The Dragon Variation

by Sharon Lee

  "He had another picture, of a sheep. He said that they were—not clever."

  Anne grinned. "My grandfather kept sheep," she said, "back on New Dublin. He contended that they were smarter than a radish—on a good day."

  Drusil tel'Bana smiled and in that instant Anne saw the woman as she had been: Humorous, vivid, intelligent. Then the cloud of grief enfolded her again and she gestured toward the laden table.

  "These are his notes. Please, Scholar, of your kindness . . ."

  "It's what I came for," Anne said. She spun the desk chair around to the table, reached out a long arm and snagged one of the straight-backed "student's" chairs.

  "Do you have time to sit with me?" she asked Drusil tel'Bana. "In case I should have questions as I go through?"

  "My time is yours," the other woman said, sitting primly on the edge of the straight chair.

  Anne, perforce, sat in the battered, too-small desk chair, and pulled the first stack of folders toward her.

  HOURS LATER, she sat back and scraped the hair from her face, staring blankly at the blank wall before her. Her shoulder and back muscles were cramped and she didn't doubt her legs would stiffen up when she finally tried to stand—but none of that mattered.

  Disordered as his notes undoubtedly were, it was plain to one who had corresponded with him and who tended in certain directions of thought herself, that Jin Del yo'Kera had found it. He had found what she herself had been looking for—the proof, the empirical, undeniable evidence of a common mother tongue, which had then given birth to its disparate, triplet children: Liaden, Terran, Yxtrang.

  Jin Del had found it—his notations, his careful reasoning, his checks and double checks—all here, needing only to be re-ordered, culled and made ready for presentation.

  All here, all ready.

  All, except the central, conclusive fact.

  Anne looked aside, to where Drusil tel'Bana still sat patiently in her hard chair, face grooved with grief, but otherwise composed, calm.

  "Is there," Anne asked slowly. "Forgive me! I do not wish to ask—improperly, but I must know."

  Drusil tel'Bana inclined her head. "There is no shame in an honest inquiry, Scholar. You know that is true."

  Anne sighed. "Then I ask if there are—people—who would feel their—melant'i at—risk, should a fact be found that linked Terra to Liad?"

  "There are many such," the other woman said, with matter-of-fact dreariness. "Even among your own folk, is there not the Terran Party, which would wish to deny Liad the trade routes?"

  The Terran Party was a gaggle of cross-burning crackpots, but it did exist. And if the Terran Party existed, Anne thought wildly, why shouldn't there be a Liaden Party?

  "You feel," Drusil tel'Bana said hesitantly, "that there is something—missing—from Jin Del's work?"

  "Yes," Anne told her. "Something very important—the centerpiece of his proof, in fact. Without it, we merely have speculation. And all his notes lead me to believe that what he had was proof!"

  Beside her, the other woman sagged, tears overflowing all at once.

  "Scholar!" Anne reached out—was restrained by a lifted hand as Drusil tel'Bana shielded her face.

  "Please," she gasped. "I ask that you do not regard—I am not generally thus. I shall—seek the Healers, by and by. Only tell me if you are able, Scholar."

  Anne blinked. "Able?"

  "Able to take on Jin Del's work, to find his proof and finish his lifepiece. I cannot. I lack the spark. But you—you are like him for brilliance. It was your thought that started him on this path. It is only fitting that you are the one to complete what you caused to begin."

  And there was, Anne admitted wryly, a certain justice to it. Jin Del yo'Kera had unstintingly given of his time and his knowledge to the young Terran scholar he had graciously addressed as 'colleague.' Together, the two of them had constructed the quest represented by the notes now spread, helter-skelter, before her. That one of the two was untimely called aside did not mean that the quest was done.

  She sighed, trying not to think of the years it might take to recapture that one vital fact.

  "I will need to take this away with me," she told Drusil tel'Bana, waving a hand at the littered table. "I will require permission to go through his files—the computer. The books."

  "Such permissions are on file from the Scholar Chairman of the University. If you find it necessary to take anything else, only ask me, Scholar, and I shall arrange all." The Liaden scholar rose and went to the desk, pulled open a drawer and extracted a carry-case.

  "What you have upon the table should fit in here, I think."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Love: the delusion that one woman differs from another.

  —H.L. Mencken

  "SACRIFICE?"

  Er Thom sagged to the edge of the desk, staring at Daav out of stunned purple eyes.

  "Anne said it would be a sacrifice for me to become her lifemate?"

  "She stopped short of the actual word," Daav acknowledged, "but I believe the sentence was walking in that direction, yes."

  "I—" He glanced aside, moved a slender, ringless hand and rubbed Relchin's ears.

  "There—must be an error," he said as the big cat began to purr. "She cannot have understood." He looked back to Daav.

  "Anne is not always as—certain—of the High Tongue as—"

  "We were speaking Terran," Daav interrupted and Er Thom blinked.

  "I—do not understand."

  "She said that, also." Daav sighed, relenting somewhat in the face of his brother's bewilderment. "She admits to being in love with you, darling—very frank, your Anne! However, she is sensible that a Terran lover makes you vulnerable, as she would have it, and that a Terran wife must make you doubly so." He smiled, wryly. "An astonishingly accurate summation, given that she does not play."

  Er Thom chewed his lip.

  "She asked me," he said, all his confusion plain for the other to read. "She asked me to guard her melant'i."

  "She did?" Daav blinked. "In—traditional—manner?"

  "We were speaking Terran," Er Thom said slowly. "Last evening, when I had gone to escort her to Prime. We were about to leave her apartment and she suddenly paused and looked at me with—with all of her heart in her face. And she said, Don't let me make a mistake . . ."

  "And you accepted this burden on her behalf?"

  "With joy. It was the avowal I had longed for, which she had not given, though there was certainly sufficient else between us—" He broke off, eyes wide. "It was plain," he said stubbornly. "There could have been no error."

  "And yet," Daav said, "the lady spoke—plainly, I assure you!—of her intention to show you a dry face, when time had come for her to end her guesting and return to University."

  "No." Er Thom's voice broke on the denial. He cleared his throat. "No. She cannot—"

  Daav frowned. "Would you deny an adult person the right to her own necessities?"

  "Certainly not! It is only that there must be some error, some nuance I am too stupid to see. Anne is honorable. To ask for the care of a lifemate and in the next breath speak of giving nubiath'a—it is not her way. Something has gone awry. Something—"

  "And how," Daav cut in gently, hating what he must put forth. "if the lady asked not for lifemate's care, but for that of kin?"

  "Kin?" Er Thom's face showed blank astonishment. "I am no kin of Anne."

  "Yet her son is accepted of Korval," Daav murmured, "which might encourage her to believe herself in a manner—kin—to you."

  A vivid image of Anne's body moving under him, a recollection of her kiss, her face transcendent with desire—Er Thom glanced up. "I am not persuaded she believes any such thing."

  "Hah." Daav's lips twitched, straightened.

  "Another way, then. Understand that I honor her abilities in the High Tongue. However, you, yourself, say her proficiency sometime wavers. How if her understanding of custom is likewise uncertain? How if she should consider that a gu
est of the House might ask this thing of a son of the House?" He moved his shoulders.

  "She has already made one error of custom, has she not?" He asked his brother's stubborn eyes. "In the matter of naming the child?"

  "Yes," Er Thom admitted after a moment. "But there is no—" He broke off, sighing sharply.

  "I shall endeavor to arrive at plain speaking," he said slowly, "and show Anne—" He stopped, wariness showing in his face.

  "Is it—possible—that the delm will allow a lifemating between myself and Anne Davis?"

  "The delm . . ." Daav moved from his chair, took two steps toward the desk and his brother—and halted, hands flung, palm out, showing all.

  "The delm is most likely to ask you to consider what this affair has thus far bought you," he said levelly. "He is likely to ask you to think on the anger of your thodelm, who refuses to See your child, and who is prepared to ring such a peal over you as the world has never witnessed! The delm may ask you to look on the disruption your actions have introduced into the clan entire." He took a gentle breath, meeting his brother's eyes.

  "The delm is likely to ask you if another coin might spend to better profit, brother, and the Terran lady released to her necessities."

  Er Thom was silent, eyes wide and waiting.

  "The delm may well ask," Daav concluded, with utmost gentleness, "that you give this lady up."

  "Ah." Er Thom closed his eyes and merely sat, hip on the desk, one foot braced against the carpet, hand quiet along Relchin's back.

  "With all respect to the delm," he murmured eventually, and in the Low Tongue, so Daav understood that as yet the delm was safely outside the matter. "Might it be—permitted—to mention that one has striven for several years to put this lady from one's mind?" He opened his eyes, tear-bright as they were.

  "Whatever the success of that enterprise, certainly she remained in one's heart." He moved his shoulders, almost a shudder. "The delm needs no reminder of one's—adherence to duty—saving this single thing. To give her up—that is to go now, tonight, to Solcintra, and give myself to the Healers."

  And have Anne Davis ripped not only from his memory but from his daily mind, Daav thought, overriding his own shudder. Which commission the Healers certainly would refuse.

  However, were Anne Davis to depart according to her stated intention, the Healers would very easily agree to assuage what measure of grief Er Thom might experience from the parting.

  Daav stared at his brother's face, seeing the pain there, feeling his longing, and his need.

  It's ill-done, he warned himself, though he already knew he would fail to heed his own warning. You set him up to fail; you bait the trap that will spring forgetfulness with that which he most desires to recall . . .

  "Daav?"

  He started, went forward and enclosed his brother in embrace. Laying his cheek against the warm, bright hair, he closed his eyes, and allowed himself a fantasy: They were boys again, the lie went, and nothing loomed to mar their love. They were one mind with two bodies, neither ascendant over the other. There was no dark power that one held which with a word would change the other, irrevocably and forever . . .

  "A wager," Daav whispered, never caring that his voice trembled. It did not matter. Er Thom would take the bait. He must.

  Daav stepped back and met his brother's eyes. "A wager, darling," he repeated softly.

  "Tell me."

  "Why, only this: Woo the lady while she is here. Win her—plainly, mind—and with full understanding between you! Win her aye, and win all. The delm shall overrule yos'Galan, the lady shall stand at your side, the child shall be your acknowledged heir. All." His mouth twisted wryly.

  "Does your wooing fail to sway the lady from her necessities, then the day she leaves Liad is the day you make your bow to Master Healer Kestra."

  "Hah." Er Thom's lips bent in a pale smile, eyes intent on Daav's face.

  "Shall I lose, brother?" he asked softly.

  "I will tell you," Daav said with the utter truth one owed to kin, "that I think you shall."

  "So little faith!" Er Thom moved his shoulders. "It is only a continue of the throw made three years past. The game continues." He smiled more widely and gave a little half-bow from his perch against the desk. "We play on."

  Daav returned the bow, speechless and grief-shot, in a fair way to hating delm and clan and homeworld and the necessities the weaving of all created—

  "Never mind." Er Thom came off the desk and moved forward, raising a hand to cup Daav's cheek, to trace the line of a bold black brow.

  "Never mind, beloved," he whispered, and touched the barbaric silver earring, sending it to trembling. "I shall not lose."

  SOME HOURS LATER, Daav leaned far back in his work chair and stretched mightily, fisted hands high over his head.

  "Well," he said, righting himself and glancing over to where Er Thom sat beside him, silently perusing the screen. "Does that cover everything, do you think?"

  "I believe it is a solid beginning," Er Thom replied, picking up his glass and sipping. "A contract of formal alliance between Clan Korval and Anne Davis. Free passage on any Korval ship. Right of visit to our son . . ."

  "And half your personal fortune," Daav finished, tasting his own wine. "Your mother will dislike that excessively, darling."

  Er Thom shrugged, much as he had earlier when this point had been raised.

  "Money is easy to come by," he murmured now, dismissing his parent's displeasure as the merest annoyance. "Why should Anne not have comfort in her life?"

  "Why, indeed?" Daav sighed. "I do wonder—"

  Er Thom flashed him a quick purple glance. "What is it you wonder?"

  "Only if the lady's understanding of custom was equal to the knowledge that her child belongs to Korval. I had the distinct impression that she meant to take him away with her when she returned to University." He sipped wine. "Though I could be mistaken."

  "I am certain that she understands that Shan is of Korval," Er Thom said. "We had discussed it—several times."

  "Quite a donnybrook, as the lady described it," Daav agreed. "Still, I wonder if she does know."

  "Since I am already embarked upon a mission of clarity, I shall undertake to be certain that she does." Er Thom frowned. "What is a donnybrook?"

  "An argument," Daav murmured, "named in honor, or so I am told, of a possibly-mythic town on Terra where fisticuffs is the pastime of choice." He grinned. "A language to love, admit it!"

  "I fear my proficiency falters daily," Er Thom said mournfully. Far down the hall, a clock could be heard striking the hour.

  "Gods, only hear the time! And I expected early at Port tomorrow—"

  Daav eyed him doubtfully. "Are you?"

  "Yes, certainly. I must tend some matters on the Passage first, then there are orders to place, people to see . . ."

  "Naturally enough, since you have been away for some time. However," Daav hesitated.

  "Your thodelm expects there is no reason for you to go into Port. Or so she said."

  Er Thom glanced down at his naked hands; back to Daav's face.

  "My thodelm," he said levelly, "is—alas—mistaken."

  "Yes," Daav agreed, "I thought that she might be." He waved a hand at the screen. "Get you home, then. I shall send this lot on to Mr. dea'Gauss. He should have the framed contracts to you within a two-day. You and I can then discuss any modifications that may be necessary before the final papers are presented to Anne."

  "All right." Er Thom rose and smiled. "Thank you, Daav."

  "Thank me, is it? Go home, darling, you're in your cups."

  HE LET HIMSELF in through the door off the East Patio and went, surefooted and quiet, through halls illuminated by night-dims.

  In the upper hallway, he lay his hand against a door-plate, and stepped gently into the darkened room beyond.

  Anne lay in the long, wide bed, fast asleep in the wash of star shine from the open skylight. She looked vulnerable, thus, and incalculably precious: a je
wel for which a man must gamble—and never think of losing.

  He sighed as he stood over her, for he understood Daav's wager well enough, knew the dangers that dodged his steps and his brother's distress—who could have no less failed to offer the wager than Er Thom declined to take it. To be delm was an awesome and perilous duty. Daav had never wanted the Ring, which was Er Thom's certain knowledge. He had, indeed, begged his delm to pass him by, to place the Ring in abler hands—

  In Er Thom's hands.

  She had refused, which was wisdom, and Daav was thus Korval, gods pity him. Daav possessed full measure that trait which allowed him to offer such a thing as this twisty wager to his cha'leket, expecting him to fail—for the good of the clan.

  It is a terrible thing, Er Thom thought, leaning above his sleeping love, for a delm to have a brother.

  Beneath the star-glown blanket, Anne stirred and lifted a hand.

  "Er Thom?" Sleep-drugged and beautiful, her voice. He caught her questing hand and bent to gently kiss the palm.

  "Hush, sweeting," he murmured, soothing in the Low Tongue. "I had not meant to wake you. Sleep, now . . ."

  "You, too," she insisted in Terran. "It's late."

  "Indeed, and I am to go early to Port . . ."

  "Tell the computer to wake you up," she mumbled, her hand going slack in his as she slid back toward sleep. "Come to bed . . ."

  With exquisite care, he lay her hand back atop the coverlet, then stood still in the starlight, watching her and recalling what his thodelm had ordered.

  Thinking on Daav's damned, labyrinthine wager.

  Woo the lady. Win her aye and win all . . .

  Anne feared that a lifemate's burden of shared melant'i put him at risk in the world. Such fear did her only honor, so he considered it, and proved—if it happened he required proof—the depth of her love.

  To win her, he must cross custom one final time, show her his heart and his innermost mind—as if they were already lifemated many years.