Revenge of the Catspaw

by Helena Puumala

  “You want to know why people are cruel to one another? The Witches, and the teachers of children who have taken lessons from them, and other wise women, say that it is because humans are imperfect creatures. And, according to them, we can never attain true perfection, so we'll never succeed in being totally good and kind to others of our kind. But we must try to improve our record, and we must also try to eradicate cruelty wherever we find it. The Creators demand it of us, but they also help us with the task. That's probably why we're now involved as deeply as we are with the situation in the Neotsarian Sector. In a sense we have been asked to help better a situation which has swung too far in the wrong direction.”

  She grinned.

  “By the way, I passed my tests. I'll be starting my Agency training on Space Station ASC with the next group of recruits.”

  “Oh, wow,” Lindy breathed. “That's great! And Texi?”

  “I'll be apprenticing in Space Ship Mechanics at the ASC Port,” he said with a broad grin. “We're doing like Jillian and Joe: she, Agent; he, Space Ship Mechanic.”

  “Maybe Lindy and I'll see you on Yukoid, in a year or so,” said Cameron. “We are going there, Lindy aren't we? To help foment revolution?”

  “Yes. We'll be the Agent and the engineering nerd couple.”

  “I think,” said Shellion, “that we'll find a use for both of you.”

  **

  In the Back Room Restaurant, Sarah sipped wine from her glass while she and her companions waited for their meals to arrive. She was nervous; it seemed like, lately, the challenges seemed to follow one another, without much of a break in between. She found herself almost missing the simple life of Sunny which had begun to grate on her before it had come to a dramatic end.

  Coryn's parents, naturally enough, wanted to talk about their son.

  “I'm still amazed that he seemed to have settled down to something resembling a normal life,” Darrin Leigh said with a shake of his head. “He was such a handful until Carovan directed him into Agency work. And that work was not run-of-the mill!”

  “He was always very much his own person,” said Moire. “But his heart was always in the right place.”

  “I'm not sure that I'd call combining the job of an Agent with that of the Kordean-Confederation Liaison Officer a 'normal life',” Peter commented. “The situation on this world is much less tense now than it used to be, since some of the most power-hungry Neotsarians have been—shall we say—eliminated, but, for a time, the stakes were pretty high, and he was right in the middle of it all. Almost as close to the eye of the storm as Sarah was.”

  “His role, in the first place, here on Kordea was to keep you safe, is my understanding?” Darrin asked Sarah.

  Sarah made a face.

  “That was so. He and Witch Marlyss shared the duty, and, boy, did I resent them for it,” she said.

  “Your resentment must have been a little hard on him,” Moire said with a grin. “He had fallen in love with you by then.”

  “You think so?” Sarah's eyebrows were up. “The possibility never occurred to me.”

  “That's why he dug up the job. Why he left the lucrative boudoirs of RES,” Moire said with certainty. “I know my son. I knew there was somebody he was really keen on, I just didn't know who it was. He was very closed-mouthed about it, even to me, and he and I always talked pretty freely. I thought that perhaps the woman in question was not responding to his charm offensive, and that was depressing him.”

  Sarah giggled.

  “He was very careful to not charm me,” she said. “Although he lay it on thick with Witch Marlyss, and the other Circle Witches who he dealt with. All to good effect in terms of the diplomatic relations involved.”

  “Which is exactly as he ought to have behaved under the circumstances,” pointed out Darrin. “He was in a guardianship role in relation to you.”

  “Indeed.” Now Sarah winced. “Jillian Ashton explained that to me in precise detail one time when she lay into me for acting like a spoiled child—which I was doing. In those days I remember thinking that Coryn's Dad would have been proud of him, he did his job in such a straight-laced, precise fashion. It drove me crazy.”

  “Were you in love with him, at that time?” Moire asked.

  “I don't know.”

  Sarah looked at her father and made another face.

  “If I was, I didn't dare to acknowledge it to myself. Dad, you had some idea of how it was with my sister, Maris, and me. As I've told you, it only got worse, after you and Cam disappeared. I was the ugly sister; I didn't have much self-confidence about men, by the time I left Laurentia.”

  “Possibly, if you had had a father present, to show you love and admiration, it might have eased the rivalry between sisters,” Peter said with a sigh. “When Cam and I visited Earth, I had the impression that your stepfather was pretty indifferent to you.”

  “True. Though I had great grandparents,” Sarah said. “They made a lot of difference in my life. I'm hoping, now that much of the danger swirling around me has diffused, that, once Coryn is better, we can visit them. It's been a while.”

  “The two of you should take some time off, and go for a proper honeymoon when that happens,” Moire said. “Visit us, and Coryn's sister. Go and see Fiana, Steph and Baby Rory on Mallora. We hardly saw them here; they were in such a rush to get going.”

  “It was fun seeing Fiana all domesticated,” said Darrin with a grin. “Motherhood suits her. And that bloke that she married seemed like a really nice guy.”

  “Steph is,” Sarah said. “And lots of fun. Plus Fiana has been really good for him. Yeah, we'll definitely have to put visiting them on our to-do list.”

  “So you're pretty confident that this Healing Session which is in progress is going to fix what's wrong with Coryn?” Moire asked a bit tentatively.

  Sarah had wondered how worried the Leighs were about Coryn's health.

  “The doctor of the Fleet Ship seemed to think that he was in really rough shape,” Darrin added. “She said that if the Kordean Healers could help him within the time frame they were claiming, they were frigging miracle workers.”

  “Mind you, she said it was possible that they are,” Moire added. “She was quite impressed by what you had done with him; yet she said that you claimed to have no talent at all, in Kordean terms, for healing.”

  “Yeah, what I did was pretty primitive, and I struggled like a madwoman to even manage that much. And I had the Guru's people—the Naralusians, all who were on the ship—helping me.”

  Sarah stopped to order her thoughts.

  “Marlyss,” she finally said, “has immense faith in this Healer Carlina. And Marlyss wants to see Coryn well. Like I said earlier, Coryn went out of his way to charm Marlyss, and he succeeded, probably beyond his expectations. So when you meet her—and you will—understand that to her Coryn is as dear as if he was her own child.”

  She grinned.

  “She's way more fond of him than she is of me,” she added. “Although she and I have a great deal of affection and respect for one another.”

  “That boy always was able to charm women who were his mother's age,” Darrin said with a shake of his head.

  “That's not a bad thing, Darrin,” Moire protested with a laugh. “Especially now that he is a married man.”

  “And irrevocably tied to his wife,” added Peter. “And she to him.”

  “I have to admit that I'm very, very anxious to see him well, too,” said Sarah. “Seeing him as broken as he was when I'd done the transportation trick, nearly tore my heart apart. I'm definitely counting on Healer Carlina to perform the miracle that she is reputed to be capable of.”

  **

  Mel Jourda had arrived in Trahea again. Sarah was vaguely aware of his presence while she showed her in-laws around the city, pointing out interesting sights, and places that had relevance to her and Coryn. She showed them the alley that led from the Port to the Trade City with its stalls of cheap souvenirs.

  �
��The Kitsch Alley the Liaison Office staff have started calling it,” she explained. “It had no moniker at all, and that one is as good as any; it's an accurate description, anyway. The place where a traveller can pick up something to take with them, if they didn't think to shop in the Trade City.”

  From the Trade City they took a detour to look at the housing project for the locals which was under construction, and which Coryn had shepherded into being.

  “It is very important because it gives the locals who work at the Port an opportunity to live in the kind of quarters which they prefer, but without being sardined into the poorer areas of Old Trahea. Kordeans don't care that much for Terran architecture; they fill their houses with rooms that we would consider superfluous, and cover their walls with hangings.”

  Although Ferhil Stones was not like that, she mused to herself. But, then, it was a stone pile lined with wood—perhaps the wood took the place of all the fabric?

  “Texi and Nance from the Liaison Office were planning to move into the development as soon as it was finished,” she added. “But I guess they're going to Space Station ASC instead, Nance to train as an Agent, and Texi to take Space Ship Mechanic's training.”

  Darrin was very interested in the buildings along the Main Street of Old Trahea

  “This place is a living museum, for heavens' sake,” he said as he craned his neck every which way to get a look at as much as was physically possible. “How old are these buildings, anyway?”

  Sarah shook her head.

  “Old. That's all I know, and most locals aren't any better informed. It seems like Trahea has always been here; even though that can't possibly be so.”

  Sarah was grateful to those people in the Port who helped her by taking the Leighs off her hands with social invitations of all kinds. Coryn was well-liked, and many of the people who had liked him were pleased to have an opportunity to find out where he came from, and the parents were glad to talk about their son. It probably relieved their anxiety about having to rely on a healing method which was completely alien to them.

  Sarah spent some of the time that she had to herself trying to figure out what the high-ranking diplomat, Jourda was up to. He had closeted himself for several hours with Peter, she knew; Peter had mentioned the event during a meal he and Sarah had shared in the Liaison Office Residence at the end of one work night, when they, miraculously, had been the only two people in the kitchen. She had asked what was going on, but Peter had not answered the question, merely redirected her attention, cleverly enough that she had not realized that he had done so, until much later. The only conclusion that she had been able to draw was that her father was turning into as wily a diplomat as her husband was. Perhaps Coryn had known that would happen when he had suggested Peter as his replacement in the Liaison Office.

  She was certain, however, that the Diplomatic Corps were up to something, and Mel Jourda was involved in the plotting. When she ran into Dyron at the LockandKey one night, after the Port work-shifts were over, he mentioned that he had had some serious discussions with Jourda, whom he called the mysterious, but influential man from the Confederation Diplomacy.

  “So what did he want?” she asked curiously. “Or offer?”

  Dyron had shrugged his shoulders apologetically.

  “I'm not to talk about it, yet,” he said. “You will find out soon enough.”

  “Sarah and I were Team mates on Volgoid,” said Shellion.

  He was squiring Ariane around, and had been the one to suggest that Sarah come with them to “the cool drinking establishment, the like of which there are none in the Neotsarian Sector of the Galaxy”.

  “I don't feel the need to keep secrets from her,” he added. “So I'll talk about the meeting that I had with this Jourda”

  “I didn't realize that he had approached you,” Sarah responded. “If that's true, then he's probably working with The Agency, too.”

  “He is,” Shellion said. “He told me as much. He said that the Acting Head of The Agency, Harmiss, is a much easier person to work with than the last guy was. With luck, he said, maybe it could be arranged that he becomes the permanent Head. And they're trying to arrange a scenario in which it's easier for us Revolutionaries to undermine the political pyramid of the Neotsarian Empire, easier because we'll have Agency help available to us. And that would involve using Dyron's home world, Naralusia, as a base for Confederation operations, since it is actually within the Neotsarian Sector, but the Naralusians are capable of keeping the Neotsarian War Fleet away from it.”

  “Hm,” said Sarah. “Achieving that would probably require some fine footwork by the Confederation Diplomatic Corps. Not that there wouldn't be something for your people in it; you Naralusians—and to think I've hung out with the Guru Johannes all this time and never knew what his world was called until you, Dyron, and your friends told us—will be much safer within the orbit of the messy Confederation than under the repressive rule of the Neotsarian Empire.”

  “And, as Grampa Johannes would say, dealing with people who prefer diplomatics to dictates, is always the way to go,” added Dyron with a grin.

  “And, let's face it, if there's a move to undermine the power of the Neotsarian Elites, that's a good thing for me,” Sarah said. “It hardly matters to me who is doing it. I won't be a target any longer, if the amarto-energy is no longer seen as a route to Galactic domination. I'll be able to come and go as I want.”

  “Have you heard anything about how your husband is doing?” Ariane asked. “Is the healing working?”

  Sarah sighed.

  “I won't know anything until Witch Marlyss gets in touch with me. She and Healer Carlina were very confident about Carlina's ability to fix him up as good as new, when she took him under her care. It's been a few days now, and, yes, I'm getting anxious, of course, I am. But I do know that a Kordean Witch with her Stone, can perform miracles, and I'm told that Carlina is as good a Healer as you can find on the planet.”

  “Well, then have faith in this Carlina,” said Shellion with a grin. “If she can heal as well as you can transmit matter, your man is in good hands.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Marlyss got hold of Sarah through ESP.

  It was just after sunset and the Lina-ascent hour when Sarah, chatting with Curt, the house servant who had just arrived and was making the first pot of coffee for the guests of the Liaison Office Residence, felt the presence of the Eldest of the Circle of Twelve hovering about her. She quickly apologized to Curt and retreated into the room which had been hers and Coryn's for a short while, and now housed only her—plus Coryn's things, of course. She wrapped herself in his robe which she had got into the habit of sleeping with, while she drew out her Stone, and settled down on the bed to concentrate with it.

  “What news?” she asked, the moment she had a clear mental channel to her mentor.

  “Excellent news, Sarah. Carlina has finished, and he's sleeping like a baby, all at ease at last.” Sarah could feel the delighted smile behind Marlyss' thought. “She said that he had been in a really bad way; the worst case she has ever treated. But she also said that he's a fighter; he really wanted to get better. She thinks that it was the fighter in him that made it possible for him to withstand what he was going through while it was happening. A less determined soul would have given in and passed on to easier pastures.

  “He looks wonderful; quite a number of us have been slipping into his room to look at his sleeping face. It's peaceful now.

  “So catch a ride, and come; bring others who want to see him, certainly his parents. Jaime says that they'll house anyone whom we can't accommodate, at the Institute. According to him they have lots of room, though the guests will have to look after themselves; there aren't many house servants there.”

  “The Terrans are used to looking after themselves.” Sarah said with a happy giggle.

  She could barely contain herself as she rushed out of the bedroom, still wrapped in Coryn's robe.

  “Dad!” she sh
outed. “Moire! Darrin! Carlina's finished healing Coryn! Marlyss says that he's sleeping like a baby!”

  Peter was at the Residence communications console. He turned to grin at her.

  “Just got the official message from Witch Alta,” he said. “We're invited to Ferhil Stones,” he added for the benefit of Moire and Darrin who were just coming out of the bedroom assigned to them.

  Sarah did a little impromptu dance to the amusement of Curt who was pouring mugs of coffee, and starting another potful, before beginning to cook breakfast. Then she went and hugged her mother-in-law, and the two of them held each other, laughing through tears.

  “I think that we're going to love our little daughter-in-law,” said Darrin to Peter, as he watched the two of them “Almost as much as she and Coryn appear to love one another.”

  “It's wonderful,” said Peter with an unexpected pang of envy, which he knew to be silly and irrational.

  Still, it had been hard to face the fact that Sarah's mother, Cara was irretrievably lost to him, since she had remarried, and was content with her second husband. Then he brightened, having remembered something. The Witch Clarisse, the Eldest of the Six, had been using the Terran transport system (flyers and flits) which he had arranged for the Circle Witches at Mel Jourda's suggestion, to come and visit him whenever her duties permitted. Perhaps it was time to start encouraging her; she was a bright, attractive woman, and both Sarah and Cameron obviously liked her. If they could make their work lives mesh....

  **

  Ferhil Stones was in a celebratory mode. Everybody, even the servants who normally tried to remain invisible, and the lowly, white-gowned Apprentices were grinning from ear to ear, it seemed. The greenhoods were chattering and laughing among themselves, and Marlyss and Carlina, accompanied by the Guru Johannes when they came to greet the visitors in the front lobby, looked absolutely ebullient.