by Sharon Lee
Miri Robertson grinned. "Tough call, ain't it?"
"Surprisingly so." He smiled at her. "I am guided in this by my lifemate, who I am persuaded would wish me safe among kin."
"Safe among kin ain't what we're offering this quarter," she told him, very serious indeed. "Be sure you know that."
Daav raised his eyebrows. "I know it now, I thank you. The condition is not so different from my life away."
"OK, then. First things first." She moved one step back, which put her shoulder-to-shoulder with her lifemate.
Daav took a sharp breath, and felt Aelliana, awake and aware, and very interested in the matter at hand.
Miri Robertson lifted her chin and looked him in the eye before spreading her arms in the ritual gesture.
"We see you, Daav yos'Phelium," she said, the High Liaden phrase ringing against the darkness. "Come forward and be reunited with your House."
Throat tight, and eyes misted, he stepped forward. He had to bend a trifle to accept his Thodelmae's kiss; not at all to receive the Thodelm's. He did not entirely anticipate the embrace that followed—as perhaps his son had not, judging by its abruptness and the rough, anguished whisper in his ear:
"Father, where the hell have you been?"
Day 308
Standard Year 1392
Blair Road
Surebleak
DESPITE A NATURAL desire to please one's oathsworn, Pat Rin did not sleep well. Indeed, his exertions toward a restful slumber were so little rewarded that he arose from his celibate, sagging bed after only a few hours of tossing and turning, and made hasty use of a shower which could at best be coaxed to produce tepid water. Thereafter, Natesa at his back in defiance of a direct order to seek her own couch, he had another tour of his new property, yanking open every drawer in every room, ending—unfulfilled, frustrated, but considerably warmer for the exercise—in the so-called "parlor," where he was in good time to greet the printer.
That worthy came, as she had last evening, ink-stained and breathless, with the addition this morning of a fistful of flimsy gray sheets, which she thrust at Pat Rin with a broad grin.
"On the street, Boss. Got a couple of mine from the shop and some of Audrey's on the corners, reading 'em out, with extras to give the ones who can read themselves."
"Well done." Pat Rin shook one sheet loose and passed it to Natesa, took another for himself, and put the rest atop the chest of drawers he had been, fruitlessly, exploring.
It was, he saw at once, the paper that was gray; the printing itself was remarkably crisp and resisted smudging. The announcement of the change in administration was set top-and-center, with no alteration in his original text. That was good. At the bottom of the page was a boxed advertisement, announcing the grand opening sale at the Carpet Emporium on Blair Road, directly across from Al's Hardware.
"We will want one of these put out every morning," he said to the printer. "I will give you news from the boss' office. It would please me, however, if this effort were to develop into an . . . honest . . . publication, imparting news of interest and importance to everyone who lives on these streets."
The printer nodded. "I was talking to one of mine last night, while we was setting the type on this. Old fella. He remembers 'way back, and he says we usta have a—a daily gab-rag. Told me how to set it up. We're gonna need couple people on the street, finding out what's up and who's doin' which. They'd write it up and we'd set it—and every morning, early, it's on the street, free. Free," she said again, emphatically, though Pat Rin had made no demur. "Reason we can give it away, is we sell these boxes like you got here to the joint-owners—like Al and Tobi and, hell, Ms. Audrey. Sounded weird to me, but Laird—that's the old guy—Laird says the owners paid up, and were glad to do it. The percentage is that they got more traffic through their joints, especially if they'd do a—a special on something everybody needs—sugar, say. Sell it low instead of high to—"
Pat Rin raised a hand, and the printer chopped off in mid-sentence, eyes showing white in her ink-smudged face.
"I am familiar with the concept. It is precisely what I propose and I am delighted that you have an advisor to hand. Do you find yourself able to undertake this project?"
"I'm in," she told him. "I need to know what your piece is so we can price up the boxes right."
Pat Rin frowned. "My . . . piece. I—Ah." It was expected that he take a profit from the printer's endeavor, while absorbing nothing of the risk. Gods, what a hideous place. He sighed.
"My piece will be taken in advertising space," he said, showing her the flimsy sheet. "A box, precisely as you have it here, with words that will alter at my discretion. Three times a week, I will have such an advertisement from you."
She blinked. "That's it?"
He lifted his eyebrows, consciously adapting a High House hauteur. "It is sufficient."
"Yessir," she said hastily, and cleared her throat, looking around her. "Well, if you're not—"
"Hold." He extended a hand, and she froze as if he had turned her to stone. "There may be another service you may perform for me. I will pay," he said sternly, "for this service."
The printer glanced aside, possibly trying to gain something from Natesa's face. In this, she was apparently frustrated, for she looked back to Pat Rin with a jerky nod. "Sure, Boss. What can I do for you?"
"Pens," he said.
"Pens?"
"To write with. Ink pens. Black ink, by preference, or blue. But any color will do—I apprehend that I may not be able to afford to be proud. Have you such access to such things?"
She swallowed, her eyes sliding toward Natesa again, before being forcibly brought back to his face. "Yessir. I can get you pens. Black ink and blue. Got red, too, and green. Purple . . . "
"Black," he said firmly, and added, after taking thought. "And red. A dozen each, if you have them in such quantity. If not, as many as you can bring me today, with the balance due when they are available."
She nodded, jerkily. "Right, Boss," she said, her feet sliding against the plastic floor, preparatory to taking her leave—and froze once again when Pat Rin raised his hand.
"One last thing," he said. "A—a logbook."
"Logbook, Boss?" There was genuine puzzlement on the woman's face.
Pat Rin sighed. "A bound book, with the interior pages blank, so that one may—may make notations. Of a good size . . . " His hands moved, squaring it out in the air between them. "The binding of some durable material—leather, perhaps or—"
"Got it!" The printer's face lit. "Can do, Boss. Got just what you need. I'll send it over with the pens."
"And an invoice," Pat Rin cautioned her. "I will purchase these from you."
"Sure, Boss. Whatever you say." She moved her feet again, clearly aching to be gone.
"Thank you," Pat Rin told her. "You have done well. Natesa will see you out."
"Right. Uh—you're welcome. Boss." She darted after Natesa and Pat Rin closed his eyes, wishing most heartily for a cup of tea.
Pat Rin put the tin down on the kitchen table, not quite able to repress the shudder, and stood, head bent, striving for patience. Once, the tin before him had contained a perfectly unexceptional blend of afternoon tea. Now . . .
The cook, who had been hovering, hands twisting in his apron, sighed.
"Bad, huh?" He said it almost wistfully.
"On several counts," Pat Rin told him, with really commendable calmness. "First, it is old. Second, it is damp. This sort is a dry leaf tea." He took a careful breath. "Well. We shall have to purchase more. When—"
The cook was shaking his head vigorously. "No, sir. Or, at least, not if you're after more that look like that tin there. Got a bunch of 'em in the pantry."
"Which are of like age?" Natesa murmured.
Pat Rin moved a shoulder. "The age perhaps does not matter so much," he said. "This tin had been stasis-sealed. If the others have not been breached, there may actually be something in this house worth drinking." He waved a languid hand
at the cook. "Take me to the pantry."
The man blinked. "Ain't no need of that, Boss. Won't take me a minute to fetch 'em out for you."
"Yes, but you see," Pat Rin explained gently, "eventually I will wish to partake of a meal, and I am afraid that the quality displayed last evening must improve. Rapidly. So, I am interested in what else might be in the pantry in addition to tea; and if any of it is eatable, or may be made to be eatable." He fixed the man in his eye and frowned. "In short, I wish to ascertain whether I need a new pantry or a new cook."
"Oh," the cook said. "Gotcha." He unwrapped his hands from his apron, and pointed. "Right this way, Boss."
Pat Rin followed, Natesa at his back. The pantry was at the end of a narrow hallway, behind a heavy wooden door. The cook pushed this portal open and brought up the lights, revealing half-a-dozen orderly shelves of tinned stuffs, and bags that announced their contents in letters and pictograph: salt, sugar, flour, rice. To the right of these were a few bins, covered over with old blankets. Above, suspended by cords from the center beam, were perhaps a dozen round, waxy balls.
The cook stood respectfully aside as Pat Rin toured the room. There were more empty shelves than full, which struck him as odd in the house of a supposed Power—but, then, much about the late Boss Moran's house struck him as odd. He perused the stocks leisurely, finding first ten stasis sealed tins of the same unexceptional blend as that which had been spoilt. He picked one up and stood with it cradled in his hand, reading the labels of the other tins.
It appeared that he was wealthy in tinned fish, tinned crackers, and two or three varieties of tinned soup. Next to these things were perhaps half-a-dozen glass jars, vacuum-sealed, each bearing a hand-lettered label: Jam. He took one of those, too, and carried it and the tea-tin in the crook of his arm as he moved over to inspect the contents of the bins, Natesa to his right, and a step behind.
Further to the right, within the shadows cast by of a row of empty shelves, something moved; at the door, the cook gasped, and stiffened. Beside him, Natesa drew, fierce and fluid—
"Do not!" He flung a hand out, and she whirled, staring at him out of obsidian eyes that must surely have done damage—had done damage . . . He shook away the wound and pointed. "It is only a cat."
She looked down the line of his finger and the cat obliged him by strolling out into the greater light, sparing the two of them a yellow-eyed glance of utter boredom before trotting off down the room, to be lost once more in the shadows.
"I . . . see," Natesa said, on a long sigh, slipping her weapon away. She looked back him, eyes considerably less sharp, and inclined her head. "Master."
"Surely, merely lucky?" he responded, deliberately flippant, and looked over to the cook, standing clenched and slightly pale by the door. "I have some . . . familiarity . . . with cats."
"Yessir, Boss. Boss Moran, he liked to shoot cats."
"Yes, well. I prefer not to have mice." Taking a deep breath, he continued to the bins.
Leaning over, he flicked back the blankets. Bin One contained a goodly number of some sort of tuber, still wearing their native soil. Bin Two was wholly given over to pungent-smelling bulbs—possibly the local equivalent of onion. Bin Three was filled near to overflowing with large orange fruits, which appeared to be of a robust habit.
Pat Rin turned to face the cook, and pointed up at the center beam.
"Cheese?"
"Right you are, Boss. Best cheese in the city."
"Ah. As it happens, I am partial to cheese."
The cook smiled. "We'll getcha a slice off the one in the kitchen, when we go back. Man who likes cheese'll find it a friend."
Pat Rin eyed him. "I infer from this that Mr. Moran did not care for cheese?"
"Nossir. Boss Moran, he didn't like much, 'cept to hoard his money. And makin' his 'hands crawl—he did get a heapin' cup o'pleasure outta that."
"I wonder that you stayed with so unsatisfactory a master," Pat Rin commented, but the man only stared at him. Sighing, he jerked his head toward the bins.
"Those tubers—are they a local specialty?"
The cook nodded. "Jonni grows 'em up on the roof. He takes care of 'most all the vegetables."
"I see. Yet when Mr. McFarland particularly desired vegetables for last evening's meal, you sent in a mess of leaves. I wonder why?"
"After greens, is what he told me. We're too early in the season for greens. Froze some stuff, end of last growin' season, but it's gone now, too."
"I see," Pat Rin said again, and used his free hand to motion the cook out into the hallway. "Let us repair to the kitchen. I am very much in need of tea, and perhaps some of your excellent bread, with jam on it."
They were seated 'round the kitchen table sometime later when Cheever McFarland arrived, all three supplied with a beer tankard filled with a gently steaming pale green liquid. Plates before each bore the sticky remains of toast-and-jam sandwiches. Pat Rin and the cook had their heads together, apparently engaged in producing a grocery list, while Natesa looked on, her eyes heavy, and faintly amused.
"Mornin'," he said to her, and pointed at the wreckage. "Any more of any of that left?"
She moved her head in a subtle nod toward the counter. "There is tea, and there is jam, and there is bread. Toast is made on the grill."
"Right." He considered her. "Long night?"
The fingers of her left hand flickered in the sign-language known as Old Trade, letting him know the boss hadn't slept—and neither had she.
"Right," he said again. "I'm on shift now. Get some rest. I'll sit on him."
She smiled faintly. "I wish you good fortune, but I believe you will find yourself bested," she murmured, easing out of her chair. At the sink, she emptied what was left of her tea, rinsed the beer mug and set it to be washed.
She looked back as she left the kitchen. Pat Rin yos'Phelium and the cook were still deep in their plans; the cook laboriously writing down the boss' suggestions.
"DON'T LOOK LIKE the ad's drawing so good," Cheever commented at about half-past lunch. "What say we shut the store for an hour and go on down to Tobi's for bite?"
Pat Rin glanced up from the battered notebook he'd been studying for most of the morning. "We do not appear to be awash in customers," he allowed, courteously. "Nor have I properly attended the hour. By all means, Mr. McFarland, provide yourself with lunch."
Cheever sighed mightily and shook his head. "I thought we'd got the concept of 'security' through to you. I ain't leavin' you here on your own, even if you probably are the best shot on the planet." He swung a hand around, impatiently. "Think about it! What if five guns come in through the front door right now and you was alone?"
The Liaden smiled, politely, like Cheever'd maybe told him a slightly off-color joke. "Why, then, Mr. McFarland, I should immediately be out the back door."
"If I believed that—which I don't—how'd you plan on dealin' with the two they sent 'round to watch the alley?" He frowned, as ugly as he knew how. "You ain't making things easy for your security, Boss. My copy of the plan don't include the part where your head gets blown off."
"Ah." He closed his eyes. Cheever considered him, letting the frown go, and allowed as how he was worried. The plan—because there was one, hammered out between the three of them long before they raised Surebleak—was only good to a point. Taking over Moran's territory—that had been according to plan. They had to have a planetary base, and while Moran's streets weren't exactly convenient to the spaceport, they had been the nearest most accessible target. From here, they could consolidate, and figure out how to get past the more powerful fatcats who controlled the territories surrounding the port.
He'd considered that they'd be using their guns more than once, 'cause that was how business was done on Surebleak, and didn't think much more about it.
Since yesterday, though, he'd thought about it a lot.
Pat Rin . . . Pat Rin wasn't a pro. Oh, he was a good shot; he walked the walk, and that cool, pretty face of his didn'
t give away much, but that was gambler bravado—plus a measure of pure cussedness, give the boy his due—and nothing like what marked Natesa out as a gun to fear.
Pat Rin had a revenge to accomplish. Cheever understood that. In fact, he sanctioned it. And he didn't doubt—if the boss had to personally shoot every fatcat and loyal 'hand on Surebleak to do it, that the job would get done. What worried him, considerable, was the question of what would be left of Pat Rin yos'Phelium at the end of the campaign. He'd already taken a hit that would've unhinged most Liadens, as Cheever understood it. Pat Rin hadn't come unhinged—at least, not so you'd notice—but he was starting to show some strain. Even as he sat there in his chair, eyes closed and restful looking, Cheever could see the tension in his muscles, and new lines starting to etch in around his mouth. The success of the game depended on this man, Cheever thought—and came suddenly to the realization that nobody—maybe not even Pat Rin himself—knew what Pat Rin would do next.
"Well." The Liaden opened his eyes and slipped the little book away into his jacket. "One does not build an entire day's labor upon a jam sandwich." He stood, a shade less graceful than his usual, which Cheever thought was the sleepless night starting to show.
"Let us have lunch, Mr. McFarland."
Come down to it, Cheever hadn't expected to win the argument, and he wasn't sure he liked the idea of the boss in Tobi's surrounded by workaday streeters, now that he had the victory. Still, they had to show their faces around town—that was the point of the rug store, after all. As if to enforce this line of reasoning, Cheever felt his stomach rumble an order for a brew and a sandwich.
That being settled, he followed the boss into the store proper just as the first customer on the day walked in off the street.
She was a sight to behold—on first glance as out of place on the street as Pat Rin himself. Second glance found the silk to be second-grade synthetic; the jewelry light-gold set with mine-cut stones. Still, she bore herself as would a person of melant'i, come to call upon an equal.
Accordingly, Pat Rin bowed.
The lady considered him out of clever blue eyes, and shook her pale, elaborately coiffed head.