A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume I

by Sharon Lee

  “Which is why I don’t find them in the Book of Clans.”

  “Nor in Terran Census, either.” Luken sighed. “In anywise, boy-dear, if it’s sen’Equa you want, it’s to Low Port you’ll go.”

  “Ah, will I? How delightful.” Pat Rin slipped Fal Den’s debt-book into his sleeve and absently took up his wineglass. “I wonder what trade it is that Family sen’Equa follows?”

  Luken moved his shoulders. “Why, they began in mechanical and electronics repair, with a side in the gaming business. The repair work led them to vending machines, you see, and an exclusive contract with dea’Linea. Then, when dea’Linea incepted that tedious scandal and got ruined by way of it, sen’Equa sued for such holdings as remained—in payment of their contract. I was myself involved as a trustee of the dissolution, and saw the paperwork. sen’Equa received only the most meager of settlements—well, they had no one to speak for them. So, unless they have moved far forward—or backward—sen’Equa owns properties in Mid-Port and in Low-Port, in the form of several small gambling houses.”

  “Oh,” Pat Rin said, and very nearly smiled. “Do they?”

  SHE HAD READ the letter thrice, more alarmed each time. A party, here, at House of Chance? Worse, a party composed, or so he would have her understand, entirely of those who made High Port—aye, and the city beyond it—their home? All very well and good to bring in one or three at a time, filling the private rooms, to her profit. But, a party of three to four dozen lord-and-ladyships? It was . . .

  . . . frightening.

  Betea sen’Equa was not a woman of fragile nerve, nor was hers an imaginative nature. Yet this latest letter from Hia Cyn—this proposed—engaged—event—felt wrong. Gods’ mercy that her grandmother was dead, and Betea did not have to go before her with such feeble misgivings in her heart.

  “Hitch your fortune to the High-Port,” that redoubtable old lady had been wont to say, “and the cantra will flow into your pocket.”

  Which had doubtless been true in the old days, when her grandmother, with the assistance of various patrons, added three houses to the sen’Equa holdings—one in High Port itself.

  Grandmother’s wisdom had likewise served Betea’s mother, who had added another Mid Port house to the chain before a drunken quarrel with her latest patron left her dead.

  After that came Betea’s aunt, who decreed that sen’Equa had no need of patrons; that sen’Equa houses would henceforth pay for themselves, with no dependence on those who sat high.

  It had been a worthy dream, Betea thought so even now. But her aunt in her grief over the loss of her sister had reckoned without worldly realities. sen’Equa had no standing among the clan-bound, nor ever had. Oh, they paid taxes, in return of which they were guaranteed the protections and services of the Port. But they had no social standing, and no one was obliged to either sell, or treat with them at fair cost.

  Or pay a death-price, for kin who were murdered.

  It had been fair market prices and rent that the names of the wealthy patrons had purchased for sen’Equa, and by the time her aunt realized that, the house in High Port had faltered and was closed.

  Her aunt then did what no other of their family had done—she left the Port and went into the city, to apply for a Name from the Council of Clans.

  But to become a Name, there must be a Name willing to sponsor the applicant to the Council. A patron, in fact—and Betea’s aunt would have none of patrons.

  So, now it was Betea and two houses left—their starting place in Low Port, where Uncle Tawm ruled, and the House of Chance in the Terran section of Mid Port. Terrans scarce cared what your name was—or if you had a name at all, so long as your cantra was good. They sold to Betea as they would to any other business on the street—yes, and came by in the evening or ahead of their morning shifts, to wager a bit on the wheel, perhaps, or buy into a game of cards.

  She’d been doing well enough, or so she told herself now, and had no need to return to the patron model. Only that the loss of those two houses in her aunt’s time and another on her aunt’s death—had eaten at Betea and made her dream, too, dream of the days when sen’Equa held five houses and there was talk of building a sixth . . .

  Betea sighed, dropped the letter to her desk for the fourth time, slipped the sixth-piece into her pocket, and, restless, went down the ramp into the main room, to see how the play went on.

  Which is how she came to be there when he walked in the door: High Port, sure enough, with his pretty brown hair and a blue gemstone in one ear; dressed in a sober, expensive jacket and shiny boots. She saw the hint of the pistol beneath the jacket and approved his good sense, even as she went forward to intercept him.

  “May I assist you, lordship?” she inquired, coming up on him from the right, her hands plainly in sight, out of respect for the pistol.

  Velvet brown eyes considered her at some length, and then he inclined his head, very slightly.

  “Do you know, perhaps you can?” he said, and his voice was pleasant on the ear. “I am looking for Betea sen’Equa.”

  Her stomach clenched, but she put the silly start of fear aside and bowed deeply, which the high ones cared about.

  “You have found her,” she said. “How may I assist you?”

  “I am here on a matter of Balance,” the pretty man told her, “which stands between yourself and Fal Den ter’Antod.”

  Betea felt the blood drain from her face. She might have known that the game would fold someday, and one who was perhaps a little bolder than the others would send his man of business, or his delm, or his elder kinsman to Balance the matter—with her. She touched her tongue to lips suddenly gone dry.

  “Why does he not come himself?” she asked.

  “Because he is dead,” the other said, and moved a hand, showing her the ramp up to the office in her own establishment.

  “Perhaps this is not a discussion you wish to continue on the open floor?”

  Dead? But . . . Betea clutched at her disintegrating courage, straightened her back and looked boldly into the man’s dark eyes.

  “Please come with me,” she said, and turned away without looking to see if he followed. Somehow, she didn’t doubt that he would.

  * * *

  THE OFFICE WAS comfortably appointed, the screens that monitored the playing floor set into the wall above the manager’s cluttered desk.

  A quick and subtle glance at the clutter revealed to Pat Rin the sorts of papers one might find on the desk of any manager, High Port or Low—invoices, bills of lading, lists, and the various correspondence of business. A handwritten letter on plain paper lay askew in the center of the desk, as if it had been flung down in haste. A blank comm screen sat to the right of the general disorder, the keyboard shoved away beneath.

  At the center of the room, Betea sen’Equa turned to face him. She was tall, Pat Rin noted—a little above his own height, though nothing near Shan’s—and lithe, with a girl’s pretty, soft face. Her eyes were as blue and as ungiving as sapphire—and it was to the woman who had earned those eyes that he made his bow.

  “I am Pat Rin yos’Phelium Clan Korval. I come to you as the instrument of Fal Den ter’Antod’s will. Your name is written in his debt-book. It falls to us to Balance that which lies between you.”

  The hard blue eyes considered him, emotionless; the round, girl’s face betrayed only youth.

  “Please tell me how Fal Den came to die,” she said, and her voice did waver, just a little. “I saw him only days ago . . .”

  “He died by his own hand,” Pat Rin told her and used his chin to point at the dark screen. “If you permit, I will call up the report from news service.”

  She glanced at the screen, and stepped to one side. “If you please.”

  He moved to the desk, tapped the power key, called up the public archive, and stood aside.

  Betea sen’Equa came forward, frowned at the synopsis, reached down and called for more information, then stood looking at it for far longer than it shoul
d have taken her to read it. Eventually, however, she recalled herself and turned to Pat Rin, her face somewhat paler than it had been.

  “What is written next to my name,” she asked steadily, “in Fal Den’s debt-book?”

  She had offered him neither a chair nor refreshment, which discourtesy was irritating. Pat Rin discovered himself more inclined to believe the debt lay on the lady’s side, which did no honor to his duty. If Fal Den himself had not known which of the two of them was owing and owed . . .

  Pat Rin inclined his head. “I regret. Only your name appears. It is the very last notation in the book, written on the day of his death, and it is very possible that the process that ended with his self-murder was even then at work.”

  She stared at him, eyes and face without expression.

  Pat Rin sighed. “Perhaps if we speak together of your dealings with Fal Den on the occasion of your last meeting, we may discover between us both the fault and the Balance owed.”

  Still she stared at him, and she was not, by Pat Rin’s judgment, either a half-wit or a fool . . .

  “Self-murder,” she said abruptly. “Are they certain of that?”

  He frowned. “It is what his kin has sworn to the Council. Have you reason to believe that Fal Den came by his death in another fashion?”

  “Perhaps. I don’t . . .” She spun aside, rudely, and paced to the far end of the room, where she stood for the slow count of six heartbeats, facing the wall, showing him her back.

  At last, she took a deep breath, turned and walked back to the center of the room. She stopped several paces away and looked boldly into his eyes.

  “I know why my name is written in Fal Den’s book,” she said, and her voice was as hard as her eyes. “I know who owes and who is owing. I will tell you these things. For a price.”

  “A price?” Pat Rin raised his eyebrows. “Madam, your name is written in a dead man’s book. You do not bargain price with me.”

  “But I do,” she said sharply. “You may be bound to play by High Port rules, lordship, but I am not. My mother died at the hand of a High Port lord. She had no book nor no other high friends to call in her debt, and the lord himself said the thing was outside of lawful Balance, for she had no Name to protect her.” She crossed her arms under her breasts and now the bold gaze was a glare.

  “I am selling the information you need. You will buy it, or you will not.” She inclined her head, brusquely. “Your throw, lordship.”

  It was on the end of his tongue to tell her that he had no need to buy anything from her—but that was only pique, such as would make Luken laugh and bid him to climb down from the high branches.

  Mastering his irritation, he looked at her, standing tall and stern before him.

  The lady has the winning hand, he told himself, wryly, which rubbed ill against his pride as a gamester. And he was not come here, he reminded himself, as a gamester, but as the agent of Fal Den’s will, upon which the petty prides and irritations of Pat Rin yos’Phelium had no right to intrude.

  He bowed to the lady, very slightly.

  “What is your price?”

  VIEWED CORRECTLY, Pat Rin thought, shaking his lace into order and frowning at his reflection in the dressing-glass, the situation was piquant. Indeed, one was persuaded that one’s deplorable cousin Shan would find it rich in hilarity. And, to be just, had it been Shan dressing just now to attend, of all things, an express, Pat Rin might have found himself more inclined toward laughter.

  His partner in this evening’s enterprise could not be dislodged from her conviction that he attended such affairs as a matter of course on every quarter-day, nor from the equally demented belief that his very presence held her proof against whatever predations she imagined that Hia Cyn yo’Tonin intended to visit upon her.

  Though, Pat Rin allowed, fixing the sapphire in his ear, to be wary of Hia Cyn yo’Tonin proved Betea sen’Equa to be a woman of sense, however late in her life.

  It had taken all of his powers of persuasion, and not a little High House hauteur, to wring the information he required from Betea after he had given his word to attend this evening’s festivities.

  The tale she had told was a simple one, nor was Fal Den the first to come away from an acquaintance with Betea sen’Equa lighter by certain equities and certificates of stock.

  It would have seemed simple thievery, and the lady herself the final culprit, yet there was another player in the game, whose presence muddied the score considerably.

  As Betea told it, her first meeting with Hia Cyn yo’Tonin was mere chance. Pat Rin, who knew the man, doubted this, but had not thought it appropriate to interrupt the lady’s account with his private speculations.

  In any case, Hia Cyn, through design or mischance, came into the orbit of Betea sen’Equa and very quickly showed her how she might increase profits. Betea had ambitions, Pat Rin learned, but not much understanding of the ways of what she termed “the high world.”

  Hia Cyn brought to her young people—mostly young men—who were slightly in awe of the gaming world, and slightly in awe of her, she who was tall and exotic, and who held modest court within her own houses.

  The games were—initially—honest, with small friendly wagers. But after a time, the stakes would alter. In the private parlors, the victims would play for small sums until some point of melant’i or other would be brought into the conversation and slowly the net would be drawn about them. Carefully, then, while served sympathetic portions of wine, or perhaps one of Hia Cyn’s special cigarillos, the mark would be brought to promise against their quartershare, or against their inheritance. Especially, Hia Cyn liked them to promise something that would come to them only when the person immediately before them in their clan’s line of succession came to die.

  Thus the stakes were things like quitclaims to islands, access codes to small and private lodges, the desperately secret formula of some proprietary process.

  This, she learned later; she had delivered the first few keywords and certificate numbers to Hia Cyn without ever knowing what they were, earning thereby what he was pleased to call a “finder’s fee.” In cash.

  No one ever came back to her and confronted her with their loss, which for a time fed the comforting illusion that what she dealt in were “might-happens” of no value.

  Alas, she was not a lady who allowed herself to repose long in ignorance. If what she gained for Hia Cyn was worthless, she reasoned, why then was she paid to procure it?

  And so she finally learned that these items promised at late night in the heat of play were more than a gambler’s losses. They became the very evidence of a threat—perhaps a mortal threat!—to a person of melant’i. As such, they were bought back with ridiculous ease, often with items or in amounts the victims themselves suggested—things that were in one way or another extremely liquid and little prone to tracking.

  Knowledge should have set her free, for surely even Nameless Port-folk might report larceny to the Proctors. However, Betea weighed the risk of being implicated along with Hia Cyn and the all-too-probable outcome of being found the sole offender, and did not call the Proctors. In any wise, she said, the trade was slowing down. Indeed, for several relumma, Hia Cyn introduced her to no one new.

  And then, at the beginning of the present relumma, he had brought Fal Den ter’Antod to her attention.

  “And now he has died,” Betea had said, stone-faced in the office above her modest gambling house. “None of the others cared so much.”

  She had named those others in the course of her narration and Pat Rin had taken those names to the redoubtable dea’Gauss, Clan Korval’s man of business, who was even now in the process of checking accounts with various of the masters of the Accountants Guild.

  Which left Pat Rin free to attend a party in the deplored and deplorable express mode, with only six hours left him to correctly place and Balance the error that had brought Fal Den to his death.

  It was well here to reflect upon Fal Den, Pat Rin thought, and the
nicety of his honor, which had not allowed him to place a debt of which he was uncertain.

  Pat Rin sighed and gave his lace a last, unnecessary, shake. Time and past time to get on with the pursuit of pleasure.

  Express, indeed.

  * * *

  THE ADDRESS WAS in Solcintra Mid-Port, on a street well-known to a certain set of self-styled adventurers and high rollers. An adventurer he was not, but in the course of learning to be a high roller, it had sometimes been necessary for Pat Rin to attend parties on this street. Now an acknowledged player, he still received invitations to such parties, but of late he had more and more often discovered himself, regretfully, with a conflicting engagement. To be seen in the area during a business day was unexceptional, of course, but to be seen here in the evening, dressed in all his finery . . .

  At least he was not alone. He saw several vaguely familiar faces in the distance, all of them younger than he, each carrying their sealed red packet inscribed with the legend, “To Be Opened Expressly at the House of Chance.”

  He bowed distantly in the direction of a young lady whose name escaped him—her face notable in that Pat Rin had witnessed the end of a match at Tey Dor’s in which this gentle became the dozen dozenth of the current year’s list. Pat Rin sighed—no doubt he would be singled out during the express to give hints and best wishes, if not to lend countenance to the rather interesting costume that the lady had found appropriate to wear to an event that might turn out to be nothing more than an evening of light play. Indeed, she gained his side as he came up to the gaudily painted doorway, and just in time he recalled her name—Dela bel’Urik Clan Shelart.

  Together, they entered the sen’Equa’s House of Chance, he in his evening lace, and she as she might appear for an evening among friends to her house; or even friends to her bed. Assuredly, someone ought to speak to the lady regarding the attire generally held to be proper for public outings—but it would not be he.