A Liaden Universe® Constellation: Volume Two

by Sharon Lee

  Kareen yos’Phelium Clan Korval, smart as a whip and eager for duty . . . was inadequate to the clan’s needs.

  What pilots saw when faced with a random tumbling ball, she knew not; how they managed not to be hit in the face with it she could not comprehend—as frequent sessions with the autodoc for too frequent bruises and bloodied noses attested. While numbers blossomed to meaning for others, whispering arcane and delightful secrets, for her they remained mere numerals.

  In other words, Kareen was deficient in ways that tutors could not assist her to overcome; her abilities insufficient in ways irreconcilable with the delm’s necessities when one was Delm of Korval.

  “I must,” her mother, the delm, had said, “I must be prepared to bring to the clan my full replacement. It is not the fact of having a child that is important, but of having a child who might be delm.”

  This said to the child who found only headaches in the twistiness of numbers and joy in the complexity of Code and deed . . .

  “Understand me,” Chi had continued, “it is not your attention to your studies that is at fault. It is that, as some are born unable to see as many colors as others, and others are born with no ear for music. The equations do not speak to you. The healers have said so, the tutors have said so, and the tests have said so. As we discussed the issue, your tutor admired the time you’ve spent at the work—she had the logs to hand—while proclaiming your energy high no matter the outcome. She also pointed out that energy alone does not pull an equation into balance.”

  Here her mother’s eyes had gone soft, her voice wry.

  “Also, it comes to the attention of your delm that you have given advice to the tutor.”

  Already numb with the understanding that she had failed her Clan, Kareen had raised her eyes to the delm’s.

  “I did not ‘offer advice’,” she asserted, standing as tall as she might, while bearing the weight of her shame. “The tutor had said to me that an equation she offered for solving was straightforward and without complication, and that for comparison I might see solving an issue her Clan was facing wherein a hasty giving of nubiath’a upon notification . . .”

  A quick hand-motion by the Delm stopped her.

  “I have seen your work, Daughter. The cites were appropriate; the discussion of potential remedies useful and clear. In fact, speaking as one who had been requested to broker the difficulties between those very clans, your solution was by far the cleanest—and one not discovered by three delms after many days of negotiation and research.” A slight pause, accompanied by a one-sided smile; followed by a sigh.

  “And so, the clan moves forward,” her mother said then. “As of today, your math tutor and your prepiloting classes are removed from your schedules. My own schedule has been amended. It is my belief that you have found your calling. Pursue it.”

  That had been the last time she’d had complete regard of her delm, or her mother.

  The intercom blinked, giving out a musical sound entirely unlike its usual alert tone, followed by Jeeves’ electronic voice, as clear as if it stood beside her.

  “Lady Kareen, you may hear odd sounds from this speaker; we are calibrating the connection. Can you hear me?”

  She took a deep breath. When she answered her voice was, of course, perfectly calm.

  “Indeed, Jeeves, I can hear you perfectly. You sound exactly as I expect.”

  “Noted. Miss Anthora suggests we will have a plan of action for you within moments. We have identified several potential methods to extract you and the sensitive information from the situation. Please stand by.”

  The clock in the hallway chimed.

  “Jeeves!”

  “Lady Kareen?”

  “I have a flight—very soon! It is imperative that I make—”

  “Noted,” the robot’s voice was chillingly mechanical. Kareen inclined her head to the intercom unit.

  “Thank you, Jeeves,” she murmured, added for herself more than for it, “Flaran cha’menthi!”

  * * *

  Jelaza Kazone

  A small thunderclap echoed off the kitchen tiles; air displaced by Miss Anthora’s precipitant arrival, Merlin in her ams.

  “Jeeves! I can locate the body easily. But Cousin Kareen . . . she’s like fog. No! Like a fog rooted in stone.” She leaned heavily against the counter, scarcely seeming to notice when the cat scrambled free and leapt to the floor. There was a certain fixity to her gaze that was consistent with a working trance. She was sweating, which was also not inconsistent with a working state. But this burst of panic in the midst—

  Anthora took a hard breath—another; her heart rate dropped, stress hormones leached away. A third breath and her body was soothed.

  “The house is,” she said calmly to the waiting robot, “as reported, surrounded.”

  “Noted.”

  “Suggestion?” she inquired dryly.

  “Tactical computations engaged, Miss Anthora. Although nominally engaged as a unit under Plan B, Lady Kareen is currently operating as an independent ally in the absence of Val Con yos’Phelium and others of the Line Direct, until she can return to preassigned duties. She has identified and requested the disposition of certain items of value or concern to the Plan. Tactical simplification is indicated: the orderly disposition of the contents of her house will permit focus on other pending issues.”

  “Jeeves, are you fully operational at the moment?”

  The robot’s delayed response brought her pause, but she resisted the urge to scan . . .

  “Computationally, I am more efficient and versatile than when originally constructed.”

  “Do you have strategic computations also engaged then?”

  A longer pause, followed by what could have been a short laugh, if Jeeves laughed.

  “I do.”

  “We shall discuss them later. Do you have weather-monitoring capability?”

  “Of course.”

  “Very good. Please monitor the weather in the area of Cousin Kareen’s townhouse.”

  Jeeves initiated the necessary protocols. “As you say, Miss Anthora.”

  “Thank you. I will work from here, I think.”

  She settled herself bonelessly to the floor; closed her eyes, and said—to Jeeves or to herself or to Merlin, busily bathing in a spot of sunlight—“first, the blood and flesh.”

  Based on similar situations in the past, Jeeves refrained from replying as her trance state deepened. He also stationed himself to partially block the doors, since the cats inevitably gathered about as soon as they could when wizard-work was being done.

  * * *

  Patience had not been so easy of late. First, she’d been forced to the conclusion that the calling of Plan B, however much she deplored it, fell within the realm of the First Speaker’s duties. It was in the diaries, after all, and consistent with the protocols.

  Next, she’d found herself dispatched to multiple errands, most of which any servant might have performed in ordinary times. Then, finding that Luken bel’Tarda’s role was set as the one who would guide their mission, she’d had to deal with what he called “the grinding and polishing of small wheels” as the children were gathered, informed of their situations, and in several cases, armed.

  She had arranged and conferred with what patience she could muster, discovering in the man the delm had appointed her son’s protector in her stead—the amiable, babbling rug merchant—someone of quick insight, resilience, and a way with children.

  Then had come the machinations placing her as the one to receive this or that of the late-arriving parcels, and providing her with one last chance to add to the confounding of their enemy. Bel’Tarda’s contacts were sufficient in the absence of her own staff; smugglerlike, she had acquired three different sets of tickets to the off-world stations, none under her own name.

  Luken bel’Tarda had argued strongly against her delaying departure. He had gone so far as to charge her with risking the children. She had waved him and his arguments aside, cert
ain of what was due her own melant’i. And in that, she thought now, as the clock chimed the hour of the second ship’s departure, she might have been, perhaps . . . somewhat . . . foolish.

  At least, there had been no risk to the children. Finding her adamant, bel’Tarda had altered his own arrangements—who, after all, notes the movements of a rug merchant?—and was now several days off-world, with those very children in his charge. Hopefully, she thought with a sudden shiver in the pleasantly warm room, beyond the reach of those others of Her Nin’s organization.

  She spared a thought then for her own child, whose location had been established, but who had apparently managed to slip out from under the notice of Her Nin’s associates. Well. Never let it be said that Pat Rin was anything but clever; and a gambler, so she thought, would have some small skill at defense and misdirection. Surely, he had gone to—

  Hold! What was that noise?

  Ears straining, she leaned forward in the chair, hands gripping the armrests. The sound came again, from the library just beyond the closed door. A sound like—wind, perhaps, or—

  She stood in the doorway of the stone study, with no memory of having risen from her chair or opening the door, staring into the library—knowing that she had carefully taken her shot, and that her victim had fallen thusly. There.

  As she stared, her library began to . . . disappear. Spirals of dust rose as shelves long filled with books and precious papers emptied themselves with a hazy burping noise. The shelves shook and flexed as their burdens went . . . elsewhere, leaving the dust of paper and people to dance briefly in the slanting light, and settle.

  There had been blood, and enough of it to make her gag. Her purpose strong in her heart, she had checked her work and found it potent, before calling for assistance.

  Now, there was no sign of blood. There was a mark on the ceiling which might have been new, there, but then the house had a long history, and Chi herself might once have thrown a bottle to make that mark.

  Her Nin—Her Nin’s corpse—was gone, and so were the books that had filled the shelves on the west wall. As she watched, the books on the east wall disappeared shelf by shelf. She folded her hands together, tightly, and wondered if she, too, would disappear in some dusty spiral.

  Well, then. She had requested aid from a dramliza. It might be said that she had known better.

  The ladder Her Nin had died on shivered. It creaked; the rails that had steadied it twanged—and the ladder was gone. Next, the chair he had last sat in phlumphed elsewhere. The near-empty bottle of jade, the table, the cloth napkins with the tree-and-dragon embroidered in silk. Gone, gone, gone.

  She moved then, deliberately, her steps echoing as she made a hasty inspection. There were no beds in the bedrooms, no linens in the bathroom, no rugs on the floors.

  Had she been less sure of the world and of her place in it, Lady Kareen might have felt more than a shiver. Indeed, had she another acquaintance to hand she might have been tempted to admit awe or even a tingling of fear. The dramliz were a force to be reckoned with, even when doing your bidding.

  The door to the stone study stood open still; the furnishings within untouched.

  She fled into that comfort; then, too energized to sit, opened the door to the servant’s closet.

  She had, as a rule, not used the closet as a passageway, even as a child, being somewhat uncomfortable with the closeness of it. Later though, there had been times she had been set to minding Daav and Er Thom when a tutor was not to hand. They, of course, had delighted in the cramped space, the flour-dusted aprons, and the endless opportunities afforded to spring out at those who searched for them, laughing uproariously, as if it were all a very good game.

  Daav, in particular, had had a gift for being someplace else: in the servant’s closet here, if not in the kitchen, and if not in the kitchen, in the capacious pantry with its huge bags of rare imported flours and mysterious bins, boxes, tins, freezers, and even a stasis box snugged into the stone wall that formed the other boundary of this room, the wall that was the wine cellar itself. More than once, she had been forced to transit the closet in order to extract both of her unwelcome charges from the divertissement of foodstuffs arriving from below.

  Chi, though, was wont to use the closet often at parties, and not merely to check on the timing of the next remove.

  Kareen sniffed—why was it that a delm of Korval should have felt it better to avoid a guest than to act entirely properly and deal as necessary? But there, that had never been her own condition, and delms must face both necessity and Code in their proper moments.

  The staff jackets and aprons in the closet smelled inevitably of the baking as she inched through; Kareen, and Chi before her, always insisted on fresh breads and a choice of rolls and pastries. Until Daav’s exuberance ruined a perfect cake, the old cook had joked that he could qualify as an assistant chef if ever he wished to, just by his observations of the kitchen staff.

  That had been just before the day when she had been in search of them both—again—only to have Er Thom burst upon her, crying out that Daav was going to be recycled, grabbing her by the sleeve and pulling her along at a chancy run, explaining in gulps that there hadn’t been room in the dumbwaiter for both of them, so Daav had gone first, cramming himself amid an untidy clutter of outgoing bins and boxes—and it had been a very near thing, indeed, to convince Cook to call down and stop the loading until the heir could be recovered—sticky, befloured, and grinning—from the recyclables.

  Kareen stepped out of the passage, even more confining to one of adult proportions. The kitchen felt less than homelike to her, lacking people and preparation for the next meal. Not even a rumble of a breadmaker broke the silence. She glanced at the clock above the main console and bit her lip, the third and final ticket—the ticket she had never thought to need—heavy in her pocket.

  The kitchen equipment stood ready, and there beside the service intercom and food consoles was the small staff room, door festooned with traditional paper contacts affixed at what must be traditional angles: lists of vendors, private numbers of on-call staff and notes of travel times, transit routes, and taxi numbers, scribbled on it . . . but there, Cook came from a traditional clan and was classically trained.

  There was a modest view through the kitchen window, and through the privacy screen she saw to the north two of the vehicles she had been concerned with, and clustered about them the several unknowns who stood as if they had every right to interfere with Code, custom—and life.

  She leaned hard against the window then, recalling that the windows let no sight out. Just as well that, for her tears had started again. The scholar, after all, had been an honorable man, until this misjudgment. Had he not spoken freely, he might now stand at the side of his co-conspirators.

  With that bracing thought she straightened. The intercom over Cook’s station burbled, and Jeeves spoke.

  “Lady Kareen, Miss Anthora has removed those things other than yourself. Please advise on your circumstances and locations of watchers.”

  Circumstances?

  She licked her lips, glancing again through the window.

  Circumstances.

  “Flaran cha’menthi, Jeeves.” She paused, drew a breath, and began.

  “I arrived in my own vehicle—the landau, of course—with sufficient time to prepare for today’s meeting, which began promptly and ended the same. Until approached by the scholar, I saw nothing at first glance untoward, though I was afterward reminded that there had been several vehicles about when I arrived—yet this is not unexpected, being so close to the lake on such a fine day. Those vehicles were still in place when I made my way to leave; random people where there are no random people; workmen doing the same work they had been doing when I arrived, groundspeople I had never seen before. Additionally, there were vehicles unfamiliar to me in several of the parking lanes closest to my own, occupied.

  “That was at the front entrance. Feeling visible, I returned to our own halls, and attempte
d to leave by the back entrance, generally used by our staff, and also where there is access to the unit’s own runabout. There, I saw a vehicle parked in such a way as to block my garage and there was someone pruning a bush one never prunes.

  “At the moment, I have several weapons upon me; I have replaced the charge in my pocket gun and it is fully loaded. I have—”

  “Cousin,” came Anthora’s breathy voice, sounding calm enough considering circumstances and the fey work she’d been performing.

  “Anthora.”

  “Cousin, I am at the end of the removals I can perform directly. A living person such as yourself is not as easy to translate through walls as is furniture.”

  Kareen bowed sagely to the air, relieved that she, too, was not to merely disappear into an unmarked ether.

  “I understand. One works as necessity dictates.”

  A pause, then, “Of course. I regret to report, however, that necessity is becoming strained. I am arranging a diversion, but it appears that the emergency exits are also covered by the placement of the vehicles you mention.”

  “Indeed. Might I inquire about the nature of the . . . ”

  A most discreet musical tone sounded. Kareen recognized the annunciator at the front door.

  “I will ignore this intrusion for the moment. Surely you hear it.”

  “I do. Jeeves will relay . . . ”

  Another tone sounded: the annunciator at the service entrance.

  Her Nin’s associates, Kareen thought her heartbeat suddenly loud in her ears, had become bored with waiting.

  “Lady Kareen,” Jeeves said politely, “we ask if you have thoughts on the matter to hand?”

  “Yes,” she said, moving quickly back to the closet. A tuque came to her hand; she yanked it savagely over her hair, and snatched up a white jacket, the tree-and-dragon embroidered on the pocket. “I will need a vehicle at my milliner’s, to transport me to my next appointment.” She paused at the service console, pressed a series of numerals and passed on. “If you have your diversion to hand, for the love of the gods, release it!”