by Anthology
“At the rate you drank that one, you’re going to need it.” The crewman went off.
Ean went back to his work.
By the time he was done, the lines were straight and glowing. Except line one, which was straight but not glowing, but you couldn’t change a bad crew.
He patted the ship’s control chassis one final time. “All better now.” His old trainers would have said he was crazy to imagine that the ship responded with a yes.
He didn’t realize how tired he was until he tried to stand up after he’d finished and fell flat on his face.
“Linesman’s down,” someone shouted, and five people came running. Even the ship hummed a note of concern. Or did he imagine that?
“I’m fine.” His voice was a thread. “Just tired. I need a drink.”
They took that literally and came back with some rim whiskey that burned as it went down.
It went straight to his head. His body, so long attuned to the ship, seemed to vibrate on each of the ten ship lines, which he could still feel. This time when he stood up, it was the alcohol that made him unsteady on his feet.
“I’m fine,” he said, waving away another drink. “Ship’s fine, too,” slurring his words. He gave the chassis one last pat, then weaved his way down the corridor to the shuttle bays.
Of the quick muttered discussion behind him, all he heard was, “Typical linesman.”
The music of the ship vibrated in him long after the shuttle had pulled away.
Back on planet, they had to wait for a dock.
“Some VIP visiting,” the pilot said. “They’ve been hogging the landing bays all shift.”
The commercial centers on Ashery were on the southern continent. There was little here in the north to attract VIPs. Ean couldn’t imagine what one would even come here for. Maybe it was a VIP with a cause, come to demand the closure of the Big North—an open-cut mine that was at last report 3,000 kilometers long, 750 kilometers wide, and 3 kilometers deep. Every ten years or so, a protest group tried to close it down.
Ean didn’t mind. He sat in the comfortable seat behind the pilot and dozed, too tired to stay awake and enjoy the luxury of a shuttle he’d probably never see the likes of again. He’d bet Rigel hadn’t ordered this shuttle. He fell properly asleep to sound of the autobot offering him his choice of aged Grenache or distilled Yaolin whiskey. Or maybe a chilled Lancian wine?
He woke to the pilot yelling into the comms.
“You can’t send us to the secondary yards. I’ve a level-ten linesman on board, for goodness sake.”
Ean heard the reply as the song of line five—the comms line—rather than the voice that came out of the speakers.
That was another thing his trainers had said was impossible. He might as well have claimed the electricity that powered the ship was communicating with him. But humans were energy, too, when you got down to the atomic level. If humans could communicate, why couldn’t the lines?
“I don’t mind the secondary yards,” Ean said. It would cut two kilometers off his trip home.
The pilot didn’t listen.
“Level ten I said,” and five minutes later, they landed, taxiing up to the northernmost of the primary bays, which was also the farthest from where Ean needed to go,
Ean collected his kit, which he hadn’t used, thanked the pilot, and stepped out of the shuttle into more activity than he’d seen in the whole ten years he’d been on Ashery.
The landing staff didn’t notice him. Despite the fact he was wearing a cartel uniform. Despite the ten bars across the top of his pocket. They knew him as one of Rigel’s and looked past him and waited for a “real” linesman to come out behind him.
Ean sighed and placed his bag on the scanner. He was a ten. Certified by the Grand Master himself. He was as good as the other tens.
He’d been through customs so often in the past six months, he knew all the staff by first name. Today it was Kimi, who waved him through without even checking him.
God, but he was tired. He was going to sleep for a week. He thought about walking to the cartel house—which was what he normally did—but it was four kilometers from the primary landing site, and he wasn’t sure he would make it.
Unfortunately, it was still a kilometer to the nearest public cart. A pity the pilot hadn’t landed them in the secondary field, where the cart tracks ran right past the entrance.
The landing hall was full of well-dressed people with piles of luggage: all trying to get the attention of staff; all of them ignoring the polished monkwood floor, harder than the hardest stone; all of them ignoring the ten-story sculpture of the first settlers for which the spaceport was famous. At least the luxury shops along the concourse were doing booming business.
Ean accidentally staggered into one of the well-dressed people. Rigel would probably fine him for bumping into a VIP. The man turned, ready to blast him, saw the bars on his shirt, and apologized instead.
These weren’t VIPs at all, just their staff.
Ean waved away the man’s apology and continued weaving his way through the crowd. It seemed ages before the lush opulence of the primary landing halls gave way to the metal gray walls he was used to and another age before he was finally in the queue for the carts.
It was a relief to get into the cart.
Two young apprentices got on at the next stop. Rigel’s people, of course. Who else would catch the cart this way? Their uniforms were new and freshly starched. They looked with trepidation at his sweat-stained greens and silently counted the bars on his shirt, after which they pressed farther back into their seats.
He’d been in their place once.
Four gaudily dressed linesmen got on at the stop after that. They were all sevens. Excepting himself, they were the highest-ranking linesmen Rigel owned. For a moment, Ean resented that they could take time off when he never seemed to do anything but work.
But that was the whole point of Rigel’s keeping him here, wasn’t it. Rigel’s cartel may have had the lowest standing, and Rigel’s business ethics were sometimes dubious, but he was raking in big credits now. The other cartel masters had sent their nines and tens out to the confluence. Rigel, who only had one ten—Ean—had kept him back and could now ask any price he wanted of the shipmasters who needed the services of a top-grade linesman.
“Phwawh,” one of the new arrivals said. “You stink, Ean.”
“Working.” Ean’s voice was still just a thread.
“Rigel’s going to have words.”
“Let him.” He’d probably dock his pay, too, but Ean didn’t care.
“And you’ve been drinking.”
Ean just closed his eyes.
Cartel Master Rigel was big on appearances. His linesmen might have been ordinary, but they were always impeccably turned out, extremely well-spoken, and could comport themselves with heads of government and business. For a boy from the slums of Lancia, those standards were important.
The conversation washed over him. First, what they’d done on their night out; later it turned to the lines. Conversation always turned to the lines eventually when linesmen were talking.
“I went in to fix line five at Bickleigh Company,” one of them said now.
Everyone groaned.
Kaelea, one of the other sevens, said, “I don’t know why they don’t get their own five under contract. We’re in there so often, it would cost around the same.”
“They tried that. Twice. The second time they even got a five from Sandhurst.”
Sandhurst was the biggest line cartel. Over the past ten years, they had aggressively purchased the contracts of other high-level linesmen until now they had a third of all the nines and tens. Ean occasionally fantasized that one day the Sandhurst cartel master would see his work and offer Rigel a huge amount for his contract, too.
As if that was ever going to happen.
“I’ve been in there three times,” Kaelea said. “You push and you push, and just when you think you have it right, it pops out o
f true again.
Sometimes Ean thought they were talking a different language to him. They used words like push and force when they spoke about moving the lines into place. He’d never pushed a line in his life. He wouldn’t know how to.
His trainers had talked in terms of pushing and pulling, too.
“Push with your mind,” the particularly antagonistic one had told him. “You do have a mind, don’t you?” and he’d muttered to the other trainer that it was doubtful.
The first six months of his apprenticeship, Ean had wondered if he’d ever become a linesman. Until he’d learned that when they told him to push, they actually meant they wanted the line straight. He could sing the lines straight.
“It’s probably a manifestation of your being self-taught,” the not-so-antagonistic trainer had told him. “You push as you sing, and that bad habit is so entrenched now, you can’t do it without singing.”
Ean had never been able to break the habit.
He could feel the two apprentices in the corner listening as the linesmen talked. One of them was strong on line five, the other on line eight. Rigel didn’t normally get anyone above a seven. Ean opened his eyes, but he couldn’t see which one it was.
The trainers had told him you couldn’t tell what line a linesman would be without testing, but sometimes Ean could hear the lines in them. The trainers had told him it was because he’d learned bad habits by not being trained in childhood, and that of course he could tell what someone was because he’d already seen the number of bars they wore. Ean didn’t care. He would bet that Rigel had just got himself an eight. How long he would keep him—or her—was another question altogether. A higher cartel would poach him.
The conversation turned to the confluence. One of the sevens—Kaelea—had been out there to service the Bose engines, “Because the nines and tens couldn’t do it, of course. They’re too busy,” and Ean hadn’t needed his eyes open to see the roll of eyes that accompanied that. “It’s…I don’t know. It’s huge, and it’s…you can feel the lines, but you don’t know what they are, and—”
He could hear the awe in her voice. But he couldn’t tell what the lines were. Sometimes he could pick the level from the linesman’s voice when they talked about the line. He hadn’t mentioned that particular talent to the trainers either. They wouldn’t have believed him, or they would have said it was another bad-training defect.
Kaelea had said “lines” rather than “line,” which meant there was more than one line out there. What would have multiple lines anyway? A ship? A station? As Ean had pointed out to Rigel, he was good at picking lines. He’d at least be able to say if there were lots of different lines or just a few.
He’d like a chance to prove that he could find out, anyway.
“We make more money hiring you out while the rest of the tens are busy trying to work that out,” Rigel had said.
That was true. Ean was busier than he’d ever been, and Rigel smiled more broadly every time he sent Ean out on a job.
Ean dozed after that.
One of the linesmen touched his arm. He blinked blearily, trying to focus.
“Are you okay?”
It was Kaelea.
He realized the cart had stopped, and everyone else was out.
“Come on, Kaelea,” one of the other gaudily dressed people said.
“I don’t think he’s well.”
“Leave him, or you’ll be fined, too.”
“I’m okay,” Ean said. “Just really, really tired.” He wasn’t sure she heard him. Next time, he’d take more care of his voice.
He struggled to sit up and almost fell getting out of the cart.
“I’ll help you,” Kaelea said, waving off his protests, and led him up to the house. “My room is closer,” and by now he was staggering too much to care. God but he was tired.
She pushed him down onto the bed and started to pull off his sweat-stained shirt. “I don’t think Rigel saw you,” she said. “You may not get a fine.”
He tried to protest, but closed his eyes instead and was instantly asleep.
Ean woke, naked and sprawled out on the bed and couldn’t remember how he’d come to be that way.
For a moment, he couldn’t work out what had woken him either.
“He’s a ten, you say?” The clipped vowels of the Lancastrian noblewoman made him think he was back home in the slums of Lancia.
He struggled awake fast. That was one nightmare he didn’t want to return to.
“Definitely a ten.” The oily tones of Rigel, Ean’s cartel master, reassured him on that much at least. He was years past the grottoes of Lancia. “Certified by the Grand Master himself.” Then his voice rose and cracked. “You can’t be going to—”
It was all the warning Ean had before the disruptor beam slammed into his mind and ten lines of song came together in a discordant cacophony. His brain almost burst with the noise. He didn’t even think. He turned the lines so they flowed back in on themselves down the line, back to the disruptor. The weapon disintegrated in a flash of heat and flame. He was only sorry to see that the Lancastrian lady had thrown it down before it had disintegrated. He would have liked to have burned off the hand.
A disruptor was a one-use weapon, made with a full set of lines, created especially to destroy other lines. Ean had heard they cost as much as a small shuttle. Who could afford one, let alone use it? Who would even think to use such a monstrous thing against humans?
“He is a ten,” the noblewoman agreed. She sounded almost surprised.
“Of course he is.” Rigel was white.
Ean was pretty white himself. A disruptor would have killed anyone less than a ten, could even have killed him if he’d been a fraction slower.
“I’ve dealt with you before, Rigel,” the noblewoman said. “Last time you sold me a five as a six.”
Rigel did that occasionally, when he thought he could get away with it, and most people knew a Lancastrian wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
“I…Surely not.” Rigel was back to his oily, obsequious best. He thought he was back in control.
Ean knew better. Lancastrian nobles may not know their line ratings, but they definitely knew revenge. He pulled on his pants and a pair of boots. He was in Kaelea’s room. He didn’t remember what had happened after they’d arrived. “So did you really want a ten, or just to teach Rigel a lesson?”
He was glad the gutter slum was gone from his accent. He spoke Standard now, could have come from anywhere in the Conglomerate. His voice, still hoarse, was better than it had been when he’d gone to sleep.
The noblewoman glanced at him and Ean saw for the first time the distinctive blue eyes of the Lyan clan. He forced himself to not wipe his suddenly damp palms down the side of his trousers. This wasn’t just any clan. This was royalty.
The woman was smiling, actually smiling, at a slum creature like him. She wouldn’t do that if she knew what stood in front of her.
“I did want a ten, but I wasn’t planning on getting one from here,” she admitted.
Rigel didn’t get it, not at first. He opened his mouth and closed it again. “But he’s a ten,” he whispered, finally.
“If I’d died, I wouldn’t have been, would I,” Ean said. He understood Lancastrian revenge.
“But I would have offered her at least a nine.” Not that Rigel had any nines.
Both Lancastrians shrugged.
“When I ask for a six, I expect a six,” the Lancastrian noble said.
“But—” Rigel couldn’t seem to stop the fish imitation.
Ean gathered up the rest of his clothes. “You obviously don’t need me.” He could see Kaelea hovering in the passage. “I’ll leave you to it then,” and made for the door.
“Hold,” said the Lancastrian noblewoman. “I’ll take him,” she said to Rigel.
Rigel smiled his oily smile.
“Less the cost of the six I purchased.”
The smile stopped, fixed. Then Rigel bobbed his head
suddenly. “Of course, my Lady Lyan.”
Lady Lyan. Only three women could call themselves Lady Lyan, and Ean bet this woman wasn’t one of them. Any true daughter of the Lancastrian emperor would be tied up so tightly in protocol and security guards, she wouldn’t be able to move. So who was this imposter? She must be one of the illegitimate children. There were rumors they were plentiful. Not that Ean cared, he supposed, but he hoped they would never come across true Lancastrian royalty or soldiers while he was working for the imposter. They were likely to all be killed.
“And I want the contract,” Lady Lyan said.
The color faded again from Rigel’s face. “But—” Ean could almost read his thoughts. No matter what Rigel said, Ean brought in 90 percent of the money right now. “Well, obviously that will cost more,” Rigel said eventually.
“I don’t like being cheated,” Lady Lyan said. “I don’t like my staff’s dying because I give them tasks they can’t do. Take the money and be glad I didn’t destroy your whole cartel as I planned to.”
Rigel made one more token protest, but Ean knew he’d already lost. The Lancastrian had done her homework. She knew how much it would hurt Rigel to lose his only ten, whether by death or by contract conversion. That was what she had come in today to do, and they all knew it. Ean was just grateful to be alive.
Even so, he was surprised Rigel didn’t protest more.
Lady Lyan beckoned to Kaelea, still hovering in the hall. “Witness.”
Kaelea looked as if she would turn and run, but Rigel beckoned frantically, too.
The exchange of contract took less than a minute. They all witnessed, then it was over.
If Ean was lucky, the Lancastrian noble would on-sell his contract today. Then, finally, maybe, he could get out into the confluence with all the other nines and tens. He didn’t want to think about the alternative—stuck working for a Lancastrian. He’d sworn he would never have anything to do with Lancia again.
They left immediately, without giving Ean time to pack.
“Send his things on,” Lady Lyan ordered Rigel. She looked at the shirt Ean now had time to pull on. “Except the uniforms.”