by Sharon Lee
“In that case, this is better placed with someone among the High Houses. They fail to arrive here in sufficient number to make my purchase worthwhile . . .”
And then she named a price which was far more of her available capital than she normally risked—but far less than the value she perceived before her—and was oddly annoyed by the man’s rather curt, “That will do.”
She was even more annoyed by the rapt attention he paid as she counted the cash out—as if each coin was in doubt. The she realized he was looking at her face. Involuntarily, she colored, which made her angry. Too long among the Terrans if she could blush so easily . . .
“No,” he said suddenly, his Liaden gone stiffly formal. “I did not mean to disturb you. I sought—I was trying to see if I might read or recognize the etchings or tattoos on your face.”
Cyra felt her face heat even more. She covered the scars with close-held fingers, looking up.
“Our transaction is finished. You may go.”
He reached his hand toward her face and she flinched.
“Ah,” he said, wisely. “The rule is that you may reach and touch my hand, but I, may not reach and touch yours. When the crash is coming I see things so clearly . . .”
Startled, she stepped back.
“Forgive me,” she managed, and paused, seeking the proper words. Indeed, she had overstepped before he had; it was folly to assume that one who was Terran had no measure of manners.
Then: “But why this crash? Crash? You do not seem to be on drugs or drink, and . . .”
Now she was truly flustered; more so when he laughed gently.
“In truth, I am very much on drugs right now. I have been drinking coffee constantly for the last three days. Starting last night, I have been drinking strong tea, as well. It has almost been enough, you see, but I could tell it would not continue to work, so I need to buy food—I should eat very soon—I need to write the notes, though, and look once more before the crash.”
Cyra held her hands even closer to her face.
“You need not look at all. These are none—”
But he was shaking his head, Terran-wise.
“No, you misunderstand. I need to look at the art so I remember what comes next . . . sometimes it is not so obvious to me when I start moving again.”
Cyra was sure she must be misunderstanding—but before she could reply he pocketed the coins from the counter top and hefted the fabric-covered blue case or portfolio he’d brought in, laying it across the counter and reaching quickly for the seals.
“You, you love beautiful things—you must see this!” he said, nearly running over his words in his haste. “This one is my best so far! This is the reason I have come to Liad . . . this is where the Scouts are!”
Now he wasn’t staring at Cyra at all, and she found the willpower to bring her hands down and come forward to see what might be revealed.
Some kind of tissue was swirled back from inside the case and before her was a photograph of a double star—with one redder and the other bluer—taken from the surface of an obviously wind-swept desert world with tendrils of high gray clouds just entering the photograph.
But sections were missing or else the photo-download had been incomplete or—
Now the odor came to her, eerily taking her back to the brief time she studied painting before turning to jewelry.
“You painted this? You are painting it now?” She looked up into his face and rapidly down to the work again. The detail was amazing, the composition near perfect, the—
“Yes,” he was saying, “yes, it is my work. But I must not paint now, because now I am tired and spent and will only ruin what I have done. For now, the work is not safe near me!”
Cyra recalled working long and hard on her first real commission, so long and hard in fact that she’d finally fallen asleep in the midst, and woke to find the beaten metal scratched and chewed in the polishing machine, destroyed by the very process which should have perfected it.
She heard her voice before she realized she was speaking—
“If you need a place—I can keep it here. It will be safe! Then, when you are awake and ready, you can claim it.”
He laughed, sudden and short, and with an odd twist of amusement pulling his grin into his beard.
“When I wake. Yes, that is a good way to put it. When I wake.”
With a flourish he waved his hand over the tissue, swept it back over the painting, and sealed the portfolio.
“My name,” he said quite formally, “is Harold Geneset Hsu Belansium. Among my family, I am known as Little Gene. To the census people I am BelansiumHGH, 4113.” He paused, smoothed his beard, and smiled wryly before continuing.
“When I’m lucky, the pretty ladies of the universe call me Bell. Please, Lady, if I may have your name, I would appreciate it if you would call me Bell.”
With that he handed the portfolio into her care.
She bowed. “Bell you wish? Then Bell it is. I am Cyra the Jeweler to the neighbors here, or simply Cyra. I will see you when you wake.”
SOUND RUMBLED THROUGH the walls and rattled the room around Cyra, who involuntarily looked toward the ceiling. This one was an explosion then—more blasting, for the expansion—and not a rerouted transport flying low overhead. Rumor had it that several of the older houses two streets over were settling dangerously, but that was just rumor as far as she was concerned. Her store would be fine. It would.
She tried to tell herself it was just the noise that was making her skittish, but she knew it wasn’t so. She had moved the stool behind the counter to gain a better vantage of the street, and had developed a nervous motion—nearly a shake of the head it was—when surveying the street.
The knowledge that she had a masterwork of art in her back room awaiting the return of the absent Bell frightened her deeply.
Suppose he didn’t return? Suppose he had “crashed” in some fey Terran way and was now locked in a quiet back room at Healers Hall, or worse?
A smartly dressed businessman carrying a bag from the pastry shop strode by and Cyra found herself looking anxiously past him toward the corner where she’d first spotted Bell. It didn’t help—the businessman had slowed, eyes caught by one of her displays, perhaps—and now was peering in and reaching for the door, carefully wiping feet, and bringing the brusque roar of a transport in with him as he entered. He closed the door and the sound faded . . .
Cyra slid to her feet.
“Gentle sir.” She bowed a shopkeeper’s bow. “How may I assist you today?”
He bowed, and now that she did not have the advantage of the stool, she saw that he was very tall, with sideburns somewhat longer than fashionable and—no, it was a very thin Terran-style beard, neatly trimmed and barely covering chin.
“Cyra, I am here to bring you a snack and to collect my painting.”
She gawked, matching the height, and the color of the beard, and the voice—
“Bell!”
He laughed, and said mysteriously “You, too?”
“Forgive me,” she said after a moment. “You gave me great pause. I have been watching for you—but I did not . . .”
He put the bag on the counter and began rooting through it, glancing at her as if calculating her incomplete sentence to the centimeter.
“I clean up well, eh? But here—if you’ll make some tea, the lady at the pastry shop assures me you’re partial to these . . .”
“Pastry shop? What does that have to do with anything?” She sputtered a moment, and— “Eleven days!” She got out finally, which was both more and less than she wished to say.
He lived very much in his face, the way Terrans do; his eyes were bright and his smile reached from the corners all the way to his bearded chin. He laughed gently, patting the counter, where there were now half-a-dozen pastries for her to choose from.
“Yes,” he acknowledged. “Eleven. Not too bad. The worst was twenty-four, but that was before I knew enough to keep food by, and I’d been partying instead of pa
inting.”
“But what did you do for eleven days?”
He shook his head and the grin dissolved. He glanced down, then looked back to her, eyes and face serious.
“I crashed. I slept and I tried to sleep. I spent hours counting my failures, numbering my stupidities. I counted transports and the explosions and watched the crack in the wall get larger with each. Every so often I knew I’d never see my painting again, and I would know that I’d been taken and that you’d fled the city and I would never see you again, either.”
He raised his hand before she could protest. “And then I would pull myself together and say ‘Fool! Bewitched by beauty again!’ And that way I’d recall your face and the painting, and try to sleep, knowing you’d be here, if only I could recall the shop name when I walked by. I nearly didn’t, you know. I had to focus on that set of ear cuffs that match yours before I was sure.”
She nearly reached for her ear, and then she laughed, somehow.
“Forgive me. I am without experience in this crashing you do. I was concerned for you, for your health, for your art!”
He smiled slowly. “We’re both concerned for my health then, which I’m sure will be greatly improved if I can eat. My stomach has been growling louder than the shuttles! Please, join me! Afterward I will need to visit the port—it would be good if you could do me the favor of retaining my art until I return.” The smile broadened. “I promise—I will not be gone eleven days, this time.”
The noise of the street invaded their moment then, as two young and giggling girls entered. They stopped short, staring at the towering, bearded figure before them.
“Please,” said Cyra to Bell. “If you will come back here, we can let my patrons look about!”
He nodded, and moved without hesitation.
She opened the counter tray to let him pass, indicated a low stool for him (his knees seemed almost to touch his ears!), and moved the pastries to the work table where they would both be able to reach them.
He smiled at her as she lifted a pastry to her lips. She felt almost giddy, as if she’d discovered some new gemstone or precious metal.
DEBBIE, THE HALF-TERRAN pastry maker from the shop four doors down was in, again, when Cyra returned from apartment hunting. It didn’t improve her mood much; the girl hardly seemed as interested in the goods as in Bell, and her language was sprinkled with Terran phrases Cyra could just about decipher on the fly. Likewise the assistant office manager from the Port Transient Shelter. Didn’t they realize that—she shushed her inner voice, nodding, Terran fashion, to Bell in his official spot behind the trade counter. He winked at her and she sighed. Were Terrans always so blatant?
The conversation continued unabated and there on the counter were actual goods; an item she didn’t recognize, so it was for sale to the shop.
“Now,” Bell was saying carefully, “I’ve seen places that these might have been in the absolute top echelon.”
The women gazed at him.
Drawn to the story and the voice despite the crowd, Cyra leaned in to hear.
“Of course, that would only be if the local priestess had purified the stone before it was cut, blessed the ore the silver had come from, sanctified the day the ring was assembled, and then prayed over the ring-giver and scried the proper hour for giving.
“In other corners of the universe,” he went on, “as, say, on Liad or Terra, the flaws in the stone might mark it ordinary. If I were you, I would ask Cyra if she’ll set a price, knowing it for a nubiath’a hastily given . . .”
Cyra moved behind the counter to take up the office of buyer, but the women had both apparently heard tall tales from Terrans in the past—
“Bell, now really, were you on that planet,” asked the assistant office manager, “—or have you merely heard of it?”
He rolled his eyes and surprised Cyra with a discreet pat as she squeezed by him.
“What, am I a spaceman, or a scout, to have all my stories disbelieved?”
They laughed, but he continued, assuming a serious air.
“Actually, it was almost all a disaster. The planet you should never go to is Djymbolay. I arrived just after I finished a painting on board the liner, and was pretty well spent. I had my luggage searched twice for contraband, and then they confiscated the painting as an unauthorized and unsanctified depiction of the world.”
He shook his head, then tapped it with his finger. “They wanted to have me put away for blasphemy or something, I think. It took a scout who happened by—all thanks to little John!—to let me keep my papers and my paint and my freedom. Off with my head or worse, I expect was the plan! But the scout was there on another matter and interceded. The locals walked me across the port under armed guard, and the scout came, too, to be sure that it was gently done—and they kept me confined to the spaceport exit-lounge for the twelve days the ship was there. If several kind ladies hadn’t taken pity, and brought me meals and blankets, I might well have starved and froze.”
Cyra bit back a comment halfway to her lips; after all she knew not where he’d slept before she met him, nor, for that matter, that he always returned to his own rooms on the afternoons and evenings he went to the lectures at Scout Academy. She only knew he returned to the store with sketches and ideas and full of hope that he might eventually be permitted to visit a new world, to be the first painter, the first interpreter . . .
In a few moments more, the transaction was made; she paid a fairly low price for the emerald ring—the one suggested by the seller—and agreed to look at earrings that might be a match.
The two women gone, Bell looked at her carefully.
“You’re tired—and you’ve been angry.”
Exasperated by his grasp of the obvious, Cyra waved her hands in the air in a wild gesture, and snapped, “How else?”
“You might be pleased, after all. The emeralds were got at a decent price.”
“Yes, a decent price. But if I’m going to afford you, my friend, we’ll need to do better.”
He looked at her with the same air of frankness he’d used when talking about the disaster that had cost him a painting, and shook his head.
“Yes, I know; I am hardly convenient for myself, much less for anyone else.”
“That’s not what I meant!” she protested. “I mean that—I mean that it is difficult to find a larger place to live hereabouts, and nearer to my apartment there are those who will not rent to someone who—”
“Someone who might bring a Terran home of a night,” Bell finished, as she faltered. “Inconvenient I said, and I meant!” he insisted with heat. “I don’t mind sleeping here in the store, after all, though the light is not always good. Perhaps you can offer to rent the corner place the next street over.”
They had been over that before, too. Bell’s situation was so changeable that neither knew how long they might find each other’s company pleasant, useful, or convenient. He could hardly sign a lease, with his “transient alien” status in the port computers assuring that any who looked would laugh at his request. Even getting a room beyond the spaceport was difficult for him, except here in the Low Port area. Mid Port was too dear for his budget in any case.
He could hardly co-sign with her, either. The conditions her delm had set were strict and might well bear on that—if she wished to ever return to the House, she would, during her time of exile, refrain from forming formal alliances; she must not buy real estate; she was forbidden to marry, or to have children . . .
There could be no co-signing; she could speak for none other than herself. But to add a place where some of his paintings could be shown—this close to the port, they might gain a better clientele with such a gallery.
Truth told, though, Bell’s sometime presence permitted Cyra to cut her dependence on Ortega’s chancy employ; in fact, twice recently they’d been there as patrons.
He looked at her, snatched the ring to his hand and began tossing it furiously into the air. This, after three previous ragged forty-day cy
cles, she recognized. Any day, perhaps any moment, he would drag out the rough sketches and ideas, choose one, and then hardly see her, even should she stand naked before him, while he took plasboard and tegg-paint and the secret odds and ends from his duit box and transformed them by touch of skilled hand and concentration and willpower unmatched to art as fine as ever she’d seen. Days, he would be one with the art.
And then he would crash; folding into a hollow and dispirited being barely willing to feed himself, with a near-fear of sunlight and a monotone voice and no plans to speak of . . . until the cycle came full and from the gray, desperate being emerged Bell, fresh and whole and new. Again.
He shook the ring, tossed it, glanced anxiously to his art kit where it was stashed near the door to the back room.
“I know,” he said. “I know! It’s almost time. I think we should close early, perhaps, and go someplace fine to eat—I’ll pay!—and plan on a bottle of good wine and snacks—I’ve chosen them already—and a night, a glorious night, my beauty. And then, we can talk at breakfast, if the art’s not here yet, and if it is, we’ll talk in a few days.”
In front of her then, the choice—and she knew already she’d take it, or most of it. Had she a clan to call on she would pledge her quartershare—to make this work, she’d—but what she would do if was no matter, now. Her quartershare would go—till the twelfth year, at least—into the account of a dead child, just as her invitations—large and small—would go to her delm, and be returned with the information that she was in mourning and not permitted.
She recalled the discreet caress a few moments earlier, her blood warming . . .
Tonight she would forget the she was poor and outcast. Bell would take them somewhere with his stash of cash and they would spend as if he were a visiting ambassador instead of an itinerant artist, and then he would—
“Bell,” she said gently, “perhaps we should stay until nearer closing. My friend. I followed your instructions last time, you know—there are three prepared boards waiting—and I have already an extra cannister of spacer’s tea and you gave me enough for two tins of Genwin Kaffe last time, so we have that. That is, if you are certain that you won’t talk to the Healers this time.”