by Sharon Lee
“I have the package. If you will do me the honor of ascending and waking the board, I will do the walkaround.”
Pilot Lucien’s hair fell in jagged points to her jawbone, the ends were dyed silver and purple; the rest was dull black. The silver and purple distracted as she tipped her head, and looked at him through narrowed eyes.
“Did the walkaround while I was waiting,” she said.
Quin’s temper flared again. Really, did she think he was a fool?
He took a breath and calmed himself. Of course, it was a test. This whole flight would be a test. There would doubtless, therefore, be many instances in which his temper was tried.
Best, then, to practice patience.
He produced a smile for the pilot.
“Thank you. I am accustomed to doing a walkaround myself; it soothes me and prepares my mind for the lift. I doubt that the ship will take harm from having the eyes of two pilots upon it.”
She shrugged and came to her feet.
“Suit yourself,” she said shortly, and went up the gantry, her boots clanging on each stair.
Teeth grit, Quin ducked under the gantry to begin the Pilot’s Pre-Lift Visual Inspection, precisely as outlined in the handbook.
• • • • • •
“Busy night?” Cassie asked him three days later, when they were again on the early shift together.
Villy liked Cassie. She didn’t mind about his other job, like some of the crew did; just treated it like . . . well . . . another job.
“Not busy at all,” he said ruefully, “so I got the idea to study, and that turned into late.”
“Didn’t you remember you had the early shift here?”
“I remembered, all right! I can’t tell you how many times I said to myself, Villim, cut it off, you gotta work early tomorrow! Didn’t do a bit of good!”
Cassie laughed.
“What’re you studying that’s so absorbing?”
“Communication,” Villy said, oversimplifying wildly. “We’re getting a lot of new clients who ain’t—aren’t—from Surebleak, just like we get here at the casino. I’m studying up on what’s comfortable, and what’s not, and bows—that’s useful here, too . . .”
Cassie’s smile had faded into something serious-looking.
“That’s pretty smart,” she said, which it was, and Villy would’ve felt proud of thinking of it, but he hadn’t—not exactly. He’d only said out something that he’d been thinking, about not feeling like he was offering everything he could to the new custom, because he didn’t know the rules. He didn’t have any idea beyond his own frustration, really; it’d been Quin who identified the problem and figured out a way to maybe deal with it.
“Do you think you could lend me the tapes, when you’re done with them?” Cassie asked, waving her card at the clock. “Or maybe we could study together? I’d really like to get a handle on them bows. For starters.”
Well, no, he couldn’t lend the tapes. For one thing, they weren’t tapes; they were lessons Quin had archived from his school. He’d been a tutor, so he’d been able to give Villy a passcode to access the basic lessons. Supplemental data and tests and stuff were only available to Quin’s code.
Anyway, nothing he could share with Cassie.
He stepped up and waved his badge. The clock beeped acceptance, and he stepped over to where Cassie was waiting for him.
“You know what we should do?” he said brightly.
“What’s that?” Cassie said, and he appreciated it that she didn’t smirk or wink or make a joke.
Villy paused, briefly having no idea what he was going to say, then heard himself speak up.
“We oughta ask Beny to organize a class. Then we could all learn together, and . . .”
He stopped because Cassie was staring at him.
“What?”
“That’s brilliant. Villy, that’s brilliant!”
“Well, it’s not. I mean, I was so focused on how to do better at my other job, I didn’t even think about us here, until you asked me what I was studying. Then it all sort of clicked.”
He gave her a smile. It was one of his professional smiles: two parts shy and one part mischief, and she smiled back, the muscles in her face and shoulders relaxing.
There, he thought, pleased; that’s better.
“I’ll talk to Beny on my first break,” he offered. Cassie shook her head.
“I’m covering for Joon this morning, upstairs. I’ll be seeing him right off and I’ll mention your idea to him.”
“It’s your idea as much as it’s mine!” he said, but Cassie only smiled and waggled her fingers at him in good-bye, turning toward the stairs.
Villy sighed, and headed for the Sticks table.
• • • • • •
The casino was bustling but not overcrowded, which was usual for the morning shift. Most of the players were late-nighters, still at the tables, with a smattering of the regulars who stopped in on their way to work to drop a coin in one of the machines, or roll a round of dice. Pretty soon, they’d get the night-workers comin’ in, ready maybe for some longer play at the wheel, or the card tables.
Or the Sticks.
All in all, Villy kept tolerably busy until it was time for his mid-morning break. Sonit came to relieve him as the last players left the table, both of them considerably lighter in the pocketbook. Villy’s knees were shaking some, and his forehead was damp. The House had won, fair. The House nearly always won, though Boss Conrad, who owned the Emerald, said the Sticks were an honest game of skill, more like cards than like dicing—or the wheel. The House was expected to win against most comers ’cause the Sticks dealer was an experienced and skilled player.
This time, though . . . The players had insisted on playing three-way, with the House taking a full part. Usually, Villy only played single players. Playing against two—well, he’d done it before, but it was uncommon and nerve-wracking.
He’d demonstrated his skill, though, and the House’d won, though he’d gotten a bad jolt when he’d thought the orange stick was gonna roll off the table . . .
“Everything okay?” Sonit asked.
“Yeah. Just finished up a three-way is all.”
Sonit whistled.
“Better you’n me. Gwon and getcher coffee. I’ll stand here an’ just sorta glare and scare ’em all away.”
That wasn’t a joke. Sonit wasn’t anything more than a good enough Sticks dealer, and not much of a player, but he was big and intimidating, and his frown was almost a physical shove in the chest. A player had to have a death-wish to approach the Sticks table while Sonit was presiding.
“I’ll be back soon,” Villy said.
Sonit grinned broadly, which made him look even more savage than his frown. Villy shook his head, and held up his hands.
“I’m going,” he said. “Don’t hurt me.”
“Like I could lay a hand on you,” Sonit said, his grin softening into a really attractive smile. “Git.”
Villy got.
• • • • • •
He was at his usual table in the break room, overlooking the floor, coffee and a cookie to keep him comfortable. He enjoyed looking down on the playing floor, seeing all the stations laid out like a map, and the players moving between them like leaves ahead of a snow wind. Lately, he’d taken to studying different styles of walking, and thinking about what each style told about the walker, or their culture. He’d shown Quin the game, one day when he was working the casino backroom, and they’d met for lunch.
Quin had been interested—and good, too, which wasn’t a surprise. Quin had fast eyes and if he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, he’d do ’til something fatal came along.
Villy took a bite out of his cookie and washed it down with hot coffee.
The locals, they kinda scuffed along the floor—that was from having to walk on ice and snow most of the time. You didn’t want to slip and fall, so you sorta half-skated along. Liadens walked tall and broad, for all they w
as skinny and short—world-bound Liadens, anyhow. Off-world Terrans walked with knees slightly bent, and hands away from their body, like they might have to grab something fast to keep from falling, which made sense, ’cause most of the off-world Terrans were spacers. And it was kind of funny, ’til you thought about it, that the space-faring Liadens—the pilots and the crewfolk—they walked like the Terrans: soft in the knees and ready to snatch a grab-bar.
Scouts now, they walked soft, and sort of swayed, like every muscle was loose. Their heads hardly moved, despite which, they saw everything. Quin said it was because Scouts had quick eyes, and quicker ears.
Mercs—Terran or Liaden—marched tall, looking left-then-right, footsteps falling firm enough that when a group of them went through the casino, you could feel ’em hit, even ’way up in control.
Security—well, there was Security now in the shapes of Big Haz and Tolly. Haz, she walked like a Scout, quiet and loose, and eyes moving. Tolly . . . Tolly was a puzzle. Sometimes, he walked Surebleak, sometimes he walked spacer. Other times—just for a step or two, and you had to be watching sharp to catch it—sometimes he walked like a hunter cat, muscles oiled and chin up, like he was scenting lunch nearby.
Right now, he was pure ’bleaker, leaning on the bar and talking with Herb. Haz stood tall beside him and a little behind, like she always did, alert to the room, and just as relaxed as if she had eyes in the back of her—
“Hey, Villy.”
A chair scraped as Beny, the day-side crew boss, slid in across the table.
“Hey,” Villy said. “Cassie talk to you?”
“’S’why I’m here. That’s a good idea you had about the seminar. We all got the basic training when we were hired on, but you’re right; it’s time to go to the next level. We don’t just got spacers and locals; we got people who expect the comforts of home. So, anyhow, I just wanted to tell you—I ran it by Mr. Conrad, and he’s gonna hire us a protocol master—prolly be a Scout, he said—and we’ll have lessons in how to be a little easier on Liaden eyes. Mr. Conrad, he was firm that he didn’t want us to cross over into looking too Liaden for our core clientele, but we still got room to bend. It was smart of you to notice.”
“I didn’t know I’d noticed ’til I was talking with Cassie,” Villy said, dunking his cookie in his coffee.
“Right, right. She said that, too. Now, here, I know your break’s just about over, so I’ll get done and leave you to finish up.”
Beny reached into his vest pocket and pulled out an envelope. He put it on the table, and pushed it toward Villy.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t you read the sign by the clock? Anybody comes up with an idea about how to make the casino run better, or increase profit, gets a reward if Mr. Conrad accepts the idea. Mr. Conrad accepted the idea, and you get fifty cash. Pretty good, huh?”
Fifty cash was a nice bit of money, but—
“I didn’t earn that.”
“Says so on the wall. Gwon and read it when you punch back in. Which you better start thinking about.” Beny got up, leaving the envelope behind him.
“Good thinkin’, Villy,” he said, and left.
Alone, Villy finished his cookie and coffee while staring at the envelope.
Fifty cash for saying they ought to learn how to bow better? That was like . . . free money.
On the other hand, he thought, pushing back his chair and coming to his feet, there wasn’t anything wrong with free money.
Was there?
He sighed sharply, grabbed the envelope and shoved it into an inner pocket of his vest.
• • • • • •
It was coming up on shift-change, and Villy was looking forward to going home and having a nap before he had to get ready for his other job. He’d just finished watching Margit Pince lose her day-pay on a solo Sticks fall. Once a week, she lost a day’s pay at his table, and he really wished she wouldn’t. Couldn’t talk her out of it, though; not his job. His job was to suppose she could afford the loss, and to witness the play to be sure it was fairly done. He wished she’d give up the Sticks, but there wasn’t any sign she was going to, anytime soon. She considered them a challenge, and she was determined to beat them—which she wouldn’t, anytime soon, in Villy’s professional judgment. Unfortunately, she’d gotten—a little—better, which only encouraged her to continue to play.
Honestly, Margit was one of the few downsides of the casino job. His gran used to say that grown-ups chose for themselfs, and Margit was a grown-up. So. He took a deep breath and settled himself. Not his problem; he’d done his job.
There not being anybody looking to step up and take Margit’s place at the table, Villy started to straighten the drawer, so the dealer next-shift could just open right up. He collected the tokens into their bag, and updated the tally sheet; lined the wrapped and sealed bundles up: twenty-fours all together at the top, thirty-sixes beneath; eighteen stick bundles tucked in their own compartment down the length of the drawer.
The bigger bundles were standard offers at Liaden casinos. The bundle of eighteen—called Quick Sticks—was a Surebleak variation, offered only at the Emerald casino, and approved by no less a gamester than Pat Rin yos’Phelium.
Pat Rin yos’Phelium, that was Boss Conrad’s real, Liaden name. Not many people knew that, though it was right there to be figured out, by those who paid attention.
Most people, though, they didn’t pay attention, though it ought’ve been plain that, if Boss Conrad and the Road Boss were brothers, and the Road Boss didn’t make no secret of his name being Val Con yos’Phelium, that Boss Conrad’s real name ought at least to have yos’Phelium in it somewhere.
Even though it wasn’t true that the bosses were brothers—he’d asked Quin, who’d said they were cousins, though it was true that Quin’s father—that being Pat Rin—was the older of the two.
“Likely they decided it was simpler for those not familiar with Liaden Lines to understand them as brothers, and such a simplification did no damage to their melant’i.”
Quin’d been lying on his side on Villy’s bed, his head propped on his hand. He’d paused for a second, staring hard at nothing, which meant he was weighing something in his mind.
“There was the matter of the two Rings, also . . .” he said, quiet, like he was talking to himself before he said, louder and firmer, “Yes, I think they decided for simplicity.”
He’d smiled at Villy.
“After all, I agreed to have had a younger brother, for much the same reasons. It does me no harm to honor the memory of a boy who had placed himself under my father’s protection. Had he survived, we might well have been declared foster-brothers. That being so, why should I not agree with what is already widely known?”
That bidness—about Quin’s younger brother—that was about Jonni, who’d been a kid in Boss Conrad’s house, and gotten in the middle of a firefight. The story’d gone out on the street that Jonni’d been the Boss’s own son, which Villy’d known wasn’t true. Jonni’s ma’d worked for Ms. Audrey. She never did say who was his father; might’ve been she hadn’t known. Or that she had, and thought her boy’d be better off without ’im.
Villy’d tried to ’splain that, once, to somebody who knew the street story, and who didn’t care to believe anything else. That had kinda cured him of ever trying to ’splain it again.
Well, no wonder the bosses just accepted what the street said; they might as well save their breath for—
Something moved in the corner of his eye. He looked up from the drawer, smiling slightly and impersonally at the Liaden woman approaching the table. She wasn’t wearing leather, but she walked like a spacer, with some merc mixed in.
“Buy a bundle, ma’am? We have Solcintran Sticks in packets of twenty-four and thirty-six. Or, if you’re pressed for time, we also offer the local eighteen-stick variation.”
“Thank you,” she said.
She smiled at him. Some of the world-bound Liadens were trying to learn to smile at Ter
rans, having heard that Terrans liked to be smiled at. Their efforts usually ran from faintly unsettling to painful.
This was the first smile Villy’d gotten from a Liaden that was outright terrifying.
He swallowed and bowed his head, like he was welcoming her, but it was really to hide his face. His foot twitched toward the panic switch on the floor under the table, but he stopped it just short of connecting.
“I believe,” the Liaden said, “that you are a companion to Quin yos’Phelium, as I am myself. I wonder if you might tell me his direction.”
That was off; his mouth tasted sour, that’s how off it was. Sure, him and Quin were friends, but there wasn’t no reason for this stranger to know, or care about it, once she’d come to know it. Quin’s father owned the Emerald, didn’t he? And if she was one of Quin’s friends, wouldn’t she know that?
He took a breath, thought about the panic switch again, and decided it was better not to make a fuss. That being so, he got his professional smile into place and looked up to meet her eyes.
“I can’t talk about that here,” he said. “My melant’i’s Sticks dealer, right now.”
She blinked—he’d surprised her—and inclined her head.
“Of course,” she said, polite enough; “I understand. Good-day to you.”
She turned and walked away, giving off that mixed vibe of merc and spacer.
Villy let out the breath he’d been holding, and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, Sara was on his side of the table, tally-sheet in hand.
“Time to go home, hon!” she said cheerfully.
He gave her a grin, though it felt a little uncertain on his mouth.
“Already? I was having so much fun, I thought I’d do a double.”
“Nope, nope. My turn to have some fun. You’ve had enough.”
“Right, then,” Villy said. He patted her arm, and scooted out from behind the table.
Going across the floor to the stairs, he kept an eye out for the woman who’d wanted Quin’s direction. He didn’t see her, which might’ve meant she’d left—or maybe she’d smartened up and asked one of the Security Team to take her to the Boss.
