Necessity's Child (Liaden Universe®) (14 page)

He kept himself very still, so as not to disturb her, while he tried to figure out what had waked him.

His door was ajar; his room faintly lit by the night-dims in the larger nursery. Had one of the twins called? He listened, but if it
had
been Shindi or Mik, they had settled again. Sometimes, Mrs. pel’Esla was about in the night; he’d woken more than once to the comforting sounds of her making a pot of tea, or the rhythmic rock of her chair, the spill from her reading lamp making his room a little brighter.

But if Mrs. pel’Esla was up this night, she was being very quiet indeed.

And he—he was
awake
, tingling with energy. There was no possibility of going back to sleep. Perhaps, he thought, he should go down to the gym and contend with the shadow-spar for a round or two. Or—no!

He would go for a walk in the inner garden. In fact, he must do so, and at once! If he was to remove to the city in the morning, he must say his proper good-bye to the Tree.

No sooner had he thought the thought than he was moving, easing out from beneath Eztina’s weight and leaving her curled among the disordered blankets, still sound asleep.

Syl Vor opened his chest, found his warmest sweater by touch and pulled it on, pushing his feet into slippers. His house robe hung on its hook by the door; he had it on and slipped out.

Quiet and still, the nursery. He crossed the big room, keeping to the rugs and avoiding the creaky boards, hesitating at the door. If he put his hand against the plate, the door would wake Mrs. pel’Esla, and possibly the twins, so he simply punched in the override code and stepped into the hall.

The hall outside was shadowed, but the night-dims were more than bright enough for his dark-accustomed eyes. He went down the back stairs, through the short service corridor, and was confronted once more by a door.

It was very likely, he thought, that the door would tell Jeeves it had been opened, and the AI would come to look for him, or, worse, wake Mother. Unfortunately, and unlike the nursery door, he did not know the override for this one.

Or did he?

There was something like a tickle at the back of his head. He stepped closer, and raised his hand to the code pad. His fingers moved in a quick pattern that his mind didn’t quite attend to, and the door swung open before him, admitting a chill breath of breeze rich with the scents of leaf and soil.

Syl Vor smiled and stepped out into the garden.

* * *

He hadn’t known that the Tree glowed in the dark, bathing its place at the center of the garden in green light as soft as mist. Syl Vor went across the short grass, being careful not to catch his slippers on any of the root humps, and so arrived at the great trunk.

With a sigh, he leaned against it, arms spread, as if his small reach could encompass it in a hug, and put his cheek against the warm bark.

“Hello, Tree,” he murmured. “I am going into the city to school and to be of use to Mother, and to Mike Golden, and to Cousin Pat Rin. I will come to visit—I promise!—but not so often as I have done.”

A soft warmth filled him, and he relaxed closer against the trunk, comforted by the Tree’s approval.

He might have fallen asleep for just a moment, leaning there all warm and safe, because he came awake all of a sudden, just as he had in the nursery. But this time, he knew what had waked him.

Syl Vor yos’Galan Clan Korval.

Someone had spoken his name, though not precisely aloud, the not-sounds tickling the inside of his head.

He straightened away from the Tree, smiling, and heard a rustle in the leaves above him.

Startled, he looked up, and then down, at the seed pod that had landed in the grass at his feet.

It was his, he knew it, just as he knew to pick it up and hold it in his palm until it opened for him, revealing the kernels. They smelled so good that he was suddenly very hungry, though he had made a good meal at Prime.

He swallowed, and remembered that his Mother had told him that one should always thank the Tree for its gifts.

“Thank you,” he said, and made a little bow—child to elder—before he succumbed to his hunger and ate the kernels.

As soon as they were finished, he was full, and satisfied, and beginning to be a little chilly, despite his sweater and his robe.

He bowed to the Tree again, and said, “Good-night,” before returning to the garden door, and passing through the sleeping house, to the nursery again, and his bed.

* * *

Rys had fallen asleep with Malda’s head on his knee.

Kezzi looked at the two of them, feeling a nip of jealousy. Why should Malda favor a
gadje
with his care?

And yet . . . she sat down in her place by the bed.

Why should he not? There was a bond between them, after all. Both had been beaten and broken by
gadje
in the City Above; both had been given into Bedel hands. Surely, Malda would dream with a brother in misfortune, if only to assure him that all would be well.

Kezzi smiled, and leaned forward, first to touch Rys’ forehead, which was warm, but not alarmingly so, and a little damp; and then to stroke Malda’s head.

The man did not wake, but the dog opened his eyes, and his stubby tail thumped on the blanket, once, and then twice.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“No,” Syl Vor said, glaring at the bracelet sitting beside his teacup. As bracelets went, it was inoffensive enough, with nothing in the way of jewels, bells, or ribbons. Merely, it was a bright brass cuff that fastened with a hook and chain, innocent of any adornment, without even the Tree-and-Dragon etched into its shiny surface.

“I beg your pardon, Syl Vor-son?” His mother’s cool voice carried a sharp edge of surprise.

That recollected him to his manners, and he hurriedly transferred his gaze from the bracelet to her face.

“What I meant to say, ma’am,” he said more moderately, “is that such a thing will mark me out. It is not in the usual mode, for persons of my age.”

His mother frowned, but her reply was also moderate.

“We spoke of this. You agreed to accept a tracking device, so that the house may be assured of your whereabouts and your safety during those hours you are apart from us.”

Well, and so he had done. But that had been before he had seen the device. He had envisioned something small enough to be slipped into a pocket, or, at most, a pin, like the clan-sign clipped to the collar of the shirt he wore under his sweater. This bracelet—it was not what any of his agemates had worn, back ho— on Liad. Children wore their clan-sign; jewelry was for those who had been tutored in the proper modes of adornment.

But, there, they were on Surebleak, he reminded himself. Perhaps the mode was different here.

“Will the other students, in the school,” he said to his mother, “wear similar?” If it was the mode, then it was. Grandaunt might not approve, but he would at least not stand out as odd.

His mother’s frown was more marked. “Perhaps some will; perhaps some will not. You, however, will wear this, Son Syl Vor, or you will return to the clanhouse this morning.”

Syl Vor looked down, biting his lip. He had angered her, which had not been his intent, but—

“Problem, ma’am?” came Mike Golden’s voice from just behind his chair.

“My son was merely objecting to the necessity of the device, Mr. Golden,” Mother said, as tart in Terran as she had been in the Low Tongue.

“Oh, well.” Mike Golden stepped ’round the table so that he made the apex of the triangle. He gave Syl Vor a friendly nod.

“Don’t like the bracelet, Silver?”

“No, Mike,” he answered, and added, politely, “if you please.”

“Nothing to please,” the man said, and Syl Vor felt his heart lift. He had an ally, he thought; his mother listened to Mike Golden. Perhaps he could avoid the bracelet after all.

“No need for the tracer.” Mike Golden was speaking to his mother, and Syl Vor’s heart lifted higher.

His mother’s eyes narrowed. “Is there not?” she asked icily.

Mike Golden spread his broad hands, showing them empty, and shrugged.

“If the boy wants to play Boss, I’ll just get Larnce from his breakfast and tell him he’s not just doin’ escort, but he’ll be goin’ to school.”

Syl Vor’s spirits plummeted. He accepted that someone of the household would walk with him to the school’s entrance. The safety of Surebleak’s streets, as his mother had said, were such that she herself did not venture forth, except in company with Mike Golden or other of her gun-sworn. Certainly, his lessons at Runig’s Rock had shown him the virtue of backup, if such could be arranged.

Walking to school with Larnce, then, was one matter, and acceptable. But to have Larnce with him all the day, standing at his back while he did his lessons, glaring at the other students, and showing his gun plainly on his belt?

“No!” he said, rather more loudly than he had intended. He looked down, face hot.

“Two
nos
in the course of one meal is rather too many,” his mother noted. “Especially for so short a meal as breakfast. Pray strive to limit your use of the negative until at least tomorrow lunchtime, my son.”

He swallowed, and raised his head to meet Mike Golden’s brown eyes.

“I esteem Larnce,” he said slowly, feeling his way in Terran. Esteem was perhaps not
precisely
accurate, since he knew little of the man beyond his face and the fact that he was on Boss Nova’s staff. It did, however, seem the polite thing to say.

“So you won’t mind him standin’ your ’hand.” Mike Golden nodded and turned, as if heading at once to the kitchen to roust Larnce to duty.

“No!” Syl Vor said, and bit his lip, not daring to look to his mother. Mike Golden turned back, face quizzical.

“What’s on your mind, Silver? Say it out plain, so we can all hear it.”

“Yes.” He took a hard breath. “I will wear the bracelet.”

* * *

School was nothing at all like guesting with Maelin and Wal Ter at Glavda Empri, and sharing their tutors and lessons. For the first thing, he had known Wal Ter and Maelin always; their House was closely aligned with Korval, and their Line with yos’Galan. Maelin’s grandfather had been cargo master for Syl Vor’s own grandfather Er Thom, on
Dutiful Passage
; and for Uncle Shan, too.

Here at school, there were no familiar faces or House ties. Here, the teacher, Ms. Taylor, had him stand up with her at the front of the room, facing twenty-three seated strangers, whom he guessed to range in age from slightly younger than he to a boy who was surely old enough to have been ’prenticed.

Ms. Taylor put her hand on his shoulder, as if they were kin, and had him say out his name and his street. Then, she asked those seated to say their names and streets. Recognizing this as his first test, Syl Vor committed each face-name-street combination to memory.

After the introduction was complete, he was let to sit in an empty chair next to a boy with red hair cut so short it stood up on his head like bristles, and who stared at him with a frown before turning his face, deliberately, away.

Syl Vor bit his lip and faced forward, wondering how he might have offended. But, there, maybe this boy—Rudy Daniel, he recalled, from Gough Street—maybe this boy’s Boss had a policy against those from Blair Road, or maybe his Boss didn’t agree that there should be a Road Boss. And it was, was it not, exactly the sort of thing Mike Golden had said his going to school would help fix? Though not all at once.

A projection picture coalesced on the wall directly before them, fuzzy at first, then suddenly sharp. Syl Vor frowned, then smiled at the map—a flat map, in fact, of the whole city, from the port to the end of the road.

“All right, everybody!” Ms. Taylor called. “Time to do routes. Tansy, what’s the quickest way from school to Al’s Hardware?”

From the first row, a small girl with her hair in braids stood up, took the pointer from Ms. Taylor’s hand and aimed at the map. A red dot appeared on the position of the school.

“Here’s us,” Tansy said, her voice high and breathless. “The quickest way to Al’s is go out the back door, down Brehm Alley to Rendan, take a right and down three doors.” The pointer wobbled unhelpfully, but Syl Vor’s eye followed the lines of the map, finding the alley, the intersection, the turn. “Doors” as a direction puzzled him for a moment, until Ms. Taylor took the pointer back.

“Very good, Tansy. Thank you.” She retraced the route more smoothly and Syl Vor was able to see that Al’s Hardware Store was the third shop from the corner of Rendan Road. Each shop would of course have a door onto the street, therefore—“three doors.”

“Anders!” called Ms. Taylor. “Get me to Patrol, quick!”

Anders was the tallest person in the room. Anders Jeff, Syl Vor told himself in reminder, from Moravia.

“Out the front, cross the street, left to the corner.”

The red dot traced the route.

“Good! Vanette!”

And so it went, until they had each provided a route to a landmark nearby. Syl Vor was asked to pilot them to Boss Conrad’s house, which he thought too easy for the last question in the game.

Except it wasn’t the last question.

Ms. Taylor looked out over them with her hands on her hips and a grin on her face.

“Warm, now?” she asked.

“We’re warm, all right!” all the class but Syl Vor shouted.

“Let’s do round two!” she shouted back, and threw the pointer across the room to Desi Beale, who caught it with a laugh and jumped to her feet.

Round two was
not
easy. Ms. Taylor would call out the name of a place or an intersection somewhere on the map, and the student with the pointer would have to find the straightest route. The rules allowed the pointer holder to name one advisor, which meant that Rudy from Gough Street called on Anders of Moravia for aid, and Tansy of Alvarado Square asked Jack Vance of Hamilton Street for assistance.

Syl Vor was fair bouncing on the edge of his chair, committing the routes to memory, and the location of restaurants, groceries, and patrol stations across the city. So engrossed was he that the pointer nearly grazed his head before he realized that his name had been called.