Changeling

by Sharon Lee

  "I heard her scream, but I could not--the ship..."

  "The Master Pilot commends you. The others..."

  "The others," Ren Zel finished wearily, "are allied to Jabun and dare not risk his anger."

  "Just so. And Obrelt--forgive us, child. Obrelt cannot shield you. Jabun has demonstrated that we will starve if we reject this Balancing."

  "Demonstrated?"

  She sighed. "Eba has been released from her position, her keys stripped from her by the owner before the entire staff of the shop. Wil Bar was served the same, though the owner there was kind enough to receive the keys in the privacy of the back office. Both owners are closely allied with Clan Jabun."

  Gods. No wonder Eba wept and would not see him.

  "We will mourn you," Aunt Chane said softly. "They cannot deny us that." She glanced at the clock, stepped up and offered her arm.

  "It is time."

  He looked into his Aunt's face, saw sorrow and necessity. Carefully, tender of the chancy leg, put his hand on the offered arm and allowed himself to be led downstairs to die.

  * * *

  THE HOUSE'S MODEST ballroom was jammed to overflowing. All of Clan Obrelt, from the eldest to the youngest, were present to witness Ren Zel's death. Fewer of Clan Jabun were likewise present, scarcely a dozen, all adult, saving one child--a toddler with white-blonde hair and wide blue eyes that Ren Zel knew must be Elsu's daughter.

  On the dais usually occupied by musicians during Obrelt's rare entertainments was a three-sided table. On the shortest side stood Ren Zel; Aunt Chane and Obrelt Himself were together at one of the longer sides; Jabun and his second, a grey-haired man with steel-blue eyes, stood facing them.

  In the front row of witnesses sat a figure of neither House, an old and withered man who one might see a time or two a year, at weddings and funerals, always wearing the same expression of polite sadness: Tor Cam tel' Vana, the Eyes of Casia's Council of Clans.

  "We are here," Jabun lifted his voice so that it washed against the far walls of the room, "to put the death upon the man who murdered Elsu Meriandra, pilot first class, daughter of Jabun."

  "We are here," Obrelt's voice was milder, but no more difficult for those in the back to hear, "to mourn Obrelt's son Ren Zel, who dies as the result of a piloting accident."

  Jabun glared, started--and was restrained by the hand of his second on his sleeve. Thus moderated, he turned his hot eyes to Ren Zel.

  "What have you in your pockets, dead man? It is my Balance that you go forth from here nameless, rootless and without possessions."

  Slowly, Ren Zel reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew the two cantra pieces.

  "Put them on the table," Jabun hissed.

  "He will return them to his pocket," Obrelt corrected and met the other's glare with a wide calmness. "Ren Zel belongs to Obrelt until he dies. It is the tradition of our Clan that the dead shall have two coins, one to an eye." He gestured toward the short side of the table, still holding Jabun's gaze. "Ren Zel, your pocket."

  Obediently, he slipped the coins away.

  Once again, Jabun sputtered; once again, he was held back by his second, who leaned forward and stared hard into Ren Zel's face.

  "There is something else, dead man. We will see your license destroyed ere you are cast away."

  Ren Zel froze. His license? Were they mad? How would he work? How would he live?

  "My nephew gave his life for that license, Honored Sir," Aunt Chane said serenely. "He dies because he was worthy of it. What more fitting than it be interred with him?"

  "That was not our agreement," the second stated.

  "Our agreement," said Obrelt with unbreached calm, "was that Ren Zel dea'Judan be cast out of his Clan, and made a stranger to his kin, his loss to Obrelt to precisely Balance the loss of Elsu Meriandra to Clan Jabun. Elsu Meriandra was not made to relinquish her license in death. We desire, as Jabun desires, an exact Balancing of accounts."

  Jabun Himself answered, and in such terms that Ren Zel would have trembled, had there been room for fear beside the agony in his heart.

  "You think to buy him a life? Think again! What ship will employ a dead man? None that Jabun knows by name." He shifted, shaking off his second's hand.

  In the first row of witnesses, the aged man rose. "These displays delay and impair the death," murmured the Eyes of Council. "Only his Delm may lay conditions upon a dying man, and there is no death until the Delm declares it." He paused, sending a thoughtful glance to Jabun. "The longest Balance-death recorded stretched across three sundowns."

  Jabun glared briefly at the Eyes, then turned back to the table.

  "He may retain the license," he said, waving his hand dismissively. "May it do him well in the Low Port."

  There was silence; the Eyes bowed toward the Balancing table and reseated himself, hands folded on his knee.

  Obrelt cleared his throat and raised his voice, chanting in the High Tongue.

  "Ren Zel dea'Judan, you are cast out, dead to Clan and kin. You are nameless, without claim or call upon this House. Begone. Begone." His voice broke, steadied.

  "Begone."

  Ren Zel stood at the small side of the table, staring out over the roomful of his kin. All the faces he saw were solemn; not a few were tear-tracked.

  "Begone!" snarled Jabun. "Die, child-killer!"

  In the back of the ballroom, one of the smallest cousins began to wail. Steeling himself, not daring to look at Chane, nor anywhere, save his own feet, Ren Zel walked forward, down the three steps to the floor; forward, down the thin path that opened as the cousins moved aside to let him gain the door; forward, down the hallway, to the foyer. The door stood open. He walked on, down the steps to the path, down the path to the gate.

  "Go on!" Jabun shouted from behind. Ren Zel did not turn. He pushed the gate open and walked out.

  The gate crashed shut behind him and he spun, his heart slamming into overaction. Shaking, he flattened his palm against the plate, felt the tingle of the reader and--

  Nothing else. The gate remained locked. His print had been removed from the House computer. He was no longer of Obrelt.

  He was dead.

  * * *

  IT WAS FULL NIGHT when he staggered into the Pilots Guildhall in Casiaport. He'd dared not break a cantra for a taxi-ride and his clan-credit had proven dead when he tried to purchase a news flimsy with the headline over his photograph proclaiming "Pilot Dead in Flight Negligence Aftermath." His sight was weaving and he was limping heavily off the leg that had been crushed. He had seen Lai Tor in the street a block or an eternity over, raised his hand--and his friend turned his face aside and hurried off in the opposite direction.

  Dead, Ren Zel thought, and smiled without humor. Very well, then.

  A ghost, he walked into the Guildhall. The duty clerk looked up, took him in with a glance and turned her face away.

  "You are not required to speak to me," Ren Zel said, and his voice sounded not quite ... comfortable ... in his own ears. "You are not required to acknowledge my presence in any way. However." He pulled his license from its secret pocket and lay it face down on the reader. "This license--this valid license--has a debt on it. This license will not be dishonored. List the license number as "on call," duty clerk. The debt will be paid."

  Silence from the clerk. No move, toward either the license or the computer.

  Ren Zel took a ragged breath, gathering his failing resources. "Is Casiaport Guildhall in the practice of refusing repayment of contracted loans?"

  The clerk sighed. Keeping her eyes averted, she turned, picked up the license and disappeared to the back.

  Ren Zel gasped, questioning the wisdom of this play, now that it was too late, his license possibly forfeit, his life and his livelihood with--

  The clerk reappeared. Eyes stringently downturned, she placed a sheet of printout and his license on the countertop. Then she turned her back on him.

  Ren Zel's heart rose. It had worked! Surely, this was an assignment. Surel
y--

  He snatched up his license and slipped it away, then grabbed the paper, forcing his wavering sight to focus, to find the name of the client, lift time, location.

  It took him all of three heartbeats to realize that he was not looking at flight orders, but an invoice. It took another three heartbeats to understand that the invoice recorded the balance left to be paid on his loan, neatly zeroed out to three decimal places, "forgiven" stamped across the whole in tall blue letters, and then smaller blue letters, where the Guildmaster had dated the thing, and signed her name.

  Tears rose. He blinked them away, concentrating on folding the paper with clumsy, shaking fingers. Well and truly, he was a dead man. Kinless, with neither comrades nor Guildmates to support him. Worldbound, without hope of work or flight, without even a debt to lend weight to his existence.

  The paper was folded, more or less. He shoved it into his jacket pocket, squared his aching shoulders and went out into the night Port.

  On the walk, he turned right, toward Findoir's, taking all of two steps before recollecting himself. Not Findoir's. Every pilot on Port had news of his death by now.

  His comrades would turn their faces away from him, as Lai Tor had. He might speak to them, but they would not answer. He was beyond them--outcast. Nameless. Guildless. Clanless.

  Dead.

  The tears rose again. He blinked them away, aghast. To weep openly in the street, where strangers might see him? Surely, even a ghost kept better Code than that.

  He limped a few steps to the left and set his shoulders against the cool stone wall of Casiaport Guildhall. His chest hurt; the bad leg was afire, and the street scene before him seemed somewhat darker than even night might account for.

  Ren Zel took a breath, imposing board-calm. Dispassionately, he cataloged his resources:

  A first-class piloting license. A jump-pilot's spaceleather jacket, scarred and multiply patched. Two cantra.

  He leaned his head against the stone, not daring to close his eyes, even here, in the relative safety of Main Port.

  They expected that he would go to Low Port, Clan Jabun did. They expected him to finish his death there. Obrelt had cast against that, winning him the right to hold his license; winning him, so he must have thought, a chance to fly. To live.

  And how had Jabun countered? Briefly, Ren Zel closed his eyes, seeing again the three-sided table, the crowd of cousins, weeping and pale; heard Jabun snarl: "What ship will employ a dead man? None that Jabun knows by name."

  And that was his doom. There was no ship on Casiaport that Jabun could not name.

  Or was there?

  Ren Zel opened his eyes.

  Jabun's daughter--had not spoken Terran.

  Perhaps then her father did not know the names of all the ships on port.

  He pushed away from the wall and limped down the walk, heading for Mid Port.

  * * *

  THE MAN BEHIND THE desk took his license and slid into the computer. His face was bored as he scrolled down the list of Ren Zel's completed assignments.

  "Current," he said indifferently. "Everything in order, except..." The scrolling stopped. Ren Zel's mouth went dry and he braced himself against the high plastic counter. Now. Now was when the last hope died.

  The duty cler--no. The roster boss looked down at him, interest replacing boredom in his face.

  "This note here about being banned from the big hall. That temporary or permanent?"

  "Permanent," Ren Zel answered, and was ashamed to hear his voice shake.

  "OK," the boss said. He pulled the license out of the slot and tossed it across the counter. Exhausted though he was, still Ren Zel's hand moved, snatching the precious thing out of the air, and sliding it safely away.

  "OK," the boss said again. "Your card's good. Fact is, it's too good. Jump-pilot. Not much need for jump-pilots outta this hall. We get some intersystem jobs, now and then. But mostly the jumps go through Casiaport Guild. Little bit of a labor tax we cheerfully pay, for the honor of being allowed on-world."

  It was an astonishment to find irony here. Ren Zel lifted his eyes and met the suddenly knowing gaze of the roster boss, who nodded, a half-smile on his lips.

  "You got that, did you? Good boy."

  "I do not," Ren Zel said, careful, so careful, of the slippery, mode-less Terran syllables, "require a jump-ship, sir. I am ... qualified ... to fly intra-system."

  "Man's gotta eat, I guess." The boss shook his head, stared down at the computer screen and Ren Zel stood rooted, muscles tense as if expecting a blow.

  The boss let his breath out, noisily.

  "All right, here's what. You wanna fly outta here, you gotta qualify." He held up a hand, though Ren Zel had said nothing. "I know you got a first class card. What I don't know is, can you run a Terran board. Gotta find that out before I turn you loose with a client's boat." He tipped his head. "You followin' this, kid?"

  "Yes, sir." Ren Zel took a hard breath, his head aching with the effort of deciphering the man's fluid, idiomatic Terran. "I am ... required ... to, to demonstrate my worth to the hall."

  "Close enough," the boss allowed, crossing his arms atop his computer. "The other thing you gotta do, after you pass muster, is post a bond."

  Ren Zel frowned. "Forgive me, I do not--'bond'?"

  "Right." The boss looked out into nothing for a moment, feeling over concepts, or so Ren Zel thought. "A bond is--a contract. You and me sign a paper that basically says you'll follow the company rules and keep your face clean for a Standard, and to prove you're serious about it, you give me a cantra to keep. At the end of the year, if you kept your side of the contract, I give you your money back." Again, he held up his hand, as if he expected Ren Zel's protest.

  "I know your word binds you, you being all honorable and Liaden and like that, but it's Gromit Company policy, OK? You don't post bond, you don't fly."

  "O...K," Ren Zel said slowly, buying himself a thimbleful of time while he worked the explanation out. He gathered, painfully, that the hall required him to post earnest money, against any misfortune that might befall a client's goods while they were under his care. In light of what had happened to the last item entrusted to him in flight, it seemed that the hall was merely prudent in this. However...

  "If the ... Gromit Company? ... does not fulfill its side of the contract?"

  The boss gave a short laugh. "Liadens! If the company don't fulfill its side of the contract, kid, we'll all be lookin' for work."

  That didn't quite scan, but he was tired, and his head ached, and his leg did, and if he did not fly out of the Terran hall, who else on all of Casiaport would hire him? He inclined his head.

  "I accept the terms," he said, as formally as one could, in Terran.

  "Do you?" The boss seemed inclined to find that humorous as well. "OK, then. Report back here tomorrow Port-noon and we'll have you take the tests. Oh--one more thing."

  "Yes."

  The man's voice was stern. "No politics. I mean that. I don't want any Liaden Balances or vendettas or whateverthehell you do for fun coming into my hall. You bring any of that here and you're out, no matter how good a pilot you are. Scan that?"

  Very nearly, Ren Zel laughed. Balance. Who would seek Balance with a dead man?

  He took a shaky breath. "I understand. There is no one who ... owes ... me. Anything."

  The boss held his eyes for a long moment, then nodded. "Right. Keep it that way." He paused, then sighed.

  "You got a place to sleep?"

  Ren Zel pushed away from the counter. "I ... not..." He sighed in his turn, sharply, frustrated with his ineptitude. "Forgive me. I mean to say--not this evening. Sir."

  "Huh." The boss extended a long arm and hooked a key off the board by his computer. "This ain't a guild hall. All we got here is a cot for the willfly. Happens the willfly is already in the air, so you can use the cot." He threw the key and Ren Zel caught it between both palms. "You pass the entry tests, you find your own place, got it?"

  Not
entirely, no. But comprehension could wait upon the morrow.

  "Yes, sir," Ren Zel said respectfully, then spent two long seconds groping for the proper Terran phrase. "Thank you, sir."

  The man's eyebrows rose in apparent surprise. "You're welcome," he said, then jerked his head to the left. "Second door down that hall. Get some sleep, kid. You're out on your feet."

  "Yes," Ren Zel whispered, and managed a ragged approximation of a bow of gratitude before turning and limping down the hall. He slid the key into the slot and the second door whisked open.

  The room beyond was no larger than it needed to be to hold a Terran-sized cot. Ren Zel half-fell across it, his head hitting the pillow more by accident than design. He managed to struggle to a sitting position and pulled off his boots, setting them by long habit where he would find them instantly, should he be called to fly. After sober thought, he removed his jacket and folded it under the pillow, then lay down for a second time.

  He was asleep before the timer turned the room lights off.

  * * *

  ON ITS FACE, THE case had been simple enough: A catastrophe had overtaken two first class pilots. First board was dead; second nearly so, and Guild law required that such matters be reviewed and judged by a Master Pilot. So the Guild had called upon Master Pilot Shan yos'Galan Clan Korval, Master Trader and Captain of the tradeship Dutiful Passage.

  Shan had, he admitted to himself, ridden the luck long enough, having several times during the last three Standards been in precisely the wrong place to be called upon to serve as Master of Judgment, though his name had been next on the roster.

  This time he was the only Master Pilot near, and in fact had already filed a flight plan calling for him to be on, the planet on which the fatal incident had occurred. Thus the Guild snared him at last, and offered a budget should he need to study what was left of the ship, or convene a board to do so.