by Sharon Lee
In addition to his melant’i as Korval-in-trust, Er Thom yos’Galan wore a master trader’s ring. Interesting goods, therefore, had a way of coming into his hand, and it had long been his habit to send the more interesting and exotic textiles to Luken’s attention.
Pat Rin assayed a tiny sip of tea, eyeing the manifest half-heartedly. “Sell them?” he murmured, that being the most common outcome of rugs sent by Er Thom, though two, to Pat Rin’s knowledge, were on display in museums, and one covered the white stone floor of the Temple of Valiatra, at the edge of the Festival grounds.
“Not these, I think,” Luken said picking up his tea glass. “It seems that the clan is divesting itself of the Southern House and the place is being emptied—including the back attics, which I daresay is where these were found.”
Korval was selling the Southern House? Not a heartbeat too soon, in Pat Rin’s opinion. He had been to the place once, and had found it dismal. Nor was he alone in his assessment. While most of Korval’s houses enjoyed more-or-less steady tenancy, the Southern House most often sat empty, undisturbed by even the housekeeper, who had his own quarters in another building on the property.
“Perhaps Cousin Er Thom wants a catalog made?” Pat Rin offered, taking another cautious sip of tea. Though rugs Luken dismissed as back attic fare hardly seemed likely candidates for cataloging and preservation.
“He doesn’t write. Only that the house is being cleared, and that these might interest me.” Luken sipped his tea, and moved a dismissive hand. “But, enough of that. Your news, boy-dear—all of it! I haven’t seen you this age. Catch me up, do.”
It hadn’t quite been an age, the two of them having dined together only a twelveday ago, though there was, after all, the news which was no news at all….
Pat Rin looked down into his glass, then forced himself to raise his head and meet Luken’s gentle gray eyes.
“Korval-pernard’i bade me take the test again, yesterday.” He felt his face tighten and fought an impulse to look away from Luken’s face. “I failed, of course.”
“Of course,” his foster father murmured, entirely without irony, his expression one of grave interest.
“I don’t know why,” Pat Rin sand, after a moment, “I can’t be left in peace. How many times must I fail before they will understand that I am not a pilot, nor ever will be?” He took a breath, and did glance down, his eye snagging on the manifest, the upside down tree-and-dragon, sigil of the clan in which he was second of two freaks, his mother being the first. “If I am asked to take the test again, I will not,” he stated, and raised his glass decisively.
“Well,” Luken said after a moment. “Certainly it must be tedious to be asked to take the same test repeatedly, especially when it is so distressful for you, boy-dear. But to speak of turning your face aside from the word of Korval-pernard’i—that won’t do all. Husbanding the clan’s pilots falls squarely within his duty—and determining who might be a pilot, as well. He doesn’t send you to the testing chamber only to plague you, child. If you were feeling more the thing, you’d see that.”
It was gently said, but Pat Rin felt the rebuke keenly. Yet Luken, as nearly all the rest of his kin, was a pilot. Granted, a mere third-class, and there had lately been a time when he would have given all of his most valued possessions, had he only been given in exchange a license admitting that Pat Rin yos’Phelium was a pilot, third class.
He told himself he didn’t care; that five failures would teach him the lesson Cousin Er Thom refused to learn.
He told himself that.
“Child?” murmured Luken.
Pat Rin looked up and smiled, as best as he was able around the headache.
“I hope I didn’t disturb your rest when I came in last night,” he said softly.
Luken moved his shoulders. “In fact, I had been late in the showroom, and was just coming up myself when you were dispatched from your cab.”
Blast. He didn’t remember that. Not at all.
“I’m afraid that I was a trifle disguised, last night,” he said, around a jolt of self-revulsion.
“A trifle,” Luken allowed. “I guided you to your room, we said our sleepwells and I retired.”
None of it. Pat Rin bit his lip.
“I made rather a fool of myself last night,” he said. “Not only did I fall into my cups, but then I was idiot enough to play cards—and lost most wonderfully, as you might expect."
“Ah.” Luken finished off his tea and put the glass aside. “You also told me last night, as we were negotiating the stairway, that you had come away early because a certain—pin’Weltir, I believe?—had become boorish in his insistence that you shoot against him, then and there, which is not, perhaps, entirely idiot.”
He had already determined that for himself, but a part of him was eased, that Luken thought so, too.
“Some things,” he admitted, “I did correctly.” He tipped his head, then, and shot a quick glance into Luken’s face, where he found the gray eyes attentive
“Do you care, father? The trade I have set myself to learn, that is.”
Luken spread his hands. “Why should I care? From all I understand, it’s a difficult study you undertake in order to ascend the heights of a profession which is exhilarating and not without its moments of risk.” He smiled. “I would expect, of course, that you will rise to become a master, if masters of the game there be.”
“Not—by that name,” Pat Rin said, thinking of those who had undertaken his education. “But, yes. There are masters.”
“And you aspire to stand among them?”
Well of course he did. Who of Korval, present or past, had not sought to stand among the masters of whatever profession or avocation they embraced? Certainly not Luken.
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
“It is well, then,” his foster father judged. “That you will mind your melant’i and keep the honor of your House pure, I have no need to ask.”
He paused for a moment, reaching absently to his empty glass, and letting his hand fall with a slight sigh. Pat Rin got up, bore the glass to the sideboard, refilled it and brought it back.
“Gently done,” Luken murmured, his thoughts clearly somewhere else. “My thanks.”
“It is my pleasure to serve you, father.”
“Sweet lad.” He had a sip from the refilled glass and looked up.
“I wonder if you’ve given thought to setting up your own establishment,” he said. “It occurs to me that bin’Flora has a townhouse for lease in a location near the High Port.”
Most of Solcintra’s gambling houses were located at the High Port. There were several residential streets just beyond the gate, none of them unsavory, though one or two not as… fashionable… as they might be.
Bin’Flora traded in textile-bolt goods more usually than rugs—and the present master of the house, one Sisilli, and Luken had enjoyed a friendly rivalry for possibly more years than Pat Rin had been alive. Therefore, it was likely that the house in question was on—
“Nasingtale Alley,” Luken murmured. “Third house on the right, as you walk out from the High Port.”
Pat Rin sipped tea. “Rents on Nasingtale Alley are certainly above my touch,” he said to Luken. “I am yet a student.”
“Yet an able student, for that,” Luken said. “And the rent may not be… quite ruinous."
“Ah.” He considered the face across from him thoughtfully. “Shall I set up my own establishment, father?”
Luken sighed. “It’s a prying old man, to be sure,” he said. “But I will tell you what is in my heart, boy-dear.
“Firstly, and true enough, I worry about you, walking about the port with large amounts of coin on you.” He raised a hand. “I know your reputation with the small arms, but it would be best not to employ them.”
“I agree,” Pat Rin murmured, and Luken inclined his head.
“Too, it makes sense to hold a base near your daily business, and this house bin’Flora offers is certainl
y that.
“And lastly…” His voice faded and he glanced aside.
Pat Rin felt his stomach clench.
“You know your mother and I have no love lost between us,” Luken said slowly, “despite that which the Code tells us is due to kin. And you know that, as a youngling, you were moved from your mother’s care into mine, by the word of the Delm.”
The Delm. That would have been Daav yos’Phelium, his mother’s brother, gone from the clan these years, on a mission of Balance. There had been no love lost between his mother and her brother, either, Pat Rin knew, though as a child he had adored his tall, easy uncle.
“I confess that I was a bit puzzled when you went to live with your mother, after your schooling was done.” He raised a hand. “I don’t ask your reasons, boy-dear, though I know you had them. Nor will I speak ill of your mother to you. I will say that, drawing on my knowledge of you—and of her—perhaps you might consider if you would be more… relaxed in your own small establishment.”
That he certainly would be, Pat Rin thought, for his mother was a high stickler and kept stringent Code. He supposed that was inevitable, given her reputation as Liad’s foremost scholar of and expert on the Code. She also held rank among Solcintra’s leading hosts, and it was for that reason that Pat Rin, returning home from university and fixed upon the trade that he would follow, had taken up residence with his parent, rather than moving back into his comfortable place with Luken.
Kareen yos’Phelium could—and did, for who knew better what was due the heir of a woman of her impeccable lineage and melant’i?—launch him into society. Luken cared little for society, though his clientele came largely from the High Houses. And Pat Rin had needed the final polish and the ties to the High which only his mother could give him.
He wondered, here and now, sitting in Luken’s sunny alcove, if he would have chosen differently, had he known the cost beforehand. For life with his mother was not easy, or comfortable, though he was surrounded by every luxury. He was required to live to his mother’s standard, and to study the Code until he was very nearly an expert himself. He studied other things, as well, so that he would have a store of graceful conversation available; he attended all the fashionable plays, patronized his mother’s excellent tailor, wore gems of the first water, and was never seen at a stand.
The one… relaxation he allowed himself was target practice every other morning, on the lifetime membership to Tey Dor’s club which uncle Daav had given to him.
Of course, he saw now—had seen last evening with sudden clarity—that his mother had never believed his assertions that he intended to make his way without recourse to the funds of the Clan. She had heard him, for she was a courteous listener, precisely as the Code instructed—heard him, but did not believe. And he had never quite seen that there would need be an after to his plan.
“Pat Rin?” Luken murmured.
He blinked back into now, and inclined his head.
“You understand,” he said slowly. “That I attempt to… produce a certain, and very specific, affect. Produce, and sustain it.”
Luken smiled. “I am not quite an idiot, boy-dear.”
“Of course not,” he murmured, more than half caught in his calculations. “So, the question before me now is whether the affect will remain fixed, should I retire to my own establishment.”
“I should think,” Luken said, “that the key would be not to retire, but to continue as you have been, only from the comfort of a bachelor’s dig.”
A townhouse on Nasingtale Alley could scarcely be called a ‘dig’—and Luken, as he so often was, despite one’s mother’s contention that the rug merchant was no more nor less than a block—Luken was right. Pat Rin had only to carry on as he was. The invitations would continue to arrive—and he might even host a small entertainment or two, himself. The gods knew, he had assisted with enough of his mother’s entertainments to know how the thing was done.
“Please consider,” Luken said carefully. “You are now well known among the Houses. Your melant’i is your own, no matter that it in some measure reflects your mother’s, and your Clan’s, as it must. But—it would hardly do for you to regularly best your mother’s houseguests while you yourself sleep under her roof. Nor would it be best for you, seen among the elders of many a House as a biddable young man always at your mother’s call, to have to rigorously make a point…”
Pat Rin grimaced at this description of himself, while allowing that, from the outside, it might appear thus.
“…as I say, if you need to press an honest advantage across a table, it might be best if you do it first among the lesser members of the Houses until Lord Pat Rin is more fully known as himself. If being Lady Kareen’s son is not your occupation, my boy, then having your own place will afford you both more flexibility in your evenings and more company in the mornings. I say this as one who was, alas, once young myself.”
Seated, Pat Rin bowed the bow of apprentice to master.
“It might do,” he said, and glanced to Luken’s face. “If bin’Flora’s rate is possible.”
Luken smiled. “Please, know that there are two partners in every trade. The place would have been rented anytime the last two relumma were the matter simply one of cash flow. Not all would-be renters are High House, my boy. Nor,” he said with sudden emphasis—“are all High House equally acceptable. Whatever the Code may teach.
“I will mention your interest to Sisilli,” Luken concluded, and drank off the rest of his tea. “As much as I enjoy your company, child, I am afraid that I must leave you for an appointment.”
Pat Rin inclined his head, his gaze snagging on the manifest, lying forgotten on the table. He extended a slender hand and plucked the page up, running an eye trained by Master Merchant Luken bel’Tarda down the list of items.
“Shall I inventory these, while you are gone?” he asked Luken. “That will have to be done, whatever else Cousin Er Thom intends.”
“So it will,” Luken said, coming to his feet. “If you have the leisure, boy-dear, the work would be appreciated. You’ll find the lot of them in the old private showing room. And also, since you will wish to have clear sight if not a clear head, I suggest you make use of some of the tea you will find there. It will have Terran wording on it—McWortle’s Special Wake-Up Blend—and it should be taken just as the directions instruct. Shall we plan on dining at Ongit’s this evening?”
“I would enjoy that,” he said truthfully. “Very much.”
“Then that is what we shall do,” Luken declared. “Until soon, my son.”
“Until soon, father,” Pat Rin responded and rose to bow Luken to the door.
* * *
IT APPEARED THAT Luken had been correct in his assessment of the lot of rugs from the Southern House, as well as in his understanding of the utility of McWhortle’s Special Wake-Up Blend.
The tea was surprisingly tasty for something avowedly of Terran extraction, and equally efficacious.
The rugs… He sighed. Not all of the pilots of Korval—put together!—knew what Luken did of rugs, and some had, alas, displayed an amazing lack of both color sense and fashion awareness. The first rug, indifferently rolled and protected by nothing more than a thin sheet of plastic, was synthetic. He threw it across the flat onto the show-zone, where the mass and size were automatically recorded—the overhead camera recorded detail, but really—there wasn’t much to say for it. Machine stamped in a small, boring floral pattern, backed with nothing more than its own fibers, with a density on the low side, it might as well be sent as a donation to the Pilot’s Fund used-goods outlet in Low Port.
Pat Rin dutifully entered these deficiencies into his clipboard, slotted the stylus, and touched a key. The clipboard hummed for a moment, printing, and a yellow inventory tag slid out of the side slot. Pat Rin picked up the stitch gun and stapled the tag to the corner of the rug, before rolling it, bagging it in a bel’Tarda-logo light-proof wrapper, and dragging the sorry specimen over to the storage bin whi
ch he had marked with Cousin Er Thom’s number and the additional legend, “Southern House.”
Straightening, feeling somewhat better for the tea and in fact much more clear eyed—he looked suddenly to the shelf above the bin, where a long-haired white cat with excessively pink ears lounged, very much at her leisure. Likely she’d been there the while; that he hadn’t noticed her was a further testament to his excesses of the evening before.
“Niki,” Pat Rin murmured, extending a finger, but not quite touching the drowsing animal.
Her eyes slitted, then opened to full emerald glory. Yawning, she extended a pink-toed and frivolously befurred foot to wrap around his fingertip, her claws just pricking the surface of his skin.
Pat Rin smiled and used his free hand to rub the lady softly beneath her delicate chin. Niki’s eyes went to slits again and her breathy purr filled the air between them. The claws withdrew from his captive finger and he let the freed member fall to his side, while moving his other hand to her ears. His exertions there were shortly rewarded with an increase in her audible pleasure, and he smiled again.
One’s mother did not keep cats, or any other domestic creature, aside the occasional servant. It made for an oddly empty feel about the house, even when it was full with guests.
“Thank you,” he whispered, giving her chin a last rub and stepping back. Niki squinted her eyes in a cat-smile, purring unabated.
Pat Rin turned back to his work.
The next rug was intriguingly and thickly wrapped in what must have been a local newspaper. He fussed the sheets off and found the rug rolled backing out, tied at intervals with what might have once been elegant hair-ribbons. He sat on his heels and smiled. This, he would examine last. It had good weight and somehow the smell of a proper rug—and would be his reward for doing a careful inventory of the rest of the obviously unsuitable specimens tumbled about them.
He used a utility blade to slit the plastic sealing the next rug, noting the ragged jute backing, and unrolled it onto the scale with a casual kick before bending to retrieve the clipboard.