by Doris Egan
"I don't doubt it." Ran accompanied him to the door.
He was back a few seconds later. "Well?" he asked.
I said,"Ran, I've been on Ivory for several years now, and I've sat in on any number of unusual conversations. But I have to say that this was the weirdest."
He smiled, not a happy smile. "He's still more than half convinced I'm guilty. That's why he wants to hire me. So I can let my principals know that he's looking for a meeting. Or if the price is right, so I can tell him my principals' names."
"He didn't say that."
"Yes, he did."
I found myself staring at the dirty dishes. "So you'll have to turn him down."
"That would be an admission of guilt, too. Protecting my client's identity, the first duty of a good sorcerer."
"Well, you can't take him up on it, not if you don't have a client to hand over."
"And then there's Kylla and the marriage."
I sighed. "I thought this was going to be a simple social problem."
He stooped and picked up the plates. "Theodora, why do people always think I'm guilty of something? Is it my face?"
"Has this been happening all your life, or only since you met me?"
"Good point." He balanced my cup atop the pile. "I'm glad you're finally starting to take some responsibility for this constant disruption of my life."
"Huh! If we're going to start talking about disrupting people's lives—"
"I didn't force you to come back to Ivory, that was your fate."
Yeah, fate operating under a Cormallon pseudonym. I followed him into the pantry. "So what are we going to do? Want to talk to Kylla before we get any deeper in this? We'll wake her if we call now."
"Kanz, no. Kylla would grab me by the throat and tell me to do anything it takes, now, to get Jusik in our debt."
"You want me to run the cards? I don't know how helpful they'll be in a situation like this. I mean, they're your cards, they don't care about Kylla or Kade. I can do a regular business configuration… although, technically, you haven't accepted this as a business offer."
Ran stopped short. "A business offer. Why was Jusik so quick to assume Kade was killed for business reasons? It's the normal assumption for most of our clients, but the Six Families practice murder as an art form. Why shouldn't Kade have been the loser in one of their damned games?"
"That's easy." I took the dishes from him and set them down. "Kade was killed by a sorcerer. You were the only known sorcerer on board, and you're not a gameplayer, you're a businessman."
"We can't assume that, though. There may very well have been an amateur sorcerer on board." He leaned on the sideboard unhappily. "This is a mess, sweetheart. Assassinations among the aristocracy are none of our business."
"So turn him down." I smiled, knowing he wouldn't.
Another sigh. "And you know what else," he said. "Now we have Stereth Tar'krim to worry about."
At that point I wasn't really worried about Stereth, because I trusted that as an old friend he would find some way of warning us off the case if he were involved. I wasn't even worried about Kylla and Lysander's marriage, because somehow in the end Kylla always gets things the way she wants them in life. Although I hated to see her unhappy meanwhile.
I was worried about an entirely different subject. That night in bed, I said to Ran, "I want to talk to you about us."
He shifted uncomfortably. Ran does not like to talk about important topics; talk implies uncertainty, and as Cormallon heir he seems to feel the path of his life should not admit uncertainty in any area. He's known since childhood what his duty was and his life should be, so why talk?
I said, "About children."
He looked unhappy. "You don't talk about children, they're something that happens."
"They're something that doesn't happen, too. There's good reason to think that Ivorans might be different genetically from the rest of standard society. Maybe even a different species. I've looked and looked, but I can't find any hard evidence anywhere—maybe somebody knows, some-
where in the Tellys medical complex, but they're not telling if they do—"
"You went to the Tellys medical complex?"
"Just for research. On the Net."
"Oh."
"Listen to me. There's always a chance that you and I won't be able to have children. Or if I do get pregnant we have no idea what'U happen. On the other hand, if you went to the Selian Clinic, we could get a good genetic scenario, with percentage probabilities—"
"No."
"They need both parents to run a scenario."
"What do you mean, both? Have you been?"
"Why would I go without you? Anyway, I've been examined plenty of times back on Athena, so nobody's getting any novel data from me."
He was silent. I got tired of listening to the dark, so I said, "Ran?"
He said, "Look. I will not turn over any informational property of Cormallon, including my body, for study."
"Come on, Ran, we're talking about an outworlder medical clinic. It's not a rival House."
He sat up, throwing back the light summer coverlet. He switched on the light. There was no anger in his face, but I had the feeling he was upset. "Times are changing. With every generation it gets worse. We only reestablished contact with standard society a hundred years ago, did you know that?" He didn't wait for an answer. "It's not going to end now. Every time a new piece of technology is imported, we change a little more. Someday our rivals will be on Tellys and Pyrene, not down the road and over the hill. That's what our grandson will have to worry about; I'd be a fool to make it harder for him."
"Well." I stared at him. "I never thought to hear this from you."
He smiled wryly. "Because I spend all my time focused on whatever the current sorcery assignment is? Because I only seem to worry about this fiscal year?"
"Yes."
The smile was painful. "I'm the First; it's my job to consider the future of the House. Which will not be enhanced by handing goodies to potential enemies."
I didn't try to argue that; to an Ivoran, anyone not in his family is a potential enemy. I said, "Even if the Tellys doctors could isolate a gene in your body for sorcery—if it exists, and if they care enough to try, which I doubt—what good would it do them without the genes themselves, without any practical means of expressing them?"
"Understanding something is the first step to controlling it."
"Without the rest of the steps, the first one doesn't count for much."
"I'm not going." He switched off the light.
I waited till he settled back, then said, "If I can't get pregnant, this hypothetical grandson will never exist. Have you thought about that?"
Silence. My eyes readjusted to the dark. I looked around the small bedroom, at the dressertop with its vials and bottles and containers, at the chest, at the stool in the corner. I gave him plenty of time, then I said, "If I can't get pregnant, will the Cormallon council pressure you to marry somebody else? Take a second wife, the way Lysander's being pressured?"
He said, "I would resist that most strenuously."
He sounded like a politician holding the line against taxes. And we all know how long that lasts: I said, "You should run for one of the democratic offices." Then I slapped my pillow a couple of times to plump it up, and settled down to go to sleep.
Chapter 6
I entered the Porath house again with mixed feelings. We were intruding on a private grief, yet we'd been invited. Add to that the fact that I didn't really know what we were going to do. The role of a sorcerer is generally to cause trouble, not to work out how the trouble came about. When Ran needed investigating done, he generally paid people to do it for him… but then, the investigating was usually nonsorcerous in nature. And strictly business.
I'd run the cards, to be on the safe side, as with any client assignment; they'd suggested a good chance of success and no great danger to Ran, so I'd given my stamp of approval. I hoped I wouldn't regret it.
<
br /> I touched Ran's arm as we passed the lacquered pillars of the central porch. He looked at me.
"I won't be able to stay long," I said, tapping my nose. Cats.
"Twenty minutes. We'll talk to Grandmother Porath if we can, and then Coalis."
I nodded. The lizard, at least, was gone from the immediate vicinity. Maybe there was a shed or something on the property where he was kept. On the other hand, this could mean we'd come upon a heavy reptilian shape dragging itself toward us in any dark corridor.
The doors around the porch had been hung with bolts of silver cloth, and silver paper lanterns dangled from the roof. A smell of incense came from a doorway at the right wing of the house. Kade's body would be laid out there before it was burnt.
I said, "If this were Athena, someone would have to examine the corpse."
Ran nodded. "We will."
"What do you mean, we will? We're not doctors."
"What good would a doctor be?" He used the Standard word, as I had. "We know the physical cause of death. Drowning. And if there are any traces of sorcery to be found, a doctor would hardly be helpful."
"Look, I really don't think I'm up to—"
The house steward met us at the door, and we all bowed. He was a tall, gray-haired man on the verge of retirement, as stewards often seem to be—it must be a job you work up to—and he said, "The orders of the House are to lend you every assistance." He had a kind, rather quiet voice; his whole style was that of one whom it would be difficult to shock. "I hope you'll forgive my not meeting you at the gate, but things have been quite turned around today."
"Of course," said Ran. "One of the reasons I came was to offer the sympathy of my House."
"It is much appreciated. Please come in. The guard at the gate said you'd inquired whether Coalis was at home?"
"Yes," said Ran, as we exchanged looks. Neither of us had suspected the gatehouse had a Net terminal, or even that the Poraths were on the Net; they looked dirt-poor, and the subscription fees were stiff. But there was no other way our question could have reached the steward so quickly. "We'd like to speak with him, if we may. Although we'd prefer to speak to his grandmother first."
The steward led us in through the main hall, passing the arch that opened into the kitchen. "I'm afraid Grandmother's asleep at the moment, gracious sir. Actually, I wouldn't expect to see her till tomorrow at the earliest. She was, well, given medication. She hasn't taken this well."
"I see." Ran cleared his throat. "In that case, I suppose we could see Co—"
"Sir Cormallon!" The tall woman who'd shadowed Eli-ana Porath through the garden party and onto the canal boat strode down the flight of stairs at the corridor's end. "Your pardon—you are Ran Cormallon, the sorcerer?"
Ran admitted that he was. She bowed. "Leel Canarol, defensive chaperone to Eliana Porath. My lady asked me to come down and see if it was you who were our visitors. She'd like to speak with you, if you don't mind." She wore black provincial trousers, worked in silver thread, and had a quilted silk vest above them that was also silver: half-mourning clothes, out of respect to the Poraths. I noted there was still a pistol-sized bulge beneath the vest, even here in the family compound.
The steward turned to us, awaiting our reply. Well, nothing had gone as planned so far; we might as well see what Eliana wanted. I conveyed this to Ran with a shrug, and he spoke to Leel Canarol. "We are, of course, honored by the summons. We'll follow you."
As she led us upstairs, she said, "I'm afraid Grandmother won't be able to see you today in any case." As in the couple of other great houses I'd visited (and married into) I saw that even the staff called the old lady "Grandmother." I'd bet they called Jusik "Lord Porath," though.
"Yes, the steward told us." Ran did not confirm that we were here to see her, or specify any other names. I smiled to myself. If Leel Canerol—or Eliana Porath—wanted to find out anything about what we were doing here, they would have a hard time of it. Ran gripped information like a miser.
Past a hanging of fringed purple, Eliana's room was laid out in the morning sun. It faced the garden; the branches of the coyu tree near the porch brushed her window. The room was white and yellow, clean and old. An alcove for her nurse's bed, a low sleeping platform in the center for herself, with a place for her defensive chaperone built into the foot. (One room, three people; odds were that at least one of them snored. I was glad I wasn't a Six-Families girl.) The sleeping platform was draped in a thick bolt of soft gold cloth, with the mattress and a small lamp atop it.
Some printed books near the window, no doubt with topics appropriate for young ladies. Flowers near the alcove. Two wardrobes. And this was it; this was, pretty much, Eliana's life. A city girl of good family, particularly without money, would not get out very much. The necessary supervision would be too expensive, even given the limited number of places she would be allowed to go.
It occurred to me suddenly that she might well be looking forward to a marriage with anybody, to let her into the ranks of married women and their extra freedoms.
Poor kid. She stood up from the bench by the window and waited, like a well-trained child, for our greeting. She wore plain house robes of light green, no silver anywhere.
Her black hair was pulled back through a velvet band, and hung to her waist.
"Honored by this meeting," said Ran. "Please accept the sympathy of our House."
She nodded. "I hope you'll overlook my clothes. They only just realized that I have no mourning dress." Her voice, high and clear, reported it as a fact, not an assignment of blame. "Auntie Jace, do you think you could get us some tah?"
The temperamental Auntie Jace, I now saw, had been sitting mouselike in the corner; now she jumped up and scurried for the door.
I said quickly, "That won't be necessary. We can't stay long." Besides the cat factor, we were here on business. I didn't want to open up any hospitality debts with Eliana. Besides, I'd gotten as nervous as a born Ivoran about eating untested food—we'd done all right here yesterday, but then yesterday Kade had been alive, and Ran hadn't been a suspect in his death.
Ran said, "I hope you'll forgive our haste. The lady Theodora and I are pressed for time today."
She bit her lip. Then she sat again, smoothing the green robes. "Please sit down," she said, so we seated ourselves on the edge of the sleeping platform. She cleared her throat, then started again. "This is very difficult. I suppose I should just— They tell me you've agreed to investigate my brother's death. Is that true?"
It's always interesting to watch Ran field other people's questions. He said, "If that's what you've been told, I won't deny it."
"Because, you see, if it is true, I have to speak with you."
Ran waited.
Finally she said, "I'm sorry at how self-centered this sounds. But don't you see how this will affect me? A prolonged inquiry, turning over all the rocks in the family garden, just when I'm—well, practically engaged? And you're his brother-in-law! He'll hear all kinds of things!"
"Will he?" asked Ran coolly.
"Every family has its quirks, gracious sir, and I'd prefer that those of mine be left decently at rest."
"Is the lady telling me she believes I'll pass any interesting gossip I may hear along the way to Lysander Shikron?"
"Won't you?"
I would have smiled if I could have gotten away with it without being rude. If she thought Ran would commit himself either way, she'd have a long wait. In the pause that followed, she turned to me. "Gracious lady, I appeal to you. Speak to your husband for me, I have no one to take my part. Don't I have a right to a good marriage?"
Kid, if I can't get him to cooperate on more important issues, I don't think you're going to get very far. I tried to think of some temporizing remark, but Ran spared me.
"Why 'prolonged'?" he said.
"I beg your pardon?" said Eliana.
"You said a prolonged inquiry.' Why 'prolonged'?"
"Well, obviously, the scope would have to be pretty wid
e—I don't see what this has to do—"
"Why would it have to be wide?"
"There's the gameplayers, of course, and Kade's business associates, and the gods only know—"
"Kade was a player?" She and Ran were referring to the game of controlled murder, popular among the Six Families. There were complicated rules that governed it, or so I gathered, anyway; as long as I stayed out of their way, I really didn't care what they did among themselves. I should add that when I say it was popular, I don't mean they all played it. It was really only a small minority, but that makes it a lot more popular than it is in any other population, true?
She sighed. "Father didn't want him playing. He's first son, and it's not like our House has branches to spare. He said that he'd stopped, but I know he didn't."
"I see. You mentioned business associates, too."
So she had. I'd lost track of that in the tangle of other possibilities.
"Yes." That seemed to be the end of the topic as far as Eliana was concerned.
Ran said, "I was unaware that the House' of Porath was involved in any form of business."
She said, with a trace of anger, "If you'd let me marry into Shikron, we'd be involved in business enough."
"But Kade was involved already."
We waited. Leel Canerol lounged in false relaxation at the other end of the sleeping platform, her short boots rest-
ing on a stool. Auntie Jace made an exasperated sound, got up, and made a show of going to the window ledge to pick up a bowl of sewing materials.
Eliana finally spoke. "It was a personal matter for him. None of the rest of the House had anything to do with it."
Leel Canerol said, "Eliana, I wouldn't advise—"
"Oh, shush, Lely. He's going to find out anyway, isn't he?"
The more sensible of her two chaperones shrugged.
Eliana said, "Kade started a moneylending association."
This is a respectable enough activity on Ivory, though perhaps a bit declasse for one of the Six Families. Ran said, "… Yes?"
She seemed surprised. "That's it."
Ran and I looked at each other. I said, "Where did he get the money? Was he partners with one of the marketplace banks?" I knew a little bit about the less official banking methods in the capital, due to some money troubles I'd gotten into earlier in my life.