by Sharon Lee
“Now,” he said when he could trust his voice for more than a few words. He looked over to Nova. “We must assess general condition, wear patterns, repairs, stains—that sort of thing. What say you?”
Seriously, she scrutinized the gauze backing, then turned the rug over, clumsily, to study the face, her hands chastely cupping her knees.
“Hands,” Pat Rin murmured. “Use your hands.”
He demonstrated, elegant fingers—ringless for this work—petting, gripping, pushing—his palms flowing about the top and bindings.
“Feel the nap. Is there a stiff spot which may be a stain invisible to the eye? Pull on the loops—do they hold or come loose? Smell the carpet—is it musty? Sour? All of these details are important.”
She sent him one startled glance out of vivid purple eyes before bending forward, her right hand stroking and seeking. She bent her face closer—and sneezed.
“Dusty,” she said.
He inclined his head.
She continued her inspection with that solemness which was characteristic of her, and at last sat back on her heels and looked at him across the rug.
“The threads are good, the stitches are firm. There is no staining visible to eye or to hand. The carpet is dusty, but fresh.”
“Very good,” he said, and plied the stylus once more.
When the yellow tag appeared, he handed it across to her.
“Use the stitch gun to staple the tag to the near corner.”
He helped her wrestle the wrapper on it, and used his chin to point at the waiting carpets.
“Please choose our next subject and unroll it while I put this in its proper place.”
She rose, a thing of pure, careless grace, and moved lithely to the pile. Pat Rin gritted his teeth and carried the little rug across to the bin.
Niki was sitting tall on the shelf. She blinked lazy green eyes at him as he stroked her breast.
Somewhat soothed, Pat Rin turned back to the work area, expecting to find the next specimen unrolled and awaiting inspection.
Indeed, a rug had been liberated from the pile, and he felt a momentary pang—she had chosen the one he had wanted to study himself. It displayed a promising underside, thick with knots. He sighed, then wondered about the delay.
Knife at her knee, Nova crouched over the roll, head bent above the single corner she had curled into the light. Her shoulders were rounded in an attitude of misery—or defiance.
“Unroll it!” he said, perhaps a little sharply, but Nova only knelt there.
Gods, what ailed the child? Pat Rin thought, irritably, and moved forward.
“Don’t . . .” Nova moaned, “I know this rug!”
But that was nothing more than nonsense. Likely the thing had been away rolled in a dusty attic for a dozen dozen Standards . . .
He moved down the cylinder, pulling the ribbon ties rapidly.
“Nova, help me roll this out.”
She crouched lower, fingers gripping her corner . . .
Pat Rin delivered a smart kick and the thing unrolled with alacrity, as if the carpet had been yearning for its freedom.
Beside him, cowering now, head even closer to the floor and the corner of carpet she clung to, Nova gasped.
He looked down at the top of her bright head, frowning. Nothing he knew of Nova encouraged him to believe that she was a malingerer. Nor was it possible to imagine Cousin Er Thom or his lady wife, Cousin Anne, tolerating this sort of missish behavior for anything longer than a heartbeat.
“Are you ill?” he asked. “Cousin?”
She shuddered, and raised her head as if it were a very great weight.
“No,” she said on a rising note, as though she questioned her answer even as she gave it. “I . . .beg your pardon, Cousin. A passing—a passing stupidity.” She rose, slowly and with a quarter of her previous grace. “Pray . . . do not regard it.”
He considered her. Carpets woven of certain esoteric materials did sometimes collect ill humors in storage. It was doubtful that this rug, which he had already tentatively classified as a Tantara of some considerable age, woven with vegetable dyed zeesa-wool thread that wore like ship-steel, had collected anything more than a little must, if that.
He glanced from her pale face to the rug. Yes—certainly it was an older Tantara, a geometric in the ivory-and-deep-green combination which had been retired for a dozen dozen Standards, and in an absolutely enviable state of preservation, saving a stain on a wide section of the ivory-colored fringe.
Bending, he ran his hand over the nap near the stain—stiff fibers grazed his palm. Whatever the substance was, it had gotten into the rug, too, which meant that there would be more to repairing the damage than simply replacing the fringe. It was odd that the carpet had been rolled away without being cleaned—and unfortunate, too. Most stains could be eradicated, if treated when fresh. A stain which had set for dozens of years, perhaps—it might be impossible to entirely remove the mar.
“We will need the kit for this,” he said briskly, straightening. “I’ll fetch it while you do a preliminary inspection.”
“Yes,” she whispered, and he sent another frown into her pale face.
“Nova,” he said, touching her hand. “Are you well?”
“Yes,” she whispered again, and turned away to find the clipboard.
Irritated, he strode off to the supplies closet.
The diagnostic kit was hanging in its place on the peg-board wall. Despite this, Pat Rin did not immediately have it down and hurry back to the work area. The stained rug had languished for years without care. A few heartbeats more would do it no harm.
Leaning against the wall, he closed his eyes and took stock. The headache was the merest feeling of tightness behind his eyes, his stomach was empty, but unconcerned. In all, he had managed to come out of last evening’s adventures in fairly good order. His present irritability was not, he knew, the result of overindulgence, but rather the presence of one of his pilot kin, innocent herself of any wrong-doing—and a poignant reminder of all that he was not. Nor ever would be.
“Be gentle with the child,” he said to himself. “Did Luken show temper with you, thrust upon him unwarned and very likely unwanted?”
But, there. Luken was a gentle soul, and never showed temper, nor ever raised his voice, no matter how far he was provoked. He had other means of exacting Balance.
Pat Rin took another deep breath—and another. Opening his eyes, he could not say that he felt perfectly calm—but it would suffice. He hoped.
One more inhalation, for the luck. He had the kit off the peg and headed back to the workroom, and his assistant, and was brought up short on the threshold.
Nova stood in the center of the rug, shoulders and chin thrust forward in a distinctly truculent attitude, surveying the pattern.
“It is a beautiful rug, indeed,” she said nastily, as if speaking to someone who stood next to her rather than one on the other side of the room.
“Indeed, show off the pattern. Tell us that it is an antique Quidian Tantara, unblemished, heirloom of a clan fallen on hard times, a clan of rug dealers who have kept this treasure until the last, until your wonderful trading skills brought its true glory to us! And how like you to bring it here as subterfuge, hiding the truth of it, magnifying yourself to the detriment of others, and to the clan. Almost, you got away with it . . .”
What was this? Was she speaking to him, after all? Had she discovered a pedigree card tucked into the end of the rug? In fact, from his view now, it might well be a Quidian, the rarest of . . .
She turned and stared directly at him.
“How many times more will you fail?” she shouted.
Pat Rin froze, caught between astonishment and outrage. How dare—
“One failure should certainly have been enough,” he said, struggling to keep his tone merely courteous and his face smooth. “That there are more can be laid to your father’s account.”
“Kin will suffer for your lapses!” Nova snar
led, moving forward one slow, threatening step.
“Yes, very likely!” he snapped, all out of patience. “But never fear, cousin. The clan will not suffer because of me. I will make my own way.”
“You fail and fail again, always blaming others,” ranted the girl on the rug, as if he hadn’t spoken. “You will die dishonored and your kin will curse your name!”
Now that, Pat Rin thought, his anger abruptly gone, was coming rather too strong. It wasn’t as if Korval had never produced a rogue. Rather too many, if truth were told—and most especially Line yos’Phelium. Taking up trade as a gamester was the merest bagatelle, set beside the accomplishments of some of the honored ancestors.
He came to the edge of the rug. Nova continued to stand at menace in the center, her attitude too—old, somehow. Too tense. And now that he brought his attention to it, he saw that her face was tight with an adult’s deep and hopeless grief—and that her eyes were black, amethyst all but drowned in distended pupils.
Too, she stood in something very close to a fighter’s stance . . . and was not quite looking at him
Pat Rin frowned. Something decidedly odd was going on. Perhaps she was acting out some part from a melant’i play? Though why she should do so, here and now, was beyond his understanding.
He held the diagnostic kit up before those pupil-drowned eyes.
“Come now!” He said, with brisk matter-of-factness. “We’ll be at work into the next relumma if we stop every hour to play-act!”
The blind, grief-ridden face turned away from him.
“How many times will you fail?” she whispered—and the voice she spoke in was not her voice.
Pat Rin felt a frisson of horror. He cleared his throat.
“Nova?”
“Die dishonored,” she mourned and sagged to her knees, palms flat against the carpet. “Cursed and forgotten.”
He caught his breath. This was no play-acting. He couldn’t, off-hand, think of any swift-striking disease that caused hallucination. There were recreational pharmaceuticals which produced vivid visions, but—
“Cursed,” Nova moaned, in the voice of—The Other. And there was no drug that Pat Rin knew of which would produce that effect.
Come to that, it was not unknown for Korval to produce Healers, though such talents usually did not manifest until one came halfling. Not that this . . . fit . . . bore any resemblance to his limited experience of Healer talent.
Dramliza?
But those talents, like Healing, usually came with puberty. And, surely, if one were dramliza . . .
Crouched on the rug, Nova looked distinctly unwell. Her grief-locked face was pale, the black eyes screwed shut, now; and she was shivering, palms pressed hard against the carpet.
Clearly, whatever the problem was, she needed to be removed from the carpet, and brought away to a place where she might lie down while he called a medic to her—and her father.
Pat Rin put the diagnostic kit on the floor and went forward. When he reached the grieving girl, he knelt and put his hands, gently, on her shoulders.
“Nova.”
No reply. Her shoulders were rigid under his fingers. He could see the pulse beating, much too fast, at the base of her slender throat.
Fear spiked Pat Rin—the child was ill! He made his decision, braced himself, slipped his arms around her waist and rose, lifting her with—
The quiescent, grieving child exploded into a fury of fists and feet and screams. He was pummeled, kicked, and punched—one fist landing with authority on his cheek.
Pat Rin staggered and went down on a knee. Nova broke free, rolled, and snapped to her feet, the carpet knife held in a blade-fighter’s expert grip.
Blindingly fast, she thrust. Pat Rin threw himself flat, saw her boots dance past him and rolled, coming to his feet and spinning, body falling into the crouch his defense teacher had drilled him on, ready to take the charge that did not come.
Nova looked at him—perhaps she did look at him—and tossed the blade away, as if it were a stylus or some other harmless trifle, ignoring it as it bounced away, safely away, across the rug and onto the workroom floor. Niki, brought down from her comfort-spot by the noise, stalked it there, tail rigid, and smacked it smartly with a clawed paw.
Slowly, Pat Rin straightened, forcing himself to stand at his ease.
Something terrible was happening, and he was entirely out of his depth. He should, he thought, call the Healers now. And then he thought that he should—he must—get her off of the rug.
Perhaps persuasion would succeed where force had failed. He took a breath and shook the hair that had come loose from the tail out of his face. His cheek hurt and he would make odds that he would have a stunning bruise by evening. No matter.
He cleared his throat.
“Nova?”
No answer. Pat Rin sighed.
“Cousin?”
She raised her head, her eyes were pointed in his direction.
Ah, he thought. Now, how to parley this small advantage into a win?
He shifted, and looked down at the carpet. An old carpet, a treasure— a Quidian Tantara, the pattern as old as weaving itself. How Luken would love this rug.
Alas, he sorely missed Luken and his endless commonsense just now. What would he do in this eldritch moment? Cast a spell? Trap the offending spirit in a tea box?
Pat Rin looked up.
“Cousin,” he said again, to Nova’s black and sightless eyes. “I . . . scarcely know you. If you must treat me this way, at least show respect to our common clan and tell me clearly which melant’i you use.”
He bowed flawlessly, the bow requesting instruction from kin.
Something changed in her face; he’d at least been seen, if not recognized.
“Melant’i games? You wish to play melant’i games with me? I see.”
Chillingly, she swept a perfect bow: head of line to child of another line.
“Lisha yos’Galan Clan Korval,” she said in that strange voice, and bowed again, leading with her hand to display the ring it did not bear. “Master Trader. It is in this guise, Del Ben, that I became aware of your perfidy in dealing with bel’Tarda.”
Del Ben? The name struck an uneasy memory. There had been a Del Ben yos’Phelium, many years back in the Line. Indeed, Pat Rin recalled, there had been three Del Ben yos’Pheliums—and then no more, which was . . . peculiar . . . of itself. He remembered noticing that, during his studies of the Diaries and of lineage. And he remembered thinking it was odd that a yos’Phelium had died without issue, odder still that the death was not recorded, merely that Del Ben vanished from the log books between one page and the rest . . .
Nova’s black eyes flashed. She laughed, not kindly. “Look at you! Hardly sense enough to see to your wounds! Well, bleed your precious yos’Phelium blood out on the damned rug if you will, and live with the mark of it. This—I am old. I am slow. I could never have touched the man you wish to be. But you—always, you do just enough to get by, just enough to cause trouble for others, just enough—”
“Bah,” she said, interrupting herself with another bow: Cousin instructing cousin.
“This one? Well, cuz, I had thought myself well beyond the time of my life where I must marry at contract. But not only will I wed a bel’Tarda because of you, I will bring them into the clan because of you.”
Pat Rin froze—what was this?
She swept on, a child chillingly, absolutely convincing in the role of clan elder.
“Ah, yes, smirk. I have seen the contracts. Tomorrow, I will sign them. Do you know that the dea’Gauss and bel’Tarda’s man of business met this week? No—you might have, had you checked your weekly agendas, but when have you ever done so? Did you know that, between them, they decided that your life was insufficient to Balance the wrong done bel’Tarda?”
There was a laugh then, edgy and perhaps not quite sane. “Do you know that we are forbidden by Korval to kill you? But no matter, cuz, I am to both carry the bel’Tarda’s heir, wh
o will replace the man who suicided as a result of your extortion, and to oversee the rebuilding of their business—likely here on Liad!—since the heir and his heir died in the fire. The only proper Balance is to offer our protection, bring them into Korval, and insure that their Line lives on. For you—you nearly destroyed the whole of it! And you?”
Another frightening bow, this one so complex it took even Pat Rin’s well-trained eye a moment to decode it: the bow of one who brings news of a death in the House.
Pat Rin, mesmerized, saw the play move on—
“You may see the delm, if you dare, or you may choose a new name—one that lacks Korval, and one that lacks yos’Phelium. You may eat while you are in this house, you may sleep in this house, you may dress from the clothes you already own—but you will bring me your clan rings, your insignia, your pass-keys. Bring them to me now. If you will speak to the delm, I will take you, else . . .
“Hah, and so I thought, “ she said, spitting on the rug.
“Remove this rug and bring me the items I named . . . Know that if you leave—if you go beyond the outside door it will not readmit you.”
With that the girl-woman kicked at the rug and stormed off of it, turning her back and crumpling into the pose Pat Rin had seen before . . .
“I shall take the rug!” Pat Rin announced with sudden fervor, not certain that she’d heard.
He rolled it quickly, slung it manfully across his back in the carry he had learned so long ago from Luken, and hustled it out into the hall, where he dumped it hurriedly on the back stairs to his loft room, and clicked the mechanical lock forcefully.
He snatched the portable comm from its shelf and rushed back to the door of the display room, where he could see the girl huddled in sobs amid the ribbons that had once bound the cursed rug.
His fingers moved on the comm’s keypad and he wondered who they had called. A faint chime came out of the speaker . . . another—and a woman’s voice, speaking crisply.
“Solcintra Healer Hall. Service?”
* * *
THE HEALERS—a plump, merry-faced man and a thin, stern woman—arrived. The woman went immediately to Nova where she crouched and wept against the floor. The man tarried by Pat Rin’s side.
