Price of Ransom

by Kate Elliott

  “They think you will. I’ve had trouble enough.”

  He shook his head. On the cookery, the kettle began to whistle, and Bach, not to be outdone, added a harmonic pitch. Heredes rose. “That’s a feint if I’ve ever seen one. I’ll take it. How did you come to be here, Lilyaka?”

  So, while he poured the hot water into a pot and out again, and then filled it up over a scattering of dried leaves, and after a bit poured the contents of the pot into ceramic mugs, she told him.

  “Well,” he said when she had finished. He took a sip of his tea, got up, and poured them both a second mugful. “Well, Lily.” Just that. Then he nodded, and Lily knew, at that moment, that she would never receive a greater compliment. They sat in mutual, easy silence while she savored it.

  A dark form appeared in the open door, tall and slender, head tilting once from side to side. “Lily?” it said.

  Heredes shifted on the bed.

  “Come in, Kyosti,” Lily said. He entered, pausing to scent again, and then moved with a predator’s grace across to Lily and sank down to sit at her feet. He looked at Heredes, unblinking, and then up at Lily. Heredes gave a slight cough. For a fleeting instant, Lily had the insane thought that he was nervous, but she dismissed it. “What have you been doing here?” she asked him. “Are you going to stay? The innkeeper said you were waiting for a lease.”

  “For the time, yes, I think I’ll stay. After I came out of the coma, I began hearing words, so like any good Welshman, I returned home to discover whether I was mad or a poet, since I wasn’t dead.”

  The confession took her rather by surprise, and yet, she realized, he was really no different from the Heredes she had known before. “Which is it?” she asked.

  The answer came from an unexpected source. “‘Never was there in Gwyddno’s weir, anything as good as tonight.’”

  Heredes laughed. “Welcome back, Hawk. Although I will confess to you, Lily, that I’m still not sure. But I have a good deal of time to discover which it is. ‘There is a fine fortress on the shore of the sea. Graciously there his desire is granted to everyone.’” He paused. “As well, I’m still struggling to remember the language. It’s been a very long time since I spoke it last.”

  “Which language?”

  “The one spoken here. And the one spoken by poets. But you’ve told me what has happened to you. You haven’t yet told me what you intend. As much as I hesitate to give advice”—he hesitated—“I don’t recommend taking up their offer. It’s bad enough to have enemies, but to consciously choose a course of action that will create them for you is, to my mind, a little foolish.”

  “No, I don’t intend to become a spy in The Pale. In fact, I just thought of something last night.” She glanced down at Kyosti, flushed a little, and looked up again. “I was out on the village green, looking up at the stars. They seem different, seeing them from the surface of a world, than being surrounded by them. Less accessible and more desirable. On the ship, they’re just part of you. I suppose you take them for granted, just like we took the high weather for granted on Unruli, or you take the hills and grass and clean air for granted here. But it made me think: the Forlorn Hope was built to be an exploratory vessel. Why not recommission it? With its current crew and whatever specialists and additional crew it needs. We’ve the experience of running the road from the Reft to League space—with a pilot and navigator, and Bach, able to calculate to the finest edge and run the way without beacons or stations to guide us. We’re all of us more used to space—or at least to enclosed spaces—than planets. And those that aren’t,” she spared a glance for Kyosti here, “have other compelling reasons to take such a course. The League must need to keep pushing outward, if not in the direction of The Pale, then toward the Reft, or in some other quadrant.”

  “Well, it’s not me you have to convince. It’s this tribunal. And I doubt if they’ll take my testimony as a good recommendation.”

  “No, I doubt if they would. Which reminds me, what do you know about Korey Windsor and his two Ardakians?”

  “I’m glad to hear they’re still with him, if only because he needs the companionship. He was a hell-raiser, Korey, back when I knew him. He always drank too much and ran right on the edge in all his operations. He got shot up badly twice. Barely lived. But I would trust him at my back.” As he said this, he looked at Hawk, and looked, if anything, guilty.

  “That’s high praise, from you.”

  Heredes met her gaze. “Lily, for me, after what I’ve seen and what I’ve done, that is the single quality on which I judge a person. Trust them not to stab me, and trust them to hold their own in a fight. Anything else is inconsequential.”

  His expression was serious in a way she had never seen it before, and she realized that he was speaking to her as to a peer, judging that she was fit to receive and understand such information. “I wonder if I really knew you, before,” she said softly.

  “You knew me well enough. You learned enough from me, Lily, that I can safely say that you learned to find your own way. That is the greatest gift a student can give a teacher: to return at last to them as an equal.”

  They talked on, into the afternoon, talked about his childhood and about his life as an actor, discussed strategies for recommissioning the Forlorn Hope, laughed at Lily’s description of the effect Pinto had on the female population of the ship. Heredes even spoke, briefly and with great reticence, of La Belle. Kyosti sat uncannily silent at Lily’s feet. He scarcely moved the entire time. The dog lay panting on the hearth, watching them with dark eyes and dozing off now and then.

  When she rose, finally, knowing that she had to return both to the inn and then on to Concord, she felt both regret and pleasure—regret for leaving after so short a time, and pleasure at knowing that he would be here, even if it was years before she could return. They went outside. Deucalion sat on the fence surrounding the pens, but he clambered down when he saw them and walked over. Lily embraced Heredes again, and they traded words of farewell, and then she turned to go.

  “Are you coming, Deucalion?”

  He hesitated, glancing at his father. “No. I’ll be down in a while.”

  Seeing that there was other business to complete, Lily whistled to Bach and, Kyosti beside her, they left. When she looked back, from the last turning in the path where she could still see the cottage, neither of the men had yet moved.

  It was night before Deucalion showed up at the inn. Lily had forsaken the tables in the courtyard to stand out at the gate, pleased to be alone in her own company, but she moved to one side to make room for him when he came up beside her. Because he said nothing, at first, she said nothing. It was another brilliant, clear night, the moon high and curved, attended by stars. In the courtyard behind, the evening crowd laughed and talked, a buzz of words in strange accents and strange languages. Hawk was content to sit with Jenny and Yehoshua and Paisley and Bach at one of the tables, Dr. Farhad watching him from an adjacent table where she sat with the advocate and Gregori. Gregori had taken a liking to the advocate, who patiently explained in painstaking detail the answers to his incessant questions. Finch had finally emerged from his room, and although he sat beside Dr. Farhad, he did not speak, but kept glancing at the other table and looking away as quickly.

  “So you mean to try for the recommissioning,” said Deucalion abruptly into their silence.

  “Yes. Do you think it will work?”

  He looked a little pale, or perhaps tired by the long walk. But he managed a smile. “Between us, and with Havel’s help, I think we can pull if off. Havel is very sharp.” His mouth twisted a little, as if something pained him. “She’s a throwback, like we are. She’s happy to twist the system to her advantage, without any scruples at all.”

  “Deucalion.” She faltered, hearing some old pain in his tone that she did not want to enflame. “You have scruples.”

  “I have what scruples I choose to have,” he said bitterly. “As has been clearly pointed out to me.”

  Tha
t he was speaking of his father was obvious to her. “I’m sorry,” she replied.

  He shrugged, but the effort to appear casual failed. “We made peace, of a kind.” He did not speak for a long while, but finally he sighed, and it was a more hopeful sound. “We made something to build on,” he finished. “Then we’ll be heading back to London tomorrow? We’ll need to send notice to the yacht skipper that we’ll leave tomorrow night or the next morning, so he can put in for a launch schedule.”

  “No.” Lily leaned against the gate and smiled, to herself, since Deucalion had turned his head enough away that she could no longer see his expression. “I made a promise, before we landed on Terra. I have one more place to visit.”

  Now he turned. “But Lily, none of your people have ever been on Terra before. Where could they want to visit?”

  She turned back to look into the lit courtyard, at Jenny and Yehoshua, sitting rather closer together than friends might; at Paisley, who was diligently attempting to draw intelligible speech out of Hawk; at Gregori, intent on the com-slate that the advocate was pointing to; even at Finch, who looked up at her as she stared and ventured the faintest hint of a smile. And at the smooth, metal-bright globe hovering watchfully, faithfully, loyally, behind Kyosti.

  “I promised Bach,” she said. “I promised I would take him to a place called”—she had to hesitate to recall the unfamiliar sound—“Leipzig.”

  23 Highroad

  GREGORI TWISTED HIS GLASS around and around in his hands, growing bored. Six months at Concord had been long enough to wait, and now this final evening seemed interminable. He wondered if throwing the glass at min Belsonn would make him stop lecturing long enough for someone else to talk, but he supposed that it would only turn the topic of the lecture to childish misbehavior, a subject he was sure that someone of min Belsonn’s personality could know little about, but have lengthy opinions on.

  “And furthermore,” continued Deucalion, “not only did Maria not appear for the hearing scheduled to discuss our charges, but evidently she has left Concord altogether. Evidently she has chosen not only to betray the trust invested in all of us as citizens and governors of the League, but to escape from her responsibilities as well, as if that absolves her. She’s no better—she’s far, far worse—than the people she wants to eliminate. Yevgeny just received information that traces her to Diomede. It is supposed that she has gone on into The Pale, from which we can all devoutly hope she will not return.” He paused for breath, looking outraged, and the captain calmly handed a bowl of vegetables to him and spoke before he could continue.

  “From my few encounters with her, I imagine she’ll get along just fine there.” She grinned. “Maybe she’ll join up with La Belle.”

  “La Belle would never have her,” he replied, sounding affronted, and lapsed into silence.

  Gregori was profoundly grateful. For some reason, he could not concentrate when min Belsonn was off on one of his speeches. The conversation drifted to other, more desultory things: Blue deciding to accept an apprenticeship at Karkara Engineering Academy rather than work with the new Chief Engineer assigned to the Forlorn Hope by the council over-seeing Exploratory expeditions; Paisley moving her few possessions to the block where the members of the Reft expedition were gathering in preparation for their journey; the medical specialist who had examined Yehoshua’s artificial arm and pronounced that not only did it have augmented strength but a full range of software add-ons, like tracking and a computer linkup and enhanced tactile perception, that Yehoshua had never suspected existed, much less learned to use.

  Gregori let the conversation flow past him, only partly aware of it. He was just happy to be back on the ship, sitting in the mess, eating, all the tables filled with old crew and new crew mixed together as they settled in at last. He felt like he was home again.

  Six months in dry dock had not improved Gregori’s impression of station life—or any life but that aboard a ship. While the Forlorn Hope was refitted, he had been forced to live in quarters more spacious, by the meter, than his mother’s cabin on the Hope but made cramped by Yehoshua’s constant presence and the knowledge that, just outside the door, hordes of station personnel and constant vehicle traffic surged and rumbled past at all hours.

  They had introduced him to a play and education group, consisting of twelve children about his age, and he felt he tolerated this arrangement fairly well, all things considered. A few of the children were even interesting, and he was not entirely sorry to hear that five of the twelve would be boarding with their parents when the Hope cast off.

  There was a stir around the table as Paisley came in, and a space was made for her to sit next to the captain. Gregori yawned. A few minutes later, Dr. Farhad walked up, and this time his mother moved aside to let the doctor sit down between her and Gregori. Gregori watched Dr. Farhad sit down, caught between apprehension and interest.

  “Dr. Farhad!” said the captain from down the table. “What news for us?”

  Dr. Farhad accepted a glass of beer from Jenny and took a sip before she answered. “The transfer has been completed. My position has been neatly divided between that of parole adviser for Hawk, and Chief of Xenopsychiatry. There were others equally qualified for the xeno position, but I fear I rather pulled strings and emphasized the illegal and unethical treatment Hawk received during his prison sentence in order to get myself appointed. There hasn’t been a newly commissioned exploratory vessel for some years and a number of people have been eager to get on. To be frank, Captain, I’ve been wishing for some time to get my hands back in to practice xeno work. And with a je’jiri family officially bonded to you, I’ve got plenty of work before we even get out of port.”

  “I’m glad you’re aboard,” said the captain, and Gregori knew she was being sincere.

  “What about you, Gregori?” Gregori fastened his hands tight around his glass and ventured a glance up at Dr. Farhad. The doctor’s gaze was too piercing for his liking. “Are you glad to be back on board?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me,” she said, and she lifted one hand so that for an instant he had a terrible fear that she was about to touch his hair—but she lowered it again, “in one of our talks do you remember telling me about the other people on the ship—the ones nobody else can see?”

  “You can’t see them,” said Gregori, a little impatient that she had not grasped this point. “At least, not really. And anyway, the je’jiri know they’re here. So does Hawk.”

  “Well, then,” Dr. Farhad replied, switching her ground smoothly, “the ones no other human can tell are here.”

  “What about them?”

  “Are they still here?”

  Gregori blinked. Then he sat back and concentrated, not on the conversation and the bodies and the general atmosphere of enthusiasm and anticipation coloring the air, but on the presences that existed farther back, a whisper, or a faint haze, against the backdrop of life. Grumpy walked past, headed out the door on the trail of some kind of practical joke. Fearful left an argument to return, as ever, to the Green Room. And the Other Captain, her presence, as he focused on her, almost as sharp as if she actually was standing there, paused in the doorway to survey her crew as they supped.

  “Yes,” he said. “They’re still here. I think they’ll always be, don’t you?”

  Not it was Dr. Farhad’s turn to blink. “I don’t know the answer to that question, Gregori. I’m still trying to find out why you do.”

  “Oh. Why do I?”

  “I think it has something to do with the color of your hair, but”—she paused as a plate full of food was handed to her by Jenny—“we’ll have time enough to discover what we can about that.”

  “My father had hair the very same color,” Gregori offered. “And I bet,” he said, because the thought had just occurred to him, “that he would have known about the other people, too.”

  “I’ll bet he would,” agreed Dr. Farhad.

  “I think he knew how people felt, more than most
people do,” Gregori confided. “And he could use it. It’s how he got people to do what he wanted. It’s why Lia left.”

  “Are you still sorry about that?”

  Gregori risked a glance at Yehoshua, who sat directly across the table from him and was, as usual, trying, but failing, not to stare stupidly at Jenny as she laughed. “I used to be,” he said, “but I’m not so sure I am any more. Anyway, she wouldn’t have wanted to be on an exploratory vessel.” He said the last two words with great relish.

  Dr. Farhad smiled. “And you are?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  Smile still on her lips, she turned away to set to work on her food.

  “—Yevgeny’s still angry about being outmaneuvered,” Deucalion was saying, “but he’s good-natured about it as well. He said he oughtn’t to have tried outflanking people of our experience.”

  The captain chuckled. “Is that how he phrased it? Our experience? That was very tactful of him.”

  “Oh, Yevgeny is a master of tact. He spent some years in the Diplomatic Corps, you know, before he went into Intelligence. Once he knew that the majority on the tribunal would support our request, you must admit he did everything he could to support it, and push it through.”

  “He likes you, Deucalion. I can’t imagine why.”

  Deucalion grinned. “He keeps hoping he’ll reform me. I still don’t know why he thinks I need reforming.”

  “Because,” said the captain firmly, but with humor, “you can’t escape your upbringing. Just think,” and she surveyed the table at large, “I went to all that trouble to escape the confines of Ransome House, and here I am, consigning myself to a ship that’s far smaller and far more confining.”

  “But min Ransome,” objected Paisley, “it be far less confining. You can go ya anywhere you please. Pretty much.”

  “It’s true,” admitted the captain, “that the horizons are less limited.”

  “Ransome.”

  The captain turned at the sound of her name. Eyes widening, she stood up. “Windsor! Fred. Stanford. How did you get on?” Then she laughed, waving them forward to seats that the others at the table moved to make free. “Never mind. I’m not sure I want to know. I’m surprised to see you here. I didn’t think you would remain on Concord.”