by Doris Egan
She frowned. "I thought you went off with that good-looking boy with the fancy clothes."
"It's a long story, Irsa."
She sighed and said, "Well, the wheel comes around sometimes and doesn't leave you in the same place. I don't know." She turned back to her cart. "Tinaje… at least we'll be getting some tone in this part of the market."
That's how we started the spring, with Ran and me in different corners of the Square. He never bothered with the Association, preferring to defend himself from thieves and cops. Nor did they bother him about joining, or anyway not after the first two representatives they sent. I knew that he was busy in other ways, too, but I didn't nag him about his secretiveness, mostly because when I remembered my own private bank account I didn't feel in a secure enough moral position.
It wasn't too bad in Trade Square. I'd been pretty hesitant about charging money for tinaje; Vale never had given me permission, but then, I'd left Teshin in rather a hurry. I told myself I was better than the girl at the Ten-rillis baths, and the Asuka people had been willing enough to charge. And it seemed to work out; if a client looked too scruffy I simply turned him away, and I kept my knife in easy reach. Anyway, one yell from me and Irsa would have had the curtain down and the Association running our way. And in feet I had far less trouble than I anticipated. Dancers are big customers for tinaje, and dance students had a hard time affording the more reputable practitioners; they were always on the lookout for a new one. I found in a short time that I was developing a reputation with the Imperial Dance Academy.
Soon after I set up in the Square, a client came to see me. He was about thirty Standard, tall and well-dressed, and I mentally raised my fee a bit when I saw him. He sat down on the mat, and I said, "Is there some particular problem you want to tell me about?"
"Not unless you count deceit as a problem," he said, and handed me a piece of paper. ' 'I didn't come for tinaje. This is a message for you."
I read it. It was the address Kylla had given me at the Asuka baths, with a date and time underneath. I looked at the visitor and said, "You wouldn't be Lysander Shik-ron, would you?"
"Your servant, gracious lady."
He was good-looking, with sharp, dark eyes and a wry smile. Kylla didn't seem to have chosen too badly; maybe he didn't have the family's approval, but so far he had mine. "This is today's date," I said.
"Today is when you're wanted."
"All right," I agreed. "I'll be there, unless something goes wrong."
He rose to leave. I said, "I assume you came in here to divert suspicion. You didn't want to hand me a note in full view of the market."
"Yes?"
"Well, don't you think it will look strange if you leave after a couple of minutes? Tinaje usually takes at least half an hour."
"Maybe I changed my mind," he said.
"And that won't look good for my reputation."
"All right, what do you suggest?"
I pulled out my notebook. "Do you know any good stories?"
* * *
The address was in a better residential section of the capital. As I expected, Kylla was waiting for me there. She didn't have much time, she said, but gave me thirty tabals (all she could get away with at the moment) and told me Grandmother was about the same and that Eln was spending a lot of time on the Net lately. She also had a basketful of groundhermit, red eggs, and a bottle of Ducort wine. We moved these hurriedly to a sack for me and exchanged a good-bye kiss, followed by a differ-ent sort of kiss on her part for Lysander Shikron. I spent at least a full minute looking through my sack while this was going on. Then we left the house in separate directions, me back to Ran and Kylla off to the relatives she was supposed to be staying with.
When I got home, I found Tyl cooking a supper of vegetables and fried bread. "Fine as a side dish, but we can do better than that," I told him, and handed him my sack of goodies. His face lit up.
"How did you do it, my lady?"
"Foreign barbarians with no manners," I said modestly. "We have our methods."
"I haven't seen wine like this since the Emperor's Anniversary. Ah, lady, I was wondering—my shoulders have been hurting since I did the extra set on my stretch bars this morning—"
"No problem, Tyl, do you want me to work on you now or after supper?"
"Food first," he said, surveying the riches.
Later when Ran and Karlas came to table they stared at the array disbelievingly. "Tyl?" said Karlas. Tyl looked to me.
"Theodora?" said Ran,
"A lucky day in the market," I said.
Ran picked up his wine glass, took a sip, glanced at what he was holding, put it down and raised an eyebrow at me.
I did not choose to respond. It was difficult enough trying to figure some way of explaining our new possession of thirty tabals. And I did have to bring it out some-how; Ran could make much better use of it than I could to achieve our mutual goals, and besides there are some ethical lines I will not cross. I really didn't believe Kylla had meant the thirty tabals to go into my Athena fund.
When dinner was over, I still hadn't mentioned it. I did some tinaje work on Tyl's shoulders and helped him clean up the supper dishes. Ran would look at me from time to time, but not in any way that let me know what he was thinking. Finally he said, "You do tinaje for everybody else, but not for me."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't think you had any interest in it." Which was better than coming out with the truth, that doing tinaje for Ran would just confuse me. I had come to accept, back at my start with Vale, that tinaje was a nonsexual form of art. In that definition, I understood it. I require consistency in my life, I don't like to blur definitions, I keep mental categories separate… in short, I didn't want to do tinaje with Ran.
"Well?" he said.
"Sit on the mat," I said. "I'm too tired for a full session."
He sat down obediently. I knelt behind him, took a minute to gather concentration, then went into the ritual for partial tinaje. I focused my attention on the necessary movements only. It was going well, I'd done the shoulder muscles, the arms, the upper back, when I moved to the head. There is a movement to help loosen tightness in the neck, where the person doing the tinaje places one hand on either side of the head, just above the ears, and rotates it. I placed my hands in the proper position and suddenly I forgot the whole session and thought: What nice, soft hair youVe got.
As the thought crossed my mind I felt his neck muscles tighten.
Vale had warned me about the occasional telepathic experiences one has in tinaje, but I'd discounted it. I finished the session in professional manner, ruthlessly trampling on any personal thoughts and concentrating on the ritual.
"All done," I said, thinking, damn it, just what is it about my thoughts that annoys you so much? He'd closed all up after he took the onyx cat away from me, too. Evidently telepathy was overrated as a means of bringing people together.
Well, enough of stepping softly. I said, "I have something to show you," and I went upstairs to my room and got out Kylla's bag of coins. I brought them down and emptied the bag on the floor in front of Ran. He stared at them.
"Thirty," I said, when he started to count. He looked up at me.
"Pieces of silver?" he asked. Ivory is not a Christian planet, but I should have known they wouldn't forget a good story. I got up to leave. He reached out an arm and held me back. "I'm sorry," he said.
I waited.
"I would like to know how you got them," he said.
"Are you sure?" The only time since Teshin that I'd said Kylla's name, he'd told me never to mention it again.
He considered the matter. Maybe we were still in sync from the tinaje; I could almost see her name rising in his eyes. "Not necessarily," he said. He picked up a few coins and let them dribble through his fingers. "All right, tymon, we'll leave it alone."
I got up to go to my room. He called, "Theodora."
I turned. "Yes?"
"Whose side are you on, anyway? I never asked."
I wanted to say, why do I always have to be on somebody's side? But to Ran that would be as good as saying "not yours." I said, "I'm going to bed now. If you think of any other interesting questions, hold them till morning."
Traditionally, rudeness is an acceptable answer to having one's loyalty questioned. Ran said, "Good night."
I woke up next morning knowing that I'd had bad dreams, but not knowing what they were. I stood at the wash basin, not moving, trying to remember; something about a dripping sound, and an echo, and being in a bad place. Nothing else. I dismissed it and went on to the market.
It was an uneventful morning, not many customers, so when Irsa asked me to watch her wares for her I did so. It started to rain soon after she left, and I put up the sides and top of her cart and went and sat under my tent, keeping an eye on things as best I could through the narrow opening. One of the flash rains of early spring, it probably wouldn't last more than ten or fifteen minutes. Meanwhile the market emptied like an overturned cart.
I felt the tent shake and stuck my head out front to find the cause. Eln Cormallon was there. He was seated on his floater, dry and perfectly turned out in the midst of the downpour, and standing beside him was cousin Ste-pan, holding an umbrella over his own head and looking silly. The floater was dry, too; it must have been a spell-shield.
"Hello, Theo." Eln smiled, the same look of gentle complicity he'd always shared with me, as though we'd just done a practice set in the garden only yesterday. "Put your head back in, you'll get wet."
"If I put my head back in, I won't be able to see you."
"True. Stepan, can we raise this rope, so I can get the floater inside the tent?"
Stepan appraised the situation with an expression of dutiful misery. "I don't think so."
"Well, then," said Eln, "I'm dry enough, so if I lower to the ground I can talk to our Theo comfortably, and you can hold the umbrella over her head."
"I don't have an extra umbrella," said Stepan.
"Yes, I know," said Eln.
So he lowered the floater, and Stepan squatted grimly beside me with his umbrella.
"Long time," I said.
"Yes, I'm sorry about that. You've often been in my thoughts, though."
"Same with me."
He said, "I never thought to see you doing tinaje. Kylla would approve, she likes the old ways. I don't mind tradition myself, when it's not at the expense of profit…"
He hesitated, thinking his own thoughts. "Theo, here's the problem. You shouldn't be here."
"IVe been in Trade Square before. If you don't mind my saying so, Eln, your family is more than a little snobbish about the ways people can make a living."
"I meant," he said, "that you shouldn't be on Ivory."
I froze. "Oh."
"You ought to be on Athena, getting your degree."
I relaxed, a very little. "You have a point there."
"And it's my family that's mucked around with your life, so I feel some responsibility. I've done some checking. There's a liner due from Tellys in a couple of weeks, one of the Queens. It'll be in port for ten days, and then go on to the next leg of its run."
"To Athena."
"Yes, to Athena."
"Well, I appreciate your notifying me of the schedule, Eln, but if I could have afforded passage on a starship I would have left here quite a long time ago."
He laughed gently. "I had that impression. What IVe come here to tell you is that your passage is already paid."
"What?" It came out as a choke.
"Your ticket and your ID are registered with the Port Authority. All you have to do is show up." He paused, and when I didn't say anything he went on. "What I would suggest is that you wait till the last day it's in port, less trouble all around that way. Now, the thing is, darling Theo, fond though I am of you, I can't afford to buy passage on every Athenan-bound liner that puts into this city. So this is a one-time deal, this ship only." He turned suddenly to Stepan. "I forget the name."
"The Queen Emily," said Stepan. By now he was thoroughly soaked.
"The Queen Emily," Eln repeated. "So there you are. By the way, if you're feeling especially grateful to me when you get back home, you might talk to a couple of people I've been dealing with on the faculty there. Let them know what a fine and trustworthy person I am, see if you can get them to stop dragging their feet."
He paused again, but I still couldn't seem to come up with anything to say. "Well, there's no need to go into all that now. I'll leave you some notes on the subject in the Net link in your cabin, and if you feel like giving me a hand, that's fine; if you don't, that's fine, too. Theo?"
"Yes."
"You're getting all this information, aren't you?"
"I'm getting it."
"Good." He seemed uncertain. "You know, I would have paid your fare a lot sooner, if you'd just gone with the Issin people back to the capital. Still, no harm done, I suppose."
I said, "No, no harm done. Eln—"
He looked attentive. I don't really know what I would have said at that point, because that was when Stepan shot to his feet, rainwater started to pound me in the face, and I heard Ran's voice say, "Theodora, are you all right?"
I called, "Yes, I'm fine."
Through the sluice of heavy rain I saw Ran standing with Karlas and Tyl. They were standing warily, rigidly, by Irsa's cart, and if they were in anything close to the same mood Stepan was in, their nerves were stretched taut. Stepan's knuckles were by my face, and they were white. I hoped no one was armed. What was I thinking? They were all armed, I only hoped nobody was too nervous.
I said, "I think they were leaving."
Ran started to walk slowly toward us, followed by Karlas and Tyl. Eln raised his floater. He said, "As a matter of fact, we were just about to go." Ran kept walking. When he reached the floater, he stopped.
"Well, then," he said, "go."
Eln regarded him. Finally he said, "Don't blame Kylla for any of this. I didn't give her a choice."
"Everybody has a choice."
A funny sort of half-smile raised itself on Eln's lips, as though he couldn't keep it off. He looked down at me.
"It must be nice," he said lightly, "to believe that."
The rain was starting to slacken. Followed by Stepan, he rode slowly out of the market, the only dry person among us.
Chapter Sixteen
"What did he want?" Ran waited until we were home and the door was shut before he turned to me. His green cloak dripped on the floor. Tyl tried to take it from him, but Ran waved him away.
"I don't know exactly," I said. "We didn't have long to talk before you showed up. He was suggesting that I leave Ivory."
"I'll bet he was," said Ran. "Talk about nerve." He paced a few steps over the parlor floor, then pulled off his cloak, rolled it into a ball, and tossed it to Tyl. Tyl shrugged at me and took it away to dry.
I didn't know why I wasn't telling Ran about the ticket arrangement. I needed time to think… my impulse was to ignore it, try to pretend the ticket wasn't there. Was that because I was looking for an excuse to stay on this planet? Had I been kidding myself the past year? That didn't feel right either… it was the circumstances… the feeling I got from my talk with Eln was that I was perfectly free to go, provided I left my honor behind when I boarded.
I didn't plan to leave that way, and yet I felt guilty about the whole scheme. Why? And why was At dishonorable to leave now, and not later? Even if Ran got through this crisis, he would still be in a semi-lethal position without a card-reader. Didn't the argument that I'd been tricked into all this still hold?
Ran went to his room, presumably to brood, and I did the same. I have never liked ethical complexity.
That night I had more bad dreams. I woke up with the feeling that I'd been through a recurrent nightmare, one I'd had before but couldn't remember. Probably just as well, I thought; there was enough to deal with in my conscious life.
I met Kylla a few days later at Lysander S
hikron's. We sat in the servants' pantry, off the main kitchen, surrounded by shelves of sealed jars. She was jeweled and painted, no doubt for his benefit, but underneath it all she looked tired and drawn. She brought more money, twenty-five tabals.
"Eln spends his life on the Net terminal," she said, "and when he's not there, he's with Stepan. I never gave much thought to Stepan one way or another before, but now he gives me the creeps. He follows Eln around like he's waiting for raw meat."
Lysander was out of the room just then, and Kylla pulled aside her robes and put her perfect, bare legs up on a bench. She leaned back against the wall. "Oh, how I wish I could get out my pipe right now. But I'm trying to introduce Lysander to my vices gradually." She glanced at me and added, "I think we'll save some of this knowledge till after the wedding."
I was surprised. "You're planning to get married?" Implied in my tone was, you can pull this off with the family?
She smiled. "Give me some time, Theo. So far, the lead role in Agamemnon is the only thing IVe ever wanted that I didn't get."
I shook my head and she suddenly gave a guilty start and dropped her legs. "Is that Lysander?" she said, as there was a thump on the door to the kitchen. But no one came in and she returned the legs to their former royal seat. "One of the house servants," she said. "I see that giggle, Theo, you may be holding it in out of courtesy, but you ought to keep your eyes down. You don't think I should be keeping these habits from my future husband, do you?"
"It's really not for me to say, Kylla."
She laughed and lit an imaginary pipe. "Isn't this the best way to break it to a beloved? Wouldn't you give him time before you exposed your, well, more unfortunate character traits?''
"No."
"What would you do?"
"I'd print out a list, and tell him to speak now or not bother me about it later. Then I'd have him initial it."
She really laughed at that point, not the ladylike silvery laughter she usually produced, but sheer guffaws. She put a hand over mine as she let go. "Theo, sweetheart," she said finally. "I can see why you get along with Ran."
