by Sharon Lee
Through the blare of pain, she heard the door slam shut.
* * *
“What do you mean, the tariff hasn’t been paid?” She heard her voice keying upward, and swallowed. The security rep averted her eyes, making a show of checking her screens. She had taken one horrified look at Ceola’s face when they were first connected, and thereafter found reasons to keep her eyes averted.
“Our records are clear,” she said, not looking up. “We have received no payment from The Friendly Glass these last three relumma.”
“My records,” Ceola said, her voice shaking, “are also clear, ma’am. The fee has been transferred on the day set forth in our contract, never once missed, in more than a half-dozen years.”
The security rep looked up, slowly, and met her eyes in the monitor.
“Our records then being so misaligned, I suggest that we commission an audit.”
An audit! Out of the monitor’s field, Ceola clenched her fists, then bit her lip when abused fingers protested. Her head hurt and her ribs, and—gods abound, an audit? She could no more afford an audit, than—
Behind her, the door opened, and she spoke quickly to the rep, even as her heart-rate increased and her blood chilled.
“Hold a moment,” she said breathlessly, and left the screen on as she forced herself to turn.
I should have locked the door, she thought, her palms wet now with panic. At the least, I should have—but surely, it is only a regular, come in for her usual!
But it was neither her attackers returning, nor a regular who stood in the center of the room, hands tucked cozily in the pockets of his jacket, surveying the tumbled stools and disordered bar.
It was Shadow.
Relief brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them away as she spun back to the screen.
“I have customers. May I speak to you again tomorrow?”
“If you call on my off-shift, any of my colleagues will assist you, ma’am. I will leave complete notes in your file.”
Of course you will, Ceola thought wearily, though she inclined her head courteously.
“My thanks. Good evening to you.”
She touched the disconnect, and turned into a speculative green gaze. “Shall I fetch the proctors, Ceola?”
“No!” Her hand rose, torn and reddened fingers spread wide. “I want—” She stumbled, words melting off her tongue like ice. Her eyes stung, and that would be too much, to weep and show helpless before him. Min might employ such stratagems, but she . . .
She . . .
“I don’t know what I should do,” she said, her voice low. “I— Please, Shadow—what should I do?”
He seemed to become even taller, though he stood there exactly as before, hands in pockets and head tipped slightly to one side.
“You should place yourself entirely in my hands,” he said, soft voice decisive. “One moment.”
He spun, returning, silent and quick, to the door, which he locked with a snap of his wrist. Ceola began to protest, then bit her lip. She had asked him to solve this for her, after all.
“We will discommode your customers as little as possible,” he said briskly, striding back down the room and coming ’round the counter. “But if you will not have the proctors, then we still must find who did this.”
He took her gently by the shoulders, and turned her face toward the brighter light over the back bar.
“That wants some attention,” he murmured. “Is there any other damage done?”
“My—” She lifted her hand, showing him torn fingers already beginning to purple. “He—he struck me in the ribs, and I couldn’t—but I can breathe now,” she said hastily, as his lips tightened. “So that’s naught, really.”
“I see. Ceola, attend me: is there any other damage?”
“I—” He was being delicate, she realized, and laughed, the sound high and unsettled in her own ears. “They were after the till, Shadow. It was their whole focus.” The tears rose again, and she looked away, misery cramping her chest. “They took what they wanted and ran.”
“I see,” he said again, and exhaled. “Have you a first-aid kit?”
“No,” she answered, and did not add that the ancient unit that had served to patch such minor bruises and contusions as might sometimes occur on a busy night had failed two relumma back, and they had not had enough extra to see it repaired. There were so many things that they had not been able to afford—the newsfeed, a part-time worker, a—
“Very well,” Shadow said, interrupting these increasingly tangled thoughts. “Now, these—people—who were so focused on the till. Have you seen them before?”
“No, no—wait.” She frowned, which made her face hurt worse. “The voice—last night, the door opened, then closed—you recall it! I thought it only that someone had looked in and failed to find a comrade, but the voice—it was the same.”
“The room was too full for them last night, so they looked for easier game,” Shadow murmured, perhaps to himself. He released her shoulders, and fished the handheld from its inner pocket.
“Ah, good, you are about,” he said into the device. “Bring whomever else you can find and come down to The Friendly Glass, there’s been some unpleasantness . . . a first-aid kit and the forensic . . . Yes. I’ve locked the door; ping me when you’ve arrived.” He paused, then grinned. “Oh, by all means, quickly.”
* * *
Scouts appeared, three of them, one bearing a first-aid kit, and another a different sort of kit which he immediately unfolded onto an empty table, with assistance from the third.
Shadow brought the scout with the first-aid kit behind the bar, standing a halfstep before her. Ceola looked up at him from her seat on the cold-box. He had, over her objections, wrapped his jacket around her shoulders. She held it close, her injured hand tucked against the plush lining. It wasn’t cold—she knew that it wasn’t cold—yet she couldn’t seem to stop shivering.
“Ceola, this is Tonith,” he said, “the best medic among what is admittedly a disreputable crew. Will you allow her to tend to your injuries?”
She did very much, Ceola thought, want someone to tend to her injuries. Her face felt as if she’d scrubbed it with gravel and rinsed it with red wine. Even though she could breathe, her ribs hurt where the thief had struck her, and her arm was throbbing. Those were her major complaints, though there was a growing litany of bruises and minor pains.
“Indeed Shadow, I would be grateful to the scout,” she murmured.
Tonith stepped forward, her eyes as warm as if she were approaching an old friend, and with no hint of flinching away from the sight of Ceola’s abused face.
“Please, let us be Tonith and Ceola, as I see you are already on good terms with the captain.” She glanced over her shoulder to Shadow. “Where may we be private?”
“Wherever Ceola wishes,” he answered.
“Well, that’s generous, own it!” Tonith said merrily, slinging her kit over a shoulder and offering both hands to Ceola. “Down from the heights with you, now!”
Ceola put her hands in the other woman’s and slipped off of the coldbox. She gasped as her feet hit the floor, and found a friendly shoulder bracing her.
“A little ragged, is it, Ceola? We’ll soon have everything put right. But first you must tell me where you would prefer to be private.”
She thought with longing of her own room, but the stairs—she did not wish to walk up the stairs presently.
“There is the office . . . ” she managed, using her chin to point the way. “Just there.”
“Perfect,” Tonith proclaimed, and slid a firm arm around her waist to help her walk the few steps that were needful.
* * *
“I am going now,” Ceola told Jas Per. “Do you have everything needful?”
The big man—taller even than Shadow and with a breadth of shoulder that surely meant there had been a Terran at Festival—gave her a dour nod. “Everything in order, Mistress. Didn’t you just go over it all yourself?”<
br />
She considered him, suspecting humor or insubordination, but he was industriously racking the glasses, his eyes downcast, his broad hands delicate and sure.
Well, and if he were accustomed to the company of scouts, then it could just as easily be insubordination and humor, Ceola thought—and what matter, really? Jas Per worked hard, and though he took most of heavy lifting to himself, he was no mere Port tough, dependent only on his fists. No, Ceola had rapidly come to suspect that Jas Per was as deep as he was broad. He exchanged effortlessly between currencies, scarcely glancing at the ’change board over the bar, and he had at least three languages ready to his tongue: Liaden, Trade and Terran. Though he was not so comprehensive a source of news as Shadow, or even Tonith, yet he seemed to know the goings-ons of Port and city—all without stirring outside The Friendly Glass.
Where he went after the bar closed, she did not know, and he did not say. Shadow had brought him to her, on the day after the till was taken, saying that the big man would “help out.” She began to protest—there was no extra money to pay wages—and had been silenced by a raised eyebrow and the quiet information that she need not concern herself with Jas Per’s wages at the moment.
That had been five days ago. So short a time; yet time for everything to change. The scouts had speedily found the men who had taken her till. They had made quite an enterprise of the neighborhood, those two, having stolen also from the grab-a-bite at the top of the street, and the trinket shop at the bottom. Her money, alas, had not been found, though it could have been worse. They had taken a full day’s profits from the grab-a-bite, and left the owner with a broken head, too.
Of Min, however, or of the dapper Captain Elby, there was no news at all.
“Very well,” Ceola said, giving Jas Per a crisp nod of the head. “I will be back in the second hour.”
She said the same thing every day when she left him. He must be very tired of hearing it, but to leave the bar, their legacy from their mother, their wealth and their lifeline, in the hands of non-kin—it was not easy for her. And what if Min returned to find a stranger behind the counter?
Yet, if she tarried much longer, she would be late for her assignation with Shadow, and their time together—already much too short!—would be made even shorter by her foolishness.
Ceola gave Jas Per one last nod, deliberately turned her back and once again left her life in his care.
* * *
Shadow came forward, smiling, his hands extended.
“Am I late?”she asked, slipping her hands into his, and smiling up into his face.
“Precisely on time,” he assured her. “How does Jas Per go on?”
“I believe he has mastered the entire trade and will soon release me to my own affairs. He greets the regulars by name, and has their usual waiting before they even find a stool.”
Shadow frowned slightly. “That may land him in trouble, should someone chose to vary of an evening.”
“Perhaps it might, but the chances are very slender that he would be caught by surprise. Just last evening, he did not pour Hantem’s ale out for her when she walked in the door. He waited until she had seated herself at the bar and called for wine, then poured with a generous hand. I asked him later how he knew she would not want the usual, and he said, ‘it was in her walk.’” She looked up at her tall escort as they strolled toward their private room.
“Now tell me truly, sir! Is he a scout?”
“Jasper, a Scout? No, I fear not—though he is a very skillful muscle-reader.”
“Seriously, Shadow, he cannot continue to work for—at The Glass, without wages, and I am in no wise to pay him.”
“Has there been no word yet from your sister?” he asked
Ceola looked down at the burnished floor. “I—no. Have you—have your searchers found nothing?”
“Alas, we have not, but you mustn’t despair. She may, after all, have gone off-world with her friend for a small vacation.”
It would, Ceola thought, be much like Min, though she might have left word! Or perhaps not, considering what else she had forgotten to tell her only kin.
“Tonith was by early today,” she said slowly. “You recall that she was kind enough to undertake a trace of those transfers for me.” She looked up, forcing herself to meet bright green eyes. Shadow inclined his head, silently inviting her to continue.
Ceola swallowed, for this—this was a wound, a blow to honor that could not lightly be shared.
“The security company rep was correct—we have not made our payment for the last three relumma. The money was transferred, right enough, but it went to—another account. A . . . private account.” She cleared her throat. “In Min’s name.”
“Ah,” he said softly.
Ah, indeed. Her sister had stolen from her—had placed the one thing that stood between them and the Low Port in jeopardy. Ceola did not know what to make of it, but it hurt, bitterly.
“Will you hold line?” Shadow asked her, and then—“Can you hold line?”
“I will hold as long as I can, of course—I must! The Glass is in Min’s name, as eldest. Though how I will manage without Jas Per I hardly know.”
“There is no reason to manage without him for some time yet,” Shadow said, stepping back and allowing her to proceed him into their room. “Nor will you fret over his wages. There is a matter of Balance between he and I.”
Inside the room, she turned to look up at him. “But—”
“Hush,” he murmured, holding up a hand as the door closed behind him. “No distractions from the outside world enter this room, correct?”
That had been the mode from the beginning, though how he supposed her able to think at all, once they—
She smiled up at him. “Correct,” she said.
* * *
Some while later, she pushed open the door to The Glass and strode inside, luxuriating in a loose, effortless stride. As always after her time with Shadow, she felt sparklingly aware, as if she had slept deeply, instead of exercising profusely.
There was a good early crowd—that was the first thing she noted as she moved toward the counter. The second thing she noticed was Jas Per, tall and unusually subdued at the center of the bar, as if standing sentinel. He caught her eye and moved his head slightly to the right, even as he turned to answer a call from one of the regulars.
Frowning, Ceola followed the direction of his nod. A woman was draped on the end-most stool, sleek black hair curling over one shoulder, her chin resting on one hand, while with the other she toyed petulantly with a half-empty glass of the red.
Ceola’s stomach sank, which must be wrong. Surely, she thought, forcing herself to continue walking brisk and businesslike toward the bar, surely she should rejoice to again meet absent kin?
Well, and if her stomach was a fool, at least her head knew what was owed to family.
“Min,” she said, softly, upon arriving at her sister’s side. “Sister, welcome home; I had been worried, with you gone so long, and no word.”
Angry brown eyes met hers, and a shapely arm flung out, pointing.
“What is that?” she snapped, heedless of customers within hearing distance of clan business.
Ceola blinked. “Jas Per,” she said softly. “He has been helping me keep the bar. I depend upon him a great deal,” she added, only then realizing that it was so; “and can scarcely think how I’d go on without him.”
“Oh, indeed!” Min made no effort to moderate her voice, which was made sharper by the edge of sarcasm. “And here I thought it was Shadow you had in your eye. Well! If you care for misshapen Low Porters . . .”
Ceola gasped, and leaned forward, her hand perhaps a bit too heavy on her sister’s arm.
“Min,” she said quietly, “will you shout such things into the ears of our customers, some of whom value Jas Per high?”
For a moment, she thought that Min would continue—and what course stood open to her, Ceola thought, if that came to pass? Surely, she could not ask J
as Per to escort her own sister to the door, like a grease ape in his cups?
Fortunately, it did not come to that. Min slid to her feet and moved toward the back alcove, her uncertain stride speaking of more than one glass of the house red.
She spun unsteadily and leaned against the back wall of the tiny office, crossing her arms over her breast, her face set and hard.
“Why is that abomination working behind my counter?” she asked, her voice high and ugly.
Ceola considered her, and took a deliberate breath. Centering herself, Shadow called it.
“He is here because we were robbed,” she said.
Min’s face lost some of its rich color. “Robbed?” she repeated. “How much was in the till?”
“Only the ’change money,” Ceola told her, keeping her voice even. Gods, had it always been this difficult to speak soft? “However, the security company would not come, on account of nonpayment, and I . . . took some minor harm because of it.”
Min shook her hair back. “Nonpayment! Those deposits went out! Check the ledgers.”
Ceola felt herself settle into the ready-pose—her weight balanced over her knees, shoulders firm, chin up.
“Do not trouble yourself,” she said, and her voice was so cold her skin pebbled. “I’ve traced the pathway that money traveled, Sister. The deposits went out, right enough, and into your private account.”
Min tipped her head. “That was clever work,” she commented, without a trace of shame. She tossed her hair again. “But, let us not brangle! I have come to bring you to a meeting, and you have very nearly made us late.”
Ceola blinked. “A meeting? I can’t leave the bar now!”
“Why not? Surely your charming Jas Per can handle the custom.”
“Min, I am not leaving the bar for a meeting. Do you mean to stay here?”
“I do not mean to stay here!” her sister snapped.
“Then give me your direction. I will come to see you tomorrow during Day Port.”
“You will do as you are instructed by the eldest of your House,” Min spat, and snapped forward, her hand whipping toward Ceola’s face.
She was tipsy with the wine she had drunk, and angry besides. It was no trick at all to catch her wrist, and hold it—tightly.
