A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume I

by Sharon Lee

  Ren Zel recruited his patience, watching the screens, the descent entirely out of his hands. Gods, how long since he had sat passenger, wholly dependent on another pilot’s skill?

  The ship hit atmosphere and turbulence in the same instant. There was a bump, and a twitch. Ren Zel flicked forward, hands on his useless board—and sat back as Elsu made the recover and threw him an unreadable look from over-brilliant blue eyes.

  “Enjoy the skim, Pilot,” she said. “Unless you doubt my skill?”

  Well, no. She flew like a madwoman, true enough, but she had caught that boggle just a moment ago very smoothly, indeed.

  The skim continued, and steeper still, until Ren Zel was certain that it was the old scout tape she had fashioned her course upon.

  He looked to the board, read hull-heat and external pressure, and did not say to the woman beside him that an old packet was never the equal of a scout ship. She would have to level out soon, and take the rest of the skim at a shallow glide, until they had bled sufficient momentum to safely land.

  She had not yet leveled out when they hit a second bit of turbulence, this more demanding than the first. The ship bucked, twisted—again Ren Zel snapped to his dead board, and again the pilot on first corrected the boggle and flew on.

  Moments passed, and still Elsu did not level their course.

  Ren Zel leaned forward, checking gauges and tell-tales, feeling his stomach tighten.

  “Pilot,” he said moderately, “we must adjust course.”

  She threw him a glance. “Must we?” she asked, dulcet. “But I am flying this ship, Ren Zel dea’Judan.”

  “Indeed you are. However, if we do not level soon, even a pilot as skilled as yourself will find it—difficult—to pull out. This ship was not built for such entries.”

  “This ship,” she stated, “will do what I wish it to do.” Incredibly, she kept her course.

  Ren Zel looked to the screens. They were passing over the ocean, near enough that he could see the v-wakes of the sea-ships, and, then, creeping into the edge of screen four, towering thunderheads where the water met the land.

  “Pilot,” he said, but Elsu had seen them.

  “Aha! Now you shall see flying!”

  They pierced the storm in a suicide rush; winds cycled, slapping them into a spin, Elsu corrected, and lightning flared, leaving screen three dead.

  “Give me my board!” Ren Zel cried. “Pilot, as you love your life—”

  She threw him a look in which he had no trouble reading hatred, and the wind struck again, slamming them near into a somersault in the instant her hand slapped the toggle. The cabin lights flickered as Ren Zel’s board came live, and there was a short, snapped-off scream.

  Poised over the board, he fought—fought the ship, fought the wind, fought his own velocity. The wind tossed the ship like so many flower petals, and they tumbled again. Ren Zel fought, steadied his craft and passed out of the storm, into a dazzle of sunlight and the realization that the ground was much too close.

  He slapped toggles, got the nose up, rose, rose—

  His board snapped and fizzed—desperately, he slapped the toggle for the secondary back-up.

  There was none.

  The ship screamed like a live thing when it slammed into the ground.

  ON THE MORNING OF his third day out of the healing unit and his second day at home, his sister Eba brought him fresh clothes, all neatly folded and smelling of sunshine. Her face was strained, her eyes red with weeping.

  “You are called to the meeting between Obrelt and Jabun next hour, Brother,” she said, her voice husky and low. “Aunt Chane will come for you.”

  Ren Zel went forward a step, hand outstretched to the first of his kin he had seen or spoken to since the accident. “Eba?”

  But she would not take his hand, she turned her face from him and all but ran from the room. The door closed behind her with the wearisome, too-familiar sound of the lock snapping to.

  Next hour. In a very short time, he would know the outcome of Jabun’s pursuit of Balance, though what Balance they might reasonably take remained, after three full days of thought on the matter, a mystery to him. The Guild would surely have recovered the flight box. They would have run the tape, built a sim, proven that it had been an accident, with no malice attached. A tragedy, surely, for Jabun to lose a daughter. A double tragedy, that she should die while in Obrelt’s keeping. There would be the life-price to pay, but—Balance?

  He considered the computer in its alcove near the window. Perhaps today he would be allowed to access the nets, to find what the world knew of this?

  But no, he was a pilot and a pilot’s understanding was quicker than that. He knew well enough the conditions of his tenure here. All praise to Terran poetry, he even knew the proper name for it.

  House arrest.

  Escorted by med techs, he’d arrived home from the Medical Center, and brought not to his own rooms, but to the Quiet Suite, where those who mourned, who were desperately ill—or dying—were housed. There was a med tech on-call. It was he who showed Ren Zel the computer, the call button, the bed; he who locked the door behind him when he left.

  There was entertainment available if one wished to sit and watch, but the communit reached only the med tech and the computer accessed only neutral information—no news, no pilot-net; the standard piloting drills did not open to his code, nor had anyone brought his books, or asked if he wished to have them. This was not how kin cared for kin.

  Slowly, Ren Zel went over to the pile of clean clothes. He slipped off the silver-and-indigo robe, and slowly, carefully, put on the modest white shirt and dark trousers. He sat down to pull his boots on and sat a little longer, listening to the blood singing in his ears. He was yet low of energy. It would take some time, so the med tech told him—perhaps as long as a relumma—to fully regain his strength. He had been advised to take frequent naps, and not to overtire himself.

  Yes, very good.

  He pushed himself to his feet and went back to the table. His jacket was there. Wonderingly, he shook it out, fingering the places where the leather had been mended, pieced together by the hand of a master. As he had been.

  The touch and smell of the leather was a reassuring and personal commonplace among the bland and antiseptic ambiance of the quiet suite. He swung the jacket up and on, settling it on his shoulders, and looked at the remaining items on the table.

  His piloting license went into its secret pocket. For a moment, he simply stared at the two cantra pieces, unable to understand why there should be so much money to his hand. In the end, still wondering, he slipped them into the pocket of his jacket.

  Behind him, he heard the lock snap, and turned, with a bare fraction of his accustomed speed, staggering a little on the leg that had been crushed.

  Chane dea’Judan stepped into the room, the door sliding silently closed behind her. He stood where he was, uncertain, after Eba and two days of silence, what he might expect from his own kin.

  If Aunt Chane will not speak to me, he thought, I will not be able to bear it.

  She paused at the edge of the table and opened her arms. “Ren Zel.”

  He almost fell into the embrace. His cheek against her shoulder, he felt her stroke his hair as if he were small again and needing comfort after receiving some chance cruelty from one of his cousins.

  “It’s gone ill, child,” she murmured at last and he stirred, straightened, and stood away, searching her solemn face.

  “Ill,” he repeated. “But the life-price of a pilot is set by the Guild. I will take the—” He stopped, struck dumb by the impossible.

  Aunt Chane was weeping.

  “Tell me,” he said then. “Aunt?”

  She took a moment to master herself, and met his eyes squarely.

  “A life for a life,” she said. “Jabun invokes the full penalty. Council and Guild uphold them.”

  He stared at her. “The flight box. Surely, the Guild has dumped the data from the flight box?”
>
  “Dumped it and read it and sent it by direct pinbeam to a Master Pilot, who studied it and passed judgement,” Aunt Chane said, her voice edged with bitterness. “Jabun turned his face from the Master Pilot’s findings—and the request to hold open review at Casiaport Hall! He called on three first class pilots from Casiaport Guild to judge again. I am told that this is his right, under Guild law.” She took a deep breath and looked him squarely in the eye.

  “The honored pilots of Casiaport Guild find you guilty of negligence in flight, my child, the result of your error being that Pilot Elsu Meriandra untimely met her death.”

  But this was madness. They had the box, the actual recording of the entire flight, from engage to crash.

  “Aunt—”

  She held up her hand, silencing him.

  “I have seen the tape.” She paused, something like pride—or possibly awe—showing in her eyes. “You will understand that it meant very little to me. I was merely astonished that you could move so quickly, recover so well, only to have the ship itself fail you at the last instant . . .” Another pause.

  “I have also read the report sent by the Master Pilot, who makes points regarding Pilot Meriandra’s performance that were perhaps too hard for a father to bear. The Master Pilot was clear that the accident was engineered by Pilot Meriandra, that she had several times ignored your warnings, and that she had endangered both ship and pilots by denying you access to your board during most of the descent. That she was not webbed in . . .” Chane let that drift off. Ren Zel closed his eyes.

  “I heard her scream, but I could not—the ship . . .”

  “The Master Pilot commends you. The others . . .”

  “The others,” Ren Zel finished wearily, “are allied to Jabun and dare not risk his anger.”

  “Just so. And Obrelt—forgive us, child. Obrelt cannot shield you. Jabun has demonstrated that we will starve if we reject this Balancing.”

  “Demonstrated?”

  She sighed. “Eba has been released from her position, her keys stripped from her by the owner before the entire staff of the shop. Wil Bar was served the same, though the owner there was kind enough to receive the keys in the privacy of the back office. Both owners are closely allied with Clan Jabun.”

  Gods. No wonder Eba wept and would not see him.

  “We will mourn you,” Aunt Chane said softly. “They cannot deny us that.” She glanced at the clock, stepped up and offered her arm.

  “It is time.”

  He looked into his aunt’s face, saw sorrow and necessity. Carefully, tender of the chancy leg, put his hand on the offered arm and allowed himself to be led downstairs to die.

  THE HOUSE’S MODEST ballroom was jammed to overflowing. All of Clan Obrelt, from the eldest to the youngest, were present to witness Ren Zel’s death. Fewer of Clan Jabun were likewise present, scarcely a dozen, all adult, saving one child—a toddler with white-blonde hair and wide blue eyes that Ren Zel knew must be Elsu’s daughter.

  On the dais usually occupied by musicians during Obrelt’s rare entertainments was a three-sided table. On the shortest side stood Ren Zel; Aunt Chane and Obrelt Himself were together at one of the longer sides; Jabun and his second, a gray-haired man with steel-blue eyes, stood facing them.

  In the front row of witnesses sat a figure of neither House, an old and withered man who one might see a time or two a year, at weddings and funerals, always wearing the same expression of polite sadness: Tor Cam tel’ Vana, the Eyes of Casia’s Council of Clans.

  “We are here,” Jabun lifted his voice so that it washed against the far walls of the room, “to put the death upon the man who murdered Elsu Meriandra, Pilot First Class, daughter of Jabun.”

  “We are here,” Obrelt’s voice was milder, but no more difficult for those in the back to hear, “to mourn Obrelt’s son Ren Zel, who dies as the result of a piloting accident.”

  Jabun glared, started—and was restrained by the hand of his second on his sleeve. Thus moderated, he turned his hot eyes to Ren Zel.

  “What have you in your pockets, dead man? It is my Balance that you go forth from here nameless, rootless and without possessions.”

  Slowly, Ren Zel reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew the two cantra pieces.

  “Put them on the table,” Jabun hissed.

  “He will return them to his pocket,” Obrelt corrected and met the other’s glare with a wide calmness. “Ren Zel belongs to Obrelt until he dies. It is the tradition of our clan that the dead shall have two coins, one to an eye.” He gestured toward the short side of the table, still holding Jabun’s gaze. “Ren Zel, your pocket.”

  Obediently, he slipped the coins away.

  Once again, Jabun sputtered; once again, he was held back by his second, who leaned forward and stared hard into Ren Zel’s face.

  “There is something else, dead man. We will see your license destroyed ere you are cast away.”

  Ren Zel froze. His license? Were they mad? How would he work? How would he live?

  “My nephew gave his life for that license, Honored Sir,” Aunt Chane said serenely. “He dies because he was worthy of it. What more fitting than it be interred with him?”

  “That was not our agreement,” the second stated.

  “Our agreement,” said Obrelt with unbreached calm, “was that Ren Zel dea’Judan be cast out of his clan, and made a stranger to his kin, his loss to Obrelt to precisely Balance the loss of Elsu Meriandra to Clan Jabun. Elsu Meriandra was not made to relinquish her license in death. We desire, as Jabun desires, an exact Balancing of accounts.”

  Jabun Himself answered, and in such terms that Ren Zel would have trembled, had there been room for fear beside the agony in his heart.

  “You think to buy him a life? Think again! What ship will employ a dead man? None that Jabun knows by name.” He shifted, shaking off his second’s hand.

  In the first row of witnesses, the aged man rose. “These displays delay and impair the death,” murmured the Eyes of Council. “Only his delm may lay conditions upon a dying man, and there is no death until the delm declares it.” He paused, sending a thoughtful glance to Jabun. “The longest Balance-death recorded stretched across three sundowns.”

  Jabun glared briefly at the Eyes, then turned back to the table.

  “He may retain the license,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “May it do him well in the Low Port.”

  There was silence; the Eyes bowed toward the Balancing table and reseated himself, hands folded on his knee.

  Obrelt cleared his throat and raised his voice, chanting in the High Tongue.

  “Ren Zel dea’Judan, you are cast out, dead to clan and kin. You are nameless, without claim or call upon this House. Begone. Begone.” His voice broke, steadied.

  “Begone.”

  Ren Zel stood at the small side of the table, staring out over the roomful of his kin. All the faces he saw were solemn; not a few were tear-tracked.

  “Begone!” snarled Jabun. “Die, child killer!”

  In the back of the ballroom, one of the smallest cousins began to wail. Steeling himself, not daring to look at Chane, nor anywhere save his own feet, Ren Zel walked forward, down the three steps to the floor; forward, down the thin path that opened as the cousins moved aside to let him gain the door; forward, down the hallway, to the foyer. The door stood open. He walked on, down the steps to the path, down the path to the gate.

  “Go on!” Jabun shouted from behind. Ren Zel did not turn. He pushed the gate open and walked out.

  The gate crashed shut behind him and he spun, his heart slamming into overaction. Shaking, he flattened his palm against the plate, felt the tingle of the reader and—

  Nothing else. The gate remained locked. His print had been removed from the House computer. He was no longer of Obrelt.

  He was dead.

  IT WAS FULL NIGHT when he staggered into the Pilots Guildhall in Casiaport. He’d dared not break a cantra for a taxi-ride and his clan-credit had proven d
ead when he tried to purchase a news flimsy with the headline over his photograph proclaiming “Pilot Dead in Flight Negligence Aftermath.” His sight was weaving and he was limping heavily off the leg that had been crushed. He had seen Lai Tor in the street a block or an eternity over, raised his hand—and his friend turned his face aside and hurried off in the opposite direction.

  Dead, Ren Zel thought, and smiled without humor. Very well, then.

  A ghost, he walked into the Guildhall. The duty clerk looked up, took him in with a glance and turned her face away.

  “You are not required to speak to me,” Ren Zel said, and his voice sounded not quite . . . comfortable . . . in his own ears. “You are not required to acknowledge my presence in any way. However.” He pulled his license from its secret pocket and lay it face down on the reader. “This license—this valid license—has a debt on it. This license will not be dishonored. List the license number as ‘on call,’ duty clerk. The debt will be paid.”

  Silence from the clerk. No move, toward either the license or the computer.

  Ren Zel took a ragged breath, gathering his failing resources. “Is Casiaport Guildhall in the practice of refusing repayment of contracted loans?”

  The clerk sighed. Keeping her eyes averted, she turned, picked up the license and disappeared to the back.

  Ren Zel gasped, questioning the wisdom of this play, now that it was too late, his license possibly forfeit, his life and his livelihood with—

  The clerk reappeared. Eyes stringently downturned, she placed a sheet of printout and his license on the countertop. Then she turned her back on him.

  Ren Zel’s heart rose. It had worked! Surely, this was an assignment. Surely—

  He snatched up his license and slipped it away, then grabbed the paper, forcing his wavering sight to focus, to find the name of the client, lift time, location.

  It took him all of three heartbeats to realize that he was not looking at flight orders, but an invoice. It took another three heartbeats to understand that the invoice recorded the balance left to be paid on his loan, neatly zeroed out to three decimal places, “forgiven” stamped across the whole in tall blue letters, and then smaller blue letters, where the Guildmaster had dated the thing, and signed her name.