Shadows and Shades (Adventures in the Liaden Universe®) (3 page)

* * *

THE VOICE STOOD, humming, while Montet dragged the stasis box out, unsealed it and flipped open the lid. At a sign from the other woman, she tipped the box sideways, and the thing, whatever it was, rolled out onto the grass, buzzing angrily.
      "I hear you, Discord," the Voice murmured, and raised her hand to sign.
      Montet dropped back, triggering the three recorders with a touch to her utility belt.
      The Voice began to sing.
      A phrase only, though the beauty of it pierced Montet heart and soul.
      The phrase ended and the space where it had hung was filled with the familiar malice of the black thing's song.
      Serene, the Voice heard the answer out, then sang again, passion flowing forth like flame.
      Again, the thing answered, snarling in the space between Montet's ears. She gasped and looked to the Voice, but her face was as smooth and untroubled as glass.
      Once more, the woman raised her voice, and it seemed to Montet that the air was richer, the grassland breeze fresher, than it had been a moment before.
      This time, the thing did not allow her to finish, but vibrated in earnest. Montet shrieked at the agony in her joints and fell to knees, staring up at the Voice, who sang on, weaving around and through the malice; stretching, reshaping,
reprogramming
, Montet thought, just before her vision grayed and she could see no longer.
      She could hear, though, even after the pain had flattened her face down in the grass. The song went on, never faltering, never heeding the heat that Montet felt rising from the brittling grass, never straining, despite the taint in the once clean air.
      The Voice hit a note, high, true and sweet. Montet's vision cleared. The Voice stood, legs braced, face turned toward the sky, her mighty throat corded with effort. The note continued, impossibly pure, soaring, passionate, irrefutable. There was only that note, that truth—nothing more—in all the galaxy.
      Montet took a breath and discovered that her lungs no longer burned. She moved an arm and discovered that she could rise.
      The Voice sang on, and the day was brilliant, perfect, beyond perfect, into godlike, and the Voice herself was beauty incarnate, singing, singing, fading, becoming one with the sunlight, the grassland and the breeze.
      Abruptly, there was silence, and Montet stood alone in the grass near her ship, hard by an empty stasis box.
      Of the Voice of Naratha—of Naratha's Shadow—there was no sign at all.

HE WOKE, PANTING, out of a snare of dreams in which he over and over ran to succor a child, hideously suspended over a precipice, the slender branch clutched in terrified small fingers bending toward break beneath the slight weight—
      While he ran—ran at the top of his speed. And arrived, over and over, full seconds after the branch gave way and the tiny body plummeted down....
      He opened his eyes—not too far—and swallowed as the dim light assaulted him. Lashes drooping, he took careful stock.
      The dream—it had somehow become
the dream
of late it seemed—was both frequent and bothersome enough that he'd considered once or twice taking it to the Healers.
      On other mornings, those not quite so fraught with physical complaints, his considerations had always led him to reject the notion that the dream was prophetic, for hadn't he been tested by the dramliz, several times over, at the order of the Delm-in-Keeping as well as at the order of his mother? And the dream never gave face to child, nor location to tree or cliff....
      The dramliz tests were remarkably similar to the piloting tests—somehow he always managed to fail without knowing exactly what it was expected of him. Of course the wizards claimed they
weren't
expecting anything of him, but neither his mother nor anyone else seemed pleased by the results—not fast enough for pilot, nor possessed of whatever
some
thing the dramliz probed for—
      Well, and he had long ago understood that neither the Clan's ships nor the Clan's allies among the Healers or the dramliz would provide his sustenance, and he had begun casting about for what he could do to support himself, for he was a young man, holding in full measure all the stubborn pride of his House. He would take not a dex from the Clan that could not use him. His quartershares could accumulate in his account until the cantra overran the bank and flowed down the streets of Solcintra.
      So he had cast about. He could shoot, of course, but one could scarcely make a living as a tournament shooter. Uncle Daav's happy experiment of giving him a gun and target practice at Tey Dor's had brought him close to the gaming set, who had no qualms about dealing with someone not a pilot, or not able to tell the future through true prophecy...
      Early last evening, however, he had a moment of prophecy. It came when he overheard his mother speaking with Guayar Himself. It seemed that Guayar knew a certain house which had need of one well-placed, and well-taught, and well-versed in the Code, and able to travel with a group of children, teaching as well as protecting. She'd suggested that she knew of
just
such a person.
      Travel with
children
?
      He had been on his way out, intending to stop at the parlor only long enough to take graceful leave of his parent and exchange pleasantries with her guest. Rag-mannered though it was, he allowed himself to forgo these duties and instead left immediately by a discreet exit that did not require him to pass the occupied room.
      Once outside, he had gone, not to Tey Dor's, which had been his first, and perhaps best, inclination, but to a minor establishment which catered to the aspiring gamester. There he had accepted most of the proffered beverages, which was not his habit.
      Now, his head hurt abominably, of course, and his stomach was uneasy, though not quite in revolt. Mixed fortune, there. He supposed he should rise, shower and prepare himself to meet the dubious pleasures of the day. After all, it wasn't as if he had never been drunk before.
      In truth, he was rarely drunk, being a young man of fastidious nature. Certainly, he was
never
drunk while gaming, and last night's losses at the piket table were ample illustration of his reasons, thank you.
      Sighing, he raised his hands and scrubbed them, none-too-gently, over his face, relishing the friction.
      Gods, what a performance! He was entirely disgusted with himself, and not the most for his losses at cards. At least he had retained sense enough not to enter the shooting contest proposed by pin'Weltir!
      At least—he thought he had. His memory of the later evening was, he discovered to his chagrin, rather ...spotty.
      His stomach clenched, and he took a deeper breath than he wanted—and another—forcing himself to lie calmly, to wait for the memories to rise... There.
      He
had
turned pin'Weltir down, and when the man insisted, he had refused even more forcefully—by claiming his cloak and calling for a cab. He remembered that, yes. Too, he remembered entering the cab, and the driver asking for his direction. He remembered saying, "Home," an idiotic reply emblematic of his state, and the driver asking again, doggedly patient, as if she dealt with drunken lordlings every night—which, he thought now, in the discomfort of his bed, she might very well.
      After that, he remembered nothing, though he supposed he must have managed to give her the direction of his mother's house—and if his mother had been late at her studies and had observed his return—
      He wondered if people died of hangovers, and, if so, how he might manage it.
      A spike of red pain shot through his head and he twisted in the bed, gagging, eyes snapping open to behold—
      Not the formal bedchamber he occupied in his mother's house, but the badly shaped, sloped ceiling chamber where he had spent many peaceful childhood nights.
      Despite the headache, Pat Rin smiled. Drunk into idiocy he may have been, but his heart had known the direction of home.

* * *

SOME WHILE LATER, showered and having taken an analgesic against the headache, he glanced at last night's bedraggled finery, flung helter-skelter on the simple, hand-tied rug. He bit his lip, ashamed of this further untidy evidence of his debauch, then gathered it all up and took it into the 'fresher, where he bundled the lot into the valet to be cleaned and pressed.
      Returning to his bedroom, he paused at the old wooden wardrobe, coaxed open the sticky door and was very shortly thereafter dressed in a pair of sturdy work pants and a soft, shapeless shirt.
      Closing the wardrobe, he considered himself in the thin mirror: A slender young man, dark of hair and eye, cheekbones high, brows straight, chin pointed, mouth stern. In his old clothes, he thought he looked a laborer, or a dock worker, or a pilot at leave—then he glanced down at his long, well-kept hands and sighed.
      Looking back to the mirror, he frowned at the mass of wet hair snarled across his shoulders. The
torentia
was all the kick this season, and Pat Rin yos'Phelium Clan Korval, apprentice at play, naturally wore his hair so, spending as much as an hour a day combing and curling the thick, unruly stuff into the long, artful chaos fashion demanded.
      But not today. Today, he turned 'round, snatched a comb up from the low bureau and dragged it ruthlessly through the tangled mass until it hung, sodden and straight. Putting the comb aside, he raised both hands, pulled his hair sharply back, holding the tail in one hand while he rummaged atop the bureau, finally bringing up a simple wooden hair ring, which he snapped into place.
      The lad in the mirror presented a more austere face, now, without the fall of hair to soften it. Indeed, he might have been said to be quite fox-faced, were it not the general policy in the circles in which he lately moved that Pat Rin yos'Phelium was comely.
      Poppycock, of course, and tiring, too. Almost as tiring as Cousin Er Thom insisting upon endless repetitions of tests taken and proved—
      No.
      He would not think of Cousin Er Thom—of Korval-pernard'i. And he assuredly would not think of tests. In fact, he would go downstairs to tell Luken that he was to house.

* * *

"Good morning, boy-dear!" Luken said, looking up with a smile. The manifest he had been studying lay on the tabletop amidst the genteel ruins of a frugal breakfast, the tree-and-dragon—Korval's seal—stamped in the top left corner of the page.
       Despite everything, Pat Rin smiled, and bowed, gently, hand over his heart.
      "Good morning, father," he replied, soft in the mode between kin. "I trust I find you well?"
      "Well enough, well enough!" His foster father waved a ringless hand toward the sideboard. "There's tea, child, and the usual. Have what you will and then sit and tell me your news."
      
His news
? Pat Rin thought bitterly. He turned to the sideboard, taking a deep breath. Luken, alone of all his relatives could be trusted to honestly care for Pat Rin's news, and to take no joy in his failures.
      He poured himself a glass of tea, that being what he thought he might coax his stomach to accommodate, and returned to the table, taking his usual seat across from Luken, there in the windowed alcove. Outside, the sky shone brilliant, the sun fully risen. Odd to find Luken so late over breakfast, dawn-rising creature that he was.
      "Are you
quite
well?" Pat Rin asked, around a prick of panic. "I had looked to find you in the warehouse...."
      Luken chuckled. "Had you arisen an hour earlier, you would have found me precisely in the warehouse," he said. "What you see here is a second cup of tea, to aid me in puzzling out just what it is that Er Thom means me to do with these." He picked up the manifest and rattled it gently before dropping it again to the table.
      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 said, 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 certainly 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."