Balance of Trade

by Sharon Lee

  Jethri held onto his temper, barely. His mother's mood was never happy, dirt-side. He wondered, briefly, how she was going to survive a whole year world-bound, while the Market was rebuilt.

  "I don't want to ship on Digger," he said, keeping his voice just factual. He sighed. "Please, ma'am—there's got to be another ship willing to take me."

  She stared at him until he heard his heart thudding in his ears. Then she sighed in her turn, and spun the chair so she faced the screens, showing him profile.

  "You want another ship," she said, and she didn't sound mad, anymore. "You find it."

  Day 34

  Standard Year 1118

  Ynsolt'i Port

  Zeroground Pub

  "NO CALLS FOR Jethri Gobelyn? No message from Sirge Milton?"

  The barkeeper on-shift today at the Zeroground Pub was maybe a Standard Jethri's elder. He was also twelve inches taller and out massed him by a factor of two. He shook his head, setting the six titanium rings in his left ear to chiming, and sighed, none too patient. "Kid, I told you. No calls. No message. No package. No Milton. No nothing, kid. Got it?"

  Jethri swallowed, hard, the fractin hot against his palm. "Got it."

  "Great," said the barkeep. "You wanna beer or you wanna clear out so a paying customer can have a stool?"

  "Merebeer, please," he said, slipping a bit across the counter. The keeper swept up the coin, went up-bar, drew a glass, and slid it down the polished surface with a will. Jethri put out a hand—the mug smacked into his palm, stinging. Carefully, he eased away from the not-exactly-overcrowded counter and took his drink to the back.

  He was on the approach to trouble. Dodging his senior, sliding off-ship without the captain's aye—approaching trouble, right enough, but not quite established in orbit. Khat was inventive—he trusted her to cover him for another hour, by which time he had better be on-ship, cash in hand and looking to show Uncle Paitor the whole.

  And Sirge Milton was late.

  A man, Jethri reasoned, slipping into a booth and setting his beer down, might well be late for a meeting. A man might even, with good reason, be an hour late for that same meeting. But a man could call the place named and leave a message for the one who was set to meet him.

  Which Sirge Milton hadn't done, nor sent a courier with a package containing Jethri's payout, neither.

  So, something must've come up. Business. Sirge Milton seemed a busy man. Jethri opened his pouch and pulled out the agreement they'd written yesterday, sitting at this very back booth, with Nance the bartender as witness.

  Carefully, he smoothed the paper, read over the guarantee of payment. Two kais was a higher buy-out than he had asked for, but Sirge had insisted, saying the profit would cover it, not to mention his 'expectations.' There was even a paragraph about being paid in the event that Sirge's sure buyer was out of cash, citing the debt owed Sirge Milton, Trader, by Norn ven'Deelin, Master of Trade, as security.

  It had all seemed clear enough yesterday afternoon, but Jethri thought now that he should have asked Sirge to take him around to his supplier, or at least listed the name and location of the supplier on the paper.

  He had a sip of beer, but it tasted flat and he pushed the glass away. The door to the bar slid open, admitting a noisy gaggle of Terrans. Jethri looked up, eagerly, but Sirge was not among them. Sighing, he frowned down at the paper, trying to figure out a next move that didn't put him on the receiving end of one of his uncle's furious scolds.

  Norn ven'Deelin, Master of Trade. . . The name looked odd, written out in Terran, approximating spelling across two alphabets that didn't precisely match, edge-on-edge. Norn ven'Deelin, who had given his card—his name—into Sirge Milton's keeping. Jethri blinked. Norn ven'Deelin, he thought, would very likely know how to get in touch with a person he held in such high esteem. With luck, he'd be inclined to share that information with a polite-talking 'prentice.

  If he wasn't inclined. . . Jethri folded his paper away and got out of the booth, leaving the beer behind. No use borrowing trouble, he told himself.

  * * *

  IT WAS LATE, but still day-Port, when he found the right office. At least, he thought, pausing across the street and staring at that damned bunny silhouetted against the big yellow moon, he hoped it was the right office. He was tired from walking miles in gravity, hot, gritty—but worse than any of that, he was scared. Norn ven'Deelin's office—if this was at last his office—was well into the Liaden side of Port.

  Not that there was properly a Terran side, Ynsolt'i being a Liaden world. But there were portions where Terrans were tolerated as a necessary evil attending galactic trade, and where a body caught the notion that maybe Terrans were cut some extra length of line, in regard to what might be seen as insult.

  Standing across from the door, which might, after all, be the right one, Jethri did consider turning around, trudging back to the Market and taking the licks he'd traded for.

  Except he'd traded for profit to the ship, and he was going to collect it. That, at least, he would show his senior and his captain, though he had long since stopped thinking that profit would buy him pardon.

  Jethri sighed. There was dust all over his good trading clothes. He brushed himself off as well as he could, and looked across the street. It came to him that the rabbit on Clan Ixin's sign wasn't so much howling at that moon, as laughing its fool head off.

  Thinking so, he crossed the street, wiped his boots on the mat, slid his fractin manfully out of his palm and into his public pocket, and pushed the door open.

  The office behind the door was airy and bright, and Jethri was abruptly glad that he had dressed in trading clothes, dusty as they now were. This place was high-class —a body could smell profit in the subtly fragrant air, see it in the floor covering and the real wooden chairs.

  The man sitting behind the carved center console was as elegant as the room: crisp-cut yellow hair, bland and beardless Liaden face, a vest embroidered with the moon-and-rabbit worn over a salt-white silken shirt. He looked up from his work screen as the door opened, eyebrows lifting in what Jethri had no trouble reading as astonishment.

  "Good-day to you, young sir." The man's voice was soft, his Trade only lightly tinged with accent.

  "Good-day, honored sir." Jethri moved forward slowly, taking care to keep his hands in sight. Three steps from the console, he stopped and bowed, as low as he could manage without falling on his head.

  "Jethri Gobelyn, apprentice trader, Gobelyn's Market." He straightened and met the bland blue eyes squarely. "I am come to call upon the Honored Norn ven'Deelin."

  "Ah." The man folded his hands neatly upon the console. "I regret it is necessary that you acquaint me more nearly with your business, Jethri Gobelyn."

  Jethri bowed again, not so deep this time, and waited til he was upright to begin the telling.

  "I am in search of a man—a Terran," he added, half-amazed to hear no quaver in his voice—"named Sirge Milton, who owes me a sum of money. It was in my mind that the Honored ven'Deelin might be willing to put me in touch with this man."

  The Liaden frowned. "Forgive me, Jethri Gobelyn, but how came such a notion into your mind?"

  Jethri took a breath. "Sirge Milton had the Honored ven'Deelin's card in pledge of—"

  The Liaden held up a hand, and Jethri gulped to a stop, feeling a little gone around the knees.

  "Hold." A Terran would have smiled to show there was no threat. Liadens didn't smile, at least, not at Terrans, but this one exerted himself to incline his head an inch.

  "If you please," he said. "I must ask if you are certain that it was the Honored ven'Deelin's own card."

  "I—the name was plainly written, sir. I read it myself. And the sigil was the same, the very moon-and-rabbit you yourself wear."

  "I regret." The Liaden stood, bowed and beckoned, all in one fluid movement. "This falls beyond my area of authority. If you please, young sir, follow me." The blue eyes met his, as if the Liaden had somehow heard his dismay at being
thus directed deeper into alien territory. "House courtesy, Jethri Gobelyn. You receive no danger here."

  Which made it plain enough, to Jethri's mind, that refusing to follow would be an insult. He swallowed, his breath going short on him, the Market suddenly seeming very far away.

  The yellow haired Liaden was waiting, his smooth, pretty face uncommunicative. Jethri bowed slightly and walked forward as calmly as trembling knees allowed. The Liaden led him down a short hallway, past two closed rooms, and bowed him across the threshold of the third, open.

  "Be at ease," the Liaden said from the threshold. "I will apprise the master trader of your errand." He hesitated, then extended a hand, palm up. "It is well, Jethri Gobelyn. The House is vigilant on your behalf." He was gone on that, the door sliding silently closed behind him.

  This room was smaller than the antechamber, though slightly bigger than the Market's common room, the shelves set at heights he had to believe handy for Liadens. Jethri stood for a couple minutes, eyes closed, doing cube roots in his head until his heartbeat slowed down and the panic had eased back to a vague feeling of sickness in his gut.

  Opening his eyes, he went over to the shelves on the right, half-trained eye running over the bric-a-brac, wondering if that was really a piece of Sofleg porcelain and, if so, what it was doing set naked out on a shelf, as if it were a common pottery bowl.

  The door whispered behind him, and he spun to face a Liaden woman dressed in dark trousers and a garnet colored shirt. Her hair was short and gray, her eyebrows straight and black. She stepped energetically into the center of the room as the door slid closed behind her, and bowed with precision, right palm flat against her chest.

  "Norn ven'Deelin," she stated in a clear, level voice. "Clan Ixin."

  Jethri felt the blood go to ice in his veins.

  Before him, Norn ven'Deelin straightened and slanted a bright black glance into his face. "You discover me a dismay," she observed, in heavily accented Terran. "Say why, do."

  He managed to breathe, managed to bow. "Honored Ma'am, I—I've just learned the depth of my own folly."

  "So young, yet made so wise!" She brought her hands together in a gentle clap, the amethyst ring on her right hand throwing light off its facets like purple lightning. "Speak on, young Jethri. I would drink of your wisdom."

  He bit his lip. "Ma'am, the—person—I came here to find—told me Norn ven'Deelin was—was male."

  "Ah. But Liaden names are difficult, I am learning, for those of Terran Code. Possible it is that your friend achieved honest error, occasioned by null-acquaintance with myself."

  "I'm certain that's the case, Honored," Jethri said carefully, trying to feel his way toward a path that would win him free, with no insult to the trader, and extricate Sirge Milton from a junior's hopeless muddle.

  "I—my friend—did know the person I mistakenly believed yourself to be well enough to have lent money on a portweek investment. The—error—is all my own. Likely there is another Norn ven'Deelin in Port, and I foolishly—"

  A tiny hand rose, palm out, to stop him. "Be assured, Jethri Gobelyn. Of Norn ven'Deelin there is one. This one."

  He had, Jethri thought, been afraid of that. Hastily, he tried to shuffle possibilities. Had Sirge Milton dealt with a go-between authorized to hand over his employer's card? Had—

  "My assistant," said Norn ven'Deelin, "discloses to me a tale of wondering obfusion. I am understanding that you are in possession of one of my cards?"

  Her assistant, Jethri thought, with a sudden sharpening of his wits on the matter at hand, had told her no such thing. She was trying to throw him off-balance, and startle him into revealing a weakness. She was, in fact, trading. Jethri ground his teeth and made his face smooth.

  "No, ma'am," he said respectfully. "What happened was that I met a man in Port who needed loan of a kais to hold a deal. He said he had lent his liquid to—to Norn ven'Deelin, master trader. Of Clan Ixin. He said he was to collect tomorrow—today, midday, that would be—a guaranteed return of four-on-one. My—my payout contingent on his payout." He stopped and did not bite his lip, though he wanted to.

  There was a short silence, then, "Four-on-one. That is a very large profit, young Jethri."

  He ducked his head. "Yes, ma'am. I thought that. But he had the—the card of the—man—who had guaranteed the return. I read the name myself. And the clan sign—just like the one on your door and—other places on Port. . . " His voice squeaked out. He cleared his throat and continued.

  "I knew he had to be on a straight course—at least on this deal—if it was backed by a Liaden's card."

  "Hah." She plucked something flat and rectangular from her sleeve and held it out. "Honor me with your opinion of this."

  He took the card, looked down and knew just how stupid he'd been.

  "So wondrously expressive a face," commented Norn ven'Deelin. "Was this not the card you were shown, in earnest of fair dealing?"

  He shook his head, remembered that the gesture had no analog among Liadens and cleared his throat again.

  "No, ma'am," he said as steady as he could. "The rabbit-and-moon are exactly the same. The name—the same style, the same spacing, the same spelling. The stock was white, with black ink, not tan with brown ink. I didn't touch it, but I'd guess it was low-rag. This card is high-rag content. . . "

  His fingers found a pattern on the obverse. He flipped the card over and sighed at the selfsame rabbit-and-moon, embossed into the card stock, then looked back to her bland, patient face.

  "I beg your pardon, ma'am."

  "So." She reached out and twitched the card from his fingers, sliding it absently back into her sleeve. "You do me a service, young Jethri. From my assistant I hear the name of this person who has, yet does not have, my card in so piquant a fashion. Sirge Milton. This is a correctness? I do not wish to err."

  The ice was back in Jethri's veins. Well he knew that Khat's stories of blood vengeance were just that—fright tales to spice an otherwise boring hour. Still and all, it wasn't done, to put another Terran in the way of Liaden Balance. He gulped and bowed.

  "Ma'am, I—please. The whole matter is—is my error. I am the most junior of traders. Likely I misunderstood a senior and have annoyed yourself and your household without cause. I—"

  She held up a hand, stepped forward and laid it on his sleeve.

  "Peace, child. I do nothing fatal to your galandaria—your countryman. No pellet in his ear. No nitrogen replacing good air in an emergency tank. Eh?" Almost, it seemed to Jethri that she smiled.

  "Such tales. We of the clans listen in Port bars—and discover ourselves monsters." She patted his arm, lightly. "But no. Unless he adopts a mode most stupid, fear not of his life." She stepped back, her hand falling from his sleeve.

  "Your own actions reside in correctness. Very much is this matter mine of solving. A junior trader could do no other, than bring such at once before me.

  "Now, I ask, most humbly, that you accept Ixin's protection in conveyance to your ship. It is come night-Port while we speak, and your kin will be distressful for your safety. Myself and yourself, we speak additionally, after solving."

  She bowed again, hand over heart, and Jethri did his best to copy the thing with his legs shaking fit to tip him over. When he looked up the door was closing behind her. It opened again immediately and the yellow-haired assistant stepped inside with a bow of his own.

  "Jethri Gobelyn," he said in his soft Trade, "please follow me. A car will take you to your ship."

  * * *

  "SHE SAID SHE wouldn't kill him," Jethri said hoarsely. The captain, his mother, shook her head and Uncle Paitor sighed.

  "There's worse things than killing, son," he said, and that made Jethri want to scrunch into his chair and bawl, like he had ten Standards fewer and stood about as tall as he felt.

  What he did do, was take another swallow of coffee and meet Paitor's eyes straight. "I'm sorry, sir."

  "You've got cause," his uncle acknowledged.

>   "Double-ups on dock," the captain said, looking at them both. "Nobody works alone. We don't want trouble. We stay close and quiet and we lift as soon as we can without making it look like a rush."

  Paitor nodded. "Agreed."

  Jethri stirred, fingers tight 'round the coffee mug. "Ma'am, she—Master Trader ven'Deelin said she wanted to talk to me, after she—settled—things. I wouldn't want to insult her."

  "None of us wants to insult her," his mother said, with more patience than he'd expected. "However, a Master Trader is well aware that a trade ship must trade. She can't expect us to hang around while our cargo loses value. If she wants to talk to you, boy, she'll find you."

  "No insult," Paitor added, "for a 'prentice to bow to the authority of his seniors. Liadens understand chain of command real well." The captain laughed, short and sharp, then stood up.