Lee, Sharon & Miller, Steve - Liaden Books 1-9

by Liaden 1-9 (lit)

  In the part of her mind shielded by the Healer's magic, Nova recalled the name, recalled a much older face from the portrait gallery at Jelaza Kazone - Ker Lin yos'Phelium, seven hundred and twelve years dead.

  His face went rigid. "I hear the Delm," he said, courtesy thinly sheathing his anger. "I request the Delm listen once again."

  What was this, after all? Ker Lin's Delm at that age must have been old Renoka yos'Phelium.

  A flash of impatience was recalled, and a flare of almost feral love, before she gave him haughty leave. "You may speak. But you must offer more or different information, boy! I grow weary of hearing your 'musts!'"

  Eyes. Gods and demons, what eyes the child had! Silver bright, shining, hypnotic - and the will!

  "I have Seen that I shall join the Scouts in the spring," he said, with some fair semblance of calm. "I shall not wed until after my third mission."

  "And I say you will do so now! I will see a yos'Phelium contract-wed into yo' - "

  "Silence!" He gestured, and her voice choked in her throat; her bones rocked with the force of the command, and her blood chilled. She stood, moving as if against strong wind, found the energy needful to shake off his will, and glared down at him, the one of all of them who would be Delm...ah, yes, if he lived so long!

  "Defend your actions!" she ordered, the High Tongue crackling with the force of her own will. "Defend, or be gone!"

  His face lost some of its luster, it seemed, within a moment, to grow old and to fall away almost into the face of the child he had been, with tears at the corners of his eyes; then his eyes - only silver - were sad.

  "If you will insist," he said, and she tried to tell herself it was merely halfling dignity she heard in his voice. "I have said that I have Seen what will happen, and I am taught not to foretell to others - "

  "The melant'i of the situation, Ker Lin! We are alone: If you had done this in public, I would have had to send you away at once! I shall need to know."

  Suddenly he looked defeated and small, and then, in an instant, he became a man.

  "You will see a yos'Phelium contract-wed into yo'Hala," he said very quietly. "The child shall come to yos'Phelium, and the alliance thus formed will last for many, many years. I shall join the Scouts, and after my third mission I shall lifemate. Later I will be Delm."

  Renoka bowed to that, believing all, because already she had believed half. "And in this present case, my wise? Who shall fulfill the contract with yo'Hala in your stead?"

  "You, my aunt and Delm."

  Blank astonishment was recalled, along with the beginning of a suspicion. "You know that Tan El yo'Lanna has my promise to wed him, when Zipper is next in port."

  The eyes were silver ice; she thought she saw pity and knew, but would not allow herself to know. Selfishly she made him say it.

  "Tell me, Ker Lin."

  "Let be!" Pain roughened his voice, not command; but she was pitiless in her own pain.

  "You are required!"

  He bowed, then, very, very gently. "Aunt Renoka, forgive me." He paused, then looked at her straightly. "Zipper's drive failed in the outer arm. The cargo has been orbited, and news of its location will come to me when I am Delm." He paused and sighed. "The attempt to restart the drive was catastrophic. Dan Art yos'Galan alone has survived."

  He bowed again, with all the love and care he could fit into the gesture, and left quietly.

  "Let be!" Renoka cried out to the echoing room. "Let be!"

  She called up flight schedules and requested docking information, angrily scrubbing at the tears that would neither stop nor take on urgency. The silver eyes - she sighed and cried the harder.

  Alone in the house, Renoka looked over the blue carpet, waiting. After a while someone - not Ker Lin - came to tell her that Dan Art yos'Galan was rescued. She was already dressed in mourning when they arrived.

  Nova opened her eyes and saw the proper furniture and the amber screen; she reached up and angrily scrubbed the tears from her face.

  What had she touched? What had she done that demanded that Memory?

  She glanced at the material on the screen: a list of proposed alliances and known wedding negotiations. With a clarity she mistrusted she heard Ker Lin's voice.

  "Let be!"

  She swept her hand across the controls savagely.

  "Jeeves!" she yelled into the air. "Jeeves, bring me some tea!" The robot arrived in seconds, bulky engine to a train of three cats.

  "Tea and company, I'm afraid, Miss Nova." Jeeves set the service down on the low table by the window, poured, and stepped back.

  Nova bent down to pick up the middle cat, a sorry mop of varicolored stripes named Kifer. He began to purr and knead immediately, and Nova rubbed her face in his outrageously, wonderfully soft fur.

  "Let them stay," she said to the robot. "I can use some company just now."

  LIAD

  Envolima City

  Tyl Von sig'Alda sat in the quarters assigned him and frowned at the graph hung over the desk. Several specialists had provided the uniform opinion that the coils of the ruined ship where yos'Phelium and the female had been stranded might have been coaxed to provide one Jump, given an individual with the knowledge and the will. The computer took his opinions as fact and constructed a portrait of the Jump-sites so attainable.

  Records rendered a portrait of Val Con yos'Phelium as a man of will and wide knowledge, from a Clan that valued ships and the lore of ships above all else. It was utterly conceivable that he had demanded and received of the tired coils one last effort, that he was already on some world or other, evading debriefing or striving valiantly to win home.

  The female...He fingered the report recently acquired from several highly confidential sources. The female was negligible; a mere Terran mercenary, lacking education or any other discipline besides her skill at arms. True it was that she had survived the disaster of Klamath; also true was the fact that she had spent months afterward in rehabilitative therapy for the abuse of the substance Lethecronaxion - Cloud, as so many Terrans called it, kin to the drug utilized by the Department to induce its agents to complete recall.

  The function of Cloud, however, was to inhibit memory. sig'Alda experienced shadowy revulsion. The female was a brute; a killer addicted to a drug that wiped her yesterdays from experience as quickly as she lived them. How came Val Con yos'Phelium to travel with such a one?

  If she were a tool...He ran the odds, consciously adding pertinent factors from yos'Phelium's record and data gained during training.

  .8

  Well within the realm of possibility, then, that the female was but a convenient tool, held in check by her dependence upon the drug - and upon the supplier of the drug.

  So then: The mission on Lufkit had gone well enough of itself, but something unknowable had gone amiss between its completion and the time Val Con yos'Phelium was to rendezvous with his transport home. Sometime after the completion of his mission and before the firefight between Lufkit police and members of the local chapter of Juntavas - substantiated in several popular newspapers from Lufkit - Val Con yos'Phelium had acquired the services of Miri Robertson, retired mercenary and former bodyguard.

  Suppose that yos'Phelium had understood the situation to be worsening. Suppose further that he acknowledged sleep a physiological necessity. It would certainly be prudent, in a case where one expected disaster around every corner, to engage something to guard one's sleep. Chance had provided something well versed in guarding and competent with her weapons - and the solution had worked: Circumstances showed as much.

  Provided with a solution that had answered so admirably in one instance - and perhaps yet unsure of what might await him - yos'Phelium takes the female with him aboard the Clutch ship. She is competent in her brutish way, and even loyal - he, of course, having taken care to provide himself with a supply of Lethecronaxion beforehand.

  sig'Alda ran the odds once more.

  .8

  Well enough. The female was but a tool
to yos'Phelium's hand - provided by chance, honed by necessity. He had been foolish to suspect anything else. What other use had a well-trained agent for a bitch Terran, after all?

  Reasoning reconstructed to satisfactory tolerance, sig'Alda pulled the keyboard toward him, beginning to plot the coordinates of the planets on the graph that hung over the desk. Several of the worlds represented there were Interdicted. However, the duties of Scouts took them to many strange orbits, including those about Interdicted Worlds. Best he consider any reports the Scouts had on files regarding those particular Forbiddens before he made further plans.

  VANDAR

  Springbreeze Farm

  Zhena Trelu left her boarders to clear up the supper dishes and made her way down the hall, key clenched tight in her hand, second thoughts buzzing in her head. The Meltz boy would be here soon, to tune Jerry's piano, just as she had said he could. Except now she was not so sure.

  She paused at the door, looking from key to lock, telling herself hopefully that three years was a long time, telling herself that maybe the key did not work anymore, after all this time...

  Undecided, she fidgeted with the key; then, with a sharp head-shake, she clenched her fingers, her hand moving toward the pocket of her apron.

  Behind her she heard a noise.

  She jerked around - and there was Meri, gray eyes huge in her pointed face, one hand tentatively extended. "Zhena Trelu, please. Cory play yes."

  It was said in the mildest possible tone, but the old woman clutched at the spark of resentment the words ignited, using that warmth to chase away the cold confusion.

  "Why in wind should he?" she demanded, knowing it was unreasonable, but not caring. Hers was the loss, and how should that - that child, her husband standing healthy at her side, presume to judge..."You two are supposed to be working for me, not taking over my house! Telling me what to do. That's Jerry's piano! Nobody ever touched it but him. Nobody. And I should just hand it over to some - foreigner I first laid eyes on three weeks ago? Why? Like as not, the pair of you're only out to rob me - "

  No!" The girl's voice cut passionately across the stream of nonsense. "Good Cory! Patient Cory! Works hard - fixes - helps. Helps you. Helps me. Who helps Cory?" She flung her hands out, and Zhena Trelu saw the shine of tears in the gray eyes. "Zhena Trelu. Please. Cory play yes."

  And what good, the old woman thought suddenly, sanely, was a piano to a dead man? She closed her eyes, feeling suddenly close to tears herself. Jerrel Trelu had been a kind man; no one should go hungry for music in his zhena's house.

  Slowly she opened her fingers around the key, turned back, and fumbled a moment with the lock before twisting the knob and pushing the door wide.

  "Thank you, Zhena Trelu," Meri whispered behind her; but when she turned back, the girl was gone.

  The piano was badly in need of tuning. Hakan worked carefully, Cory at his elbow, watching everything he did. On the doublechair to the right of the instrument, Miri and Kem had their heads together over a book. Kem's cool voice occasionally reached Hakan - she seemed to be teaching Miri the alphabet.

  Zhena Trelu sat in the single chair on the other side of the lamp, ostensibly reading, but Cory, looking at her now and then from under long lashes, thought she had not turned a page since sitting down.

  The tuning finally done, Hakan closed the case and waved Cory toward the keyboard, grinning. But the slighter man hesitated, then drifted soundlessly over to stand before the old woman and her book.

  "Zhena Trelu," he said softly, and she looked up, frowning.

  Slowly, with full pomp, he made her the bow of one who acknowledges an unpayable debt. "Thank you, Zhena Trelu. Very."

  She sniffed. "Just don't you let me find you shirking your work and coming in here to play, hear me? Work comes first."

  "Yes, Zhena Trelu." He smiled. "I will work."

  She sniffed again, mindful of three pairs of young eyes on her. "Well, what're you waiting for? You were the one who wanted to play." She flicked her hand toward the piano. "So, play."

  He grinned and moved back to the instrument, slid onto the bench, and ran his fingers up and down the keys. Then he began to play, straightly and without flourish, the main line of the piece Hakan had been running through his guitar, three days past.

  Hakan gave a shout and grabbed his guitar, taking up the weaving minor thread.

  In the doublechair, Miri and Kem set aside the book to listen to the music. In the single chair, Zhena Trelu sat rapt.

  In the manner of such things, one song led to another. At some point during the evening, wine was opened and poured; and, in the manner of those things, was found too soon to be gone. A little time later Zhena Trelu excused herself with a yawn and went upstairs to her bedroom, waving aside an offer of an escort from Kem and Meri.

  Her departure brought Hakan to an awareness of the hour, and he and Kem bundled themselves together, eliciting promises from their new friends to come to supper on Marin evening and making arrangements for Hakan to pick them up.

  When the taillights of Hakan's car had finally faded, Miri leaned back against Val Con with a sigh. "Boss, I think I'm drunk."

  She heard him laugh softly and felt his fingers tighten where they rested on her shoulders. "I am afraid that I am also drunk, cha'trez."

  "Couple of saps," she judged, turning around and grinning up at him. "One of us is supposed to stay sober to carry the other one home and get 'em in bed. Now what?"

  He appeared to consider the problem while he laid his arm about her waist and drew her into the hallway. "I suppose," he said, locking the door with great care, "that we must then carry each other."

  "Okay," Miri agreed, sliding her arm around his waist.

  Leaning on each other, they gained their bedroom without mishap.

  It was not yet dawn when Val Con drifted awake. He kept his eyes closed, feeling Miri pressed tightly against his side, her head on his shoulder, one arm flung across his chest. He was conscious first of a warm contentment; then he heard the song.

  Though "heard" was not precisely the correct word; nor was "song." Cautiously, eyes still closed, he sought the song that was heard only within his head and found it, a thing of surpassing brightness and warmth, singing blithely to itself - and tasting strongly of hunch.

  He regarded it for some time, remembering the old tales, knowing what it must be, joy building within him.

  The gods make you a gift, he told himself gently.

  And the part of him that was Korval replied: As it should be. The gods owe much.

  Alive-and-well, sang the song-that-was-not-a-song from its joylit corner of his self. Miri-alive. Miri-well.

  Fear surfaced for a moment as he recalled the man he now was. But then he recalled that his lifemate had shown no wizardly skills at all, so might not be able to hear him - and the fear was vanquished.

  He moved a little in the predawn, curling around the woman beside him, burying his face in the cloud of her hair. Warm within, warm without, Val Con slid back into sleep.

  VANDAR

  Springbreeze Farm

  Val Con sat at the piano, letting his fingers roam randomly over the keys. The sound of Zhena Trelu's radio reached him from down the hall, and somewhere close by Borril groaned and shifted. He wondered where Miri was and moved his attention for the briefest of instants to the song of her and its joyous message: Alive-and-well, alive-and-well...

  Lips relaxing into a smile, Val Con turned his attention to the notes he played, ear snagging on a series of three that recalled the piece he and Hakan had been working on the previous night. Shaking his head, he ran lightly through the song, then returned to the beginning, playing in earnest.

  Best you practice, he told himself with mock sternness. If Hakan succeeds in getting the two of us a job playing music, you must be ready and able.

  He was unsure of the likelihood of such work, but Hakan hardly spoke of anything else. It seemed there was a fair of some type looming, and Hakan's heart was set upon t
he two of them playing in one of the exhibition halls. The wages, in Hakan's estimation, were barely less than a joke - in fact, he had suggested that Cory keep the whole sum himself, since Zhena Trelu did not see fit to provide either of her charges with pocketpaper. No, one was given to understand that the sole reason for playing - besides the playing itself - was the exposure. All the world, in Hakan's eyes, attended the Winterfair at Gylles.

  A soundless something called him from his reflections, and he glanced up to see Miri hesitating in the doorway. He let his fingers slow on the keys and smiled at her. "Hello, Miri."

  "Hi." Her answering smile was apologetic. "I didn't mean to bother you. Left my book."

  "It's no bother," he said, watching her go gracefully across the room to the doublechair. She had taken to wearing her hair loose of late, which he found pleased him greatly. It seemed they both considered this world - this place - a sanctuary.

  Miri had found her book and was turning to go.

  "You might stay," he said, wishing she would. "Unless my playing will disturb you?"

  She grinned. "Naw. Thought I'd bother you."

  "It's no bother," he repeated gently. "I would be pleased if you'd stay."

  "Rather listen to you than Zhena Trelu's radio stories any day," she said, curling promptly into the doublechair and opening the book.

  "High praise," he murmured, and grinned when she laughed. His fingers touched the keys, and he began to play once more.

  He moved from song to song, working through the list of eleven that made up their scanty repertoire. The music had his whole attention, though now and then he heard a small sound as Miri turned a page.

  The last of the eleven was a slippery thing requiring sharply curtailed ripples from the keyboard, as well as a jagged staircase of mismatched notes reaching toward an impossible crescendo. Such a line would have been bad enough on an omnichora, yet some demented creativity had thought it suitable for an instrument as clumsy as the piano...