by Sharon Lee
The door slid aside. A slim figure in a rumpled robe turned from the counter, teapot in hand, opal blue eyes wide in a thin, golden face.
“Quin,” said Luken, smiling.
“Grandfather!” the boy gasped, looking conscious. He smiled, then, and nodded down at the pot.
“Would you like a cup of tea? It’s fresh made.”
* * *
Grandfather looked tired, Quin thought. No, more than that, he looked worried. That was an honor. Grandfather was treating him like an adult, not like a child or a halfling to whom an untroubled face must be shown.
It was also deeply disturbing, which Quin had noticed was the case with many of adulthood’s honors. He sipped his tea, watching Luken do the same, and wished that there was some way in which he could ease that all-too-obvious worry. His father, he thought, would know exactly what to do.
But his father wasn’t here.
Heart cramped, Quin put his cup down.
“Would you like some cookies, Grandfather?” he asked.
Luken lowered his cup, and smiled gently. “Thank you, Boy Dear, but I think not. The tea is very welcome, though.” He sipped again, appreciatively, and placed his cup on the table. “Now, tell me, what brings you awake so early in the morn?”
When they had first come here, Grandmother Kareen had insisted that they keep the homeworld’s hours and maintain a strict division of day and night. She said it was their duty, which Quin supposed it must be, since Grandmother knew everything about duty and how it was most properly fulfilled. For himself, Quin could have done with a little less duty and a little more Luken, though it worked out well enough once the two elders began to rotate shifts, “so that we do not become stale and accustomed,” as Grandfather had it.
“Quin?”
He started, and sighed. “I was . . . thinking,” he admitted, and suddenly leaned forward, his hands gripping each other painfully. “Grandfather, do you think—do you think it goes well? It’s been so long . . . ”
“Has it been so long?” Luken murmured. He patted Quin’s arm softly. “I suppose it has been some time, at that, and your year is longer than mine by reason of you having so few of them. Well.” He picked up his cup.
Quin forced himself to sit back and picked up his own cup. The tea was good, he thought, but he didn’t sip.
Neither did Luken.
“I think,” he said slowly, as if he were considering the matter deeply, “that it goes as well as it may. Understand that some matters require more time than others. The First Speaker will surely wish to be certain of Korval’s position and of our allies before she calls us to her side.”
The First Speaker—Cousin Nova, that was, who was almost as much of a stickler as Grandmother Kareen. Quin had once remarked to his father that Cousin Nova was no gambler, and received a sharp set-down for his impertinence.
I should hope that the one who holds the clan’s future in trust for the delm is everything that is prudent. Gambling with lives is for Korval to do.
Quin bit his lip. “If it—If the First Speaker needed pilots, she’d remember to send for me—wouldn’t she, Grandfather?”
“Things would be desperate indeed, Boy Dear, before the First Speaker deprived us of our pilot.”
Our pilot. That was, Quin thought, with some bitterness, him. Not that he’d been allowed to pilot anything more than a sim since they came here, and done enough board drills to last him a long lifetime. He held a second-class card, but, he thought, he should have been a first class by now. Would have been, if Plan B hadn’t caught them all in its net of duty and boredom.
“I’m scarcely a pilot if I’m not allowed to fly,” he pointed out, his voice sounding churlish in his own ears. “Your pardon, Grandfather,” he muttered, and sipped tepid tea.
“That’s only the truth spoken,” Luken said, pushing his cup across the table. “Pour for me, Child.”
He did, first filling Grandfather’s cup, then his own, and put the pot aside.
“You recall the protocol,” Luken said gently. “If I fall, the keys are yours, whereupon—”
“No!” Quin interrupted, so forcefully that his tea sloshed over the edge of the cup and onto his hand. “Grandfather, you are not going to fall!”
Luken raised his eyebrows. “Well, if it comes to that, it is my duty to fall, if it will buy the pilot and the passengers time to be away,” he said mildly, and inclined his head. “Do you know, Quin, I think that I will have some cookies after all.”
“Of course, Grandfather.” He rose at once and went to the cabinet, had the tin down and took a moment to arrange the cookies on a plate. Just because we are in exile, Grandmother said, often, is no reason to descend into barbarism.
He took the plate to the table, offering it first to Luken, who took a single cookie, daintily, and bit into it with obvious enjoyment.
Quin put the plate in the center of the table, and reclaimed his chair. The cookies were his favorite—vanilla and spice seed—but he wasn’t hungry. He sipped his tea.
“Now,” Luken murmured gently, done with his treat, “what news?”
Quin blinked.
“I—news, Grandfather?” he managed.
Luken sighed. “You must forgive a man grown old in the ways of Liad. It had seemed to me, Boy Dear, that you placed a subtle emphasis on you in the declaration that I would not fall, which suggested to me that you have had news, perhaps, of . . . someone who may indeed have fallen.”
Quin sighed. It was useless to try to hide things from Luken; he knew that. Really, Grandfather probably knew all and everything, even about Padi helping him crack the datalocks.
He sighed again and looked up into his Grandfather’s eyes.
“Father hasn’t signed in,” he said slowly. “Not once since—since Plan B . . .”
“Ah, I had forgotten that you held the access codes to the Roster,” Luken said gently.
Quin pressed his lips together and said nothing. If by some chance Grandfather didn’t know about Padi’s assistance, he wouldn’t hear of it from Quin.
“Very good,” Luken said after a moment. “I must say that you surprise me, Boy Dear. I would have thought you knew by now that one who listens at doors hears nothing good.”
That was a lesson long ago learned, true enough, but—
“I had to know,” he muttered.
“Of course you did,” Luken replied courteously. He reached for another cookie and raised his eyes to Quin’s. “Now, tell me: what it is that you know?”
“I—” He gasped, feeling tears rise, swallowed, and forced himself to meet Grandfather’s calm, gray eyes.
“I know that Father hasn’t signed in,” he said steadily. He took a breath. “The rest is speculation.”
“I see. Well.” Luken bit into his cookie and sighed. “I agree that it is extremely vexatious of Pat Rin to have ignored protocol. His mother, your grandmother, is certain to ring a peal over him, when they are once again in the same room. For myself, I have determined to do nothing of the kind, for he will have had his reasons, you know. Your father does not much resemble an idiot.”
Quin considered him, the heavy misery that had settled in his chest lightening somewhat.
“You know that he is . . . safe, then, Grandfather?”
Luken sighed and picked up his teacup.
“Child, I know nothing of the sort. I merely hope.”
“Hope.” He hadn’t meant to speak so scornfully, not to Grandfather, and yet—
“It’s no shameful thing,” Luken murmured, “to hope. Nor would you be alone, did you take up the habit. We each of us hope for a Balanced outcome, and a speedy return home. Here, we hope for the safety of those who actively expose themselves to danger, while they hope to prevail, so that they and we will be reunited and that soon.”
Quin cleared his throat, thinking of the last time he’d seen his father. They’d said their public goodbyes at the foot of the gangway; his father had pressed his hand, and abjured him to study wel
l, wearing what Quin thought of as his card-playing face. All very ordinary, and he was only going back to school, after all, and would be home again at the end of the term.
There had been no reason for it, but Quin had paused just as he was about to enter the shuttle. Paused and turned his head.
At the foot of the gangway stood his father still, his dark hair riffled by the evening breeze, his face . . . attentive. Quin caught his eyes, and Father smiled, wide and sweet, as he so seldom did, and never in public. Quin had smiled back; Father raised his hand, fingers rippling in the sign for soon. Then the steward called and Quin had to clear the door, find his seat, strap in, and lean back, all the while glowing with the warmth of Father’s smile.
“Quin?”
He looked up into Grandfather’s eyes. “It would be good if we were called home soon,” he said, gravely. “And in the meanwhile, Grandfather, it doesn’t quite seem like Father to have allowed anything ill to befall him.”
Luken smiled and put his warm hand over Quin’s cold one.
“No, it doesn’t, does it?”
* * *
“They’ve gone?”
Those were Kareen yos’Phelium’s first words when she entered the control parlor to relieve Luken as guardian on-duty. A sharp-tongued stickler she might be, and what she had done to his boy never to be forgot, or forgiven, but no one could say that the lady was dull or that her ability to do sums was in any way impaired.
“Directly before the last manual survey,” Luken said, glancing again at the screen, yet innocent of lurkers. “I admit to a certain dismay.”
“One would prefer them in eye,” Kareen agreed, taking the second’s chair. “Perhaps they grew bored?”
“I could find no ease along that road, though you might do better,” Luken answered cordially.
Kareen sighed. “I expect I shall find none, either. It’s an ill road, beginning to end.” She frowned at the screen.
“Shall we take to the ship?”
According to the First Speaker’s wisdom, he was the elder-in-charge; thus the question came properly to him. Of course. Nor was it an ill question, only annoying in the way that questions which have no clean answer so often are.
Certainly, one felt increasingly exposed, in this supposedly rarely traveled corner of space. Certainly, a ship afforded flexibility, mobility, that their current situation did not. And yet . . .
“A destination?” he murmured, inviting her suggestion.
Again, she sighed. “Without proper access to certain information . . .”
Precisely. A ship might also, of course, gain them the newsfeeds that their stable fortress location lacked. It was no use thinking of sending one out for news, of course; they had but a single ship. If one went, all accompanied.
There were, of course, subplans to guide them, committed to memory long ago, and each assuming a catastrophic impetus. This . . . uneasiness was formed by a circumstance that, despite the instincts of two grown old in society, might yet be only happenstance.
“If we formed a less vulnerable grouping . . .” Kareen murmured, perhaps to herself.
Oh, they were vulnerable, Luken agreed silently; never think otherwise! Two silver-hairs, two halflings, a younger, and a pair of babes-in-arms. Had they been more grown, or less old—
Well. Had they been more grown, Korval’s treasures, there would have been no need to hide them away.
Luken looked to the screens . . . blinked and looked again.
“It may be,” he said slowly, “that our decision has been made for us.”
* * *
It was not the same ship, and it was possible that they had overreacted in sending the children to the ready room, the ship keys usually on Luken’s belt in Quin’s hand, and the back-up keys in Padi’s. Lady Kareen waited with him in the control parlor, one hand on the back of his chair, watching the screens over his shoulder, ready to move on the instant through the panel directly behind them.
On the screen, the ship approached, slowly, inexorably.
“Now . . .” Kareen breathed, and as if in response, the first beacon sent its challenge.
The approaching ship made answer, properly. On the master board, Luken saw the beacon begin its countdown from twelve. If the ship were still in range of its sensors when it came back online, it would die, friend or—but there, it was past and on course for the second beacon.
A ship of the clan, Luken thought, but found scant comfort in the thinking of it. Ships, after all, could be captured; and pilots subverted. The codes that held their doors against those who wished to gain Korval’s treasures for their own enrichment were not invincible. And as much as he wished the vessel that was now past the second beacon and on its way to the third and last, to be the answer to all their waiting, the closer it came, the more he mistrusted it.
“Does it seem to you, good Master bel’Tarda,” Kareen yos’Phelium murmured in his ear, “that the ship we see is somewhat too . . . apt?”
“It occurs to me,” he answered, his voice hushed. “One does so wish it to be a Korval vessel . . .”
“Precisely,” she said, suddenly crisp.
Luken drew a careful breath, and watched the ship in the screens. I am too old for this, he thought, and not nearly clever enough.
“The docking computer’s been fairly answered,” is what he said aloud. “Will you step aside while I go to greet our guest?”
“I’ll remain here, I think,” she said, not entirely surprisingly, “and monitor the situation. If matters . . . clarify, be assured that I know my duty.”
None better, he thought, and pushed out of his chair, suddenly feeling all of his years and the accumulated weight of the childrens’.
“I daresay, I won’t be but a moment,” he said with false cheer, and left the control parlor, heading for the dock.
* * *
Syl Vor sat with the twins, who were being very good, very quiet, in their separate carriers. That was precisely as it should be, Quin thought approvingly; Shindi and Mik were Syl Vor’s job until they had to move. If they had to go before Grandmother was with them, then Syl Vor would pick up Shindi and he would take Mik, and they’d run as fast as they could, with Padi bringing up the rear. That was as it should be, too, because Padi was co-pilot; her charges, the pilot and the passengers.
Quin, watching the screen, thought that Grandfather and Grandmother had—perhaps—been too enthusiastic in their duty. Indeed, it was all he could do to hold to discipline and not open the door. For surely, surely, this was recall at last, for here came a ship whose pilot held all the proper codes . . .
“Why don’t we have an all-clear?” Padi demanded, echoing his thought. “The systems accept the ship—it’s docking! What more does Aunt want? A calling card?”
“They want the pilot to prove the door code, too,” Quin said.
“Why?” Padi was fairly dancing from one foot to the other. “He had all the others. What proof can one more door hold?”
Quin touched the screen’s keypad, accessing the camera on the hall outside the forward dock. It would, he thought, be Cousin Shan, or perhaps Cousin Anthora. Or . . . if Cousin Nova—if the First Speaker couldn’t spare any of the Line Direct for the errand, then it would certainly be Pilot Mendoza, or . . .
Familiar and firm. That was what Grandmother said. That the pilot the First Speaker sent to them, when it was come time to go home, would be familiar to them, and firm in their loyalty to Korval.
For long moments, the bay door remained sealed, ready light glowing green above it. Quin’s stomach clenched. What if the pilot failed, after all, to have the proper codes for the door? That would mean—gods, would it mean that the ship had been stolen? Or that the pilot—their pilot, familiar and firm—had been stolen, and—and coerced into revealing—
“Quin?”
Padi was frowning at him, and that would never do
He took a deep breath and gave her a smile. “Don’t you want to know who has come for us?”
Her face relaxed into a grin.
“The pilot could,” she agreed, “take our feelings into account and make some haste.”
As if the pilot had heard her, the ready light snapped to yellow, and the bay door slid open.
“Syl Vor!” Quin hissed. “Count of twelve!”
He had never in his life seen the woman who stepped, soundless as a scout, into the hallway.
* * *
The ship rejoiced in the name of Fortune’s Reward; a ship of the line, lately assigned to the wastrel cousin, whom Korval’s great enemy and the Juntavas alike had thought to be easy meat.
Not so the Office of Judgment, and in that they had been proven wise. Never an ill thing, to have the sagacity of the judges proven.
It was ill, the pilot thought, releasing the webbing, but not yet rising from the chair . . . It was ill, indeed, that she came thus into Korval’s most secret treasurehouse, alone, and unknown to those who stood guard. It had been better—but no matter. Done was done, and, truly, she had finessed more volatile situations. She would need to win them, that was all.
Win them.
She rose then, with no need to check her status. Her weapons were old friends; each of their caresses known and unique. They would not disturb her, nor unbalance her; and they would come to her hand when they were needed.
So, then, the codes; last in the series she had been given to memorize. She would in a moment open the door and step into Korval’s treasurehouse, where she would doubtless be greeted by one of the vigilant guardians.
Win them.
* * *
The door accepted the codes, whisking out of her way. Beyond, the hall was empty, saving the cameras and the vents that she did not doubt were an active part of security.
Happily, whoever monitored the camera, and presumably held the decision as to what sort of gas might fill this hallway, appeared to be of a deliberate nature. She had, after all, demonstrated mastery of the codes. The guard might grant an extra few minutes of life to such a one, awaiting . . . confirmation.
There was another door at the top of the hall. She did not approach it; certainly she did not try it. Her information regarding what might happen, did she attempt either, had been specific.
