by Sharon Lee
There was a small silence before the ga—before Rys again showed his wan smile.
“Silain is correct, as you are—to remind me. Tea would be very welcome, and also—” He took a breath—“some grapes.”
Kezzi nodded and pushed Malda’s head off of her knee.
“I will put the leaves to brew,” she said, “then help you to sit up.”
* * *
Syl Vor woke up so completely that he thought for a moment that he hadn’t been asleep at all. He must have been, though—for Eztina curled bonelessly under his chin, making the little half-snore, half-purr sound she only made when she was deeply asleep.
He kept himself very still, so as not to disturb her, while he tried to figure out what had waked him.
His door was ajar; his room faintly lit by the night dims in the larger nursery. Had one of the twins called? He listened, but if it had been Shindi or Mik, they had settled again. Sometimes, Ms. pel’Esla was about this night; he’d woken more than once to the comforting sounds of her making a pot of tea, or the rhythmic rock of her chair, the spill from her reading lamp making his room a little brighter.
But if Ms. pel’Esla was up this night, she was being very quiet, indeed.
And he—he was awake, tingling with energy. There was no possibility of going back to sleep. Perhaps, he thought, he should go down to the gym and contend with the shadow-spar for a round or two. Or—no!
He would go for a walk in the inner garden. In fact, he must do so, and at once! If he was to remove to the city in the morning, he must say his proper good-bye to the Tree.
No sooner had he thought the thought, then he was moving, easing out from beneath Eztina’s weight and leaving her curled among the disordered blankets, still sound asleep.
Syl Vor opened his chest, found his warmest sweater by touch and pulled it on, pushing his feet into slippers. His house robe hung on its hook by the door; he had it on and slipped out.
Quiet and still, the nursery. He crossed the big room, keeping to the rugs and avoiding the creaky boards, hesitating at the door. If he put his hand against the plate, the door would wake Ms. pel’Esla, and possibly the twins, so he simply punched in the override code and stepped into the hall.
The hall outside was shadowed, but the night dims were more than bright enough for his dark-accustomed eyes. He went down the back stairs, through the short service corridor, and was confronted once more by a door.
It was very likely, he thought, that the door would tell Jeeves it had been opened, and the AI would come to look for him, or, worse, wake Mother. Unfortunately, and unlike the nursery door, he did not know the override for this one.
Or did he?
There was something like a tickle at the back of his head. He stepped closer, and raised his hand to the code-pad. His fingers moved in a quick pattern that his mind didn’t quite attend to, and the door swung open before him, admitting a chill breath of breeze rich with the scents of leaf and soil.
Syl Vor smiled and stepped out into the garden.
- - - - -
He hadn’t known that the Tree glowed in the dark, bathing its place at the center of the garden in green light as soft as mist. Syl Vor went across the short grass, being careful not to catch his slippers on any of the root-humps, and so arrived at the great trunk.
With a sigh, he leaned against it, arms spread, as if his small reach could encompass it in a hug, and put his cheek against the warm bark.
“Hello, Tree,” he murmured. “I am going into the city to school and to be of use to Mother, and to Mike Golden, and to Cousin Pat Rin. I will come to visit—I promise!—but not so often as I have done.”
A soft warmth filled him, and he relaxed closer against the trunk, comforted by the Tree’s approval.
He might have fallen asleep for just a moment, leaning there all warm and safe, because he came awake all of a sudden, just as he had in the nursery. But this time, he knew what had waked him.
Syl Vor yos’Galan Clan Korval
Someone had spoken his name, though not precisely aloud, the not-sounds tickling the inside of his head.
He straightened away from the Tree, smiling, and heard a rustle in the leaves above him.
Startled, he looked up, and then down, at the seed pod that had landed in the grass at his feet.
It was his, he knew it, just as he knew to pick it up and hold it in his palm until it opened for him, revealing the kernels. They smelled so good that he was suddenly very hungry, though he had made a good meal at prime.
He swallowed, and remembered that his Mother had told him that one should always thank the Tree for its gifts.
“Thank you,” he said, and made a little bow—child to elder—before he succumbed to his hunger and ate the kernels.
As soon as they were finished, he was full, and satisfied, and beginning to be a little chilly, despite his sweater and his robe.
He bowed to the Tree again, and said, “Good-night,” before returning to the garden door, and passing through the sleeping house, to the nursery again, and his bed.
* * *
Rys had fallen asleep with Malda’s head on his knee.
Kezzi looked at the two of them, feeling a nip of jealousy. Why should Malda favor a gadje with his care?
And yet…She sat down in her place by the bed.
Why should he not? There was a bond between them, after all. Both had been beaten and broken by gadje in the City Above; both had been given into Bedel hands. Surely, Malda would dream with a brother in misfortune, if only to assure him that all would be well.
Kezzi smiled, and leaned forward, first to touch Rys’ forehead, which was warm, but not alarmingly so, and a little damp; and then to stroke Malda’s head.
The man did wake, but the dog opened his eyes, and his stubby tail thumped on the blanket, once, and then twice.
Chapter Fourteen
“No,” Syl Vor said, glaring at the bracelet sitting beside his teacup. As bracelets went, it was inoffensive enough, with nothing in the way of jewels, bells, or ribbons. Merely, it was a bright brass cuff that fastened with a hook and chain, innocent of any adornment, without even the Tree-and-Dragon etched into its shiny surface.
“I beg your pardon, Syl Vor-son?” His mother’s cool voice carried a sharp edge of surprise.
That recollected him to his manners, and he hurriedly transferred his gaze from the bracelet to her face.
“What I meant to say, ma’am,” he said more moderately, “is that such a thing will mark me out. It is not in the usual mode, for persons of my age.”
His mother frowned, but her reply was also moderate.
“We spoke of this. You agreed to accept a tracking device, so that the house may be assured of your whereabouts and your safety during those hours you are apart from us.”
Well, and so he had done. But that had been before he had seen the device. He had envisioned something small enough to be slipped into a pocket, or, at most, a pin, like the clan-sign clipped to the collar of the shirt he wore under his sweater. This bracelet—it was not what any of his agemates had worn, back ho—on Liad. Children wore their clan-sign; jewelry was for those who had been tutored in the proper modes of adornment.
But, there, they were on Surebleak, he reminded himself. Perhaps the mode was different, here.
“Will the other students, in the school,” he said to his mother, “wear similar?” If it was the mode, then it was. Grand-aunt might not approve, but he would at least not stand out as odd.
His mother’s frown was more marked. “Perhaps some will; perhaps some will not. You, however, will wear this, Son Syl Vor, or you will return to the clanhouse this morning.”
Syl Vor looked down, biting his lip. He had angered her, which had not been his intent, but—
“Problem, ma’am?” came Mike Golden’s voice from just behind his chair.
“My son was merely objecting to the necessity of the device, Mr. Golden,” Mother said, as tart in Terran as she had been in the Lo
w Tongue.
“Oh, well.” Mike Golden stepped ’round the table so that he made the apex of the triangle. He gave Syl Vor a friendly nod.
“Don’t like the bracelet, Silver?”
“No, Mike,” he answered, and added, politely, “if you please.”
“Nothing to please,” the man said, and Syl Vor felt his heart lift. He had an ally, he thought; his mother listened to Mike Golden. Perhaps he could avoid the bracelet after all.
“No need for the tracer.” Mike Golden was speaking to his mother, and Syl Vor’s heart lifted higher.
His mother’s eyes narrowed. “Is there not?” she asked, icily.
Mike Golden spread his broad hands, showing them empty, and shrugged.
“If the boy wants to play Boss, I’ll just get Larnce from his breakfast and tell him he’s not just doin’ escort, but he’ll be going to school.”
Syl Vor’s spirits plummeted. He accepted that someone of the household would walk with him to the school’s entrance. The safety of Surebleak’s streets, as his mother had said, were such that she herself did not venture forth, except in company with Mike Golden or other of her gun-sworn. Certainly, his lessons at Runig’s Rock had shown him the virtue of back-up, if such could be arranged.
Walking to school with Larnce, then, was one matter, and acceptable. But to have Larnce with him all the day, standing at his back while he did his lessons, glaring at the other students, and showing his gun plainly on his belt?
“No!” he said, rather more loudly than he had intended. He looked down, face hot.
“Two nos in the course of one meal is rather too many,” his mother noted. “Especially for so short a meal as breakfast. Pray strive to limit your use of the negative until at least tomorrow lunch-time, my son.”
He swallowed, and raised his head to meet Mike Golden’s brown eyes.
“I esteem Larnce,” he said slowly, feeling his way in Terran. Esteem was perhaps not precisely accurate, since he knew little of of the man beyond his face and the fact that he was on Boss Nova’s staff. It did, however, seem the polite thing to say.
“So you won’t mind him standin’ your ’hand.” Mike Golden nodded and turned, as if heading at once to the kitchen to roust Larnce to duty.
“No!” Syl Vor said, and bit his lip, not daring to look to his mother. Mike Golden turned back, face quizzical.
“What’s on your mind, Silver? Say it out plain, so we can all hear it.”
“Yes.” He took a hard breath. “I will wear the bracelet.”
- - - - -
School was nothing at all like guesting with Maelin and Wal Ter at Glavda Empri, and sharing their tutors and lessons. For the first thing, he had known Wal Ter and Maelin always; their House was closely aligned with Korval, and their Line with yos’Galan. Maelin’s grandfather had been cargo master for Syl Vor’s own Grandfather Er Thom, on Dutiful Passage; and for Uncle Shan, too.
Here at school, there were no familiar faces or House ties. Here, the teacher, Ms. Taylor, had him stand up with her at the front of the room, facing twenty-three seated strangers, whom he guessed to range in age from slightly younger than he to a boy who was surely old enough to have been ’prenticed.
Ms. Taylor put her hand on his shoulder, as if they were kin, and had him say out his name and his street. Then, she asked those seated to say their names and streets. Recognizing this as his first test, Syl Vor committed each face-name-street combination to memory.
After the introduction was complete, he was let to sit in an empty chair next to a boy with red hair cut so short it stood up on his head like bristles, and who stared at him with a frown before turning his face, deliberately, away.
Syl Vor bit his lip and faced forward, wondering how he might have offended. But, there, maybe this boy—Rudy Daniel, he recalled, from Gough Street—maybe this boy’s Boss had a policy against those from Blair Road, or maybe his Boss didn’t agree that there should be a Road Boss. And it was, was it not, exactly the sort of thing Mike Golden had said his going to school would help fix? Though not all at once.
A projection picture coalesced on the wall directly before them, fuzzy at first, then suddenly sharp. Syl Vor frowned, then smiled at the map—a flat map, in fact, of the whole city, from the Port to the end of the road.
“All right, everybody!” Ms. Taylor called, “time to do routes. Tansy, what’s the quickest way from school to Al’s Hardware?”
From the first row, a small girl with her hair in braids stood up, took the pointer from Ms. Taylor’s hand and aimed at the map. A red dot appeared on the position of the school.
“Here’s us,” Tansy said, her voice high and breathless. “The quickest way to Al’s is go out the back door, down Brehm Alley to Rendan, take a right and down three doors.” The pointer wobbled unhelpfully, but Syl Vor’s eye followed the lines of the map, finding the alley, the intersection, the turn. “Doors” as a direction puzzled him for a moment, until Ms. Taylor took the pointer back.
“Very good, Tansy. Thank you.” She retraced the route more smoothly and Syl Vor was able to see that Al’s Hardware Store was the third shop from the corner of Rendan Road. Each shop would of course have a door onto the street, therefore—“three doors.”
“Anders!” called Ms. Taylor. “Get me to Patrol, quick!”
Anders was the tallest person in the room. Anders Jeff, Syl Vor told himself, in reminder, from Moravia.
“Out the front, cross the street, left to the corner.”
The red dot traced the route.
“Good! Vanette!”
And so it went, until they had each provided a route to a landmark nearby. Syl Vor was asked to pilot them to Boss Conrad’s house, which he thought too easy for the last question in the game.
Except it wasn’t the last question.
Ms. Taylor looked out over them with her hands on her hips and a grin on her face.
“Warm, now?” she asked.
“We’re warm, all right!” all the class but Syl Vor shouted.
“Let’s do round two!” she shouted back, and threw the pointer across the room to Desi Beale, who caught it with a laugh and jumped to her feet.
Round Two was not easy. Ms. Taylor would call out the name of a place or an intersection somewhere on the map, and the student with the pointer would have to find the straightest route. The rules allowed the pointer-holder to name one advisor, which meant that Rudy from Gough Street called on Anders of Moravia for aid, and Tansy of Alvarado Square asked Jack Vance of Hamilton Street for assistance.
Syl Vor was fair bouncing on the edge of his chair, committing the routes to memory, and the location of restaurants, groceries, and patrol stations across the city. So engrossed was he that the pointer nearly grazed his head before he realized that his name had been called.
He ducked, snatched, and jumped to his feet.
“I need to get to Boss Wentworth’s turf,” Ms. Taylor told him. “Shortest route.”
He blinked up at the map, at a loss; not even knowing who he might call on among his classmates. Boss Wentworth’s turf? He fingered the pointer, pushed the bracelet up under the sleeve of his sweater, and yet the map gave him no—
“Wentworth’s Jopha,” said a boy who looked as if he ought to be ’prenticed. Peter Day, Syl Vor remembered. He got up slowly, as if standing pained him, and gave Syl Vor a nod. “Jopha,” he repeated.
Syl Vor looked back to the map, stomach tightening as he didn’t at first—there! Jopha Road ran on a long diagonal from their location. And the shortest route?
His eye measured, and he brought the pointer up.
“The shortest route to Boss Wentworth’s turf takes us out the back door, to Brehm Alley, following until it ends at Taplow Street. A left turn onto the street and up the hill, to—”
“Don’ wanna go that way,” Peter Day interrupted.
Syl Vor blinked, frowned at the map, re-ran the possible routes—and turned to his self-appointed assistant.
“It is the sh
ortest?” he said.
“Well, yeah, it is, by steps. But it ain’t by time.”
Oh. A blocked road, then, which the map wouldn’t show, but which someone local to the area would be aware of. Syl Vor nodded.
“If the way is not passable, then—”
“Ain’t nothing the matter with the way!” Rudy Daniel shouted. “Don’t listen to that dope.”
“Rudy!” Ms. Taylor said sharply. “No name-calls. Make it right with Pete.”
Rudy took a deep breath, held it and let it all come out in a hissing rush which sounded rude to Syl Vor. Then he rose and went to Peter, holding his hand out.
“Sorry, Pete.”
The elder boy nodded, and put his hand in Rudy’s. They moved their linked hands up, then down, and loosed their grips, each going one step back.
“Now!” said Ms. Taylor. “Pete—tell Syl Vor why you advise him not to go that way.”
“Yes’m.” Pete turned around and looked down at Syl Vor. His eyes were different colors—one blue and one brown, both sleepy-looking.
“Your way’s right through the middle of the old store-buildin’s,” Pete said, as if that explained everything.
Syl Vor nodded, and, when Pete said nothing else, repeated. “But, it is the shortest route?”
“Looks that way, but ain’t so,” Pete said.
Syl Vor thought he could understand why Rudy had lost patience. He took a breath, thought, and asked the best question he could think of.
“What bars the way?”
Pete smiled and nodded, once, as if he had been particularly clever.
“Ghosts,” he said. “There’s ghosts up there in them old buildin’s. Best to go around.”
- - - - -
After Routes was History, and after History was lunch. That was vegetable soup and bread and milk, which they ate in the room next to the classroom, where there was a table, chairs, and a serving stand.
Ms. Taylor stood at the serving stand, ladling soup into their bowls as they filed past. They carried their bowls to the table, and sat, hands folded in their laps, until everyone was in place and Ms. Taylor had sipped from her spoon, and nodded, once.