Changeling

by Sharon Lee

  He smiled in his turn and went to take her hand.

  "The jacket disarmed you, doubtless."

  She laughed, kin-warm. "Doubtless. Jump-pilot, eh? It suits you extremely."

  Eba had been his favorite sister--young enough not to entirely despise the childish projects of a younger brother, yet old enough to stand as sometimes ally against the more boisterous of the cousins. Ren Zel pressed her fingers.

  "I find you well?"

  "Well," she conceded, and then, playfully, "And well you find me at all, rogue! How many relumma have passed since you last came to us? I suppose it's nothing to you that I am tomorrow sent to Morjan for a twelve-day? I was to have left today, but necessity calls me to the shop. Say at least you will be at Prime!"

  "I believe I shall," he said. "The Delm calls me home, on business."

  "Ah!" She looked wise. "One had heard something of that. You will be pleased, I think." She dropped his hand and patted the leather sleeve of his jacket. "Go on inside. I must to the shop."

  "Yes, of course." She read his hesitation, though, and laughed softly, shaking her glossy dark hair back.

  "You cannot stand out on the walk all day, you know! Until Prime, Ren Zel!"

  "Until Prime, Eba," he replied, and watched her down the walk. She turned at the corner without looking back. Ren Zel squared his shoulders, walked up to the gate and lay his palm against the plate.

  A heartbeat later, he was within Obrelt's walls. Directly thereafter, the front door accepted his palmprint and he stepped into the house.

  His nose led him to the dining room, and he stood on the threshold several minutes before one of the cousins caught sight of him, touched the arm of the cousin next to him, who turned, then spoke quickly--quietly--to the cousin next to her until in no time the whole busy, bustling room was still, all eyes on the man under the archway.

  "Well." One stirred, stood up from her place at the table.

  "Don't dawdle in the doorway, child," said Aunt Chane, for all the stars as if he were ten again. "Come in and break your fast."

  "Yes, Aunt," he said meekly and walked forward. The cousins shook themselves, took up the threads of their conversations, poured tea and chose slices of sweet toast. Ren Zel came to the table and made his bow.

  "Ma'am."

  "Ren Zel." She held out a hand, beckoning, and he stepped to her side. Chane smiled, then, and kissed his cheek. "Welcome home."

  * * *

  AUNT CHANE SAT ON the short side of the table across which Ren Zel and Obrelt Himself faced each other, in the Advocate's Chair. The wine was poured and the ritual sip taken; then the glasses were set aside and Obrelt laid the thing out.

  "The name of the lady we propose for your wife is Elsu Meriandra, Clan Jabun," he said, in his usual bluff way.

  Ren Zel blinked, for Jabun was a Clan old in piloting. Certainly, it was not Korval, but for outworld Casia it was very well indeed--and entirely above Obrelt's touch.

  The Delm held up a hand. "Yes, they are beyond us absolutely--pilots to shopkeepers. But Obrelt has a pilot of its own to bring to the contract suite and Jabun was not uninterested."

  But surely, Ren Zel thought, surely, the only way in which Obrelt might afford such a contract was to cede the child to Jabun--and that made no sense at all. Jabun was a Clan of pilots, allied with other of the piloting Houses. What use had they for the seed of a child of Obrelt, bred of shopkeepers, the sole pilot produced by the House in all its history? He was a fluke, a changeling; no true-breeding piloting stock such as they might wish to align with themselves.

  "The child of the contract," his Delm continued, "will come to Obrelt."

  Well, yes, and that made sense, if Obrelt found pilot wages to its taste and wished to diversify its children. But, gods, the expense! And no guarantee that his child would be any more pilot than Eba!

  "No," Aunt Chane said dryly, "we have not run mad. Recruit yourself, child."

  Ren Zel took a deep breath. "One wishes not to put the Clan into shadow," he said softly.

  "We have been made to understand this," Obrelt said, of equal dryness with his sister. "Imagine my astonishment when I learned that a debt contracted by the House for the good of the House had been reassigned to one Ren Zel dea'Judan Clan Obrelt. At his request, of course."

  "My contracts are profitable," Ren Zel murmured. "There was no need for the House to bear the burden."

  "The Clan receives a tithe of your wages," Aunt Chane pointed out.

  He inclined his head. "Of course."

  He looked up in time to see his Aunt and his Delm exchange a look undecipherable to him. The Delm cleared his throat.

  "Very well. For the matter at hand--Jabun and I have reached an equitable understanding. Jabun desires his daughter to meet you before the lines are signed. That meeting is arranged for tomorrow evening, at the house of Jabun. The lines will be signed on the day after, here in our own house. The contract suite stands ready to receive you."

  The day after tomorrow? Ren Zel thought, feeling his stomach clench as it did when he faced an especially tricksy bit of piloting. Precisely as if he were sitting board, he took a breath and forced himself to relax. Of course, he would do as his Delm instructed him--obedience to the Delm, subservience to the greater good of the Clan, was bred deep in his bones. To defy the Delm was to endanger the Clan, and without the Clan there was no life. It was only--the matter came about so quickly...

  "There was a need for haste," Aunt Chane said, for the second time apparently reading his mind. "Pilot Meriandra's ship is come into dock for rebuilding and she is at liberty to marry. It amuses Jabun to expand his alliances--and it profits Obrelt to gain for itself the child of two pilots." She paused. "Put yourself at ease: the price is not beyond us."

  "Yes, Aunt," he said, for there was nothing else to say. Two days hence, he would be wed; his child to come into Clan, to be sheltered and shaped by those who held his interests next to their hearts. The Code taught that this was well, and fitting, and just. He had no complaint and ought, indeed, feel honored, that the Clan lavished so much care on him.

  But his stomach was still uncertain when they released him at last to settle his business at the Port and to register his upcoming marriage with the Guild.

  * * *

  THE LINES WERE signed, the contract sealed. Elsu Meriandra received her Delm's kiss and obediently allowed her hand to be placed into the hand of Delm Obrelt.

  "Behold, the treasure of our Clan," Jabun intoned, while all of Clan Obrelt stood witness. "Keep her safe and return her well to us, at contract's end."

  "Willingly we receive Elsu, the treasure of Jabun," Obrelt responded. "Our House stands vigilant for her, as if for one of our own."

  "It is well," Jabun replied, and bowed to his daughter. "Rest easy, my child, in the House of our ally."

  The cousins came forward then to make their bows. Ren Zel stood at the side of his contract-bride and made her known to each, from Obrelt Himself down to the youngest child in the nursery--his sister Eba's newest.

  After that, there was the meal of welcoming. Ren Zel, who held lesser rank in Obrelt than his wife held in Jabun, was seated considerably down-table. This was according to Code, which taught that Obrelt could not impose Ren Zel's status on Elsu, who was accustomed to sitting high; nor could her status elevate him, since she was a guest in his House.

  He had eaten but lightly of the meal, listening to the cousins on either side talk shop. From time to time he glimpsed his wife, high up-table between his sister Farin and his cousin Wil Bar, fulfilling her conversational duty to her meal partners. She did not look down-table.

  The meal at last over, Ren Zel and Aunt Chane escorted Jabun's treasure throughout Obrelt's house, showing her the music room, the formal parlor and the tea room, the game room and the door to the back garden. In the library, Aunt Chane had her place a palm against the recording plate. This registered her with the House computer and insured that the doors allowed to contract-spouses would open at her
touch.

  Departing the library, they turned left down the hall, not right toward the main stair, and Aunt Chane led the way up the private stairway to the closed wing. In the upper hallway, she paused by the first door and bowed to Elsu Meriandra.

  "Your room, contract-daughter. If you find aught awry, only pick up the house phone and call me. It will be my honor to repair any error."

  Elsu bowed in turn.

  "The House shows me great kindness," she said, most properly, her high, sweet voice solemn. She straightened and put her hand against the plate. The door slid open and she was gone, though Ren Zel thought she looked at him, a flickering glance through modestly lowered lashes, in the instant before the door closed behind her.

  Though it was not necessary, Aunt Chane guided him to the third and last door on the hallway. She turned and smiled.

  "Temporary quarters."

  This sort of levity was not like his Aunt and Ren Zel was startled into a smile of his own. "Thank you, ma'am."

  "Thank us, is it?" She tipped her head, considering him in the hall's dim light. "Let the flowers aid you," she said softly. "It will be well, child."

  He had his doubts, in no way alleviated by the few words he had actually exchanged with his wife, but it would serve no useful purpose to share them with Aunt Chane. The Clan desired a child born of the union of pilots: His part was plainly writ.

  So, he smiled again and raised her hand, laying his cheek against the backs of her fingers in a gesture of kin-love. "It will be well," he repeated, for her comfort.

  "Ah." She seemed on the edge of saying something further, but in the end simply inclined her head before walking, alone, back the way they had come.

  After a moment, Ren Zel put his hand against the door and entered his temporary quarters.

  He had been here yesterday, moving in his clothes and such of his books as he thought would be prudent. He had even opened the inner door and gone into the middle room--into the contract room itself--walking lightly on the lush carpet.

  The bed was ornate, old, and piled high with pillows. The flowers twined up two bedposts and climbed across the connecting bars, spilling down in luxuriant curtains of green and blue. Sunlight poured down from the overhead window, heating the blossoms and releasing the aphrodisiac scent. Standing by the wine-table, Ren Zel had felt his blood stir and taken a step away, deliberately turning his back on the bed.

  The rest of the room was furnished but sparsely: there was the wine-table, of course, and a small table with two chairs, at which two might take a private meal; and a wide, yellow brocade sofa facing a fireplace where sweet logs were laid, awaiting the touch of a flamestick. The solitary window was that above the bed; the walls were covered in nubbled silk the color of the brocaded sofa.

  Across the room--directly across the room from the door by which he had entered--was another door. Beyond, he knew, was another room, like the room he had just quit, where his sisters were laying out those things Elsu Meriandra had sent ahead.

  Some trick of the rising heat had filled his nostrils with flower-scent again and Ren Zel had retreated to his own quarters, locking the door to the contract-room behind him.

  Now, showered and dressed in the robe his sisters had given him in celebration of his marriage, he paused to consider what little he knew of his wife.

  She was his elder by nearly three Standards, fair-haired, wide-eyed and comely. He thought that she was, perhaps, a little spoilt, and he supposed that came of being the true-daughter of a High Clan Delm. Her manners were not entirely up in the boughs, however, and she spoke to Aunt Chane precisely as she ought. If she had little to say to him beyond those things that the Code demanded, it was scarcely surprising. He was in all things her inferior: rank, flight-time, age, and beauty. And, truth be told, they had not been brought together to converse.

  That which had brought them together--well. He had taken himself to the sleep learner, to review the relevant section of Code, for the contract-bed was a far different thing than a breakshift tumble with a comrade--and there his wife had the advantage of him again. She had been married once already, to a pilot near her equal her rank, and Jabun had her child in its keeping.

  Sighing, he straightened his garment about him, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror: Ordinary, practical Ren Zel, got up in a magnificent indigo-and-silver marriage robe that quite overwhelmed his commonplace features. Sighing again, he glanced at the clock on the dresser.

  The hour was upon him.

  Squaring his shoulders under their burden of embroidery, Ren Zel went to the inner door, and lay his palm against the plate. The door opened.

  Elsu Meriandra was at the wine table, back to him. Her hair was loose on her shoulders, her robe an expensive simplicity of flowing golden shadowsilk, through which he could plainly see her body. She heard the door open and turned, her eyes wide, lustrous with the spell of the bed-flowers.

  "Good evening," she said, her high voice sounding somewhat breathless. "Will you drink a glass with me ... Ren Zel?"

  His name. A good sign, that. Ren Zel took a breath, tasting the flowers, and deliberately drew the scent deep into his lungs. He smiled at the woman before him.

  "I will be happy to share a glass with you, Elsu," he said softly, and stepped into the contract-room.

  * * *

  REN ZEL WOKE IN the room he had been allotted, and stretched, luxuriating in his solitude even as he cataloged his various aches. The lady was not a gentle lover. He thought he could have borne this circumstance with more equanimity, had he any indication that her exuberance sprang from an enthusiasm for himself. To the contrary, she had brushed his attentions aside, as one might dismiss the annoying graspings of a child.

  Well, he thought ruefully, he had heard that the flower did sometimes produce ... unwarranted ... effects.

  So thinking, he rolled neatly out of bed, showered, and dressed in his usual plain shirt and pants. He stamped into his boots and picked up his latest book--a slender volume of Terran poetry. The habit of taking a book with him to breakfast had formed when he was a child and it had come to his notice that the cousins let him be, if he were diligently reading.

  He was passing the game room on his way to the dining hall when the sound of child's laughter gave him pause.

  It was not entirely ... comfortable ... laughter, he thought. Rather, it sounded breathless, and just a little shrill. Ren Zel put his hand against the door and, quietly, looked inside.

  Elsu Meriandra was playing catch with young Son Dor, who had, Ren Zel remembered, all of eight Standards. She was pitching the ball sharply and in unexpected directions, exactly as one might do when playing with a pilot--or one destined to be a pilot.

  Son Dor was giving a good accounting of himself, considering that he was neither a pilot nor the child of a pilot. But he was clearly at the limit of both his speed and his skill, chest heaving and face wet with exertion. As Ren Zel watched, he dove for the ball, reacting to its motion, rather than anticipating its probable course, actually got a hand on it and cradled it against his chest. He threw it, none too steadily, back to Elsu Meriandra, who fielded the toss smoothly.

  "That was a good effort," she said, as Ren Zel drifted into the room, meaning to speak to her, to offer her a tour of the garden and thus allow Son Dor to escape with his melant'i intact.

  "Try this one," Elsu said and Ren Zel saw her hands move in the familiar sequence, giving the ball both velocity and spin. Dropping his book, he leapt, extended an arm and snagged the thing at the height of its arc. He danced in a circle, the sphere spinning in a blur from hand to hand, force declining, momentum slowing, until it was only a ball again--a toy, and nothing likely to break a child's fragile fingers, extended in a misguided attempt to catch it.

  "Cousin Ren Zel!" Son Dor cried. "I could have caught it! I could have!"

  Ren Zel laughed and danced a few more steps, the ball spinning lazily now on the tips of his fingers.

  "Of course you could have, sweetin
g," he said, easily. "But you were having so much fun, it was more than I could do not to join in." He smiled, the ball spinning slowly. "Catch now," he said to Son Dor, and allowed the toy to leave his fingers.

  The child rushed forward and caught it with both hands.

  "Well done!" Ren Zel applauded. Son Dor flushed with pleasure and tossed the ball back. Ren Zel caught it one-handed, and allowed his gaze to fall upon the wall clock.

  "Cousin," he said, looking back to the child, "is it not time for history lessons?"

  Son Dor spun, stared at the clock, gasped, and spun back, remembering almost at once to make his bow.

  "Ma'am, forgive me. I am wanted at my studies."

  "Certainly," Elsu said. "Perhaps we might play ball again, when your studies free you."

  Son Dor looked just a bit uneasy about that, but replied courteously. "It would be my pleasure, ma'am." He glanced aside.

  "Cousin..."

  Ren Zel waved a hand. "Yes, all you like, but do not, I implore you, be late to Uncle Arn Eld. You know how he grumbles when one is late!"

  Apparently Son Dor knew just that, and the knowledge gave his feet wings. The door thumped closed behind him and Ren Zel let out his breath in a long sigh before turning to face Elsu Meriandra.

  She was standing with her head tipped, an expression of amused curiosity upon her face.

  "He is not," Ren Zel said, stringently even, "a pilot. He will never be a pilot."

  She frowned slightly at that and motioned for the ball. He threw it to her underhanded and she brought it, spinning hard, up onto her fingers.

  "Are you certain of that, I wonder? Sometimes, when they are young, they are a little lazy. When that is the case, the spinball may be depended upon to produce the correct response."

  Ren Zel moved his shoulders, letting the tension flow out of him. She did not understand--how could she? Pilot from a House of pilots. He sighed.

  "The children of this House are shopkeepers. They have the reactions and the instincts of shopkeepers." He paused, thinking of Son Dor, laboring after a toss that a pilot's child would find laughably easy.