Changeling (2 page)

* * *

IT WAS NIGHT-PORT at Casia by the time he
finished shut-down and gave the ship into the keeping of the
client's agent. Ren Zel slung his kit over a shoulder and descended
the ramp, filling his lungs with free air. World air tasted
different than ship air, though he would have been hard put to say
which flavor he preferred, beyond observing that, of world-air, he
found Casia's the sweetest.

At the bottom of the ramp, he turned right
and walked leisurely through the night-yard, then out into the
thoroughfare of Main Port.

The job he had just completed had been
profitable--an exhilarating run, in fact, with the entire fee paid
up front and a generous bonus at the far end. A half-dozen more
like it would retire his debt. Not that such runs were common.

Night-port was tolerably busy. He saw a pilot
he knew and raised a hand in greeting. The other waved and cut
across the crowded walkway.

"Ren Zel! I haven't seen you in an age!
There's a lot of us down Findoir's--come and share a glass or
two!"

He smiled, but moved his hand in a gesture of
regret. "I'm just in. Haven't been to Guild Hall yet."

"Well, there's a must," the other allowed
cheerfully. "Come after you've checked in, do, for I tell you we
mean to make a rare night of it. Otaria's gotten her first."

"No, has she? Give her my compliments."

"Come down after you've checked in and give
them to her yourself," his friend said, laying a hand briefly on
his sleeve. "Until soon, Ren Zel."

"Until soon, Lai Tor."

Warmed, he continued on his way and not many
minutes later walked up the stairs into Casiaport Guild Hall.

The night clerk took his license, scanned it
and slid it back across the counter. "Welcome home, Pilot." She
tapped keys, frowning down at her readout. Ren Zel put his card
away and waited while she accessed his file.

"Two deposits have been made to your
account," she said, scrolling down. "One has cleared, and twelve
percent Clan share has been paid. Eleven-twelfths of the balance
remaining has gone against the Pilots Guild Tuition Account, per
standing orders. No contracts pending..." She paused, then glanced
up. "I have a letter for you, Pilot. One moment." She left the
console and walked to the back.

Ren Zel frowned. A letter?
A
paper
letter?
Who would--

The clerk was back, holding a buff colored
envelope. She used her chin to point at the palm reader set into
the surface of the counter.

"Verification, please, Pilot."

Obediently, he put his palm over the reader,
felt the slight tingle, heard the beep. He lifted his hand and the
clerk handed him the envelope. His fingers found the seal embossed
on the sealed flap--Obrelt's sign.

Ren Zel inclined his head to the clerk.

"My thanks."

"Well enough," she replied and looked once
more her screen. "Status?"

He paused on the edge of telling her
"on-call," feeling the envelope absurdly heavy in his hand.

"Unavailable," he said, fingers moving over
the seal.

She struck a last key and inclined her
head.

"So recorded."

"My thanks," he said again and, shouldering
his kit, walked across the hall to the common room.

As luck would have it, the parlor was empty.
He closed the door behind him, dropped his kit and slid his finger
under the seal.

A letter from Obrelt? His hands were not
quite steady as he unfolded the single sheet of paper. Paper
letters had weight, and were not dispatched for pleasantries.

Has someone died? he wondered, and hoped that
it might not be Chane, or Arn Eld or--

The note was brief, written in Obrelt's Own
Hand.

Ren Zel dea'Judan was required at his Clan
house, immediately upon receipt of this letter.

His Delm judged it time for him to wed.

IT WAS MORNING WHEN the taxi pulled up before
Obrelt's house. Ren Zel paid the fare, then stood on the walkway
until the cab drove away.

He had not come quite "immediately," there
being no reason to rouse the House at midnight when so many were
required to rise early and open the various shops under Obrelt's
care. And he was himself the better for a shower, a nap and a
change of clothes, though it was still not easy to consider the
reason he had been summoned home.

Home.

Ren Zel turned and looked up the walk, to the
fence and the gate and the tall town house beyond them. He had
grown up in this House, among the noisy gaggle of his sibs and
cousins; it was to this House that he had returned on his brief
holidays from school. Granted, he had come back less often after he
had finished with his lessons, but there had been flight time to
acquire, techniques to master and the first class to win.

Once he held first class, of course, there
had been contracts to fulfill, the debt to reduce. Between
contracts, he had routinely kept his status on "on call," which
required him to lodge at the Guildhall. The debt shrunk, but so,
too, did his contact with his family.

He looked at the gate, and took a deep
breath, steeling himself as if for some dreaded ordeal. Which was
nonsense. Beyond the gate were only his kin--his Clan, which
existed to shelter him and to care for him and to shield him from
harm.

He took a step up the walkway.

The gate in the wall surrounding Obrelt's
house sprang open and a woman emerged from the fastness beyond,
walking briskly in her neat, shopkeeper's uniform and her sensible
boots, a manager's clipboard cuddled against her breast.

She saw him and checked, eyes widening for
the leather-jacketed stranger on Obrelt's very walk. Ren Zel held
out his hands, palms showing empty.

"Eba," he said softly to his next eldest
sister, "it is I."

"Ren Zel?" Her gaze moved over his face,
finding enough of Obrelt there to soothe her into a smile and a
step forward, hand extended. "Brother, I scarcely knew you!"

He smiled in his turn and went to take her
hand.

"The jacket disarmed you, doubtless."

She laughed, kin-warm. "Doubtless.
Jump-pilot, eh? It suits you extremely."

Eba had been his favorite sister--young
enough not to entirely despise the childish projects of a younger
brother, yet old enough to stand as sometimes ally against the more
boisterous of the cousins. Ren Zel pressed her fingers.

"I find you well?"

"Well," she conceded, and then, playfully,
"And well you find me at all, rogue! How many relumma have passed
since you last came to us? I suppose it's nothing to you that I am
tomorrow sent to Morjan for a twelve-day? I was to have left today,
but necessity calls me to the shop. Say at least you will be at
Prime!"

"I believe I shall," he said. "The Delm calls
me home, on business."

"Ah!" She looked wise. "One had heard
something of that. You will be pleased, I think." She dropped his
hand and patted the leather sleeve of his jacket. "Go on inside. I
must to the shop."

"Yes, of course." She read his hesitation,
though, and laughed softly, shaking her glossy dark hair back.

"You cannot stand out on the walk all day,
you know! Until Prime, Ren Zel!"

"Until Prime, Eba," he replied, and watched
her down the walk. She turned at the corner without looking back.
Ren Zel squared his shoulders, walked up to the gate and lay his
palm against the plate.

A heartbeat later, he was within Obrelt's
walls. Directly thereafter, the front door accepted his palmprint
and he stepped into the house.

His nose led him to the
dining room, and he stood on the threshold several minutes before
one of the cousins caught sight of him, touched the arm of the
cousin next to him, who turned, then spoke quickly--quietly--to the
cousin next to
her
until in no time the whole busy, bustling room was still, all
eyes on the man under the archway.

"Well." One stirred, stood up from her place
at the table.

"Don't dawdle in the doorway, child," said
Aunt Chane, for all the stars as if he were ten again. "Come in and
break your fast."

"Yes, Aunt," he said meekly and walked
forward. The cousins shook themselves, took up the threads of their
conversations, poured tea and chose slices of sweet toast. Ren Zel
came to the table and made his bow.

"Ma'am."

"Ren Zel." She held out a hand, beckoning,
and he stepped to her side. Chane smiled, then, and kissed his
cheek. "Welcome home."

* * *

AUNT CHANE SAT ON the short side of the table
across which Ren Zel and Obrelt Himself faced each other, in the
Advocate's Chair. The wine was poured and the ritual sip taken;
then the glasses were set aside and Obrelt laid the thing out.

"The name of the lady we propose for your
wife is Elsu Meriandra, Clan Jabun," he said, in his usual bluff
way.

Ren Zel blinked, for Jabun was a Clan old in
piloting. Certainly, it was not Korval, but for outworld Casia it
was very well indeed--and entirely above Obrelt's touch.

The Delm held up a hand. "Yes, they are
beyond us absolutely--pilots to shopkeepers. But Obrelt has a pilot
of its own to bring to the contract suite and Jabun was not
uninterested."

But surely, Ren Zel thought, surely, the only
way in which Obrelt might afford such a contract was to cede the
child to Jabun--and that made no sense at all. Jabun was a Clan of
pilots, allied with other of the piloting Houses. What use had they
for the seed of a child of Obrelt, bred of shopkeepers, the sole
pilot produced by the House in all its history? He was a fluke, a
changeling; no true-breeding piloting stock such as they might wish
to align with themselves.

"The child of the contract," his Delm
continued, "will come to Obrelt."

Well, yes, and
that
made sense, if
Obrelt found pilot wages to its taste and wished to diversify its
children. But, gods, the expense! And no guarantee that his child
would be any more pilot than Eba!

"No," Aunt Chane said dryly, "we have not run
mad. Recruit yourself, child."

Ren Zel took a deep breath. "One wishes not
to put the Clan into shadow," he said softly.

"We have been made to understand this,"
Obrelt said, of equal dryness with his sister. "Imagine my
astonishment when I learned that a debt contracted by the House for
the good of the House had been reassigned to one Ren Zel dea'Judan
Clan Obrelt. At his request, of course."

"My contracts are profitable," Ren Zel
murmured. "There was no need for the House to bear the burden."

"The Clan receives a tithe of your wages,"
Aunt Chane pointed out.

He inclined his head. "Of course."

He looked up in time to see his Aunt and his
Delm exchange a look undecipherable to him. The Delm cleared his
throat.

"Very well. For the matter at hand--Jabun and
I have reached an equitable understanding. Jabun desires his
daughter to meet you before the lines are signed. That meeting is
arranged for tomorrow evening, at the house of Jabun. The lines
will be signed on the day after, here in our own house. The
contract suite stands ready to receive you."

The day after tomorrow? Ren Zel thought,
feeling his stomach clench as it did when he faced an especially
tricksy bit of piloting. Precisely as if he were sitting board, he
took a breath and forced himself to relax. Of course, he would do
as his Delm instructed him--obedience to the Delm, subservience to
the greater good of the Clan, was bred deep in his bones. To defy
the Delm was to endanger the Clan, and without the Clan there was
no life. It was only--the matter came about so quickly...

"There was a need for haste," Aunt Chane
said, for the second time apparently reading his mind. "Pilot
Meriandra's ship is come into dock for rebuilding and she is at
liberty to marry. It amuses Jabun to expand his alliances--and it
profits Obrelt to gain for itself the child of two pilots." She
paused. "Put yourself at ease: the price is not beyond us."

"Yes, Aunt," he said, for there was nothing
else to say. Two days hence, he would be wed; his child to come
into Clan, to be sheltered and shaped by those who held his
interests next to their hearts. The Code taught that this was well,
and fitting, and just. He had no complaint and ought, indeed, feel
honored, that the Clan lavished so much care on him.

But his stomach was still uncertain when they
released him at last to settle his business at the Port and to
register his upcoming marriage with the Guild.

* * *

THE LINES WERE signed, the contract sealed.
Elsu Meriandra received her Delm's kiss and obediently allowed her
hand to be placed into the hand of Delm Obrelt.

"Behold, the treasure of our Clan," Jabun
intoned, while all of Clan Obrelt stood witness. "Keep her safe and
return her well to us, at contract's end."

"Willingly we receive Elsu, the treasure of
Jabun," Obrelt responded. "Our House stands vigilant for her, as if
for one of our own."

"It is well," Jabun replied, and bowed to his
daughter. "Rest easy, my child, in the House of our ally."

The cousins came forward then to make their
bows. Ren Zel stood at the side of his contract-bride and made her
known to each, from Obrelt Himself down to the youngest child in
the nursery--his sister Eba's newest.

After that, there was the meal of welcoming.
Ren Zel, who held lesser rank in Obrelt than his wife held in
Jabun, was seated considerably down-table. This was according to
Code, which taught that Obrelt could not impose Ren Zel's status on
Elsu, who was accustomed to sitting high; nor could her status
elevate him, since she was a guest in his House.

He had eaten but lightly of the meal,
listening to the cousins on either side talk shop. From time to
time he glimpsed his wife, high up-table between his sister Farin
and his cousin Wil Bar, fulfilling her conversational duty to her
meal partners. She did not look down-table.