Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon

by Lee, Sharon

  She closed the door, locked it and returned to Master Kestra, waiting patiently by the window.

  “Of companionship,” she said, “I thank the Hall for its care. One would welcome a cat, if possible. The house—”

  She looked about her once more, pleased and in some way soothed. “The house will do excellently.” She bowed gratitude to the house. “I thank you. Please convey my pleasure and gratitude to the Hall Master.”

  “We are delighted to hear that the guest is pleased,” the Healer said, with no noticeable irony. She extended her hand. “If you please, Pilot?”

  Aelliana put her palm against the other woman's soft flesh. Perhaps she felt a slight tingle of energy; perhaps it was merely her fancy. Whichever, it was only a heartbeat before Kestra broke contact.

  “Felicitations,” she murmured.

  Aelliana frowned. “Felicitations?”

  “Indeed. Korval and all who wish them well must be gladdened to know that the heir has been conceived.”

  The heir? Aelliana pressed her hand against her breast, recalling Daav, the first day they had shared the tree's bounty, felled by his morsel, and his voice breathless with some exultation that had not been fear: “Surely it has no need to murder me today, and good reason to keep me alive for just a few days more.”

  She took a hard breath and stared at the Healer, her face so calm and her eyes so knowing.

  “Daav had kept fertile,” she said stringently, “for he had been to wed. I, however—had no such necessities.”

  “Ah.” Master Kestra inclined her head. “Have you, perchance, eaten of the fruit of Korval's tree?”

  “Yes, certainly. It is able to bypass the safeguards?”

  “It is able to do a great many things, apparently, and it is invested in a Korval heir, more than many.”

  Well, and Daav had told her that, too. She had not thought, not even while she was asking it to engineer some way for them to fully share themselves . . .

  Whether it was at all reasonable, she owned herself annoyed, though not quite utterly horrified. Why couldn't it do as it was asked, she thought irritably, instead of playing mischief with one's sureties and arranging for an heir, too—

  She gasped.

  “Master Kestra.”

  “Yes, Pilot?”

  “I must ask you to hold this information in the strictest confidence. Tell no one! If Mizel—Mizel will see even more advantage in delay, if it becomes known that I am pregnant beforetime.”

  Kestra inclined her head. “It is forgotten,” she said solemnly.

  “I thank you,” Aelliana said fervently.

  “Is there anything else the guest desires,” the Healer asked, “excepting a cat?”

  Daav, Aelliana thought, around a knife thrust of longing so intense she thought she might be ill. As pleasant and cozy as it was, she foresaw that the cottage might very soon come to seem vast and echoing.

  Forcefully, she put these thoughts behind her and shook her head.

  “I thank you,” she said to the Healer. “I am well-content.”

  “Then I will leave you. Please recall that you are welcome in the House, if you care to join us for meals or at another time. There is a list of activities on the house-net.”

  “Thank you,” Aelliana said again, and it was all she could do, to hold the tears decently at bay until Master Kestra had made her bow and departed.

  Aelliana closed the door, and made sure it was latched, then leaned her forehead against the friendly wood and allowed the tears to have their way.

  Uneasy with the silence, she had found a music feed on the entertainment unit and turned up the volume until it could be heard in the furthermost corner of the little house. She washed her face, arranged the port comm on the desk; and hung her clothes away in the wardrobe, working methodically and taking care to think only on the task in hand.

  Unhappily, she had not brought clothes enough that she would be occupied all evening by hanging them away. She sighed, leaving the green robe draped across the foot of the bed and went back into the main room. Leaning over the desk, she touched her screen—and jumped at the sound of a firm knock.

  The knock came again—from the garden-side door, which meant that her visitor was a Healer—perhaps even the Hall Master, come to see how the guest was faring. It would not do, she told herself sternly, to simply ignore the summons, though she was not at all certain that she wanted company.

  She opened the door.

  “Well met, Pilot Caylon! The house offers companionship!”

  The woman on the step had chocolate brown hair and light blue eyes. She was holding a lanky grey cat stretched across her body from hip to shoulder, one hand supporting the lean belly, the other gripping just beneath the upper legs. The cat's head was against her shoulder. There was something about the long muzzle that suggested at least temporary resignation; the very tippiest tip of the scruffy tail was twitching. Slowly.

  Aelliana stepped back. She had, after all, requested a cat.

  “Please bring her in,” she said hastily, “and put her down before she becomes angry.”

  “He,” the other woman corrected, stepping into the house with a will. “Close the door, or he'll hide in the garden and it will take days to coax him back out.”

  Aelliana complied, and her visitor placed the cat on the sofa.

  “Now, Mouse, behave yourself. Pilot Caylon had specifically desired you.”

  Mouse, however, having been granted liberty, wasted no time in leaping to the floor and taking refuge beneath the chaise.

  The woman sighed and turned to Aelliana, her hands raised chest-high in a gesture that looked like the sign for surrender. Since she was wearing a shirt cut very low over round breasts, the gesture was beguiling—as perhaps it was meant to be. Her smile grew softer as she lowered her hands, and wider as Aelliana followed them to a trim waist.

  “He'll come out in a while—whenever it suits him. He'd been living wild in the business district, and not doing a very good job of it. One of the desk workers found him fainting and desperate and brought him to us. He hasn't been here long, and isn't very trusting of people yet.” She took a step toward Aelliana, her presence somehow heating the air between them. “My name is Jen ana'Tilesty, Pilot.”

  “I am pleased to meet you, Healer,” Aelliana said, breathing deeply against the sudden warming of her blood. “Thank you for bringing the—for bringing Mouse. I had scarcely expected him so soon.”

  “The way the house works is that whoever is at liberty takes up the next task in queue. Mouse was at liberty and I was, so here we both are. Master Kestra said you wished companionship.”

  Companionship. And Master Kestra made sure to send a woman, Aelliana thought, so that the heir's parentage was not for a heartbeat in contention.

  “It may be,” she said slowly, “that I, in my ignorance, gave Master Kestra faulty information. Certainly, she had offered companionship, and I had said, yes, meaning that I wished for a cat. She may have heard differently, with Healer's ears.”

  “That's likely,” Jen ana'Tilesty said seriously. “Even I can see—well. I'll never be a Master Healer, no matter how much you polish me.”

  “But you are,” Aelliana said, “a Healer.”

  “I'm a Healer. I teach Empathic Sensuality, and tutor those whose clans don't want them going ignorant to their contract beds.”

  She had never considered . . . certainly she had gone ignorant—desperately so—to her contract bed. Such a tutor might have shielded her from the worst of the damage inflicted by her husband. So much time wasted, thinking that what was happening to her was what everyone endured . . .

  “I've stirred up something bad,” the other woman said. “Forgive me, Pilot.”

  “There is nothing to forgive. I was merely remarking to myself that I wished I had known that such persons as you had existed . . . many years ago, now.”

  “We all learn what we're meant to learn, when the time is ripe for learning,” Jen ana'Tilest
y said. “You know I exist now, and I'm pleased to offer whatever will ease you.”

  Aelliana considered her, glanced beyond her to where the cat named Mouse was only a pair of glowing green eyes, underneath the chaise.

  “I wonder,” she said, looking back to Jen ana'Tilesty's wide-cheeked face, “if you would like a toasted cheese sandwich.”

  The sandwiches had turned out moderately well. She was, Aelliana thought, gaining some skill on that front. Jen had proved a convivial companion, knowledgeable on subjects which Aelliana scarcely knew existed. After the meal was eaten, they cleaned up the kitchen, saw to the needs of the as-yet-invisible Mouse, and played several rounds of Modes, Aelliana having declined to play cards against a novice.

  Just after midnight, they parted amicably on a three-and-three split, with promises on both sides for a rematch. Aelliana had then sought the bed behind the painted screen.

  It was a very wide bed; the sheets were chilly; the pillows by turn too soft and too hard. She lay on her back and deliberately closed her eyes, but she was anything but restful. Now that it was quiet, thoughts crowded upon her. The tree—how could it have circumvented her protection! Worse, could a child born from such unguessable tampering be—well? Or ought it be aborted in favor of a more-regularly-got child?

  Alas, her expert on Korval's tree was beyond her for these next few days—surely no more than a few days!—and that was an unhappy thought, indeed, for it brought to mind precisely the very many ways in which she missed him, and how much she wanted him with her this moment, in this terrible, strange bed, placing his hands thus and his lips so, and doing that particular—

  Aelliana snapped up, forcefully pounding the too-hard pillow before curling onto her side. Her blood was hot, now, and she missed him even more for knowing that he would not tonight at least be slipping into bed behind her, curling his long body around hers; his skin so warm, soft over hard, wiry muscle, and his hands so knowing . . .

  She fell at last into an uneasy doze in which it was not Daav but Jen ana'Tilesty who had curled 'round her, and teased her onto her back, offering a round breast to suckle while she guided Aelliana's hands, teaching her—

  Unfairly, she woke again, hot and disordered, before the lesson was well completed, and retreated from the bed. Belting her robe around her, she went past the screen and into the common room.

  Mouse's eyes still glowed from beneath the chaise.

  Aelliana sighed and sat down on the floor, her shoulder against the chaise and her legs curled under her.

  “I had used to be a mouse, you know,” she murmured. "Utterly craven. I hid from my own reflection and would scarcely have spoken at all, saving that I had students and one must, after all, teach. I thought that my cowardice would save me; but in the long term, it did not answer. Those whom my existence threatened demanded ever more mouselike behavior. Willingly, I gave my strength away, but I was never safe, and I was always—always afraid.

  "My fear almost killed me, though by then I had been growing bolder. But I had given so much of my strength away . . . it was a near thing, and I take no credit for my own survival. What I have learned is—mark me now!—life is not safe. Random action threatens us all. The choices we have are between fear and boldness, between joy and terror.

  “If at all possible, I believe it is necessary to choose joy. One may survive no longer, nor ever be safe, but one's life will be worth living.”

  She sighed, and rested her head against the side of the chaise.

  “I don't presume to make your choices for you,” she told the cat, her eyelids drooping. “I merely offer the fruit of my own experience.”

  She allowed her eyes to drift shut. It was very quiet in the little house. On The Luck, such silence would be horrifying, signaling the loss or malfunction of vital systems. Here . . . she was very tired, and the silence allowed her to hear quite small sounds, such as the beginning purr of a cat.

  Aelliana sighed and settled her head more closely against the upholstery.

  When she opened her eyes again, the room was filled with sunlight, her legs were stiff, and a rangy grey cat was curled up snugly asleep in her lap.

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  Contents

  Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Friends are a costly necessity.

  —Anonymous

  “You're about early,” Anne said, looking up from her screen.

  Daav came up onto the patio and perched on the arm of the chair across from hers.

  “It is too glorious a morning to simply lie abed,” he told her, earnestly.

  Normally, such a performance would have gained him a peal of Anne's ready laughter and a change of subject. This morning, he caught a sharp look and a small shake of the head.

  “I'd like to know what's going on in that woman's head,” she said, darkly.

  That woman, Daav surmised, was Mizel. He sighed.

  “She merely wishes to gain the best advantage for her clan. It is what delms do, you know.”

  “If she wins Korval's annoyance for her clan, what's best there?”

  “No, you misapprehend. In the usual way of things Korval and Mizel would have . . . very little to do with each other. Our means are so far apart that it must be so. Once this—very rare—bit of business is done, we will each drop back into our appropriate orbits and scarcely heed the passing of the other. That being the case, Mizel must look to immediate gain.”

  “Which is to say, cash,” Anne said sourly. “Wouldn't there be benefit in alliance?”

  “There might have been, but you must recall that it was I who provided the means to expose the nadelm's villainy, leading to his death. An alliance with the murderer of one's son—well! I don't say that I could do it, no matter how much Korval stood to gain.”

  He leaned forward to glance over the top of her screen. “But, come! What is it that occupies you so early on this lovely morning? Not more student work?”

  “No, I'm saving that for a treat after lunch,” she said seriously. “This morning, I'm sorting applications from universities that want to host a Gallowglass Chair.”

  “Ah.” This was a pet project. When it had eventually borne in upon Anne precisely how much discretionary funding was available to her, as a full adult member of Clan Korval, she had lost no time in setting up a trust to fund a university chair to be filled by scholars who excelled in the teaching of comparative cultures, cultural genetics, or any other of a very short list of diversification studies.

  Once she, and more importantly, Mr. dea'Gauss, was satisfied with the terms of the trust, universities galaxywide had been solicited to apply for a grant.

  “We have two chairs already in place—at University, of course, and also at Delgado—which is a coup!”

  He remembered the excitement generated by the receipt of the application from the University of Delgado, a catalyst school with a stellar reputation in the academic galaxy.

  “What have you now?” he asked. “More than one, else there would be no need to sort.”

  “Bontemp has applied—a well-established school with a strong cultural diversities component already in place. It seems we'll have them, if they meet the financial test, which I'm certain they will. No, what's interesting is that we have an application from Islington College, which is very small and very . . . Terran. I can't imagine they'll pass the financials, but—the opportunity! We ought to try to accommodate them . . . somehow.”

  “Perhaps a co-op?” Daav murmured.

  Anne frowned. “Co-op?”

  “Indeed. Perhaps three or four worthy but underfunded institutions of higher learning can between them more than adequately support the Gallowglass Scholar? Might they make a joint application, with the understanding that the scholar would travel between schools?”

  “That . . . ” She snatched at her screen and made some rapid notes. “We don't want to muddy the waters around the Gallowglass, but that's a good notion you have there, laddie. Let me t
hink about it a bit.”

  “Certainly,” he said, absurdly pleased to have been of use. “Remember to consult with Mr. dea'Gauss.”

  “You'd best believe it! That young man's a fountain of ideas.”

  Since Mr. dea'Gauss was, in fact, a good dozen years Anne's senior, Daav supposed “young man” to be a pleasantry. He therefore smiled and rose, inclining his head slightly.

  “As much as I would like to sit here in the sun with you all day long, I fear that duty calls. Is there a commission I might discharge for you in the city?”

  “Not a thing, my dear; thank you for asking. Will you be seeing Mr. dea'Gauss today?”

  “We have an appointment after midday,” he admitted.

  “Fingers crossed he'll have good news for you,” Anne said, with another unusually sharp glance up into his face. “If it happens that the news isn't as good as you'd like, you know you can stay here.”

  All of Korval's houses were open to the delm, of course. Still, it warmed him that she offered—a gesture of sisterhood the like of which he was unlikely to receive from his own sister.

  “I know,” he said, bending to kiss her cheek. “Thank you.”

  Eyla dea'Lorn had provided him with several bits of fabric—a slip of misty green silk and a finger-length of silvered lace. These he set out on the board between himself and Master Moonel, and waited while the artist considered them.

  “Tell me about her,” he said, stroking the lace with a delicate, scarred fingertip.

  Daav settled himself on the stool and glanced about the shop. No pretty client room, this, but the Master's own workshop, tools hung to hand, calipers, alembics and scales set out on the tables, amid the bits and pieces that would, soon or late, become one or more of the most sought-after pieces of jewelry on Liad.

  “As one looks at her, she seems frail,” he said slowly. “Her face is thin, the bones show clearly at her collar, impossibly delicate. I can span her waist with my two hands. Her hair is light brown, shot through with gold, yellow and amber, like a Perthian tapestry. Her eyes—” He leaned forward to touch the bit of foggy silk.