by Sharon Lee
“Trader ven’Deelin. I am Khana vo’Daran Clan Baling,” the man told Jethri over a simple bow to ranking authority. “I have stood as valet to this man Bar Jan chel’Gaibin since the day my uncle retired from that position fifteen Standards gone. I stand at his side still, as he’ll have me and needs me.”
That little speech gave Jethri time to weigh the nuance and see it as a canny play. Should he bow to acknowledge, melant’i would require Jethri to give direction to the valet, at least in this short-term situation. Should he not bow to accept, he’d be deferring responsibility to the Scout, who stood frozen and mostly unnoticed just inside the door. The station authorities were not being singled out as having any authority at all.
“Shanna, do you dare?” Bar Jan attempted to sit up, the quick restraining efforts by the medic reinforced by straps already holding him.
The valet ignored the mode of superior to low hire, replying in a soothing subtle mode used by family and servants in dealing with children.
“It is what we have learned to do, my lord, when an illness came upon you, or the migraines. We have both of us learned to permit things done which must be done. I have neither the language nor the melant’i this man does, my lord.”
Bar Jan cursed quietly, then asked—“But where are the others?”
“Back to Wynhael, sir, which is how I was informed of your need. I came immediately.”
“And is my delm informed of my situation?”
“Yes, lord, the delm is informed; I made my way as quickly as I might to see if I might aid before she arrives. Rinork was asleep, keeping to her day schedule as she does.”
“Does she know I am . . . impounded here?”
“I am informed only that she has been informed, lord, and was determining action. My sources are adept, as you know. I felt it best to be here well ahead.”
“And you, Ixin? Do you come to gloat?” A nuanced question that, asked in a severe mode. Perforce Jethri replied in as neutral a mode as he could manage.
“I come to translate. I have informed officials that an accident occurred, causing us both wounds, thus I am here to be sure your recovery goes forward.”
“I have seen my hand, fool. Recovery . . .”
“Have you seen my head, then? I must have it checked in some hours to be sure there is not a concussion.”
Chel’Gaibin lifted his head as he might and saw the dressings Freza had applied.
“You have the luck of a dramliz, have you? But why an accident?”
“If they decide otherwise, we are all at risk—they might hold you and your second as rioters, or my second and associate as such, and all the crews as witnesses. We shall contrive other arrangements among us than jail cells, if we can.”
“Champ, your buddy here’s going to get a quick scan, he is—we’ll need quiet. He may have pain—we need to put a scan board under his arm and then it’ll take about fifteen seconds each time I say ‘go.’ They’ll give us some sound images to work with and some heat images, too, and between them we’ll know something.
“He can’t see it, but if you want, you’ll be able to watch that image build up there on that wall plate. We’ll decide if we can do the work here or send him down to a bigger med center civilside. His other friend there—might be he should hold that free hand and be ready to have it squeezed right hard.”
Jethri translated, telling both the valet and the trader as the med techs shifted a gridded white board nearby. The valet leaned in and without ceremony took hold of the free hand as the gridded board slid under the damaged arm. A swing arm was popped up out of the bed unit and brought within a hand’s breadth of the arm and a small sliding device on that hummed gently.
“Right then, go!”
Jethri translated, watching the image of bones and ghostly outline of skin and muscle as it built up. Bar Jan said something very low and got just as low a reply from the valet.
“And go,” said the medic, having clicked the device at another angle, and this time Bar Jan’s good hand visibly spasmed and it was the valet who made a small sound as his hand was clenched.
“And go!”
Jethri’s anatomy lessons were long ago but he saw enough of shattered bone, broken skin, and muscles torn from their moorings to cringe. This damage was no simple wrap and wait . . .
“One more, if you please. On the count of go!”
The sounds were louder and more complex this time, overriding the ordinary sounds of the air vents and making the small scuffles of sound from the bigger room fade into the background.
The sliding scan made three trips up and down that arm and it was as if the man being scanned shrank; his face got hard and he shut his eyes while both arms shook.
The medic did something that turned the image from side to side, showed it upside down, from interesting angles. Bone splinters, fractures and fractured fractures.
Sounds from the machine went down and sounds in the hall got louder, but when the doctor touched a button and dozens of points were highlighted as problem areas, Jethri grimaced, concentrating on what to tell Bar Jan.
“Hospital. Tell your buddy there I’ll give him a boost on the pain med and we will send him directly to the big hospital. I’ve already sent the images and we’ve got a bed on call; even once everything’s closed up we’ll want to keep it still as we can for several days . . .”
Jethri heard a noise then, turned, saw Infreya chel’Gaibin standing in the door with several retainers, glaring.
“Do not take him away!”
She entered the room, glaring at all, with venomous attention coming to rest on Jethri.
“I will deal with him if you do not have the grace to finish it and he has not the grace to suicide!”
Rinork pushed her way to the side of her son, drawing a gun, the valet suddenly in between mother and son. She pushed against him without recognition, peering around his shoulder to hurl invective at volume.
“Failure! Schemer! You—”
She brought the gun up against the efforts of the valet to stop her.
Bar Jan shifted but restraints held him. His wide eyes shut and—
“Stop!” Jethri swung a forearm, slamming gun hand away from the trapped man. Before she could recover, the Scout had the gun.
“How dare you,” she started but Jethri overrode her Liaden outburst in louder Trade.
“If I’d have killed him, or if he died of it now, we’d call it a fair fight and it’d be over. If you shoot him in cold blood, they’ll space you for murder!”
The Scout approached, bowing equal to equal. “We all witness. If you were to shoot him now, I’d put you in the airlock myself.”
Rinork herself stiffened. The Scout returned the weapon, sans charge.
The valet closed in, putting himself between the mother and the son again. Two of Wynhael’s crewmen stood in the door, indecisive.
Rinork closed her eyes, shoving the empty gun into her pocket, whirled on the hapless valet—
“Turn out his pockets, take his jewelry. His clothes are not worth stripping.”
She stood over the still-shaking man, momentarily blocking the valet from doing this duty.
“Open your eyes to me. You will do this!”
The shaking subsided, and the eyes did open, slowly came to focus.
“Tell me who I am.”
A voice, barely a gasp, said, “Rinork. You are Rinork.”
“Yes, I am Rinork. And you are dead. Dead to me, dead to the clan.”
He sobbed then, tried to pull himself together, closed his eyes, sobbed.
In strong clear tones then, to the medics and to Jethri, she said in Trade, “He is dead!” Then she switched to Liaden, eyes glaring into Jethri’s.
“Bar Jan chel’Gaibin is dead, as I, Rinork proper, declare to all who may hear. So shall it appear in the Gazette, that he died of his own folly on a Terran port. There shall be no Balance for stupidity.”
“Do as I said,” she told the minions at the door. “Leave
him his clothes and nothing more. And you,” she said, pointing haughtily at the valet, “have made your choice. Be his man and burn him when he dies—he is dead and you have jumped ship, as all proper Liadens shall know!”
Jethri looked to the Scout, who turned a bland face to him, his hands showing the pilot’s sign hold steady, hold steady, hold steady. The Scout spoke then, gently, to Jethri alone: “I am helpless against tradition, helpless against the Code. It is her right!”
She turned, and her minions did as they were bid, reaching through the man’s feeble protests, ignoring the protests of the medics, taking rings and necklaces and secret pocket things, pulling his boots and emptying a hidden cache.
The crew of the Wynhael was gone, leaving only the breathing body of a dead former Liaden High House trader, and his valet among strangers and enemies.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Arrival on Halatan
He woke in time to get himself some ’mite from Keravath’s kitchen and retired to his cabin to spend another round wearing his reader. It was just as well that he wanted to study as the ship was approaching docking, but the Scout was surely out of sorts with the whole of Jethri’s troublesome birthright and seemed disinclined to require his attendance at the second seat, or even at table for meals.
This section started with Arin’s face leading a lecture, and then into the main thread of things. The information that the filament of the spiral arm the Seventeen Worlds called home was facing incoming gas and dust clouds wasn’t exactly news, but the results of his tests and scan was.
Jethri felt a thrill of realization about reported dates of Arin’s computations, and the depth and range of them. It might be his book could tell him for sure, but even quick arithmetic showed him how likely it was that the fractins-and-frames building he and Arin had played at for hours at a time were likely the times when Arin had done the computations on the gas flow and compression so important to his Envidaria.
And those results? Arin calmly elucidated the problems: the shift in gravity potential would simply move some Jump points out and away from the current expectations, and those changes could be a simple second of two, or light-minutes or even up to light-days. In some other places the Jump points could paradoxically move in, close to the stars, dangerously close—test runs would need to be frequent and accurate. The same system could go through phases of these changes: compression along known dark matter filaments could induce waves and the chance was that some of the underlying filaments might also move, creating the conditions that could eventually sling-shoot gas giants out of borderline stable systems or move rocky planets in.
Here in this section Arin was explaining a technical equation Jethri realized came from the piloting math, and it was images recorded in Gobelyn’s Market’s tiny trade office.
“Watching this curve,” he said, “we’d expect minor changes over decades. Yet, if we look at the simple compression function here, and here”—Arin picked up a book as a prop, his book!—“and go to some likely rotational rates that one might deduce from a simple calculation based on numbers easily derived from recalling that the incoming gas is going to be streaming and heating at the same time it is being compressed, we’ll see that the density goes way up. It begins to rival stellar mass as it transits. Look at this: ships above a certain size and mass limit will simply not be able to match the numbers and will spend a lot of energy for a Jump that cannot be made to work. Beneath that limit, yes, trade can go forth.”
Here Arin opened his book, referred to a page, and put a number from that page on his display board, holding the book to point at the numbers in emphasis. He solved the math manually, with a bit of theatrical stuff at the end where he showed that “which lets us derive this number: an infinite amount of energy is needed to make the translation at the mass of a supermodern twenty-pod-plus ship on the Liaden and recent Combine approved major ship design, but a finite and doable translation at the mass of oh, say a common Loop ship or even some of the minor ore carriers.
“I’ve solved these equations theoretically, of course, because they’ll fluctuate.” Here he held the book in front of him and waved it again. “This is doable, and a trade system based on what we’ll have is necessary unless we wish to see this whole section cut off. Eventually this compression ring will pass. We’re talking four to five hundred years of potential complete isolation or we can build systems that will allow our ships and regions to survive and even prosper. Consider the lead time on building major trade vessels: fifteen Standards or more from laying the first spine to launch. Consider the current backlog and commitment levels to that building. Let the Liadens and the Combine folks have their games—they are committed to the size of ships they have for at least seventy Standards and closer to one hundred twenty Standards. There are larger ships in design and procurement, and I must say, let them build!
“My proposal is to let them work and for us to use the routes we’ll have with designs we have or will build and we’ll connect with them at a few points and still be part of trade while we build our own resources and avoid costly direct competition.”
“Thank you for your time.”
One last flash of the book, used to underline the math between loop ships and major trade vessels . . . and the Envidaria cut back to text.
The text he read several times and, as much as economics impacted trading, he’d not been pleased to slog through those sections, where sums and assumptions went from exa to pico, all based on the idea that someone somewhere knew exactly what moved markets. The gravitic anomalies, the changing shape of allowable orbits, and even the idea that a well-nigh invisible wall of sub-space stress might affect a ship’s ability to transport food, such facts he had little problem with.
The other issue, of course, was this courier pilot, one Rand yos’Belin. Jethri’d been amazed to hear that ter’Astin’s time at Tradedesk had been even more fruitful than his, but that was settling out in a direction that looked good.
It was kind of a hard thing knowing they could trust the woman, who was the same pilot he’d seen at Infreya chel’Gaiban’s side at the Hall of Festivals. He’d guessed from ter’Astin’s less convoluted explanations that she’d likely been the pilot who’d rummaged Jethri’s clothes on Keravath, and this made him think ter’Astin had known her longer than he knew.
If ter’Astin and she were old bedmates reacquainted on the station, it might mean that—
What it meant was that the Scout was a professional and needed to be trusted on this.
The question of trust, though, brought him around to Freza, and what he might do about her. They both had schedules, and they both had things they were sworn to . . . but . . . yeah, he trusted her, and knew she understood he had things to do, too. Here he sighed, wondering if he’d end up with callouses on his ears if he saw her often enough. She’d made it plain that a shivaree would be fine with her, but they’d left Port Chavvy in a hurry in order to make the meeting here and finish with the whole birthright and Envidaria thing—and besides, they’d not had much in the way of a decent location with the Balrog being as small as it was and Keravath worse.
“Just let me know, Jeth. Give the word and we’ll get things going the very next place we can.”
She’d kissed him then, they having a more or less in the shadows location, and added, “Remember, if we get started we’ll probably want more than a day to do things right. I’m willing to see how things play out, if you are.”
The plan was that Keravath would land ter’Astin and him on Hatalan, which was about as neutral a place as they could find. They’d meet Pilot yos’Belin, with the Scout for his side, and they’d switch the hostage book—with his fractin a promised throw-in—for the Envidaria. It being fresh from the source, he’d swear it the latest edition.
Then, since Elthoria’s schedules looked to be set that way, Keravath would take him directly to her next port, Ynsolt’i. In some ways he dreaded returning there—but the ship needn’t set down so he wouldn’t hav
e to visit the landing area where he’d seen a man suicide for fear of the treachery of Liadens.
A low tone sounded. Well there, he had much to think on, and a landing to observe. He stuffed the Envidaria in its holster, and headed to the flight deck. In a little over an hour, they’d be on the ground.
* * *
Busy was good, yes, and the Scout had given him a few minutes at the controls, insisting he ought to learn something about the ship’s handling as they fell out of orbit and toward atmosphere.
“Is this not all automatic?”
The Scout chuckled. “No fear, Pilot Jethri, it shall not be your hands on the controls as we touch down. Nor, it happens, will it be mine, though I will sit backup. Hatalan has now a more than adequate integrated air traffic system—if we wish we may watch mere airliners or distant blimps float by our glorious starship . . .”
The Scout laughed again, as if the approaching landing was allowing concern to slip away.
“I forget,” the Scout said, “that unlike most of my contemporaries, and most of yours in trade, you are not a planet dweller nor have been willingly. Many young people see starships as a freedom they cannot have on their homeworlds, and often ascribe amazing power and riches to pilots and anyone who leaves the surface of planets regularly.
“This place is full of sand and grit, Sir Guest Pilot. The children often become farm overseers or cattle chasers. Some of them cut wood for a living. Since the place as a whole seeks some ancient magical condition—perhaps it is ‘Resumption’ in Terran?—they sometimes fail of attending properly to illness. We have Scouts on-world to study and assist certain of the sub-sects here, for some declare that all Terrans are lapsed from propriety and they suffer Liadens for us not being declared Terran. The place is a danger to travelers: many of the halflings and older with sense seek to escape and thus fall prey to, well, the glitter of firegems or offers of short flights. Yet they are so strict with those striving for elsewhere that a single unpermissioned liaison of joy may ruin a life.
