Necessity's Child (Liaden Universe®) (11 page)

Claws scraping the stone, they ran past, toward the light at the end of the tunnel. Kezzi thrust the flash into her pocket and ran after.

The rat skidded to a halt, as if the light of the open garden hurt its eyes. Malda never paused, but rushed forward, grabbed the rat by the back of the neck, snapped it left, snapped it right—and dropped it, limp and unmoving, to the floor.

Kezzi swallowed, and went forward, pulling her knife out of her belt. She held it ready, just in case—but Malda’s kill had been true.

She took a breath then, and forced herself to smile.

“Good Malda!” she said. “Brave hunter!” She snapped her fingers and Malda left his prize to come forward and have his ears rubbed.

“Good dog, brave dog. Truly, you are of the Bedel! Come, now, follow!”

She moved off at a trot across the service apron. Malda hesitated, looking back at the dead rat. Kezzi snapped her fingers again—and the little dog ran after her.

There was a speaker in the wall of the garden, just beyond the fruiting trees. From it, Kezzi could call the gate-watch. A rat in the tunnel so near to the garden, that was bad. She was sad, for a moment, remembering that Malda’s ball was lost to the tunnel, then shrugged. She would go out into the City Above tomorrow, and get another one.

* * *

Syl Vor bowed to his mother’s honor, and straightened, holding the tea tin tight in both hands. He dared a glance at her face from beneath his lashes, so he saw that she was not frowning. That was, he told himself, well.

She was not smiling, either, but his mother did not smile nearly so often as Aunt Anthora or Uncle Shan. And never so easily as Grandfather Luken. It was a prize, his mother’s smile. A treasure, and not given lightly.

“My son,” she said now. “I am pleased to see you.”

Pleased. He relaxed somewhat.

“Did you not,” she asked, “
expect
me to be pleased?”

Syl Vor met her eyes. “I had thought—surprised, ma’am.”

“Ah.” Her mouth softened—not quite a smile, but definitely not a frown. “I believe the point is yours. I am also surprised.” She moved a hand, showing him the table, and the teapot. “Please, make yourself at ease.”

“Thank you,” he said, bowed again—too rapidly, because he had forgotten!

Straightening, he held the tea tin out across both palms.

“I bring a gift of your favored leaf,” he said, careful of his mode. “I hope that it pleases.”

Her mouth tightened—again, not a frown—and she stepped forward to receive the tin, and to spend a moment regarding its label.

“The gift pleases,” she said then. “It is kind of you to recall. Now, my child—sit.”

He’d left his pack with Aunt Anthora and Mike Golden in the waiting parlor, but he still wore his jacket. His mother did not seem to notice this, and he sat down at the table feeling both nervous and relieved.

His mother sat in the chair opposite him, placing the tea tin carefully to her right. Syl Vor sighed. Where Aunt Anthora was round and dark, his mother was slim and pale. She had been counted a beauty, so Padi had told him, back ho— on Liad, and added that he looked exactly like her.

That
was a piece of Padi’s foolery, and it had made him laugh.

“Before we begin, my child, you must allow me to beg your pardon. When I had suggested that we speak face to face, I had not intended to—put you aside, or to belittle your concerns in any way.”

“I had thought you were busy in the town,” Syl Vor said, “which is why I came to you.” He hesitated. “Mike Golden said that you’ve been running as fast as you can, just to stay in one place.”

“An apt man with a phrase, is Mr. Golden. Indeed, it has been precisely so.”

“His jokes aren’t very good.”

His mother raised her eyebrows. “Of that, I fear I am no judge. And I am again remiss. May I pour you a cup of tea, Syl Vor-son? Will you have cake? A sandwich, perhaps?”

“I had redjuice and cookies with Mike Golden just now,” he said, then added hastily, as he recalled his manners, “A cup of tea would be welcome.”

His mother poured, and they both sipped, to show, as Grandaunt had taught him, goodwill. Syl Vor put his cup down, and his mother lowered hers.

“Now,” she said, “how may I serve you?”

“It is I who can perhaps serve you,” he said. “I would like to go to school, here in the city.”

His mother’s mouth dropped open. He had never seen that happen before, and what it might portend, he could not say. Hastily, in case he had overstepped in a way that Mike Golden had not predicted, Syl Vor added—“Or I might help Mr. Shaper paint his barn.”

“Mr. Shaper . . .” His mother closed her eyes for the count of six, and opened them to gaze at him sternly.

“Mr. Shaper does not always . . . enjoy company,” she said. “I hope that he has not come to regret us as neighbors.”

Syl Vor thought about that.

“I think . . . not?” he said carefully. “He seems to sincerely regard Granduncle Daav. When I met him, he proposed that I help him plant the spring seedlings, and—and declared to Diglon that I had been of use. It was he who said that I might come again, and that the barn wanted paint.”

“I see . . .” His mother sighed. “Let us place Mr. Shaper’s barn to one side for the moment. This other proposition—that you attend school here in town. Do your tutors bore you, my son?”

Syl Vor shook his head—bit his lip and slanted a glance to his mother, who was merely watching him as one awaiting an answer to a question.

“If I am bored, Mother, it would be wrong of me to blame my teachers.” He paused. This had to be treated with care. He did not wish to cost either of his tutors their positions, though he thought that Ms. ker’Eklis would not be sorry to leave Surebleak.

“I had not thought of the school—I did not know there was a school here, until Mike Golden told me about it. He said that some of the Bosses are . . . concerned for the safety of their heirs. If I attended, he said, then it would make your work easier, because—”

He stopped, because his mother had risen and gone over to her desk, where she pressed what must have been a key on a comm unit.

“Mr. Golden?” Her voice was perfectly level.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“I wonder if you might join me and my son in my office.”

“Is there a problem, ma’am?”

“Why no, Mr. Golden—why would you think there was a problem? Merely, I wish that you will explain the process of your thought.”

There was a small sound that might, Syl Vor thought, have been a chuckle, then came Mike Golden’s voice once more.

“I’ll be right in, ma’am.”

* * *

“If the
gadje
is in a hurry,” Vylet said, the cards twinkling between her dark fingers like stars, “then offer the one-draw. Like this.” The deck vanished into one palm and appeared again in a wide fan between both hands.

“One card, to know what the rest of the day will bring?” she asked the pretend
gadje
they practiced upon. When she spoke to the
gadje
, her voice was husky and low, not at all like her normal voice. That was part of the
fleez
—the voice, the cards, the hat or scarf half over the face, like
so
, to make it harder to judge an age; the way to stand—shoulders round, head cocked to a side, like an old, wise bird.

“Pull one—just one—the card that speaks to you,” Vylet continued, pushing the fan toward the pretended
gadje
. “Draw it, show it. I will tell you what it means.”

The pretend
gadje
drew a card, as instructed. Vylet let her eyes widen, and dropped her voice, so that the
gadje
would need to draw close, to hear.

“You draw the double moons!” Vylet whispered huskily, and then, in her normal voice, asked, “What do the two moons mean, Kezzi?”

“Good dinner and a dry place to sleep,” Kezzi recited impatiently, and sighed. “Why do we care what the cards
mean
,” she asked, “when it is only for the
gadje
?”

Vylet stood up straight and closed the deck with a
snap
.

“It matters because it is the
art
,” she said sternly. “The art must be true.”

“Even the art we make for the
gadje
?” Kezzi asked.

“Art must always be true,” Droi said from her place by the lamp, where she was mending a torn finger on her glove. She looked up and gave Vylet the particular stare that meant she should listen, too.

“Our smallest sister asks well. We lie to the
gadje
in everything else, why say the true meaning of the cards they draw? It is wasted—the memorizing, and the art. Isn’t it?”

She looked from one to the other. Vylet made no answer, but Kezzi crossed the room and knelt a little behind Droi, so as not to block her light.

“I know the cards don’t see,” she said, carefully, because Droi was what the Bedel call
vey
—not blind, as the
gadje
were blind; not sighted as the
luthia
—or even Udari. Droi—Droi saw
some
thing, and sometimes the things she saw made her angry. She had shared a promise with Vanzin, until she saw
some
thing in the shadows, which had made her draw her knife to cut him.

“The cards don’t see,” Vylet agreed, dropping to her knees a prudent distance from Droi’s needle. “There is no power in the cards. The cards are therefore not for the Bedel, who have no need.”

This was all True Saying, and Droi rocked as she stitched, in agreement.

“Chief among those things that the Bedel do not need,” she said, “is to be
caught
. The
gadje
do not like to be tricked. Tell me this, little sister: Suppose you had the reading of the cards in the City Above tomorrow. One came and took the single—the twin moons, as Vylet’s
gadje
did just now. And you say to them, ‘Oh, the double moons! You must watch behind, and count what money you are given three times!’”

“I suppose this,” Kezzi said. “And then?”

“And then, two days later, or three, a
gadje
draws the one card, and shows the twin moons. This time, you cry out, ‘You are two times fortunate! Today you will eat well and have a dry place to sleep!’”

“I suppose this also,” said Kezzi.

“Hah. And then the
gadje
says to you, ‘But two days ago, when I drew this same card, you foretold a day of danger!’”

“And then,” said Vylet, “the
gadje
grabs you, or dashes the cards down—”

“Or beats you and cuts off your hair, as happened to Riva, who never could keep her cards straight.”

Kezzi’s stomach clenched. “I don’t know this story.”

“It happened long ago,” Vylet said.

“She died of shame,” Droi said, “before any of us was born.”

An old tale, then; Kezzi would ask Silain for the whole of it.

“So you see, little sister.” Droi looked over her shoulder and caught Kezzi’s eye, her own darkly glittering. “We memorize the cards and their meanings for our own protection from the
gadje
, the same as we learn three different routes to each of our doors, and how to throw a knife.”

“I understand,” Kezzi said, making a promise to herself that she would never be careless with her cards. “Thank you, elder sister.”

“The question was well asked,” Droi said, and quoted, “Who is old enough to ask, is old enough to know.”

* * *

Michael Golden arrived, trailing Anthora.

“I think it an excellent notion,” that lady announced, not entirely to Nova’s surprise. “If Syl Vor likes it.” She slanted a mischievous glance in that young gentleman’s direction. “Of course, you will still need to have your tutors, so that you do not fall behind, Nephew.”

That was rather more sense than Nova was used to having from her youngest sister—truly, her lifemating had steadied her marvelously.

Syl Vor nodded in his solemn way—too solemn for a boy of his years—and looked over to Michael Golden, the rogue.

“I wonder what I would be set to learn, at the school,” he said. “If I am only to be a-an
example
, then that might make trouble, instead of ease.”

Nova stared. What in the name of the gods had Kareen been teaching the children under her care at Runig’s Rock?

“That’s a good analysis,” Michael Golden said, as serious as she had ever heard him. “Being as there’s not anybody on exactly the same level at the school, everybody winds up pitching in to help everybody else. So, one thing you would prolly do is help others who might be older’n you, but ain’t so good at, say, reading. ’Nother thing is local history and such, which you might not’ve had any of. Street geography. ’Rithmetic. Cookin’. There’s some. Ms. Taylor was telling me t’other day that she was starting up a Recent Events class, to follow the new rules and committees and such that the Council of Bosses makes. Make sense to you?”

“Yes.” Syl Vor was more animated now, leaning forward. “I can be of use.”

“Right you are, an’ in more ways than one.”

“And security?” Nova asked. “Mr. Golden, can staff accommodate an extra prime?”

“Got no reason to doubt it,” he said, turning to her. “I’ll talk to ’em, and if there’s any concern, I’ll take care of it. Only thing I would need from you, Silver, is—”

“One moment,” Nova interrupted. “Mr. Golden, my son’s name—”

“It’s his joke,” that same son said, astonishingly. “It isn’t very good, but I don’t mind it.”

Well. She inclined her head. “Certainly, you may decide what names are acceptable to you,” she said. “Continue, Mr. Golden.”

“Yes, ma’am. What I need from you, Silver, in order to make this work, and without puttin’ too much strain on your ma, or on staff, or on me, is a promise that you’ll be no more trouble than you absolutely gotta be. What’s that you call it—necessary?”

“Necessity,” Anthora murmured, and glanced to Nova. “I approve of Mr. Golden,” she said.

“Perhaps you should tell him so,” Nova answered cordially, and had the satisfaction of seeing that gentleman’s cheeks darken somewhat.

“I promise to be very little trouble,” Syl Vor said, which as promises went was, Nova admitted, very handsome, though it lacked context.

“I would say, ‘as Korval recognizes trouble,’ my son, else you will lead Mr. Golden to believe something far other than you—or I—may guarantee.”