Necessity's Child (Liaden Universe®) (39 page)

“
He said
,” Kezzi raised her voice to be heard over his, “that he was sorry.”

“That’s right, Rudy, leave it,” Vanette said. “Kid just din’t think, is all.”

Rudy took a breath, closed his eyes, and opened them on a hard exhalation.

“Oh, all right,” he said. “Whatever.”

* * *

From the garden, Rys went to the men’s camp. Pulka’s hearth was unoccupied, but there was a pot of tea on the stones, so he poured himself a mug and stood, sipping and staring into the hearth glow.

Physical labor had helped keep memory at bay, but now that he was quiet again—and alone—the moment returned. The moment of his betrayal, when Jasin’s brother had accomplished his greatest piece of mischief. The pilot who had purchased his contract had been called . . . lar’Adrin. He had insisted that Rys accompany him immediately, saying that they would send for his belongings.

He had turned to Jasin’s brother, and found that one grinning at him.

“First Mate Bell’s off-ship with station security,” he said. “I’ll let her know she needs to hire another crewman, when she gets back.”

He remembered that.

He remembered his anger, and his anguish.

He remembered that lar’Adrin had not, after all, sent for his kit.

He feared—he very much feared—that he would be able to remember what had befallen him, in lar’Adrin’s care, if he pushed, only a very little bit . . .

“There you are, Brother! I have been searching the camp over for you!”

Relief flooded him. He turned to smile up into Udari’s face.

“And here I am found. How may I serve you, Brother?”

“It might be that I can serve you,” Udari said, an unaccustomed frown upon his brow. “I wonder, Brother—your lover. What does she look like?”

For a moment, he couldn’t speak, the question like a blade to his heart. He took a breath then, shakily; his heart caught its rhythm, and he sighed.

“Perhaps your height, with golden brown hair, cut very short. Three rings in the right ear”—he raised his hand to his own ear, touching the places—“copper, silver, gold. Blue-grey eyes . . .” Long, sensuous hands, and strong shapely legs; small breasts, and a firm waist . . .

But Udari was shaking his head.

“Why,” Rys murmured, “do you ask?”

“Well,” his brother sighed, “I went out and Above with the
luthia
today. A woman stopped me there, and asked if I was brother to the one called Rys.”

For the second time in a very few moments, he felt his heart stagger. Silain was to have met with . . . one of Korval today . . .

“Was it . . .” he began, but Udari was speaking again.

“She was your height, this woman, and your hue. Her eyes were blue, but more ice than fog, and her hair was yellow.”

He could call to mind no one to fit such a description. A woman—any woman, it might be.

Rys swallowed. “What did she want?”

“Why, she said she had found your knife, Brother, and asked that I take it to you.”

He brought his hand from his pocket and held it out, showing a leather-wrapped shape across his palm.

Without thinking, Rys took it up in his gloved hand. He dropped back a step and flicked his wrist . . .

Silently, the blade snapped out and locked.

Absently, he tried its balance, finding it good, and the handle well-suited to his grip. His thumb found the release, and the blade snapped home.

“It
is
your knife,” Udari said, sounding as if he had hoped otherwise.

“At least my hand seems to know it,” Rys answered, looking down at it. “Did she give a name, this woman? A reason—”

“Nothing else,” Udari interrupted. “You do not, then, know her?”

He shook his head.

“However, it is a good knife, and well-kept. There’s no reason not to keep it.”

It seemed for a moment that Udari would argue this point, but in the end he only shrugged, and turned the subject.

“What do you, Brother?”

“I had done some work in the garden, and it comes to me”—he raised his mug—“that I ought to find Jin a mug.”

Udari grinned. “Does it? Do you have the way of it, or will a brother’s teaching be of use?”

“I would expect that a brother’s teaching will be of very much use. Are you able to accompany me?”

“I am—and willing, too!”

“That is well, then. Let us go now, before my determination wanes. In fact, you might bear me company to another hearth, before we find the gate.”

“Lead,” Udari said, gaily, “and I will follow!”

* * *

Droi was sitting by the hearth, mending a tear in Vylet’s shawl. A shadow flickered, obscuring her light, and she looked up in annoyance—

Into the face of Rys Dragonwing.

“Sister,” he said, as soft and mannerly as one might want, “do you need anything?”

Anger leapt to meet the question—anger that was more than half
vey
, and which she made no attempt to soften.

“From
you
?”

It was not well-done to speak to a brother so, but Droi did not apologize. Let him think she despised him. He should certainly
not
think that he owned her, or owed her, or any other such mad,
gadje
thing as might enter his head.
That
, she would not have.

Seemingly, the blade went home; she heard him draw a sharp breath, and was glad. She put her gaze on her mending, thinking next to hear his footsteps, departing. But—

“I am going to the City Above to find a mug for Jin,” Rys said, in his quiet, patient voice. “May I find something for you?”

Well, that . . . that was only what a brother might ask a sister, after all. She could—and ought to—answer such a question more gently.

She took a breath of her own and forced herself to raise her head to meet his eyes.

“A spool of red thread would be welcome,” she said, coolly.

Rys nodded, once, and went away.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“And have you the proof of this rather astonishing assertion, Student Syl Vor?”

Ms. ker’Eklis was pushing again; pushing hard. Syl Vor would have thought that she was trying to make him lose his temper, only that made no sense. She was his math tutor, not his deportment teacher. Grandaunt Kareen was
quite
capable in
that
regard! If she thought his answer was invalid, why didn’t she just—

He took a hard breath, and quickly reviewed Pilot’s Peace.

“I am waiting, Student Syl Vor.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, minding his mode closely. Student to instructor, nothing more nor less. “You have been waiting for less than a minute.”

Her eyebrows rose.

“Oh, indeed. And what is the proper length of time for an instructor to wait for a student’s answer?”

“Long enough to allow the student to gather his thought and produce the proof,” he answered, still keeping strictly to his mode. “Ma’am.”

“Ah, I see! Allow me just a moment of whimsy. In thirty seconds, a navcomp may fail. In thirty seconds, a lifepod may be launched. In thirty seconds an earthquake can destroy a city. But thirty seconds is too short a time for a student to produce the proof for an answer that he asserts to be accurate.”

He would
not
efface himself. She was wrong; she was pushing; and he . . .

Ms. ker’Eklis rose, bringing her comp with her.

“You may proceed with the lesson by yourself,” she said calmly. “Please, take as much time as you wish.”

He rose, his legs not entirely steady; after all, she
had
succeeded in making him angry. What he wanted, right now, was to go downstairs and engage in a brisk session with the shadow-spar.

“I will of course report to your mother,” Ms. ker’Eklis murmured. “It will be for her to decide whether we will continue, or whether you will find someone of your preferred speed to stand as your tutor. Good-day, Student Syl Vor.”

“Good-day, Ms. ker’Eklis,” he said bowing from student to instructor. He kept the bow until he heard the door shut, then straightened, throwing his arms toward the ceiling.

“Aaagh!”

Kezzi, who was sitting on the floor with her back against the bedstead, and a knee desk across her lap, looked up at him. A box of color sticks sat on the floor by her side, and several sticks in various shades of brown, red, blue, green yellow, and orange littered the surface of the lap desk. She was holding a carmine stick in one hand, and with the other was bracing a cardboard rectangle against the desk.

“Did you misremember a . . .” Heavy black eyebrows pulled together into a frown. “If it was me, I would say I’d misremembered a recipe, because I wasn’t very good at tinctures and ointments and draughts for a long, long time. I could say out the ingredients; it was the measurements for each that I couldn’t keep straight. Better I didn’t know the ingredients, Jin said, because if I measured wrong, I could kill someone when all they wanted was relief from the toothache.”

Syl Vor stared at her. “Didn’t you—?” he began, then recalled that the conversation had been in Liaden.

He collapsed to the floor, facing her.

“I misremembered—well, but I
didn’t
misremember! I gave her the answer, and mark you it was correct, or she would have said otherwise! But, no, what she wanted was the
proof
, and immediately.”

“And you couldn’t give it to her?”

“Well, I
could have
, if she had given me a moment to order myself! She wanted it too quickly, and . . .” He sighed.

“And I lost my temper,” he said. “Grandaunt says that a person of
melant’i
never loses one’s temper.”

Kezzi looked down at her drawing and back to his face.

“My grandmother says that high temper proves a high heart.”

“Is that a good thing—a high heart?”

“It is for the Bedel,” Kezzi said, her brows still drawn. “What does your grandaunt say that you should do, when pushed, if not push back, and harder?”

“Write the name of the person who has provoked me, and all the particulars of the incident in my Debt Book, so that the matter may be Balanced, in due time. Which might,” he added bitterly, “take
years
.”

She nodded, her eyes drawn again to her artwork.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I am making my deck, so that I may tell the futures of the
gadje
on the street.”

This
was much more interesting than Ms. ker’Eklis, only . . .

“How old are you?” he asked.

Kezzi lifted her chin and glared at him.

“I am a younger,” she said haughtily, which was no answer at all. But, Syl Vor thought, the last thing he wanted was to have
Kezzi
mad at him, too.

“All right,” he said peaceably. “In our House, it’s not known if someone will be a . . .” He paused, startled. Usually, when he was speaking in Terran, he knew only Terran words, but the only word he could think of now was Liaden. “. . . a
dramliz
until they become halfling.”

“What’s that?”

He sighed, and spread his hand. “Someone who can . . . see the future, or the past, or-or lift a thing by thinking at it, or—there are many gifts. Aunt Anthora can—” But this was getting into complex territory “—can heal someone who is feeling sad. And Uncle Ren Zel can—he can See far and away into the future. I think.” He looked down at her card, raised a hand, but deliberately did not touch it.

“I never knew him to use cards to See ahead.”

“Well, of course he doesn’t,” Kezzi said acidly.

Syl Vor blinked at her. “But you just said—”

“I said that I’m making a deck so I can tell the futures of the
gadje
on the street. The cards are for the
gadje
; they’re—they’re part of the
fleez
. Your uncle is
vey
, and truly Sees ahead.
He
needs no cards.”

Syl Vor frowned.

“So the cards are a . . . cheat?” he asked slowly. “They don’t tell . . . true futures?”

Kezzi shrugged.

“They are
cards
,” she said. “They know nothing. Just like
gadje
know nothing.” Perhaps she saw his frown deepen, or perhaps she realized she had not explained herself plainly.

“Everyone who learns the
fleez
makes their own deck, but the pictures are the same in every deck, you see?”

He nodded.

“Good. Every picture has a little story attached to it—the same story for the same card, every time, no matter who offers the cards, no matter who draws it—yes?”

“Yes.”

“It satisfies the
gadje
; they pay a coin, sometimes two, to hear the story that goes with the card they draw. It’s a simple thing, no harm done, and the Bedel gain a coin.” She sighed. “But only
gadje
would believe that
cards
are
vey
.”

Syl Vor put the tip of his finger on the desk next to the card she had been coloring.

“What does
that
card mean?”

Kezzi sighed sharply. “Have you been listening? It means nothing!”

“You said each picture had a story attached to it.”

Her sigh this time was slightly less sharp. “Yes, I did say that,” she admitted, and held up the card, which showed a tall house standing in a garden, flowers ’round its base—and a jagged yellow bolt that had quite blown off the roof and started a little dance of flame.

“This is the Burning House,” Kezzi said, her voice taking on an odd husky tone. “It foretells change, and good fortune.”

“How can it be good fortune for your house to be burning?” Syl Vor demanded.

For a moment, he thought she would throw the card at him, then she shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, “but that’s the story the card tells.”

She frowned at the image, and said slowly. “Maybe there was something . . . bad in the house. The people who live there will be driven out by the fire, but the bad thing—it might be burned up.” She looked at him. “That would be fortunate, wouldn’t it?”

Syl Vor chewed his lip, thinking.

“Maybe it would,” he said eventually. “Quin would say—Luck is a double-edged knife.”

“The Bedel say that Fortune and Misfortune are sisters, and each must have their share. Oh!”