Price of Ransom

by Kate Elliott

  “Maybe they will. I hadn’t thought of that.” He contemplated the je’jiri for a moment, and shook his head. “Poor Finch. No wonder he’s sulking.”

  Jenny laughed. “You’re too compassionate, Yehoshua. Like Pinto, I don’t have much sympathy left for Finch.” She paused as the young woman returned, handing round mugs of dark ale and a smaller mug of milk for Gregori, and then waited as they all sampled it. Jenny’s eyes widened, rather like the young woman’s had when she had first seen Hawk. “This is good! I could get used to this.”

  The young woman laughed and went back to the kitchen.

  “You’ve made yourself welcome now,” said the advocate, smiling. “They make their own ale here, and you just complimented it.”

  “Have you been here before?” Yehoshua asked, suddenly suspicious.

  Min Havel chuckled. She had a thin, sharp face, and she could hold her own with Deucalion at his worst, but in his few encounters with her away from Deucalion and Lily, Yehoshua had decided that she was not ill-natured. “No,” she answered, “but there’s a placard in the window that says the ale is brewed on the premises.”

  “No,” said Lily from the other table, raising her voice in exasperation. “Deucalion, you simply refuse to understand. We can’t go back. Even if we wanted to. And if we’d wanted to, we wouldn’t have left there in the first place and risked taking a lost road to a place we weren’t entirely sure existed.”

  Hawk straightened, taking in air in the way Yehoshua now recognized as je’jiri scenting—and he had begun to suspect that they could smell more subtle fragrances than odor.

  “But it’s the obvious choice,” Deucalion began, and Hawk turned his predator’s gaze on Deucalion as Lily began to look angry.

  Jenny brushed her fingers against the back of Yehoshua’s hand, and he jerked, startled. “Firefight,” she said. “You’d better go back her up. He’ll listen to you.”

  “Will he?” the advocate asked with interest. “You’d be the first one.”

  “Excuse me,” said Yehoshua, and he got up quickly and, dragging his chair behind him, crossed to the other table. “Mind if I sit down?” he asked, pulling up his chair and sitting between Hawk and Deucalion before anyone could reply. Hawk tilted his head to one side, then the other, scenting him. Yehoshua stiffened slightly, but Hawk evidently marked him as acceptable and at last sat back in his chair. The tension around the table eased noticeably. Dr. Farhad tapped on her com-slate. The action irritated Yehoshua: could she never stop taking notes? He felt as if every moment surrounding Hawk was simply one long psychiatric observation, and his sympathy for the man progressed in that instant from nervous pity to a sudden urge to see that he did recover, so that he might be spared this indignity.

  “Yehoshua,” said Lily, “could you please explain to Deucalion once again that it would not be a good idea for us to join the League’s expedition to Reft space?”

  “But it would be a perfectly acceptable service to exchange for the one Basham proposed,” Deucalion went on, ignoring her mood in his enthusiasm for his idea. “You know the way, or at least have run it, and you know the area and the customs—”

  “And the current government,” interrupted Lily, “who would cheerfully cut our throats at the first opportunity and would certainly not trust any emissary claiming us as companion and guide. In any case, how can you guarantee that the person in charge of the expedition would want us along?”

  This point evidently had not occurred to Deucalion, because he looked abruptly surprised. “Oh,” he said, “didn’t I tell you?” He paused expectantly.

  “No.”

  “I asked Yevgeny for that position, and he agreed to support my application and it’s already been sent before Diplomatic Council. He expects it will be approved without any delays. I ought to know when we return to Concord.”

  Yehoshua gaped at him. Lily did as well, but recovered sooner—which was one reason, Yehoshua supposed, why she had through the course of their adventures taken on the role of commander and captain. She laughed. “Why in the Seven Hells would you want to go to Reft space?” she asked. “No, you don’t need to answer. I already know.”

  Deucalion drew himself up, looking offended. “I don’t need to sit here and be insulted.”

  “But I haven’t said anything yet.”

  “You don’t need to. I know what you’ll say. Everyone says it. He’s going because he can’t help but want to tell them the correct way to do things. He can’t help wanting to enlighten them because he thinks he’s always right.”

  Yehoshua had to hide his smile behind one hand, because it was exactly what he was thinking, and he saw now that Deucalion was more sensitive—or at least more pervious—to criticism than he had thought.

  But Lily simply chuckled. “But isn’t that why?”

  “Helping people to live better than they were,” he replied stiffly, “is not an impulse that ought to be laughed at.”

  “But I’m not laughing at the impulse, Deucalion.”

  “No. You’re just laughing at me.” He relaxed abruptly and smiled. “You remind me of Adam in some ways.”

  “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You shouldn’t. I still think”—he paused as the young woman brought their food, and started over—“I was one of the people who encouraged Yevgeny to push for the refit of the Forlorn Hope to start immediately.”

  “I was wondering how that happened. I got the impression from min Basham that he assumed that I was going to accept the offer he made.”

  “I might have led him to believe you would accept—” Deucalion coughed.

  “You lied to him! Deucalion, you can’t imagine how fond I am of you. You’re the only person I know who can bend all his own rules without seeming hypocritical.”

  “In any case,” he continued, ignoring her comment, “I was hoping all along that I could use the Hope as the lead ship in the expedition to Reft space. It would be ready by the time the expedition can be put together.”

  “I said no, Deucalion.”

  “But Lily,” Deucalion replied, so placidly that Yehoshua was immediately suspicious. “If it’s the only alternative to spying in The Pale, you may not have any choice.”

  Lily’s answer was to begin eating. Hawk watched her a moment, scenting something Yehoshua could not detect, and then favored the plate set in front of him with detached interest. He tried a bit of cheese and then settled back and closed his eyes without eating anything else. The young woman deftly brought Yehoshua’s plate over from the other table, and since everyone else had started, he ate as well. Paisley wandered in from the green and sat at Jenny’s table.

  As they finished up, a short, black-haired man whom Yehoshua recognized as the innkeeper strolled out onto the courtyard and, after a fractional pause by the locals drinking at a nearby table, came over to stand beside Lily.

  “Everything is to your liking, I hope?” he asked. His Standard was particularly difficult to understand, but peculiarly melodious for all that.

  “Yes,” Lily assured him. “Very much so. It’s very lovely here.”

  “Ah,” he agreed. “It is that. What brings you to these parts?”

  She glanced at Deucalion, but he simply nodded. “My brother and I,” she indicated Deucalion, “came here looking for our father.”

  “Why would your father be here, of all places?” the innkeeper asked, but Yehoshua could see that he was intrigued.

  “He grew up here. Many years back. Name of—” She hesitated, as if she was trying to remember something long past and almost forgotten. “Taliesin ap Branwen a Jawaharlal.” She recited it more than said it, like a lesson learned in school. “He told us he was headed back here some time past, but we were both far out near The Pale, and we lost touch. We were wondering if he’d settled in here in the past six months.”

  The innkeeper’s face creased with a broad smile. “That would be Taliesin Jones, would it? I went to school with him, you know. A good lad,
and a fine tenor. It was a sad thing when his folks had to move to Lloegre, to England. Yes, indeed. He’s taken the old Davies place while they’re out by Turfan Link on a mining job. Just a crofter’s cottage, you understand, and the dog’s no trouble, but it’s a fair enough place to write poetry in while he’s waiting for a lease to come up in the area.”

  Lily had gone a little pale, and she was breathing unsteadily. “How would we get there?”

  The innkeeper shook his head. “Oh, there’s no use going now, is there? He’s down to Llangollen these three days for the local Eisteddfod.” He paused, seeing her expression. “But don’t worry, he’s sure to be back tomorrow morning by midday. I’ll tell you the way then. It’s just up back on Mwdwl Eithin two kilometers north. A light walk for a morning. You’ll see.”

  “Thank you,” she replied with apparent calm. “We’ll go then.” The innkeeper excused himself and left to tend to a local calling for ale and, presumably, some information about these strangers. Yehoshua watched Lily. Hawk had looked up as well. She was slightly flushed, and she hoisted her mug of ale with an unsteady hand. “I can’t believe he’s still alive,” she said in a low voice. “That we’ll see him. Tomorrow.”

  At first no one replied. Then Deucalion stood up. “I think I’ll go take a walk,” he said.

  “You haven’t finished your food,” Yehoshua pointed out.

  “I’m not hungry,” he replied, and he left, heading out the gate onto the green and quickly disappearing from view.

  Lily set down her mug and turned to stare after him. “Maybe I’d better go talk to him.”

  “Do you think so?” Yehoshua asked. “I get the impression he’d like to be alone. I’ve never met your father—or at least, this father—but from what I’ve heard, it seems to me that he might not be the easiest person to meet again after so long. Not from what Deucalion’s said.”

  “Adam once referred to him as a tyrant.” Lily shook her head. “I could never imagine how anyone could see him as a tyrant. Or be troubled about meeting him.”

  Dr. Farhad looked up from her food—she ate with the same efficiency as she studied Hawk—and surveyed her company with a professional’s eye. “They are sons. It has long been known that with a father, a daughter is privileged.”

  Yehoshua chuckled. “Is that true, Lily?”

  “I don’t know. Deucalion and I haven’t compared notes much. I think I’ll look around the village this afternoon. Care to join me?”

  Yehoshua shrugged. “Might as well. I don’t know what else to do here. It’s a lot different than anywhere else I’ve spent time. What do you expect to see?”

  Lily grinned. “I’m not sure. But I can’t get out of the habit of checking my ground, in case of”—she glanced at Dr. Farhad—“an emergency.”

  “Old habits die hard,” said Dr. Farhad coolly, but Yehoshua got the distinct impression that Dr. Farhad knew quite well what Lily meant.

  21 Night

  IN THIS PLACE, THE senses were overwhelmed with the strength of je’humari existence. It was possible to keep focus only by letting her scent alone crowd against him, like a barrier to the rest.

  Hawk stood in darkness at the gate that led from the courtyard onto the green. Behind him, a few stragglers from early closing still drank, and the innkeeper stood in the door to the pub and mildly scolded them for not yet leaving. Of those he traveled with, most were still sitting outside enjoying the last fingers of ale. It was easy to distinguish them in the midst of unfamiliar smells: Jenny, sharp-scented, trustworthy, and a toughness baited with laughter; Gregori, bright as a healthy child always is; Yehoshua, mixed of dependability and a humor that matched well with Jenny’s, although he seemed unaware of it, or of the strength underpinning him, one that others relied on without he or they being aware of it; Deucalion, a turbulent mixture of honor and guilt and inflexibility; and Dr. Farhad, whose scent had a dry, cutting edge that he did not much like, but which he trusted. Bach smelled of metal and machinery, but underlying it was a second scent, ancient and depthless, a trail of scent that, had he the leisure to follow it, could lead him into the heart of creation.

  And her. He frowned. He could tell, at that moment, that she was thinking of him. It shaded her essence with doubt. He stirred and turned, and caught his scent. Took a step before that other part said, from a place he did not understand: no, you may not kill him. He looked up, staring, until he found the dark window, its shutters open, and the figure, barely outlined against a weak fight, that stood there, looking down. Finch’s scent was laced with anger and self-pity and shored up by a good nature buried under accumulated sourness. As Hawk watched, it arced with longing and cramped, repressed desire.

  Hawk flushed with the heat of the course: he touched his tongue to his lips, as if he was tasting the blood of his prey—and with a sharp yank of alien will, stopped himself again. It was not Lily that Finch was staring at.

  For an instant, Hawk was amazed that he had missed her entrance onto the courtyard. Her fragrance was shot through with the brilliance of virtue and generosity and compassion, and rich with the perfume of idealism. It took him a moment to see her, but everyone else was staring as she came up to their tables.

  She had unbound her hair. The myriad braids, beaded and hanging to her waist, were gone—vanished into a huge cloud of black hair. Like the void of space, it encompassed her entirely.

  “Paisley!” It took him a moment to sort out the voice. It was Jenny. “What happened to your hair?”

  Paisley brushed at her hair. “I took ya binding off,” she stated in a preternaturally clear voice. “Be it came to me, min, as here in ya green grass land, ya Ridanis have no reason to bind their hair. I mean to keep it unbound, for ya reminder. Min Belsonn.” She regarded him with her steady, sure gaze—much of what she was, he wished to be, but was too self-doubting to become. “I mean to go over ya way with you, whether or not ya Hope goes. If Jehane be not ya real Jehane, if he have no mind to bring ya Ridanis up where they mun go, then it be my trial to help them come here. To ya League. For ya green grass land be here. And it be wrong o’ me if I do not tell them that they can come. For they can come here, can’t they?”

  “Well, yes.” Deucalion sounded, not uncertain, at least, but surprised.

  “But Paisley.” Lily stood up. Hawk could smell the sudden flush of sorrow in her. “But that means you’re leaving us.”

  Paisley’s own regret echoed Lily’s sadness. “Yes, min. Be it you know well enough it hurts me sore to leave you, but you will understand that I mun go, if I can.”

  “Yes,” Lily replied, soft, “I understand. And I’ll encourage min Belsonn to take you. You will take her, won’t you, Deucalion?”

  Under such threat, Deucalion could only shrug. “Of course. I still think, Lily, that you—” He hesitated under her glare. “Never mind. Whatever happens, I’ll need a representative, who knows Reft space.”

  “I think it’s a shame,” said Jenny.

  “How can you say so, min Seria? I mun do my duty.”

  “No, not that. Of course you have to go. I just think it’s a shame about the braids. I always thought they were so pretty.”

  Paisley hesitated. For the first time, Hawk scented something else about her, a bouquet that he hadn’t ever been aware she possessed—vanity. “Sure, and mayhap after ya people have been sent home, mayhap then, it wouldna’ be so wrong o’ me to weave ya braids back in.” She thought about this a moment. “For then it would be ya choice, not ya binding.” As if this settled something within her, she sat down at the table next to Deucalion and launched into an interrogation of his intent and plans and methods in regard to the expedition to Reft space.

  Up above, a shutter closed, and Hawk caught on the breeze the faint whiff of the salt of tears.

  Jenny laughed and rose. “Care to go for a walk, Lily-hae? I don’t think I need to endure this. Off to bed with you, Gregori.”

  “But—”

  “That’s an order, young man.”
r />   “I’ll go up with him,” said Yehoshua quickly.

  “No, why don’t you come with us,” Jenny replied. “Gregori?”

  The boy murmured agreement and left. Hawk slipped into the shadow of a line of hedge as Jenny and Lily and Yehoshua came out to the gate.

  “Damn my eyes,” swore Jenny. “But I should have guessed she’d take it upon herself to save the whole damn Ridani population.”

  “It’s funny,” Lily mused. “When I first met her, she told me an old Ridani story, about how they got out to Reft space and how they would be saved by Jehane. All the Ridanis thought that Alexander Jehane was that Jehane. But he just took the name because it served him to do so. Now I wonder if Paisley won’t be the real Jehane.”

  “I wish her luck,” said Yehoshua.

  “Yes.” Lily lifted her gaze to stare at the stars. “Because she’s a lot like Robbie Pero. She’ll need it.” She paused and looked around, and Hawk felt her attention center to him again, doubt, fierce protectiveness, and troubled desire. “Where’d Hawk go? Do either of you see him?”

  “No.”

  “No. But he can’t have gone far, Lily-hae. I think Farhad has an electronic leash on him. She always seems to know where he is.”

  “I think I’ll just check, though,” Lily replied. Her doubt mingled with worry and the faintest hint of anger as she walked away from Jenny and Yehoshua.

  “Where do you think he went?” Yehoshua asked.

  “Who the Hells knows,” Jenny replied. “I’ve never seen a person as changed as he is now. I don’t think he can be cured.”

  The dark bulk of Yehoshua’s shoulders moved in a shrug. “Maybe he doesn’t want to be. Void knows he’s gone through more than we can imagine. Dr. Farhad let a few things slip on the trip out here. Not much, but enough.”

  “I didn’t know you felt so much sympathy for him.”

  “Don’t you?”

  Hawk could feel the warmth of her grin as a fragrance on the air. “Of course I do. I liked him too well before to give up on him now. I just—”