serana with satisfaction.

  “It may not suffice; my word against his—”

  “And mine,” she said, fiercely.

  “And yours. But, tomorrow, I must go. Also . . .” he hesitated, unwilling to raise hope prematurely.

  “Tell me.”

  “I may have found a way to release myself from Serat, at least in part.”

  She stirred.

  “What has Don Eyr’s twisty mind produced this time?” she wondered softly.

  “Do you remember the play—Degrees of Separation?”

  There was a pause before Serana laughed softly.

  “Do you think it will suffice, the clever nadelm’s scheme?”

  “I think that I will lay it before Mr. dea’Bon and allow him to determine that.”

  He leaned forward suddenly.

  “Do you, indeed, wish to remain here, to establish a Watch, and raise these children to the tradition?”

  “I do. We cannot abandon them; therefore, we must teach them. They will then teach others, and so it will spread, wider with each new generation of teachers.”

  “A long goal, Serana.”

  “But worthy.”

  “As you say.”

  Silence fell; he may have dozed, for he waked to her pulling on his hand.

  “Come and lie down by me. I have missed sleeping with you, petit.”

  He needed no more persuasion than that, and so they arranged themselves, careful of their injuries, and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  • • • • • •

  His account as an honorable man, with Law Officer Serana Benoit corroborating, was, indeed, enough.

  “You need not return to him, my lord,” Mr. dea’Bon said, with stern authority. “While this matter is under examination by the Accountant’s Guild, you may return to the safety of your clanhouse.”

  “Ah,” said Don Eyr; “you anticipate my next topic. But, first, if I may—how much could I expect to realize from the sale of my property on Ezhel’ti?”

  “As it happens, I have an offer on my desk, from your father’s clan. Their offer, so my colleague on Ezhel’ti tells, me is low, though not insultingly so. We may be able to negotiate upwards somewhat. Have you instructions?”

  “Yes,” Don Eyr said, “sell it for as good a price as you can reasonably get. Do not endanger the sale by attempting to wring every bit from the buyer. My need is cash, in the very near future.”

  Mr. dea’Bon made a note on his pad.

  “I will see it done, my Lord.” He looked up. “I remind that you have complete control over the account which is fed by your rents. If your need exceeds those funds, I am prepared, personally, to advance you a portion of the money you will certainly realize from the sale of your property.”

  “Thank you; that may be necessary, but for the moment, let it remain a possibility.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Excellent; we now address the likelihood of my return to the supposed safety of my clanhouse. Under no circumstances will I do so. My intention is set up my own establishment. I will remain on-planet, for I think that may be required, but I wish to file an Intention to Separate, immediately.”

  Mr. dea’Bon raised his eyebrows.

  “That is . . . quite old.”

  “Is it disallowed?”

  “Disallowed? Oh, no. No, not at all. I will have to do some research, but there is nothing to prevent you from filing such an Intention. However, you must, if memory serves me, set forth the conditions by which you would return to the arms of your clan.”

  “Yes. I will gladly return if and when Serat agrees to accommodate my household. Which at this moment includes Captain Benoit, nine children, and a calico kitten. I anticipate the household will grow, as we establish our base. Also, I insist that the monies belonging to my household shall be kept separate from the clan’s accounts, and the delm shall be specifically barred from access.”

  Mr. dea’Bon had a dreamy look on his face. Very nearly, he was seen to smile. He made a brisk series of notes on his pad, and looked up once more.

  “I believe I may work with this. May I ask, when we have achieved a successful outcome, that I be allowed to share the work with my colleagues? An Intention of Separation is rare enough, but these terms . . .”

  He blinked and emerged somewhat from his dream state.

  “You do understand, my lord? You must be prepared to return to Serat’s care, if your terms are met.”

  “I understand,” said Don Eyr.

  “Excellent. There is one more detail. While the investigation into Arba’s breach of contract is taking place, by Code your delm may freeze your quartershare, and your personal accounts.” He paused.

  “I advise that, in this case, Serat long ago emptied your accounts. The monies you received while you were attending school were from the rent of your house on Ezhel’ti.”

  He glanced once more at his note pad.

  “Is there any other way in which I might serve you, my lord?”

  “I think—yes. There is an old barracks at Crakle and Toom in the Low Port. Can you find for me who owns it, and how I may acquire it?”

  Another note.

  “Yes. Is there a comm code I may have, in order to report my progress?”

  “I will have it for you . . . tomorrow, sir. For today, we are wanted in our household.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  The old gentleman rose, and bowed.

  “Until soon, my lord. Captain Benoit.”

  FIVE

  Some Years Later

  The morning rush was over, and Don Eyr stepped out onto the porch to bask in the mid-morning sunshine. The porch faced the exercise yard, and there was a self-defense lesson in progress. Cisco and Ail Den were pushing the older children hard, and they were rising to the challenge.

  The younger children were at their ethics lesson, taught by Serana. Later, he would meet them in the kitchen, and they would collaborate on making the mid-day meal for the household. A household that had expanded, from the original nine children, to a
dozen, guarded and educated by five very capable adults, supported by a veritable army of cats, fierce mousers, and interested companions.

  There was more—a small neighborhood had grown up around them; an area of relative peace, in which the neighbors assisted, and kept watch for, each other. The bakery provided bread, and sweets, and a gathering place, and the children of other households often attended lessons with the children of the bake house.

  Don Eyr sighed, and stretched, and, hearing the step behind him, turned into Serana’s embrace.

  “Is it well, little one?” she asked softly.

  He laughed softly.

  “It is well, Serana. Very well, indeed.”

  Une Petite Liste de Mots Étranges

  A small list of strange words

  ****

  Key:

  f: French

  g: Gallic

  l: Liaden

  Excerpts from Two Lives

  A Liaden story that’s been waiting to be written for a long time from the Terran side of things, “Excerpts from Two Lives” is based on a song mentioned in our third novel, Carpe Diem. We’d known from the song that a tragedy was involved, but exactly how that unfolded we didn’t know until this story—requested by Baen editors Christopher Roucchio and Tony Daniel for their anthology Star Destroyers—was finished.

  ****

  Averil 21, 407 Confederation Standard Year

  “Beam Banks One and Two, go live as leads. We have identified and targeted a threat. Prepare to fire on my command, on radar’s central target. This is not a drill, you will go to full combat power. Saturate the disc at all wavelengths.”

  Proper quiet, proper response. The ship’s routine went on but the air circulators changed speed, and life-support panels grew angry red as combat-power overrides initiated. Small bells echoed the necessities of combat: hatches, airlocks, and pressure doors sealed.

  “Combat power up.” Nerves in that voice, but it didn’t squeak.

  “Lead banks, we’ll need three consecutive full-power bursts from each—lock that in! Bank Three, slave to Bank One, two point seven five second delay, wide angle. Bank Four, slave to Bank Three, ultrawide angle. Banks Five through Twelve, go to high alert. Missilery Section, watch for bulk breakaway going in-system, target at will. Section leaders, you will particularly react to bulk breakaway coming our way.”