A Liaden Universe® Constellation: Volume Two

by Sharon Lee

  “That I came here—I scarcely knew why. Except that I had discovered a foundation and it came to me that I could build a house, and keep the world safely away.”

  Oh, gods, he thought, feeling the shape of the words in his mouth, listening to his voice, spinning the tale he meant, and yet did not mean, to tell . . .

  “I built the house of cedar, and laid the beams by hand; the windows I set tight against the walls. At the core, a fireplace—” He used his chin to point over her shoulder. “Before I finished that, the healers came to me. News of my stories and the effects of my stories had reached the Masters of the Guild and they begged that I come to be trained, before I harmed anyone else.” He looked down at his hand, fisted against his knee, and heard his voice continue the tale.

  “So, I went and I trained, and then I worked as a healer in the hall. I learned to write stories down and they did not cause madness, and so took up another craft for myself. I was content and solitary until I met a young man at the skimmer track.” He paused; she sat like a woman hewn of ice.

  “He was bold, and he was beautiful; intelligent and full of joy. We were friends, first, then lovers. I brought him here and he transformed my house with his presence; with his help, the fireplace went from pit to hearth.”

  He closed his eyes, heard the words fall from his lips. “One evening, he came to me—we had been days apart, but that was no unknown thing—he followed the races, of course. He came to me and he was weeping, he held me and he told me of the woman he had met, how their hearts beat together, how they must be united, or die.”

  Behind his closed eyes, he saw image over image—Fen Ris before him, beseeching and explaining, and this woman’s wall of stone, matching texture for texture the very hearth she sat on.

  “Perhaps a true healer might have understood. I did not. I cast him out, told him to go to his woman and leave me—leave me in peace. I fled—here, to the place which was built for safety . . .”

  “How did you abide it?” Her voice was shrill, he opened his eyes to find her on her feet, her body bowed with tension, her eyes frantic. “How did you abide loving him? Knowing what he does? Knowing that they might one day bring his body to you? Couldn’t you see that you needed to lock yourself away?”

  His vision wavered, he saw stones falling, felt wind tear his hair, lash rain into his face. In the midst of chaos, he reached out, and put his arms around her, and held her while she sobbed against his shoulder.

  Eventually, the wind died, the woman in his arms quieted.

  “I loved him for himself,” he said softly, into her hair. “And he loved the races. He would not choose to stop racing, though he might have done, had I asked him. But he would have been unhappy, desperately so—and I loved him too well to ask it.” He sighed.

  “In the end, it came to my choice: Did I bide and share in our love, for as long as we both remained? Or turn my face aside, from the fear that, someday, he might be gone?”

  In his arms, Endele per’Timbral shuddered—and relaxed.

  “As simple as that?” she whispered.

  “As simple, and as complex.” Words failed him for a moment—in his head now were images of Fen Ris laughing, and of the ocean waves crashing on stone beneath the pair of them, of arms reaching eagerly—

  He sighed again. “I have perhaps done you no favor, child, in unmaking the choice you had made, if safety is what you need above all.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, and straightened out of his embrace, showing him a wet face, and eyes as calm as dawn. “Perhaps not.” She inclined her head. “All honor, Healer. With your permission, I will retire, and tend my garden of choices while I dream.”

  He showed her to the tiny guest room, with its thin bed and single window, giving out to the moonlit garden, then returned to the great room.

  For a few heartbeats, he stood, staring down into the cold hearth. It came to him, as from a distance, that it wanted sweeping, and he knelt down on the stones and reached for the brush.

  * * *

  “Mil Ton.” A woman’s voice, near at hand. He stirred, irritable, muscles aching, as if he had slept on cold stone.

  “Mil Ton,” she said again, and he opened his eyes to Endele per’Timbral’s pale and composed face. She extended a hand, and helped him to rise, and they walked in companionable silence to the kitchen for tea.

  “Have you decided,” he asked her, as they stood by the open door, inhaling the promise of the garden, “what you shall do?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “Have you?”

  “Yes,” he answered—and it was so, though he had not until that moment understood that a decision had been necessary. He smiled, feeling his heart absurdly light in his breast.

  “I will return to Solcintra. Tereza writes that there is work for me, at the Hall.”

  “I am glad,” she said. “Perhaps you will come to us, when you are settled. He would like it, I think—and I would.”

  He looked over to her and met her smile.

  “Thank you,” he said softly. “I would like it, too.”

  Lord of the Dance

  IT WAS SNOWING, of course.

  The gentleman looked out the window as the groundcar moved quietly through the dark streets. His streets.

  And really, he said to himself irritably, you ought to be able to hit upon some affordable way of lighting them.

  “What are you thinking, Pat Rin?” His lady’s voice was soft as the snow, her hand light on his knee. And he was a boor, to ignore her most welcome presence in worries over street lamps.

  He leaned back in the seat, placed his hand over hers, and looked into her dark eyes.

  “I was thinking how pretty the snow is,” he murmured.

  She laughed and he smiled as the car turned the corner—and abruptly there was light, spilling rich and yellow from all the doors and windows of Audrey’s Whorehouse, warming the dark sidewalks and spinning the snowflakes into gold.

  * * *

  “Boss. Ms. Natesa.” Villy bowed with grace, if without nuance, and pulled the door wide. “You honor our house.”

  Great gods. Pat Rin carefully did not look at his lady as he inclined his head.

  “We are of course pleased to accept Ms. Audrey’s invitation,” he murmured. “It has been an age since I have danced.”

  The boy smiled brilliantly. “We hoped you’d be pleased, sir.” He pointed to the left, blessedly returning to a more Terran mode. “You can leave your coats in the room, there, then join everybody in the big parlor.”

  “Thank you,” Pat Rin said, and moved off as the bell chimed again, Natesa on his arm.

  “Who,” he murmured, for her ear alone, “do you suppose has been tutoring Villy in the Liaden mode?”

  “Why shouldn’t he be teaching himself?” she countered, slanting a quick, subtle look into his face. “He admires you greatly, Master.”

  “Most assuredly he does,” Pat Rin replied, with irony, and paused before the small room which served as a public closet for the clients of Ms. Audrey’s house. Natesa removed her hand from his arm and turned, allowing him to slip the long fleece coat from her shoulders. The remains of snowflakes glittered on the dark green fabric like a spangle of tiny jewels. He shook it out and stepped into the closet.

  The hooks and hangers were crowded with a variety of garments: oiled sweaters, thick woolen shirts, scarred spaceleather jackets, and two or three evening cloaks in the Liaden style.

  Pat Rin removed his own cloak and hung it carefully over Natesa’s coat. Shaking out his lace, he stepped back into the hallway, where his lady waited in her sun-yellow gown.

  He paused, his heart suddenly constricted in his chest. Natesa’s black eyebrows rose, just slightly, and he moved a hand in response to the question she did not voice.

  “You overwhelm me with your beauty,” he said.

  She laughed softly and stepped forward to take his arm again.

  “And you overwhelm me with yours,” she answered in her lightly accented
High Liaden. “Come, let us see if together we may not overwhelm the world.”

  * * *

  THE DOORS BETWEEN the public parlor and the visitors’ lounge had been opened and tied back; the furniture moved out of the public parlor and the serviceable beige rug rolled up, revealing a surprisingly wide expanse of plastic tile in a deep, mostly unscarred brown. A refreshment table was placed along the back wall, directly beneath—

  Pat Rin blinked.

  When not pressed into duty as a dance hall, the public parlor of Ms. Audrey’s bordello displayed certain . . . works of art . . . as might perhaps serve to beguile the mind away from the cares of the day and toward the mutual enjoyment of pleasure.

  This evening, the walls had been—transformed.

  The artwork was gone, or mayhap only hidden behind objects, which, had anyone dared challenge Pat Rin to describe twelve items belonging to Korval that he least expected to find on public display, he would certainly have placed within the top six.

  Nursery rugs, they were—the design based upon a star map. Three rugs together formed the whole of the map, the original of which he had himself seen, preserved in Korval’s log books.

  One rug had lain on the floor of the nursery at Jelaza Kazone. The second, in the schoolroom at Trealla Fantrol. The third—the third had covered the floor in the small private parlor the boy, Pat Rin, had shared with his fosterfather, Luken bel’Tarda. And yet on the wall directly across from him—the rug, the very rug, from Trealla Fantrol. And on the wall to his right, the rug from Jelaza Kazone.

  Carefully, Pat Rin turned his head, and—yes, there on the wall behind them was the rug from his childhood, looking just as it always had, close-looped and unworn, its colors as bright as—

  “Pat Rin?” Natesa murmured. “Is something amiss?”

  He shook himself, and turned his head to smile at her.

  “Merely—unexpected, let us say.” He waved a languorous hand. “What a crush, to be sure!”

  This was not strictly the case. Still, the big parlor was comfortably crowded, the conversation level somewhat louder than one might perhaps have expected at a similar gathering in Solcintra. Bosses of several of the nearer territories were present, including Penn Kalhoon, as well as the Portmaster, and a good mix of local merchants.

  Across the room, white hair gleaming in the abundant light, his cousin Shan stood in deep conversation with Narly Jempkins, chairman of the nascent Surebleak Mercantile Union.

  “We arrive among the last, as suits our station,” Natesa said softly, which bait he ignored in favor of inclining his head to their hostess, who was approaching in a rustle of synthsilk, her pale hair intricately dressed, and an easy smile on her face.

  “Boss. Natesa. I’m real glad you could come.”

  “Audrey.” Natesa smiled and extended a hand, which the older woman clasped between both of hers.

  “Winter has been too long,” Natesa said. “How clever of you to think of a dance!”

  Audrey laughed. “Wish I could say it was all my idea! Miri was the one who put the seed in my head, if you want the truth. Said she had too much energy and no place to spend it, which I’ll say between the three of us ain’t the usual complaint of new-birthed mothers.”

  “Miri is an example to us all,” Pat Rin murmured, which pleasantry Audrey greeted with another laugh.

  “Ain’t she just—and your brother’s another one! When I invite a man to a dance and I don’t expect him to bring his keyboard and set up with the band. That’s just what he’s done, though—take a look!” She pointed down the room, where was collected a fiddle, a guitar, a drum set, a portable omnichora—and several musicians wearing what passed for stage finery on Surebleak, clustered about a slender man in a ruffled white shirt and formal slacks that would have been unexceptional at any evening gather in Solcintra.

  It had been . . . disconcerting . . . to find that Audrey, with the rest of Pat Rin’s acquaintance on Surebleak, assumed that Val Con, his cousin and his delm, was in fact his younger brother, brought in to care for the transplanted family business while the boss undertook the important task of putting the streets in order.

  As the misapprehension only amused Miri, and Val Con’s sole comment on the matter was a slightly elevated eyebrow, Pat Rin gave over attempting to explain their actual relationship and resigned himself to having at his advanced age acquired a sibling.

  “For a time, he and Miri sang for their suppers,” he said now to Audrey. “Perhaps he misses the work.”

  “Could be,” she answered, as the sound of footsteps and voices grew louder in the hall behind them. She sent a look over his shoulder, extended a hand and patted his sleeve lightly.

  “The two of you go on in and circulate. Dancing ought to be starting up soon.”

  Thus dismissed, Pat Rin followed Natesa deeper into the parlor.

  * * *

  MS. AUDREY’S BIG PARLOR, already crowded, grew more so. Deep in a discussion with Etienne Borden and Andy Mack, which involved free-standing solar batteries, and the benefits of light level meters over mechanical timers, Pat Rin still registered an abrupt lowering of the ambient noise and looked around, thinking that the promised music was at last about to begin. But no.

  It was his mother entering the room, on the arm of no one less than Scout Commander ter’Meulen, dressed for the occasion in High House best, his face oh-so-politely bland, and his mustache positively noncommittal.

  Pat Rin, who had all his life known Scout ter’Meulen, could only wonder at the reasons behind such a display—not to mention the why and wherefore of Lady Kareen accepting his arm for anything at all. They were neither one a friend of the other, though it had always seemed to Pat Rin that the greater amusement was on Clonak’s side and the greater dislike on his mother’s. Surely—

  Audrey bustled forward to welcome these newest arrivals, her high, sweet voice easily rising above the other conversations in the room.

  “I knew you’d turn the trick, Mr. Clonak!” she said gaily, patting him kindly on the shoulder. This was apparently a dismissal, as Clonak adroitly disengaged himself from the lady’s arm, took two steps into the parlor and was lost in the general crush.

  Audrey turned to face Kareen squarely, and Pat Rin’s stomach tightened, as he contemplated disaster. Even had he not counted Audrey a friend, he thought, it was surely no more than his duty to stand between her and Lady Kareen yos’Phelium, in the same way that it was his duty as Boss to stand between the residents of his streets and mayhem.

  He murmured something quick and doubtless unintelligible to the colonel and the assistant portmaster, and slipped through the press of bodies, moving as quickly as he was able.

  “Lady Kareen,” Audrey said clearly. “Be welcome in my house.”

  It was the proper sentiment, properly expressed, thought Pat Rin, working his way forward. Though what—and from whom—his mother might exact as Balance for being made welcome at a whorehouse—

  “Well met, Cousin!” Val Con murmured, astonishingly slipping his arm through Pat Rin’s. “Where to in such a rush?”

  “If you would not see a murder done—or worse—” Pat Rin hissed into the frigid silence that followed Audrey’s greeting—“let me tend to this!”

  “Nay, I think you wrong both our host and your lady mother,” Val Con said tranquilly, his grip on Pat Rin’s arm tightening. “Besides, the hand is dealt.”

  “You know what my mother is capable—”

  “Peace,” his cousin interrupted. “My aunt is about to play her first card.”

  “Who speaks?” Lady Kareen’s Terran was heavily accented, but perfectly intelligible; her tone as frigid as the wind in high winter.

  It was of course quite mad to even consider that he might extricate himself from the brotherly embrace of one who was both a pilot and a scout. Nonetheless, Pat Rin took a careful breath to camouflage his shift of weight—and felt warm fingers around his unencumbered hand. He looked down, equally dismayed and unsurprised to see
Miri grinning up at him, gray eyes glinting.

  “Take it easy, Boss,” she whispered. “Audrey’s good for this.”

  He began to answer, then closed his mouth tightly. The fact that this had been planned—that Audrey had been coached on form and manner . . .

  “That’s right,” their host was saying equitably to his mother. “You won’t know that. I’m Audrey Breckstone, boss of this House. I’m happy to see you.”

  Not for nothing did Lady Kareen stand foremost among the scholars of the Liaden Code of Proper Conduct. She not only knew her Code, but she practiced it, meticulously. Rather too meticulously, as some might think. But there was perhaps, Pat Rin thought now, an advantage—to Audrey, to the House, and to Kareen herself—in an extremely nice reading of Code in regard to this particular circumstance.

  It was not for a mere son to say what weights and measures were called into consideration as his mother stood there, head tipped politely to one side, face smooth and emotionless, but surely the unworthy scholar who had studied Code at her feet might make certain shrewd and informed guesses.

  Whether Audrey possessed the native genius to have added that guileless, “I’m happy to see you,” to her introduction, or whether she had been coached in what she was to say mattered not at all. That she had uttered the phrase in apparent sincerity placed her melant’i somewhat in regard to the melant’i of Kareen yos’Phelium. Here was, in fact, a delm—at most—or a head of Line—at least—so secure in her own worth and the worth of her House that she not only welcomed, but was happy to receive, the burden of a visit from high stickler who might ruin her and hers with a word.

  Or, to phrase the matter in the parlance of Surebleak, Audrey had in essence said to Kareen: I see that you’re armed, and I’m your equal.

  “I am pleased to accept the greeting of the House,” Lady Kareen stated, and bowed—expert to expert—which allowed a certain limited equality between herself and her host, and placed a finer measuring into the future, after more data had been gathered and weighed.

  To her credit—or that of her tutor—Audrey did not attempt to answer the bow. Instead, she smiled, and offered her arm.