by Sharon Lee
The pen…that was another regret. Four colors was not very many, but—
A hand closed over her wrist.
Instinctively, she snatched back, but the hand only tightened. She turned her head and met the firm, glass-blue gaze of the yellow-haired gadje.
“Let me go,” she snapped.
“Presently,” he said coolly, and walked with her down the hall, the other gadje noisy around them.
Ahead, she saw the door to the street, open. Sheyn stood in the doorway to the red-and-yellow room, watching. He raised a hand as Kezzi went past.
“Hey, Anna! See you tomorrow!”
She turned her head away, pretending she did not hear.
Through the door they went, she and the yellow-haired gadje. At the top of the stairs, she threw her weight against him, meaning to knock him off his feet, but he thrust a hard shoulder into her, which unbalanced both of them, and they stumbled together to the walk.
Where Mike Golden stood, hands tucked into his pockets, his broad face placid and his eyes as sharp as one of Rafin’s throwing thorns.
Kezzi took a breath.
“Let me go,” she hissed at the boy.
“Presently,” he said again, and pulled her with him, to Mike Golden’s side.
“Evenin’, Anna. Silver.”
“Good evening, Mike.”
“School is finished,” Kezzi said. “I want to go home.”
Mike Golden eyed her. “Nothing stopping you, is there?”
She threw her captive hand into the air, surprised that the boy allowed it.
Mike Golden pursed his lips.
“Silver. What’s up?”
“Anna is coming home with us.”
“I am not!”
The boy turned his head and looked directly into her eyes.
“You said you needed my pen.”
It didn’t quite seem a question, but she nodded. “Yes.”
“Then you must be brought to my mother.”
“Why?” she asked.
“So that she can see you,” he snapped.
“I don’t want to!” Kezzi snapped back, and yanked her arm, hard. He didn’t let go. She glared at him. He glared at her. Neither looked aside.
Mike Golden shifted where he stood, but said nothing.
“I want to go home,” Kezzi said finally, and without yelling.
“After my mother sees you,” he answered calmly.
Kezzi took a breath.
“I offer a bargain,” she said. “I see your mother—” His fingers tightened slightly and she stopped, staring at him.
He shook his head, and said slowly, like he was teaching her a story and she had gotten an anchor line wrong: “After my mother sees you…”
“After your mother sees me,” she repeated precisely, “I go home to my grandmother. Can you make this bargain?”
“Yes,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “The bargain is made. On my clan.”
“All right! Good!” Mike Golden said, briskly. “Let’s go, then. No sense standing around and freezing our noses off.” He turned, and the boy did, still holding Kezzi by the wrist.
“Silver, you can let her go. She promised to come with us,” the man said, and Kezzi’s heart rose. Gadje were so stupid!
But the boy shook his head, and looked directly into her eyes.
“You didn’t promise not to run away, did you, Anna?”
Her heart fell. She glared at him.
“If you want to drag me down the street, do it!” she snapped, because gadje didn’t like to seem foolish, and maybe the taunt would work where the bargain had failed.
But the boy just bent his head again, like they’d made another bargain, turned, and marched down the walk. Kezzi, perforce went with him, temper at high boil.
“Right,” said Mike Golden, following a step or two behind. “Let’s all go see the Boss, then.”
* * *
“The dog is always with the child,” Rys said. “Surely, she can’t be far.”
“Our small sister has an understanding with her good friend,” Udari said, kneeling beside the trembling Malda, and stroking him firmly. “They have dreamed much together, and her good friend accepts her wishes as his own.”
Rys drew a hard breath.
“He would come for help, if she were injured?”
“If she told him, and if his memory were long enough,” Pulka said sourly, and sighed. “But, yes. This one would die for our sister, and gladly. She found him broken, and nursed him, tended him like he was a babe, then brought him into the kompani, with the luthia’s blessing on it.”
“Which is near enough my own case that I, too, would gladly exchange her safety for my own,” Rys said, his breath coming too quickly. He tried to draw a deep breath, to find that core of crystal calm that had served him so well earlier in the day.
“The fighting cock speaks our hearts for us, Brothers,” Rafin said. He jerked a shoulder at Pulka. “We divide what must be done. Thus! We three who know the streets best shall go in quest now, while our sweet dreamer of design takes what we have gathered to the kompani, and rouses the citywise to the search. We will come, if we have success, to the third gate east. Eh?”
“It is done,” Pulka said, and without another word received the various bags, spools, and coils from the other two. These he disposed about himself, then turned and walked briskly back the way they had come into the yard.
Udari looked to Rafin.
“Let you and I search, with our sister’s friend. The most tried of us—”
“I would spare him more effort,” Rafin said, and looked to Rys. “What say you, little one?”
“I will search,” he said, pushing himself upright with the crutch, to demonstrate that he was able.
“I had no doubt,” Rafin said, and nodded to Udari. “Loose the dog.”
* * *
The doorbell roused Nova from her study of the latest feasibility study for repurposing the warehouse district. She raised her head, lips curving unconsciously as she heard the voices in the hall. Syl Vor, home from school, giving Ms. Veeno her good-afternoon. The doorwoman answered gravely in kind, which had become her habit. She added, “Hey Mike!” loud enough to be heard down the hall, in case one should have fallen, struck one’s head, and collapsed insensate to the rug, and thus been unaware of the arrival of the rest of the household.
Nova bent her head over her file once more, still smiling.
Syl Vor’s return home from school had become a marker in her day. There was no more eating at her desk, on those days when she was home. She stopped work and had dinner with her son, as they talked over the events of their very different days. If she was wanted elsewhere on the evening, they would then bid each other good-night. If she was in, they would play a few rounds of ping-pong at the table in the basement before he closed his day and she returned to her office for another hour or two of work.
It was, in all, a pleasant routine that was beginning to form, and she found herself…soothed.
First, though, he would detour to the kitchen, where Beck would ply him with cookies, or fruit jam on toast, or some other savory thing. Then, he would go upstairs, to his tutors.
Nova flicked a page over—and raised her head again, smile becoming a frown.
Syl Vor’s footsteps had not diverted to the kitchen-way, but continued toward her office, escorted by Mike Golden’s firm, well-known tread—and by another, lighter, set of footsteps that were entirely unfamiliar.
Had there been another…incident at school? she wondered, and took a hard breath against a flash of anger.
Peace, she told herself. You will know soon enough. The child does not tarry.
She straightened in her chair, folded her hands atop the file she had been reading, composing herself not a moment too soon.
Footsteps were joined by shadows, which very quickly became Syl Vor, his brisk pace unchecked, and his hand ’round the wrist of another child—a girl, Nova saw, her hair in need of a stern co
mbing and her face smudged with what might be soot.
She was wearing what what Nova had come to think of as Surebleak Ordinary—layers of clothing, which could be adjusted, according to the demands of the weather—and she was certainly not as bulky as the overlarge coat and dangling scarf made her seem.
She was also something out of the common way, even for Surebleak, which had a wide range of forms and faces in its gene pool. A broad face, a bold nose, and black eyes sparkling like the very soul of space. She was, Nova thought, angry.
And so was Syl Vor.
He halted just two paces before her desk, bowed briefly, and raised the girl’s hand—a grubby item, to be sure, the square fingers entirely unadorned.
“Mother, this is Anna Brown. I wish to propose her as my sister.”
If Nova felt a shock at this pronouncement, and she did, it was of a far lesser degree than that experienced by Anna Brown.
“What?” she cried, and yanked against Syl Vor’s grip so strongly that he staggered a step. “Are you stupid?”
“Not stupid enough to steal the plates and forks off the table in front of everybody!” he shouted back. “Or to—”
“That is enough,” Nova said sternly. “My son, moderate your voice, and pray release your…guest.”
“She’ll run away.”
“Will you?” Nova asked the girl, who glared at her, chin well up.
“No,” she said with scant courtesy.
Syl Vor stared at her. “Why not?”
“Because Mike Golden is in my way, you stupid, stupid boy!”
Nova glanced over her visitor’s head. Michael Golden raised his eyebrows and glanced to the left, where there was nothing to engage his attention. So. A tale hung ’round the girl, and Boss Nova’s chief of security was complicit in this present…entertainment.
“That is a very good reason,” she said gravely. “I myself would hesitate to try to go through a doorway that was held by Mr. Golden.” She glanced to her son, noting the signs of continued high temper.
“I understand that you bring…this young person here so that I may See her. Is this correct, my son?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Excellent. We are on the same path. Let us proceed together a step further. You have taken up the melant’i of sponsor. Speak to me of your proposed sister’s excellencies. What will we gain? How will she profit?”
Syl Vor bit his lip and glanced at the girl beside him—a glance she met with a hard stare, and an explicit frown.
As if that frown was an answer, Syl Vor nodded, and turned to face the desk squarely. He bowed, child to parent, with exact timing. Straightening, he took a breath, and his temper visibly cooled, as if he accessed the mental exercise known as Pilot’s Peace, which was nonsense; he was too young.
No sooner had she thought the thought than Nova suppressed a shiver. Of course, he had been taught Pilot’s Peace. In so many ways, he was not a little boy.
And in others, he was very, very young.
“Mother, I present to you one who gives her name as Anna Brown. Mike Golden brought her to school today, so I think she must have been a child-on-the-street. She did not want to be in school, and she was afraid of us—”
“I was not afraid!”
“—even though she pretended not to be. She was a little stupid as first, and did not attend to the introductions. Later, when Ms. Taylor told her to sit down by me, she figured out where she was to be, even though she hadn’t bothered to learn my name. This shows that she’s not truly stupid, and that she can think. It also shows that she knows it is important to take orders.
“At lunch, she stole some spoons, a fork, and a plate. While it is not done, to steal from the school, she was very quick, and I don’t think anyone else saw her. I don’t think what she did was easy, so that demonstrates someone who can learn complex tasks, and who has…dexterity and a good eye.” He paused, as if he debated something with himself, glanced to the girl, and moved his shoulders before continuing.
“I feel that she won’t like me to say this, but I think it shows her…her mettle. While at lunch, she first made sure to put three rolls away into her pockets before she ate what was on her plate, even though I think she was hungry. I don’t know if she took them for, for others at her home, or against her own later need. In either case, she planned ahead.”
He raised his chin a bit and met Nova’s eyes firmly.
“We will gain a person who is smart, quick, and strong. She plans for her own necessity, but understands that obeying orders is important.”
He paused. Nova inclined her head, inviting him to continue.
“From us, she will gain…” He frowned, and bent his head to stare at the papers on the top of her desk. Or perhaps, considering the intensity of his regard, through them.
Nova waited, hands folded, eyes on the girl, who was staring at Syl Vor with her mouth slightly open.
“Time,” Syl Vor said suddenly, and looked up. “Time to learn and to plan more fully, when there is no reason to steal.”
He stood for a moment, head tipped on a side, as if reviewing what he had said, then took a breath and bowed.
“That is what I know of this person, Mother. I think that we and she will profit in Balance.”
There was, in Nova’s opinion, some doubt of that. However, strict Balance was not kept in such cases. How could it be? There was no Balance nor keeping of debts between kin.
She nodded.
“That was very creditably done, Syl Vor-son. You are a formidable sponsor, and I am favorably impressed on behalf of your proposed sister. However, as it falls to me to judge merit fully, I have questions which I would put to her. Do you permit?”
Syl Vor glanced to the girl.
“Just tell the truth,” he told her.
She said nothing, and in a moment he bowed.
“Mother, please, ask what you will.”
* * *
Syl Vor’s mother was…like a star, Kezzi thought—bright and cold. Gadje that she was, she sat as a luthia, listening to all things said, and unsaid. And now, there would be questions. How not?
Kezzi felt a flutter in her stomach, which would be her body’s response to this woman’s power. Not fear. She was not, she told herself firmly, afraid.
Just tell the truth, the boy had said.
Well.
“You understand that my son proposes to stand as your brother and to have you come into our house as his equal?”
She hadn’t quite understood that, no. It seemed an odd thing, but gadje ways were all of them odd.
“I understand so now,” she answered, which was both polite and the truth.
The woman bowed her bright head.
“That is good. Now, I must know your name. Your true name, if you please.”
“Kezzi—”
She bit her lip—too late. She had meant to stare, bewildered, but the truth slipped between her lips, and now her true-name had been spoken, and fallen into gadje ears.
Horror shivered through her. What would she say to the luthia—her own luthia, Grandmother Silain? She had dreamed—there were ways to remove unlucky names and rename a person. But she—she did not want another name! She was—
“Kezzi is such a pretty name,” the gadje luthia said, in her cool, sweet voice. “Whyever did you trade it for Anna Brown?”
“It was a name for the gadje!” she cried, blinking back hot tears. She stared into the woman’s blue eyes. “My name is not for them to know or to call upon!”
“I understand.” The voice cooled the heat of her distress. “We will honor your true-name, whether Syl Vor gains a sister this day or no. Anna Brown you shall be, in all our public dealings.”
“In school, too,” Syl Vor said. “Don’t worry, Kezzi. I have a good memory.”
She wished he had no memory, and no ears, either! But, she remembered, she was done with school now. Recalling that, it was easy to give him one of the smiles Vylet had taught her, and nod.
&nbs
p; “If you come into this house as the sister of my son,” the voice continued, “there will be matters of the house of which you will not speak to those who are not of our house. Can you mind your tongue, Kezzi?”
“Yes!”
“I believe you,” the woman said gravely. “I thank you for your answers and for your forbearance with our poor manners. We will see you properly refreshed immediately. Syl Vor, pray take Kezzi to the kitchen and place the matter before Beck.”
“Yes, Mother.” Syl Vor bowed, which he did prettily, Kezzi thought, but if he were the son of a luthia, then he would have learned many things—as she had.
He hesitated now, however.
“Mother?”
“Yes, my son?”
“Is Kezzi my sister?”
“That is as yet undecided,” his mother said, and included Kezzi in her glance. “While you see our guest refreshed, I shall be thinking. When both of these activities have reached their natural conclusion, we will all of us speak again. I promise a decision by the end of the hour, and beg the gift of your patience, my son.”
“Yes, Mother,” Syl Vor said again, and turned, raising a hand to beckon Kezzi to follow him.
“This way, Kezzi. Beck will be very glad to see you.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“Because I never eat enough. I expect you to do better.”
Her stomach rumbled, as she turned to follow him—and turned back, remembering her manners.
Solemnly, she bowed to the woman behind the desk.
“I take leave,” she said, “with thanks to you.” It wasn’t at all what she would have said to a luthia who was not also a gadje, but it was polite.
A cool smile told her that the luthia was pleased.
“It is well. Go now, child, and refresh yourself.”
She nodded, and followed Syl Vor down the room. Mike Golden stepped aside to let them through the door. He winked at her as she went past.
She pretended not to see.
Chapter Twenty-One
“No, go! I will follow.” Rys collapsed—he hoped it looked as if he leaned—against the rough wall. “In a moment, I will follow.”
Udari had kept pace with the dog, so it was to Rafin these things were said, and sharply.
The other man hesitated, cast a glance over his shoulder at Udari and Malda, crossing the Port Road, and entering the long shadows thrown by the empty tollbooths.