Necessity's Child

by Sharon Lee

  “This is the first I’ve heard of such a proposal,” Syl Vor’s mother said. “It is very good of you to concern yourself with Gavit’s schedule, my son. However, the necessity of standing your escort does not take him from his duty; it is his duty.”

  Syl Vor bit his lip, and looked up to her.

  “In fact, ma’am, Kezzi feels that Gavit is…like a patrolman. She’s not accustomed to being escorted.”

  “I’ll vouch for that,” Mike Golden said unexpectedly. “The first two times I saw her she was by herself—except for the dog, who I don’t discount.”

  Pleased by this praise of Malda, Kezzi smiled, and tasted the very smallest amount of mess. It was, she thought, chewing grimly, not very good.

  “I think that we must continue with Gavit as escort at least until the new school is opened. Once we see how the patterns have changed, we will revisit the topic. I depend upon you and your sister to remind me.”

  “Yes, Mother,” said Syl Vor, and addressed himself to his plate.

  Kezzi followed suit, finding the squash much more to her taste than the leaves, and the chicken very good.

  “How did you find school today, daughter?”

  She swallowed hastily, and looked up into the cool, beautiful face.

  “It was…less strange today than yesterday,” she said. “A new boy was brought to class toward the end of the lessons.”

  “Yes, and Kezzi must have a watch!” Syl Vor interpolated. “Ms. Taylor specifically said that she was not to be late tomorrow.”

  Kezzi glared at him, but he was looking at Mike Golden.

  “Then Kezzi must certainly have an accurate timepiece,” his mother agreed gravely. “Mr. Golden, have we a house watch?”

  “Sure do. Excuse me a tick and I’ll get it now, before it slips my mind.”

  He rose from the table and was gone through the door into the kitchen, returning very soon with a small watch on a chain, that he compared to the larger timepiece strapped to his wrist before placing the smaller by Kezzi’s place.

  After dinner was finished, and Syl Vor’s—and Mother had poured a final cup of tea for everyone, Mike Golden showed Kezzi how to set various alarms, quizzing her on how long it took to walk to school by the best route, how long to have the waking meal, to wash her face—none of which she could tell him.

  “I haven’t had a watch,” she told him, with what patience she could muster. “The Bedel have no need.”

  He frowned a little at that—not at her, but at the watch in his hand—then nodded once.

  “Gotcha. Here’s what, Kezzi. I’m gonna set this for my best guess at a good wake-up time. When it beeps, you’d best get outta bed, dress, eat breakfast. It beeps a second time, that’s when you leave the house and head down to school, see? I’ll let Ms. Taylor know you might could be late tomorrow, but we’ll get it all worked out soon.”

  “What if she’s early?” Syl Vor asked. He was leaning over Mike Golden’s shoulder, watching the proceedings with interest.

  “Then whoever’s on door’ll let her in, give her a cuppa ’toot, and prolly a donut, too. So that’s what we call win-win. Here you go.”

  He draped the watch over her neck.

  Mother looked up from reading the luthia’s letter, which had lain by her plate, unopened, during the meal. She smiled her faint, cool smile.

  “Well done. And now, my child, it is time for you to return to your grandmother. Please convey to her my very best wishes for her good health, and say that I will do as she has suggested. Gavit and Syl Vor will escort you to the corner of Blair and Dudley, where your brother Nathan will meet you.”

  “I’ll go, too,” Mike Golden said, with his big grin. “Nice night; likely a walk’ll blow the cobwebs outta my head. ’Less you need me, Boss.”

  “Not immediately, and even if I did I would be willing to defer whatever business I had until these cobwebs were vanquished.”

  “Back soon, then,” he said, and rose, shooing Kezzi and Syl Vor ahead of him.

  * * *

  Silain the luthia lay quiet, caught between dream and waking.

  Slowly, the dream faded, emotion draining away to leave behind facts, like stones drying just beyond the long reach of the sea.

  Silain had never seen a sea in her waking mind, but a long lifetime of dreaming had opened such things to her knowledge.

  Such things, too, as the memories, not of those for whom chafurma had never ended, but of those who had felt their lack.

  And of those who had made the decision not to return for them.

  The sum of which, added to the knowledge well-known to both luthia and headman—the why of this particular chafurma, this kompani of Bedel, set down, of all possible planets, on this one, this Surebleak…

  “Grandmother? Will you have tea?” The voice was soft, each word casting a dark shadow into the waking world.

  Silain took a breath, and turned her head to smile into Droi’s eyes, and onto her very soul.

  “Tea in a moment, daughter. First, let me sit up. You will make me seemly, then give me your arm to the hearth. Tea, then, yes, shared between us. After, you will go to headman, and ask him to attend me.”

  * * *

  “Nathan!” Kezzi called out, as she had the evening before, and here in fact was her brother stepping out of the shadows with her dog at his heels.

  “Here,” she said, kneeling down on the walk and snapping her fingers. “Syl Vor, you ought to meet…Rascal.”

  He went to her side, and held his hand out as directed, palm up. It was thoroughly and noisily sniffed, then licked vigorously, after which he was directed to rub the sharp ears. Rascal wriggled alarmingly, but Kezzi said it was because he was pleased to have a new friend.

  “Now, Sister,” Nathan said mildly, and Kezzi rose at once.

  “Remember,” Syl Vor said, “to be on time for school tomorrow.”

  “I have the watch,” she said, which was no promise, but Syl Vor could hardly blame her for that.

  Instead, he smiled and lifted his hand and stood with Gavit and Mike Golden, watching the man and the girl and the dog walk away.

  “Well, there,” Mike said, and looked over Syl Vor’s head to Gavit.

  “Tell you what; I got more cobwebs than I reckoned on. Gonna get another couple blocks under my boots, for what good it’ll do me. Let the Boss know, right?”

  “Sure, Mike,” Gavit said.

  “May I come with you?” Syl Vor asked.

  “Nope,” said Mike Golden and walked away into Surebleak’s chilly spring dusk.

  * * *

  “I found something of yours in town today.” Udari spoke softly, and in the language of the Bedel. “Here.”

  Kezzi felt something slip into her outside coat pocket. Something blocky, and of a good weight.

  “Really?” Kezzi said eagerly. “What is it?”

  He laughed. “If you can’t guess, you’ll need to wait until you see it! Now, tell me—how was your mother today?”

  “She seemed well. I only saw her at the meal. Before it, my…brother taught me a game of coins and questions.” She hesitated, chewing her lip. “It might be a thing for the headman.”

  “Not for the luthia?”

  “I don’t—” She shook her head in frustration, and paused to bend and pull on Malda’s ears. “I don’t know,” she told Udari.

  “Well. Can you teach this game to me? Maybe I can help you know.”

  “Yes! Will you be able to learn today?”

  “Yes.”

  Kezzi sighed. The Bedel said, a burden shared is a burden halved, and it certainly felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

  “There’s another thing,” she said, as they walked into the shadow of the warehouses. “Two other things.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The boy—Syl Vor, my brother. His…kompani—clan. They are the People of the Tree.”

  “I’d guessed this.”

  “Yes, but—in the place they left, they w
ere called dragons.”

  Silence from Udari for as many as four hands of steps, then a soft sigh.

  “I will dream on it. And the third thing?”

  She put her hand up to grip the disk hanging ’round her neck.

  “I have a watch.”

  * * *

  “Luthia, you have need of me?”

  “We have need of each other, headman. Droi, my daughter, tea for us, please, and then you make take yourself to your own hearth.”

  “Yes, grandmother.”

  Droi bowed, and moved away. Presently, there came the quiet sounds of tea being poured.

  “Has the luthia dreamed of the numbers?” Alosha asked, before the mugs were even brought to hand.

  Silain sighed, but he was the headman, and he had asked her, after all, to dream.

  “The numbers are, as the headman has said, fixed, and we have gone beyond the time when we may be fruitful with each other. To breed with the gadje means that we will lose ourselves. In all of this, we agree.”

  She looked up as Droi came toward them, soft-foot, bearing mugs.

  The headman received his with a nod and a soft-spoke, “Sister.”

  “Daughter. You watched well for me this day. I release you now to your duty-work.”

  “Grandmother.” Droi bowed, pliant and agreeable as a child, turned and left them, silent and dark against the dimness.

  Silain turned back to Alosha.

  “I have dreamed the decisions taken, and the loss and pain endured by those in the past who left a kompani to founder, and chafurma to crumple into disaster. In my dreams, twice the decision was motivated by a ship crisis; three times, it was the condition of the planet chosen for chafurma that made a proper ending impossible. I ask if the headman has lately dreamed this kompani’s purpose.”

  He looked at her over the rim of his mug, and for a long moment was silent. When he did at last speak, he answered her question obliquely.

  “We were set down at a bad time, when the Gilmour Agency, that opened this world, had just withdrawn. During chafurma, conditions grew worse, and—yes, I believe you’re right, luthia!—the ship would not risk itself. Now, it is too busy with all the change the Boss Conrad has brought with him, and the ship could not be secret.”

  Alosha the headman took a deep breath, and shook his head.

  “We, the Bedel of this kompani will not see the end of chafurma. We will only see ourselves become gadje.”

  “That may be,” Silain said sternly, “but equally, it may not be. The youngest of us has been guided by the Sight to a condition which may work to preserve us, and even bring a proper end to chafurma. We may need to hazard something of who we are in order to win this, but—”

  “But if we are lost, already, what matter? I understand you! Tell me about this hazard, luthia and how we might tempt fortune to favor us.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The room was dark, with only the lamp on the desk lit, and her hair shining with it, head bent over a file.

  She looked up on hearing his step, and she—well, she didn’t smile, but her face eased, and she took a deep breath.

  “Mr. Golden, I had almost given you up. Did you see my daughter safely home?”

  “Roundabout I did, letting her brother so-called Nathan take the visible part.”

  She nodded and moved her hand to show him the chair next to her desk. That done, she pressed a key on the house-comm, and asked…Annis it would be, this time o’night, to send in the tea tray.

  Mike eased into his chair and stretched his legs out in front of him. She had the heater on like it was mid-winter, he felt it beating down on his neck.

  “And where, one wonders, does Kezzi live?” Nova asked, leaning back in her chair and giving him her whole attention.

  “Right where we both thought she did—up inside the warehouses. I can get back to the door they used tonight. After I saw her safe inside, I did a little walkin’ around, an’ a little standin’ around. Saw some cameras hung up clever, saw some steam coming through the seams in the ’crete-walk. Could be somebody saw me; could be not. Didn’t really wanna spook ’em.”

  “I expect that the Patrol may already have done so,” she commented, and looked up as the door opened, admitting Annis with the tray.

  She set it down soft on the corner of the desk and managed to raise her eyes to meet Nova’s, which she couldn’t’ve, three months ago.

  “Will you be needing anything else, Boss?”

  “No, thank you, Annis; the tea will be sufficient.”

  “Yes, ma’am. ’Night, Mike.”

  “’Night, Annis.” He gave her a grin, and got a full smile out of her before she turned and left, shutting the door nice and quiet behind her.

  “Thanks,” he said to Nova, who had filled his usual mug. He picked it up and sipped it, sighing in equal parts satisfied and tired.

  “The Patrol,” he said, coming back to her point. “Could be they’ve caused some upset. Was gonna talk to McFarland ’bout that, tomorrow—see what’s been found, an’ who. Look over the sweep pattern, maybe, see if we can adjust it some.”

  “A good plan,” she agreed. She leaned back in her chair, a cream-and-blue cup balanced on slim fingertips.

  They sat for a few minutes in comfortable silence. The radiant heater finished its cycle and Mike sighed.

  Nova smiled faintly.

  “Kezzi’s grandmother writes that she favors this new relationship which has found her granddaughter, and feels that it cannot but benefit both principals. She concurs that we two would do best to meet and speak together on, and suggests as neutral territory, Joan’s Bakery the day after tomorrow, in the quiet hour.” She looked up, her face guileless.

  “Now, what do you think the quiet hour might be?”

  “After the breakfast crowd’s gone an’ lunch ain’t got started,” he answered promptly. “I’ll find out the exact o’clock tomorrow.” He tipped his head. “You’ll be meetin’, I take it?”

  “If it can be arranged. Soonest begun, soonest done, as my father had been used to say. And as this now appears to have grown larger than Syl Vor’s mere acquisition of a sister…”

  “Right.”

  He sighed again and drank off his tea, stretching out an arm to put the mug on the tray. “Tell you what, it’s lucky Silver took that notion of his. Gives us an in that don’t have anything to do with the Patrol, if they’re livin’ up there.”

  “Which did not surprise you,” Nova commented.

  “Well, no, it didn’t. But, see, I come up on these streets right here, and its always been risky to go near the warehouses. ’S’why I told McFarland we needed to take it slow, send up patrols to have a look around, see what we oughta know before we start renovatin’.”

  “Kezzi’s brother Nathan…”

  “So-called,” Mike muttered.

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “Mr. Golden, you must forgive us.”

  He eyed her. “What for?”

  “It seems that we have been instrumental in making you less trusting. Surely, it must sadden one to see innocence lost.”

  He snorted.

  “You got the wrong guy, maybe.”

  “If you say so, Mr. Golden, then perhaps I do. One would not wish to distress you in any way.”

  He forbore from snorting again.

  “You was sayin’ about Kezzi and Nathan?”

  “So I was. I happened to wonder if they were very similar to each other in appearance. The child is something out of the way, for Surebleak. Of course, if Nathan, so-called, is her true-brother, than it may be that it is merely what you call a family resemblance.” She finished her tea and put the cup next to his mug on the tray.

  “Well. It may be a topic to introduce with Kezzi’s grandmother, should conversation lag.”

  “Sure. She got a name, the grandma?”

  “None that she sees fit to commit to paper.” Nova sighed, and rose, looking down upon him with that look that wasn’t ex
actly a smile.

  “I suggest that the day has been long enough, and that we could both use some rest,” she said. “I leave the arrangements for Jane’s Bakery in your hands, as well as the adjustment of Patrol work in the warehouses with Mr. McFarland.”

  “Right,” he said, coming to his feet.

  She snapped off the desk light and walked across the room, light-footed and graceful in the dim-lit office. He followed her out into the hall, and watched her safe on her way upstairs before continuing to the back of the house, and his room there.

  * * *

  It was a box of color sticks that Udari had slipped into her pocket as they walked. Kezzi squeaked, and fell to her knees to present it to Malda’s curious nose.

  He snuffled and sneezed. Kezzi laughed and put the box tenderly away into the pocket of her sweater, before rising, and looking up to meet Udari’s eyes.

  “It’s good that you found these,” she told him, seriously.

  He smiled and unwound the scarf from about her neck, hanging it with the rest on the hooks by the inner gate.

  “The luthia told me that she expects dreaming to go long, and that you were to go to Jin. Do that, and bespeak dinner for us, then meet me in the garden. We can eat and learn together.”

  Kezzi hesitated.

  “Memit doesn’t want Malda and me to play in the garden.”

  Udari grinned.

  “I’ll deal with Memit, sister; you deal with Jin.”

  She laughed. “Done!”

  A turn, a thought, and a turn back to find Udari already walking away.

  “Brother!”

  He turned, a hand upraised in question.

  “After Memit—find us—oh! twigs and pebbles, a double hand of each.”

  “I will,” Udari promised, and was gone.

  Kezzi made certain her colors were firmly buttoned into the pocket of her sweater, snapped her fingers for Malda, and set off for Jin’s hearth at a run.

  * * *

  She dreamed the amounts and the mixture, for it wouldn’t do to make a mistake. Not in this. After she had dreamed, she rose from her nest of blankets, moving quietly.

  Vylet’s sleeping place was empty; expectable, since it was her turn to pray with Dmitri.

  Kezzi’s nest…Droi heard a shuddering snore and leaned close. Yes. Kezzi was curled into a complicated knot among her blankets, and the dog, foolish in his devotion, had done his best to lie across her. His nose had gotten under a tangle of cloth and produced the muffled snore.