A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume I

by Sharon Lee

  Luken smiled. “I am not quite an idiot, boy-dear.”

  “Of course not,” he murmured, more than half-caught in his calculations. “So, the question before me now is whether the affect will remain fixed, should I retire to my own establishment.”

  “I should think,” Luken said, “that the key would be not to retire, but to continue as you have been, only from the comfort of a bachelor’s dig.”

  A townhouse on Nasingtale Alley could scarcely be called a “dig”—and Luken, as he so often was, despite one’s mother’s contention that the rug merchant was no more nor less than a block—Luken was right. Pat Rin had only to carry on as he was. The invitations would continue to arrive—and he might even host a small entertainment or two, himself. The gods knew, he had assisted with enough of his mother’s entertainments to know how the thing was done.

  “Please consider,” Luken said carefully. “You are now well-known among the Houses. Your melant’i is your own, no matter that it in some measure reflects your mother’s, and your clan’s, as it must. But—it would hardly do for you to regularly best your mother’s houseguests while you yourself sleep under her roof. Nor would it be best for you, seen among the elders of many a House as a biddable young man always at your mother’s call, to have to rigorously make a point . . .”

  Pat Rin grimaced at this description of himself, while allowing that, from the outside, it might appear thus.

  “. . .as I say, if you need to press an honest advantage across a table, it might be best if you do it first among the lesser members of the Houses until Lord Pat Rin is more fully known as himself. If being Lady Kareen’s son is not your occupation, my boy, then having your own place will afford you both more flexibility in your evenings and more company in the mornings. I say this as one who was, alas, once young myself.”

  Seated, Pat Rin bowed the bow of apprentice to master.

  “It might do,” he said, and glanced to Luken’s face. “If bin’Flora’s rate is possible.”

  Luken smiled. “Please, know that there are two partners in every trade. The place would have been rented anytime the last two relumma were the matter simply one of cash flow. Not all would-be renters are High House, my boy. Nor,” he said with sudden emphasis, “are all High House equally acceptable. Whatever the Code may teach.

  “I will mention your interest to Sisilli,” Luken concluded, and drank off the rest of his tea.

  “As much as I enjoy your company, child, I am afraid that I must leave you for an appointment.”

  Pat Rin inclined his head, his gaze snagging on the manifest, lying forgotten on the table. He extended a slender hand and plucked the page up, running an eye trained by Master Merchant Luken bel’Tarda down the list of items.

  “Shall I inventory these, while you are gone?” he asked Luken. “That will have to be done, whatever else Cousin Er Thom intends.”

  “So it will,” Luken said, coming to his feet. “If you have the leisure, boy-dear, the work would be appreciated. You’ll find the lot of them in the old private showing room. And also, since you will wish to have clear sight if not a clear head, I suggest you make use of some of the tea you will find there. It will have Terran wording on it—McWhortle’s Special Wake-Up Blend—and it should be taken just as the directions instruct. Shall we plan on dining at Ongit’s this evening?”

  “I would enjoy that,” he said truthfully. “Very much.”

  “Then that is what we shall do,” Luken declared. “Until soon, my son.”

  “Until soon, Father,” Pat Rin responded and rose to bow Luken to the door.

  IT APPEARED THAT Luken had been correct in his assessment of the lot of rugs from the Southern House, as well as in his understanding of the utility of McWhortle’s Special Wake-Up Blend.

  The tea was surprisingly tasty for something avowedly of Terran extraction, and equally efficacious.

  The rugs . . . He sighed. Not all of the pilots of Korval—put together!—knew what Luken did of rugs, and some had, alas, displayed an amazing lack of both color sense and fashion awareness. The first rug, indifferently rolled and protected by nothing more than a thin sheet of plastic, was synthetic. He threw it across the flat onto the show-zone, where the mass and size were automatically recorded—the overhead camera recorded detail, but really—there wasn’t much to say for it. Machine stamped in a small, boring floral pattern, backed with nothing more than its own fibers, with a density on the low side, it might as well be sent as a donation to the Pilot’s Fund used-goods outlet in Low Port.

  Pat Rin dutifully entered these deficiencies into his clipboard, slotted the stylus, and touched a key. The clipboard hummed for a moment, printing, and a yellow inventory tag slid out of the side slot. Pat Rin picked up the stitch gun and stapled the tag to the corner of the rug, before rolling it, bagging it in a bel’Tarda-logo light-proof wrapper, and dragging the sorry specimen over to the storage bin which he had marked with Cousin Er Thom’s number and the additional legend, “Southern House.”

  Straightening, feeling somewhat better for the tea and in fact much more clear-eyed—he looked suddenly to the shelf above the bin, where a long-haired white cat with excessively pink ears lounged, very much at her leisure. Likely she’d been there the while; that he hadn’t noticed her was a further testament to his excesses of the evening before.

  “Niki,” Pat Rin murmured, extending a finger, but not quite touching the drowsing animal.

  Her eyes slitted, then opened to full emerald glory. Yawning, she extended a pink-toed and frivolously befurred foot to wrap around his fingertip, her claws just pricking the surface of his skin.

  Pat Rin smiled and used his free hand to rub the lady softly beneath her delicate chin. Niki’s eyes went to slits again and her breathy purr filled the air between them. The claws withdrew from his captive finger and he let the freed member fall to his side, while moving his other hand to her ears. His exertions there were shortly rewarded with an increase in her audible pleasure, and he smiled again.

  One’s mother did not keep cats, or any other domestic creature, aside the occasional servant. It made for an oddly empty feel about the house, even when it was full with guests.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, giving her chin a last rub and stepping back. Niki squinted her eyes in a cat-smile, purring unabated.

  Pat Rin turned back to his work.

  The next rug was intriguingly and thickly wrapped in what must have been a local newspaper. He fussed the sheets off and found the rug rolled backing out, tied at intervals with what might have once been elegant hair-ribbons. He sat on his heels and smiled. This, he would examine last. It had good weight and somehow the smell of a proper rug—and would be his reward for doing a careful inventory of the rest of the obviously unsuitable specimens tumbled about them.

  He used a utility blade to slit the plastic sealing the next rug, noting the ragged jute backing, and unrolled it onto the scale with a casual kick before bending to retrieve the clipboard.

  The work was—comforting. Despite that Kareen yos’Phelium had declared that she would not have her heir made into a rug salesman—had in fact complained of him coming up with callused hands—Luken had trained him well, and he knew himself to be the master of the task he had set for himself. It could not be said that he completely shared his fosterfather’s ecstatic enthusiasm for carpet, or his encyclopedic knowledge of their histories, but he owned to a fondness for the breed, and knew a certain pleasure in being once more among them.

  The unrolled carpet was a geometric, hand-loomed in bronzes, browns and dark greens, with pale green fringe along the two short sides. It glistened in the light, inviting him to believe that it was silk. But he had seen the backing and was not taken in.

  As counterfeits went, it was rather a good one. The traditional Arkuba pattern had been faithfully reproduced; the measurements precisely those to which all Arkuba carpets adhered, to the very length of the pale fringe and the vegetable-dyed thread. Alas, the luster which would, in the
genuine article, be testimony to the silken threads that had gone into its manufacture, was in this case misleading. Rather than silk, the carpet before him had been woven with specially treated cotton thread.

  A perfectly serviceable and attractive rug, really, setting aside for the moment those issues surrounding a counterfeit hallmark. Pat Rin merely hoped that the nameless ancestor who had purchased the thing had known it for what it was and had paid accordingly.

  He entered his observations, tapped the stylus against the print button, and slid it into its slot while the clipboard hummed its tuneless tune and in the fullness of time extruded an inventory ticket which he stapled to the corner of the rug before bagging and dragging it over to the bin.

  Niki was still on the shelf overhead, profoundly asleep. He smiled, but did not disturb her.

  The protective plastic over the next carpet had been torn at some time—possibly as recently as the move from the Southern House to Luken’s warehouses. Pat Rin slit what was left of the sheet, approving, as he did so, the plentitude of painstakingly tied knots along the carpet’s underside, and the foundation of wool.

  Once more, a kick sent the rug rolling out—and he sighed aloud. Insects had gotten in through the breached plastic. The wool in spots was eaten down to the backing, leaving the skeleton of a handsome rectilinear design he did not immediately recognize. No, this damage had not occurred in the warehouse, being both too extensive and too old.

  Sighing yet again, he reached for the clipboard to record the loss—

  “Cousin Luken?” The voice was clear and carrying—and unfortunately familiar.

  Pat Rin closed his eyes, there where he rested on one knee beside the ruined rug, and wished fervently that she would overlook this room. There was little chance that she would, of course. His cousin Nova was nothing if not thorough. Unnaturally thorough, one might say.

  “Cousin Luken!” she called again, her voice nearer this time.

  Pat Rin opened his eyes, picked up the clipboard, fingered the stylus free and entered a description of the damage. The mechanism hummed and in due time a red tag emerged. He reached for the stitch gun—

  “Oh, there you are, Cousin!” Nova said from the doorway at his back.

  Amidst the sound of approaching light footsteps, Pat Rin stapled the red tag to a corner of the ruined rug.

  “Father sent me to help you catalog the rugs from the—” She stopped, aware, so Pat Rin thought, that she had made an error.

  Gently, he placed the stitch gun on the floor next to the clipboard, and turned his head slightly so that she could see the side of his face.

  “Cousin Pat Rin!” she exclaimed, with a measure of astonishment that he found not particularly flattering.

  He inclined his head. “Cousin Nova,” he stated, with deliberate coolness. “What a surprise to find you here.”

  The instant the words left his lips, he wished them back. He had spent the last year and more deliberately honing his wit and his tongue until they were weapons as formidable as the palm pistol he carried in his sleeve. Surely, it was ill-done of him to loose those weapons on a child.

  “Is Cousin Luken to house?” she asked stiffly.

  He rose carefully to his feet and turned to face her.

  Nova’s twelfth Name Day had been celebrated only a relumma past, and already she showed warning of the beauty she would become. Her hair was gilt, her eyes amethyst, her carriage erect and unstrained. She had, so he heard, passed the preliminary testing for pilot-candidate, an unsurprising fact which had nonetheless woken a twist of bitterness in him.

  Today found her dressed in sturdy shirt and trousers, well-scuffed boots on her feet, passkey clenched in one hand, and a glare on her face for the ill-tempered elder cousin—for which he blamed her not at all.

  “Alas, one’s fosterfather is away on an appointment,” he said, moderating his tone with an effort. “May I be of service, Cousin?”

  Her glare eased somewhat as she glanced about her.

  “Father sends me to help Cousin Luken sort the carpets from the Southern House,” she said tentatively. “However, I find you at that task.”

  It was not meant to be accusatory, he reminded himself forcefully. She was a child, with a child’s grasp of nuance.

  Though she had grasped the nuance of his greeting swiftly enough. He had the acquaintance of adults who would have not have taken his point so quickly—if at all.

  So— “Cousin Er Thom had not written us to expect your arrival and assistance,” he answered Nova, deliberately gentle. “I happened to be at liberty and took the work for my own.”

  She blinked at him, jewel-colored eyes frankly doubtful.

  “You are aware, are you not,” Pat Rin said, allowing himself an edge of irony, “that I am Luken’s fosterling?”

  “Ye-e-s-s,” Nova agreed. “But Cousin Kareen—I heard her speaking with my father and she . . .” Here she hesitated, perhaps nonplused to discover herself admitting to listening at doors.

  Pat Rin inclined his head. “One’s mother was adamant that I not be trained as a rug merchant,” he said smoothly. “Alas, by the time she recognized the danger, the damage had long been done.”

  Nova’s straight, pale mouth twitched a little, as if she had suppressed a smile.

  “Will you come into Cousin Luken’s business?” she asked, which was not an unreasonable question, from a daughter of the trade Line. Still, Pat Rin felt his temper tighten, spoiling the easier air that had been flowing between them.

  “I’ve gone into another trade, thank you,” he said shortly, and swept his hand out, showing her the pile of rolled rugs waiting to be inventoried. “For all that, I am competent enough in this one.”

  He sighed, recalling his mother’s plans for him, and shook the memory away.

  “If you like, you may assist me,” he murmured, and that was no more than the Code taught was due from kin to kin: Elders taught those junior to them, freely sharing what knowledge and skill they had, so that the clan continued, generation to generation, memory and talent intact.

  Nova bowed, hastily. “I thank you, Cousin. Indeed, I would be pleased to assist you.”

  “That is well, then. The sooner we address the task, the sooner it will be done. Attend me, now.”

  He moved over to the pile and kicked a smallish roll out into the work area. Dropping to knee, he slit the plastic, revealing a plain gauze backing. A push unrolled it onto the scale, and Pat Rin looked up at Nova, standing hesitant where he had left her.

  “Please,” he said, “honor me with your opinion of this.”

  Slowly, she came forward, and knelt across from him, frowning down at the riot of woolen flowers that comprised the rug’s design. She rubbed her palm across the surface, gingerly.

  “Wool,” she said, which was no grand deduction, and flipped up the edge near her knee. The gauze backing disconcerted her for a moment, then she returned to the face, using her fingers to press into and about the design.

  “Hand-hooked,” she said then, and was very likely correct, Pat Rin thought, but as it stood it was no more than a guess. He held up a hand.

  “Hooked, certainly,” he murmured. “Where do you find the proof for ‘handmade?’”

  Eagerly, she flipped back the edge, and pointed to the row of tiny, uneven stitches set into the gauze.

  “Ah.” He inclined his head. “I see that your conclusion is not unreasonable. However, it is wise to bear in mind that carpets are sometimes adjusted—fringe is added, or removed, backings are sewn on—or removed—holes are rewoven. Therefore, despite the fact that someone has clearly sewn the backing on by hand, the rug itself might yet have been made by machine. The preferred proofs are . . .”

  He extended a hand and smoothed the wool petal of a particularly extravagant yellow flower, displaying a stitching of darker thread beneath.

  . . . “Maker’s mark.”

  Nova bit her lip.

  “Or,” Pat Rin continued, flipping the little rug entirel
y over with a practiced twist of his wrists. He put his palm flat on the backing and moved it slowly, as if he were stroking Niki. He motioned Nova to do the same—which she did, gingerly, and then somewhat firmer.

  “What do you feel?” he asked.

  “Knots,” she replied. “So it is handmade—I was correct.”

  “It is handmade,” he conceded, “and you were correct.” He lifted a finger. “For the wrong reason.”

  She sighed, but, “I understand,” was what she said.

  “Good. If you will, of your goodness, hand me the clipboard, I will make that notation and then we may proceed with the rest of the inspection.”

  She picked up the clipboard in one hand and held it out to him over the rug. He took it, his thumb accidentally nudging the stylus out of its slot, sending it floorward in a glitter of silver—

  Nova swept forward, her hand fairly blurring as she scooped the stylus out of the air, reversed it and held it out to him.

  He blinked. A child, he thought, all of his bitterness rising . . .

  Some part of it must have shown on his face. Nova hesitated, hand drooping.

  “I was too fast, wasn’t I?” she said, sounding curiously humble. “I do beg your pardon, Cousin. Father is trying to teach me better, but I fear I am sometimes forgetful.”

  “Teach you better?” Pat Rin repeated, and his voice was harsh in his own ears. “I thought speed was all, to those who would be pilots.”

  “Yes, but one mustn’t be too fast,” Nova said solemnly. “It won’t do to frighten those who are not pilots—or to rush the instruments, when one is at the board.”

  He closed his eyes. Five times, since his eleventh name-day. Five times, he had tested for pilot and failed. Always, the tests found him too slow. Too slow—and this child, his cousin, must learn not to be too fast. He tried to decide if he most wished to laugh or to weep and in the end only opened his eyes again and took the stylus from her hand.

  “My thanks,” he murmured, and bent his head over the clipboard while he took his time making the initial entry.