Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon

by Lee, Sharon

  Other things had changed over the long night: The ports had grown chancier; Terran ports, if one were Liaden, chancier still. Ride the Luck carried weapons now—weapons, as Aelliana had it, worthy of Korval's pirate founder, gentle Grandmother Cantra. The Low Port pushed at its limits, reaching stealthy fingers out toward Mid Port's plump pockets, to the point that the Portmaster fielded more proctors, and the Pilots Guild offered warnings to those newly arrived, on a street-by-street basis.

  But those were distant shadows, even The Luck's arming merely the prudence of pilots who were properly concerned for the well-being of their ship.

  He smiled, plying his trowel with a will. Each flower clump united by a common root ball that he excavated, he placed in the moss-lined basket at his side. If it was darsibells Master Rota wanted, it was darsibells she should have.

  Turning back toward the bed, he paused, head cocked to one side, listening.

  Yes, there were footsteps—two pairs. One pair was running, lightly but not quite evenly; the other walking quick and soft. Aelliana had very nearly acquired Scout steps.

  He put the trowel down, set the basket back, and turned to face the path, kneeling as he was. No sooner was he settled then his small son burst 'round the corner, shirttail flying and a tear in the knee of his pants.

  “Father!” Val Con cried excitedly, hurtling into Daav's arms. “Father, we saw Clonak!”

  Hugging the small, wiry body tight, Daav felt his heart constrict. Clonak had returned to the homeworld several times since the Deluthia affair had relinquished him, unscathed. To all appearances, his sojourn among danger had mended his wounds, and opened for him a new career path. One for which, he said, with true Clonak style, he even possessed a talent.

  “How did you find Clonak, denubia?”

  “Funny!” Val Con wriggled and Daav loosed him, setting him carefully on his feet and keeping a hand beneath a sharp elbow.

  The small face turned up to his, green eyes trimmed with long dark lashes, the low sun striking red from the depths of the dark brown hair. Daav sighed. He was going to be a beauty, this one. All his mother, there.

  “He is also,” Aelliana said, and dropping easily to her knee at Daav's side, “at liberty for an entire relumma. I would not let him go until he had agreed to come to us for Prime.”

  “Now I understand what kept you,” he said, returning her smile.

  “No, what kept me was the young gentleman you see before you. He wished to insist that he accompany us, when next we lift out.”

  “Oh, indeed?” Daav looked down into his son's face. “Has he anything to recommend him?”

  “Do we allow willfulness to count?”

  Daav kept lips straight with an effort. “Only to a point, I think.”

  “I know my numbers,” Val Con told him earnestly. “I can help.”

  “Doubtless you could. However, the pilot had denied you, in which case there is no more to be said. The pilot decides first and best for her ship.”

  “I want to go,” Val Con said, lower lip becoming prominent.

  “That is a different pot of tea,” Daav said. “We do not always get what we want.”

  “Unless the luck is kind,” Aelliana added, settling on the grass beside Daav. “Have you forgotten your promise, Val Con?”

  Green eyes opened wide, and he was seen to rummage in his pocket, from which he eventually withdrew three seedpods.

  “The Tree gave them, when we stopped to say good-day,” he explained, holding them out on an only slightly grubby palm.

  “That was kind of the Tree, to be sure,” Daav murmured, eying the offerings. “But which belongs to whom?”

  Val Con looked down at his palm, brows pulled together, then suddenly smiled and put a finger on a pod.

  “This one,” he said triumphantly, “is for me.”

  “Very well, then, have it off the table! Which is your mother's?”

  Val Con bit his lip, and looked up. “I don't know,” he admitted.

  “Ah,” Daav considered the two pods yet on offer, and shook his head. “I confess that I don't know, either. However, I do know mine.”

  He plucked it up, feeling it fair vibrate with pleasure against his skin, while Aelliana took the pod remaining, and handed it to him.

  “If you please.”

  “It is,” he assured her, “my very great pleasure.” He opened the pod and gave her the pieces.

  “Val Con-son?” he asked.

  The boy sighed and handed over his pod, too.

  “I want to be able to open my own,” he commented.

  “Then you will want to grow stronger,” Daav told him, returning the pieces.

  “Yes,” Val Con said. He sat down without ceremony on the grass and began to eat his treat.

  Daav looked to Aelliana, who had disposed of hers while he had labored, and smiled.

  “How was Clonak?” he asked, breaking his own pod, and taking up a bit of kernel.

  She tipped her head, considering.

  “I find him changed, but cannot say precisely how,” she said slowly. “I believe that security must suit him. He spoke of standing captain of a team.”

  “Good,” Daav said. “Having folk to care for is a tonic.”

  “I would wish him more than a tonic,” Aelliana said.

  “Clonak said I looked just like you, Father,” Val Con stated.

  Daav lifted an eyebrow. “Much as it must pain me to say so, it seems that the Scout's eyesight has betrayed him. You, my child, look like your mother.”

  “I look like myself!” Val Con asserted.

  “More so every day,” Aelliana agreed, reaching to comb her fingers through his hair.

  “Indeed, one sees signs of an emerging style,” Daav added, eying the torn pants leg.

  He glanced at Aelliana. “This state of disarray is notable, even given the source. I hesitate to ask, but feel that I must.”

  “I fell,” Val Con said, matter-of-factly.

  Again? Daav did not sigh.

  “Well, then, that explains it. Falling is historically hard on the wardrobe.” He tipped an eyebrow at the boy. “Would you like a flight upstairs to display yourself to Mrs. pel'Cheela?”

  Val Con fairly danced. “Yes!”

  “Very well. All aboard the Dragon Flight!” He swooped the thin body up and onto his shoulders. Val Con shouted his laughter—and again, as Daav surged to his feet.

  Aelliana rose with him, the basket of darsibells in hand.

  “I'll just drop these off with Master Rota and meet you in our rooms, shall I? We're promised to the play tonight, recall.”

  “I do recall,” Daav told her.

  “Jets full!” Val Con commanded, and perforce the good ship Dragon Flight took off down the path, flying low and fast.

  He came out of the 'fresher to find her in a charming state of half dress; her hair wisping about bare shoulders. She smiled at him and came forward, running her palms over his chest in teasing circles before stretching high on bare toes and fitting her mouth over his.

  The kiss was long and thorough; he, a surprised but willing participant, fair panting by the time she was done with him.

  Or perhaps not quite done with him. She leaned against him, snug in the circle of his arms, cheek on his shoulder, breasts pressed against him, shivering.

  “Aelliana,” he managed, his voice nothing like steady.

  She moved her head, idly nuzzling the skin beneath his collarbone.

  “Aelliana, we will be late.”

  Her lips moved, trailing fire. She sighed and looked up at him, eyes as bright as he had ever seen them.

  “Daav,” she murmured. “I think we should have another child.”

  He considered her. “Do you plan on murdering the one we have, or is this to be in addition?”

  “In addition,” she said.

  “Very good. I approve in principle.”

  Her hand slid inside his robe, and he gasped, ready all at once.

  “Are we,” he
asked shakily, “to begin construction at once?”

  Aelliana smiled, her fingers moving maddeningly. “I think that would be perfect.”

  “I can scarcely argue with a lady who has a plan. However, I point out that we will miss the play, which means that we must on the morrow write a note. I mention this only because I am aware of how little you like to write notes.”

  Her other hand crept up 'round his neck and pulled him down to her.

  “We only have to miss the first act,” she whispered.

  * * *

  Aelliana slipped her hand through Daav's arm, letting the familiar and ever-new wash of his signal buoy her. They had parked in Korval's usual space by the theater. Ahead, she could see the intermission crowd just beginning to return to the theater, for the beginning of the second act.

  “There,” Daav said. “We shall be seen by all the world; no notes need to be written—truly, a most satisfactory outcome!”

  Something moved in the shadows ahead. She felt Daav take notice, but no more than just that—notice. They walked on, quickly enough that they would merge with the last ripple of returning theatergoers, thus making it appear that they had been there for the entire time. They would go up to Korval's box and—

  From behind them, a shout. Daav half-turned; she felt the stab of his concern.

  A shadow stepped out of the shadow ahead; a tall, broad-shouldered man—a Terran, she thought with cold clarity. He brought his gun up, unhurried and certain.

  Aelliana saw him acquire his target. Inside her head, she saw the bullet's trajectory, saw Daav's head explode. She jumped, twisting, striking Daav with every bit of her strength, throwing herself forward and up—

  The last thing she knew was satisfaction, and the beloved sense of him holding her close, and forever.

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  Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Al'bresh venat'i . . .

  “Daav.”

  From the silent, freezing dark of outspace, he took note. Of the word. And of the voice.

  “Daav.”

  He drifted closer. The word had a certain familiarity; there was a worn feel to the voice. It was not, perhaps, the first, or even the fiftieth, time it had spoken that word.

  “Daav.” The voice caught. “Brother, I beg you.”

  He was close now; close enough to know whose voice it was—one of two in all the universe, that might have called him back.

  “Er Thom . . . ”

  He felt—a grip. Fingers closing hard around his—around his hand. Yes. He gasped, groped, as if for controls, and opened his eyes.

  For a heartbeat, there was input, but no information. Colors smeared, shapes twisted out of sense, a whispery keening disordered the air. The strong grip did not falter.

  “A moment, a moment. Allow the systems to do their work, Pilot . . . ”

  He had weight now, and a form that stretched beyond his hand. The colors acquired edges, the shapes solidified, the keening—he was producing that noise, dreadful and lost.

  “Daav?”

  He blinked, and it was Er Thom's face he saw, drawn and pale, lashes tangled with dried tears.

  He licked his lips, and deliberately drew a breath.

  “Brother . . . ”

  The keening stopped, unable to fit 'round the fullness of that word, but the sense of it remained at the core of him, jagged with horror, blighted by loss.

  Fresh tears spilled from Er Thom's eyes. He raised his free hand, and tenderly cupped Daav's cheek.

  “Denubia, I thought you were gone from us.”

  “Where?” he asked, meaning, Where would I have gone? but Er Thom answered another question.

  “High Port Medical Arts.”

  The hospital.

  “Why?”

  Er Thom moved his hand, smoothing Daav's eyebrows, brushing tumbled hair from his forehead.

  “The response team brought you both in, of course,” he whispered; the tears were running freely now. “They—there was no visible wound, and yet—you did not wake. Your life signs grew weaker, and the Healers—Master Kestra herself—said she would not dare to intervene, for she did not know what she was seeing.”

  The horror at the core of him grew toothier. He tried to pull his hand away, but Er Thom held on like a man with a grip on a lifeline.

  “Aelliana?” he asked, and that was an error, for as soon as he spoke, he remembered: the shout, his turn, the sound of the gun, and Aelliana leaping, graceful and sure—her body torn by the blast, slamming into him, and a vortex of absence, sucking him out, out, alone, gone, dead . . .

  “Aelliana!”

  He twisted, prisoned by the bedclothes, desperate to escape the agony of loss.

  Er Thom caught his shoulders, pressed him against the bed and held him there while he flailed and screamed, and at last only wept, weakly, turning his face into the tumbled blankets.

  His brother gathered him up, then, and held him cradled like a babe, murmuring, wordless and soothing, and Aelliana, Aelliana . . .

  “Another child,” he whispered. “She had said we should have another child. We were late . . . ”

  “He thought he had missed you, going in,” Er Thom murmured. “The gunman said as much before he died of his wounds. He thought to wait until the end of the play and catch you as you came away.”

  “Wounds? There was no one but us, on the street, who would have wounded—”

  “You,” his brother said. “The medics found your hideaway by your hand, and that prompted them to look for another who might be in need.”

  Had he been quicker, had he been more alert—he might have preserved her life.

  “He said,” Er Thom murmured, “that you were the target. That the Terran Party has a price on your head.”

  “She saw him,” he whispered. “Timing and trajectory were blood and breath to her. She deliberately put herself into harm's way. Gods, Aelliana . . . ”

  “Pilot's choice,” Er Thom said, though his voice was not by any means steady. “Brother, will you come home?”

  Home? The rooms, her things lying where she had left them. Their apartment, with her scent and her imprint on everything. He could not . . . And yet where else was there to go?

  His heart was beginning to pound. He drew a hard breath, and forcefully turned his thoughts to other questions; questions that Er Thom would expect.

  “How long have I been—unconscious?”

  “Three days,” Er Thom answered, adding carefully, “Val Con is with us.”

  Val Con. Another bolt of agony shuddered through him. What was he going to tell their child? How could he begin to comfort Val Con, when he could scarcely hold himself rational from heartbeat to heartbeat?

  “Daav?”

  “Yes.” He raised his head and kissed his brother, softly, on the lips. “Let us by all means go home.”

  Of course, it wasn't as simple as merely going home. The med techs needed their time with him, running suite after suite of diagnostics. He was found to be well-enough for a man who had sustained what the head of the tech team termed “a massive shock to the nervous and circulatory systems.” One received the distinct impression that med techs had not expected him to survive.

  If only he had not.

  Blackness seized him; his breath went short; the room, the med tech, the instruments—all and everything smeared into a blur of senseless color. Dislocated, he fell—and his knees struck the vanished floor.

  The jolt focused him; he gasped for breath; heard the med tech call out; felt a hand beneath his elbow.

  “Are you in pain?” the tech asked.

  Was he in pain? Daav felt something like laughter, if laughter were bleak and bladed and chill, snarling in his chest. He gritted his teeth and denied it.

  “I am—a thought unbalanced,” he managed, breath coming easier now. “A momentary lapse.”

  “Ah,” the tech said and spoke over Daav's head. “Let us assist the
pilot to the chair, please. Then, rerun the room readings for the last six minutes.”

  He allowed them to lend him support and crept to the diagnostic chair on their arms, like a toddler taking his first steps on the arms of fond family. Once he was seated, the shorter med tech left them, doubtless to find the room readings, as she had been directed.

  Daav leaned back and closed his eyes, spent.

  “Blood sugars critical,” the tech murmured. “Systolic . . . ”

  He took a soft breath. “Attend me, Pilot. It would seem that you have suffered yet another potent shock to your system. Please rest here. The chair will give you several injections, to assist in balancing your body's systems. I will return in a moment.”

  He departed. Daav lay limp in the chair, scarcely caring when the injections were administered. Over in the corner, he could hear the techs speaking quietly, they thought. His hearing had returned with his eyesight, however, and he heard how worriedly they discussed plummeting blood pressure, a sudden, unexplainable crisis of blood sugars, and a glittering moment of cranial pyrotechnics.

  “Seizure,” the team leader murmured.

  Fear flooded him, very nearly drowning the horror of his loss. If the med techs could prove brain damage, he would never fly again. He stirred in the chair.

  “I am,” he said, and stopped, shocked at how weak his voice was. He opened his eyes. Both of the techs were watching him, alarm clearly visible.

  Daav took a deep breath.

  “I am,” he said again, “the surviving partner of a true lifemating.”

  The techs exchanged a glance.

  “I suggest,” Daav continued, “that I be released into the care of my kin, with whatever regimen will, in your professional opinions, best restore my strength. When I have had some time to become . . . ” His breath grabbed; he deliberately breathed deeply, “ . . . some time to become accustomed, then I will return for another series of diagnostics.”