A Liaden Universe® Constellation: Volume Two

by Sharon Lee

  Leaning against the wall, he once again went over his stolen gun. It was a good gun, loaded, well-oiled with an extra clip of pellets riding in the handle. The guard had taken good care of his weapon. Points for the—

  Above him and to the left, where the ongoing flight angled off the landing, there was a noise. A very slight noise, not immediately repeated, as if someone had scuffed a boot against the edge of a step.

  He went down on one knee on the step, raised the gun in two hands, and waited, breathing slow. Easy . . .

  Another scuff, and a shadow on the dim wall of the landing. His finger tightened on the trigger. Silence—

  And a sudden appalling rush of sound as a dark figure hurtled and hit the landing, flat-footed, gun out and pointing at his head. He had a moment to feel anger, then—

  “Kore!”

  He blinked and stared up into a pale face and dark brown eyes, short dark hair showing a blaze of gray at the temple.

  “Midj?” Slowly, he lowered the gun. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Back atcha.” She lowered her own weapon and stood, a little stiffly, he thought. “But it’s gonna hafta to wait. I’m supposed to be getting you out of here, to a safe place.”

  He frowned. “Safe by whose standards?”

  “Woman by the name of Sambra Reallen.”

  He thought about it, shook his head. “Can’t trust her.”

  “Can’t not trust her.” she countered. “She picked me up in port. Could’ve just as easily been the chairman, the way I hear it. She wants him gone and she don’t want to jinx the High Judge’s play, if he has a play. Which you’re supposed to tell her.”

  He snorted. “She wouldn’t believe me.” He thought again. “How were you supposed to get me out of here?”

  “Same way I came in,” she said, jerking her head up the stairs. “We walk up to the roof. There’s a monowing waiting to lift us out.”

  “OK,” he said, and came to his feet. He smiled, then, and it felt like his soul was stretched so wide it might burt a seam.

  “Midj, thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  * * *

  THEY WERE TWO STEPS below the fifteenth landing when the alarm went out. Kore threw himself onto the landing, fingers moving rapidly on the code bar. The panel slid open as Midj came up beside him.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Damned if I know. But the doors will seal in ten seconds—go!” He pushed her through and followed, into the dimness of the supply room.

  “Where are we?”

  Trust Midj to ask the question. “Chairman Trogar’s office.”

  “Great.”

  “Could be worse. Let’s see . . .”

  Carefully, he eased open the closet door. The receptionist’s desk was empty, but he could hear voices out in the hall. He slipped forward, barely hearing Midj’s curse as she followed him.

  He crept to the hall door, peered around—and abruptly gave up stealth.

  In the center of the hall, surrounded by gaping humans, stood two large green—persons. On the floor beyond them, he could see a form, a shock of white hair, a widening pool of blood, a—weapon, though what sort of weapon he scarcely knew.

  The largest of the two green persons—sang. There was a flash of pinpoint light, a snap of sound and the weapon was molten metal, mixing with liquid red. There followed a stifled scream from the crowd and a shifting of bodies, and then, from the crowd, one stepped forward and bowed.

  “I am called Sambra Reallen, Chairman Pro Tem,” she said softly. “How may I serve you, Aged Ones?”

  * * *

  SKEEDADDLE WAS WELL AWAY, on course for Clarine to chat with Teyope, should he have actually happened to deliver the cargo as commissioned. At least, that’s what Sambra Reallen knew. It was the least of what Sambra Reallen knew, and Midj hoped she had joy in her new status. Talk about being in a position to honor promises.

  “She’ll have to be certified by the department heads.” Kore sat down on the edge of the co-pilot’s chair and held out a steaming cup. “’toot?”

  “Thanks.” She took it, spinning her chair to face him. She drew a breath, thinking she might be about to say something, found her mouth dry, and drank some ’toot instead.

  “I wanted to say.” Kore was holding his cup between both palms, staring down as if the hot liquid were a navigation screen. “I wanted to say—I’m sorry. I had no right to pull you into that, Midj, knowing what you—knowing what it could become. My arrogance. I thought I was ahead of the trouble.”

  “Well,” she said, softly. And then again, “Well.”

  He looked up, amber eyes wary. The black hair showed some shine of silver, his face marked with the lines of responsibility and worry.

  “Your plan. I mean your old plan. Is that playing out the way you’d hoped?”

  He tipped his head, considering. Had a sip of ’toot.

  “Not exactly. There were compromises needed. Somehow, I hadn’t thought of there needing to be compromises. Some good people died, and I never meant for that to happen. Justice . . .” The ghost of a laugh. “Justice isn’t always easy to cipher. I didn’t expect that at all.” He sighed.

  “That said—we’ve made progress. In some direction. We’ve introduced another player into the game, and another set of rules. Is that a good thing, a bad thing, or of null value?” He shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  Right.

  Midj sipped her ’toot; used her chin to point at the board.

  “Course is set for Clarine. It’s easy to change, if you’re expected somewhere. Or I can set you down where you say. . . or, you can stay on.”

  There, it was out in the open.

  Kore was looking at her like he thought hard.

  “Stay on?”

  “If you want to.” The cup of ’toot trembled a bit in her hand, belying her attempt at a casual tone.

  She cleared her throat and met his eyes square. “Thinking over it all—I had the idea we’d been a damn-good team, Kore. Had the idea we might be again, if you’re wantin’ it.”

  She felt a moment of panic then—a moment brought on in part by twenty years of the nagging voice in her head telling her, He joined up with his eyes open, Midj—they’ll never let him go—

  “That is,” she said with a challenge, “if you want it and if they’ll let you . . .”

  A pause, getting long while he—and she—sipped at their cups. Then . . .

  “There isn’t anything I want more,” Kore said slowly. “But I—Midj, maybe we need to do this in stages. First, I gotta get back to the Judge. I’ve got to let him know where I am, how it is with me. And—I’d like you to meet him. Talk with him.”

  Meet the Juntava who had stolen away Kore and twenty years of their life? She felt the anger rise—shook it off as he kept talking.

  “Then, well, I got a couple Standard years’ of vacation time coming. We could go somewhere . . . like maybe Panore.”

  He favored her suddenly with a grin that made her sway as she laughed.

  “A couple years’ vacation? On Panore, is it? What did you do? Loot the strongbox?”

  His grin faded, and Midj felt a chill. Suppose he had looted the joint?

  “Nah,” he admitted wryly, “I didn’t. It’s just that I never really took much time off. I mean the Judge project, it kept me pretty busy. And . . .”

  “But Panore? I’d have thought you would have forgotten that . . .”

  He shook his head then, and snorted a quiet laugh, and kind of talked into his cup for a minute like he was afraid, or too shy, to look at her.

  “Nah. I always did mean to get out to Panore, you know. And I always kept hoping there’d be some way I could maybe get you to go with me. So when I got a chance, I put some of my money into a condo-building out there . . . one unit’s mine.”

  He looked up, caught the look of amazement that had left her mouth half-open. She felt the words spill out unbidden.

  “What? Panore’s for f
atcats! Do you have any idea of what it costs to live on a place like that? I, I . . .”

  He signed a quick yes in pilot’s hand-talk as he finished his ’toot.

  “So yeah, I do know. But now that you brought it up, why don’t we find us a cargo or two that’ll take us out that way, make sure we can still work together. Then, we can make sure we can still play together.”

  He put the cup down and unexpectedly reached his hand out for hers. “Tell me it’s a deal, and I’ll sign the book as co-pilot right now.”

  “Deal,” she said, and squeezed his hand before pulling the logbook out on its trip tray.

  This House

  I built this house out of cedar wood

  and I laid the beams by hand

  One for every false heart I had known

  One for the true heart I planned

  —from This House by Janis Ian

  IT WAS SPRING AGAIN.

  Mil Ton Intassi caught the first hint of it as he strolled through his early-morning garden—a bare flutter of warmth along the chill edge of mountain air, no more than that. Nonetheless, he sighed as he walked, and tucked his hands into the sleeves of his jacket.

  At the end of the garden, he paused, looking out across the toothy horizon, dyed orange by the rising sun. Mist boiled up from the valley below him, making the trees into wraiths, obscuring the road and the airport entirely.

  Spring, he thought again.

  He had come here in the spring, retreating to the house he had built, to the constancy of the mountains.

  Turning his back on the roiling fog, he strolled down the pale stone path, passing between banked rows of flowers.

  At the center of the garden, the path forked; the left fork became a pleasant meander through the lower gardens, into the perimeter wood. It was cunning, with many delightful vistas, grassy knolls, and shady groves perfect for tête-à-têtes.

  The right-hand path led straight to the house, and it was to the house that Mil Ton returned, slipping in through the terrace window, sliding it closed behind him.

  He left his jacket on its peg and crossed to the stove, where he poured tea into a lopsided pottery mug before he moved on, his footsteps firm on the scrubbed wooden floor.

  At the doorway to the great room, he paused, looking to his right at the fireplace, the full wall of native stone, which they had gathered and placed themselves. The grate wanted sweeping and new logs needed to be laid. He would see to it later.

  Opposite the doorway was a wall of windows through which he could see the orange light unfurling like ribbons through the busy mist, and, nearer, a pleasant lawn, guarded on the far side by a band of cedar trees, their rough bark showing pink against the glossy green needles. Cedar was plentiful on this side of the mountain. So plentiful that he had used native cedar wood for beam, post, and floor.

  Mil Ton turned his head, looking down the room to the letterbox. The panel light glowed cheerfully green, which meant there were messages in the bin. It was rare, now, that he received any messages beyond the commonplace—notices of quartershare payments, the occasional query from the clan’s man of business. His sister—his delm—had at last given over scolding him, and would not command him; her letters were laconic, noncommittal, and increasingly rare. The others—he moved his shoulders and walked forward to stand at the window, sipping tea and staring down into the thinning orange mist.

  The green light tickled the edge of his vision. What could it be? he wondered—and sighed sharply, irritated with himself. The letterbox existed because his sister—or perhaps it had been his delm—asked that he not make himself entirely unavailable to the clan. Had she not, he would have had neither letterbox, nor telephone, nor newsnet access. Two of those he had managed, and missed neither. Nor would he mourn the letterbox, did it suddenly malfunction and die.

  Oh, blast it all—what could it be?

  He put the cup on the sill and went down the room, jerking open the drawer and snatching out two flimsies.

  The first was, after all, an inquiry from his man of business on the subject of reinvesting an unexpected payout of dividend. He set it aside.

  The second message was from Master Tereza of Solcintra Healer Hall, and it was rather lengthy, outlining an exceptionally interesting and difficult case currently in the care of the Hall, and wondering if he might bring himself down to the city for a few days to lend his expertise.

  Mil Ton made a sound halfway between a growl and a laugh; his fingers tightened, crumpling the sheet into an unreadable mess.

  Go to Solcintra Hall, take up his role as a healer once more. Tereza, of all of them, should know that he had no intention of ever—he had told her, quite plainly—and his had never been a true healing talent, in any case. It was a farce. A bitter joke made at his expense.

  He closed his eyes, deliberately initiating a basic relaxation exercise. Slowly, he brought his anger—his panic—under control. Slowly, cool sense returned.

  Tereza had been his friend. Caustic, she could certainly be, but to taunt a wounded man for his pain? No. That was not Tereza.

  The flimsy was a ruin of mangled fiber and smeared ink. No matter. He crossed the room and dropped it into the fire grate, and stood staring down into the cold ashes.

  Return to Solcintra? Not likely.

  He moved his shoulders, turned back to the window and picked up the lopsided cup; sipped tepid tea.

  He should answer his man of business. He should, for the friendship that had been between them, answer Tereza. He should.

  And he would—later. After he had finished his tea and sat for his dry, dutiful hours, trying to recapture that talent which had been his, and which seemed to have deserted him now. One of many desertions, and not the least hurtful.

  * * *

  SPRING CREPT ONWARD, kissing the flowers in the door garden into dewy wakefulness. Oppressed by cedar walls, Mil Ton escaped down the left-hand path, pacing restlessly past knolls and groves, until at last he came to a certain tree, and beneath the tree, a bench, where he sat down, and sighed, and raised his face to receive the benediction of the breeze.

  In the warm sunlight, eventually he dozed. Certainly, the day bid well for dozing, sweet dreams and all manner of pleasant things. That he dozed, that was pleasant. That he did not dream, that was just as well. That he was awakened by a voice murmuring his name, that was—unexpected.

  He straightened from his comfortable slouch against the tree, eyes snapping wide.

  Before him, settled casually cross-legged on the new grass, heedless of stains on his town-tailored clothes, was a man somewhat younger than himself, dark of hair, gray of eye. Mil Ton stared, voice gone to dust in his throat.

  “The house remembered me,” the man in the grass said apologetically. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  Mil Ton turned his face away. “When did it matter, what I minded?”

  “Always,” the other replied, softly. “Mil Ton. I told you how it was.”

  He took a deep breath, imposing calm with an exercise he had learned in Healer Hall, and faced about.

  “Fen Ris,” he said, low, but not soft. Then, “Yes. You told me how it was.”

  The gray eyes shadowed. “And in telling you, killed you twice.” He raised a ringless and elegant hand, palm turned up. “Would that it were otherwise.” The hand reversed, palm toward the grass. “Would that it were not.”

  Would that he had died of the pain of betrayal, Mil Ton thought, rather than live to endure this. He straightened further on the bench, frowning down at the other.

  “Why do you break my peace?”

  Fen Ris tipped his head slightly to one side in the old, familiar gesture. “Break?” he murmured, consideringly. “Yes, I suppose I deserve that. Indeed, I know that I deserve it. Did I not first appeal to Master Tereza and the healers in the Hall at Solcintra, hoping that they might cure what our house healer could not?” He paused, head bent, then looked up sharply, gray gaze like a blow.

  “Master Tereza said she had se
nt for you,” he stated, absolutely neutral. “She said, you would not come.”

  Mil Ton felt a chill, his fingers twitched, as if crumpling a flimsy into ruin.

  “She did not say it was you.”

  “Ah. Would you have come, if she had said it was me?”

  Yes, Mil Ton thought, looking aside so the other would not read it in his eyes.

  “No,” he said.

  There was a small silence, followed by a sigh.

  “Just as well, then,” Fen Ris murmured. “For it was not I.” He paused, and Mil Ton looked back to him, drawn despite his will.

  “Who, then?” he asked, shortly.

  The gray eyes were infinitely sorrowful, eternally determined.

  “My lifemate.”

  Fury, pure as flame, seared him. “You dare?”

  Fen Ris lifted his chin, defiant. “You, who taught me what it is to truly love—you ask if I dare?”

  To truly love. Yes, he had taught that lesson—learned that lesson. And then he had learned the next lesson—that even love can betray.

  He closed his eyes, groping for the rags of his dignity . . .

  “Her name is Endele,” Fen Ris said softly. “By profession, she is a gardener.” A pause, a light laugh. “A rare blossom in our house of risk-takers and daredevils.”

  Eyes closed, Mil Ton said nothing.

  “Well.” Fen Ris said after a moment. “You live so secluded here that you may not have heard of the accident at the skimmer fields last relumma. Three drivers were killed upon the instant. One walked away unscathed. Two were sealed into crisis units. Of those, one died.”