Loose Cannon

by Sharon Lee

  LOOSE CANNON

  Adventures in the Liaden Universe®

  Number Seven

  Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

  Pinbeam Books

  http://www.pinbeambooks.com

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are fiction or are used fictitiously.

  LOOSE CANNON

  Copyright © 2001, 2003, 2011 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author. Please remember that distributing an author’s work without permission or payment is theft; and that the authors whose works sell best are those most likely to let us publish more of their works.

  First published in 2001 by SRM, Publisher.

  A Matter of Dreams originally appeared in A Distant Soil #27, April 1999

  ISBN:

  Kindle: 978-1-935224-69-3

  Epub: 978-1-935224-70-9

  PDF: 978-1-935224-71-6

  Published May 2011 by

  Pinbeam Books

  PO Box 707

  Waterville ME 04903

  email info@pinbeambooks.com

  Cover Copyright © 2011 by Steve Miller

  Cover design by Steve Miller

  LOOSE CANNON

  Smashwords Edition

  Discover other titles by Sharon Lee, Steve Miller, and Sharon Lee and Steve Miller at Smashwords

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy fo reach recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, the please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard word of this author

  Dedicated to:

  Dorothea Neale

  A Matter of Dreams

  ON SINTIA, it’s the dreaming that first marks a witch.

  A child will dream the minutiae of life, relate the sending in the morning, all innocent and dewy-eyed; astonished when the dream events turn true next day—or next one.

  She’s watched then, for grandma will have contacted Temple, never doubt it; and after a time the child will dream the name of the one she had been Before. Then she’ll be brought to Circle and trained to be one with the Dream.

  I know the way because Jake used to talk about his Mam, my gran’mam, who’d Dreamed a Dream and had the training and then left the Temple and who she’d been—for love, Jake said, and for stars.

  I’ve never dreamed the naming-Dream, being outworlder, even though witch-blood. I figure only the damned come to me—those who died unquiet or outside the love of the Holy; those who somehow lost their Name. I figure that, but I don’t say it. I dream the dreams and I let them go. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they come true.

  The first time I saw Her was dreamsight.

  She was in a port side bar—too coarse a place for Her to be—standing straight in her starry blue robe, with her breasts free and her face shining with power, black hair crackling lightning and spread around her like an aurora. Her eyes—her eyes were black, and in the dream she saw me. At her feet was broken glass; the shine of a knife.

  She was young—not above fifteen—with the silver bangles hiding half of one slim arm. But for all that, I wanted to go down on my knees in front of her and lay my cheek against her mound from which had sprung the worlds and the stars and the deep places between. That’s how it was, in the dream.

  But then the dream ended, as they do, and there was Lil, yelling about orbit and was I conning or not, so it was out of the cot and let the dream go and get about the business of making a living.

  I never talked to Lil about the dreams. They scared her, and there’s nothing worth that. Still, she’s witch-blood too and knows as sure I do when I’ve dreamt, though she never dreams at all.

  “Well?” she spat at me, spiteful the way sisters are, within the protection of Us against Them. “Was it wet this time?”

  “Keep it down and keep it clean,” I answered, no more gentle, because there was the flutter in the nine-dial I didn’t like, which meant relying on number eight, a thing that had been a bad idea since I was co-pilot and Mam on prime.

  “Where’s the passenger?” I asked, because there was a certain amount of care taken, when you’d been paid hard coin to deliver someone intact to a place.

  “Webbed in gentle as a roolyet,” Lil said and I gave a grin for the old adventure, though putting Mona Luki through the orbiting sequence was proving more of a problem than usual.

  “Shit,” muttered Lil, hands over her part of the business. “We gotta get that reset before we lift, Fiona.”

  “On Sintia?”

  “Federated port,” she answered, which was true. And, “Credit’s good,” which was not.

  “Yeah,” I said, not wanting to argue the point and have her start to worry. “We’ll let our passenger off and see if we can’t patch it. Bound to be junkyards.”

  “Flying a junkyard,” she answered, which I should have known she would. “Mam’d have a fit, Fiona…”

  And that was another line of thought better left alone.

  “Mind your board,” I growled, and she sighed, and looked rebellious, and turned her head away.

  Tower came on in another few seconds, with an offer of escort, if we had equipment trouble. I turned down the escort, which was expensive, but requisitioned a repair pad, which came gratis, they having noted trouble, and we got her down without any bad glitches.

  Our passenger, that was something else.

  Cly Nelbern got her first sight of Sintia Port there in screen number one, looked sour and flung herself into prime pilot’s chair like she had a right to it. Lil had her mouth half opened before she caught my headshake, but I doubt Nelbern would have heard a shout just then.

  I finished making my coffee-toot and ambled over, leaned a hip against the chair-back and spoke over her head. “We can give you a hand with your baggage,” I said; “or you can leave it stored. We’ll be here a day or two. Repairs.”

  Nelbern gave one of those snorts we’d decided between us passed for her laughing and shook her head, real gentle, eyes still and always on that screen.

  “So eager to lose me, Captain?”

  “Not to say,” I answered, calm, like Mam’d taught us to talk to dirtsiders. “It’s just that you paid cash money for Jumps in a hurry. I figured you had an appointment.”

  “An appointment,” she repeated and snorted. “An appointment.” She licked her lips like the phrase tasted sweet and glanced up at me out of wide blue eyes.

  “As it happens, Captain, I do have an—appointment. Yes.” She smiled, which I had never liked in her, and nodded. “I wonder if I might impose upon the good natures of yourself and your sister just a bit further.”

  I gritted my teeth and brought the cup up to keep it from showing; feeling Lil tense up behind me. I was mortally sick of dirtside manners and a stranger on our ship, whether she carried an ambassador’s ransom in Terran bits or no. It was on the tip of my tongue to say so, though not as blunt as that, when she turned full around to face me.

  “I noticed a bit of a boggle on the way in, I thought,” she said, in that conversational way officials use when it’s bound to cost you plenty. I stared down at her and shrugged.

  “Told you we’d be here a day or so.”

  “Indeed. Repairs, I think you said.” She stared, sizing me up, maybe, though I was sure she’d done that long ago. “Repairs to the central mag coil don’t come cheap, Cap
tain; and it’s hardly anything you’d like to trust to the junkyard and a gerryrig.” She smiled. “If you had a choice.”

  I felt Lil behind me like a wound spring, and in my heart I cursed all dirtsiders—especially this one. I gritted my teeth and then bared them, not caring a whit for manners.

  “So now I’ve got a choice, have I?”

  “Certainly you have a choice.” She brought her hand up, and I focused on the thing that gleamed there; did a double-stare and nearly dumped my drink in her lap.

  She was holding a Liaden cantra piece.

  I stared, not at the coin—enough money for several choices and maybe a luxury, too—but at her face—and read no more there than I ever had, save it was the first time I thought her eyes looked mad.

  “What in starlight do you want ?” That was Lil, coming up like she was stalking tiger, bent at the waist, her eyes on the shine of the money.

  Cly Nelbern looked up at me and she smiled before turning to face my sister and hold the coin up high.

  “An escort,” she said softly. “Just an escort, Ms. Betany, as I walk around the town. In case the natives are restless.”

  “An escort,” I scoffed, around the cold dread in my belly. “On Sintia a woman needs no escort—unless you’ll be breaking into the Temple?”

  The mad eyes gleamed my way, though she forbore to smile again. “Not the Temple, Captain. Of course not.” She did smile then, her eyes going back to Lil. “That would be foolish.”

  “Then us not being fools—” I began, short-tempered with something near terror.

  But Lil shot a glance that silenced me long enough for her to gabble: “A cantra, Fiona! New parts, backups, a new ‘doc, coffee…” Her eyes were back on Cly Nelbern and I knew right then I’d lost her.

  “Lillian!” I snapped, as much like Mam as I could.

  Too late. “I’ll do it,” she told the dirtsider. And held out her hand for the money.

  I sat down slow on the arm of the co-pilot’s chair and brought the tepid coffee-toot up to sip. There was nothing else to do, the word having been given. Nothing except:

  “I’ll be coming along as well, then. If that coin’s so wide a treasure, I reckon it’ll pay berth-cost while we escort this lady ‘round town.”

  Nelbern laughed, a half-wild sound no more pleasant than her smile. “Think I won’t pay, Captain?” She sent a brilliant glance into my face, and flicked the coin to Lil.

  “Order your repairs,” she said, standing up. “And you’ll—both—be ready to come with me in one hour.”

  She sauntered off toward her cabin and I looked at my sister, standing there with her hand clenched ‘round that money, and her cheeks flushed with lust of it and I sighed and hovered a second between sad and mad; figured neither would mend it and stood up myself.

  “I’ll take first shower,” I said, tossing the cup into the unit as I went past.

  At the door I looked back, but she was showing back to me, head half-tipped, like she hadn’t even noticed that I’d gone.

  *

  WE WANDERED, that endless afternoon, visiting trade-bars, dives, and talking-booths on both sides of the river. Some places folk eyed us; some places they eyed our employer. Other places they ignored us entirely, and those I liked least of all.

  The last was near the city-line, close enough to the Temple that the evening chant echoed off the dirty windows and the tawdry buildings, making even Cly Nelbern look up for a moment before turning down the short, ill-kept walk.

  This place at least made some pretense of cleanliness: the window was clear enough to let the evening light come through; the bar was chipped but polished; the tender’s tattered apron had recently been washed.

  I was three steps into the room before I realized why it felt so comfortable. It reminded me of Mona Luki: desperately ship-shape and tidy; and showing the worn spots despite it.

  It hadn’t always been so. When Mam and Jake had run her, back when I was little enough to be strapped in a net slung between their seats, watching baby-eyed while they worked the Jumps between them—then Mona Luki’d gleamed, oiled and cared-for and prosperous as you like. Then there’d been coffee—yes, and chocolate—and repairs when they were needed and spare parts in third hold. Lil was too young to remember those days—too young, just, to remember Jake, killed in the same mishap that had taken Mam’s leg.

  I’d dreamed that accident; I’d even told Mam. They’d gone out to make the repair anyway, of course, as who, save on Sintia, would not? I’d climbed into the netting with the baby and held her til Mam started to scream.

  Six years old, I was then, but it got me thinking hard about dreams.

  “So!” That was Cly Nelbern and here was the present. I came alert to both, sending my gaze along hers to the man in Sintian town clothes—shabby, bright blue overshirt, bold with raveling embroidery, darker blue pants, worn wide and loose in respect of the heat, with matching fancy-work around the hems.

  He had a tired face, used honestly, I thought, with eyes showing desperation far back. Likely I looked the same: respectability balanced on the knife-edge of despair, needing only one more disaster to send us all over into thieves.

  He gulped, brown eyes darting from her face to mine, barely glancing from me to Lil before his face softened a touch and he bowed, gesturing toward the rear of the little room.

  “I have a table, La—ma’am.” His voice was agreeable, though it quavered. Nelbern shrugged and pushed forward.

  “Delightful,” she said, and the edge in her voice put the shine of fear in his eyes. “Lead on.”

  It was a small enough table in a snug, ill-lit corner, tight seating for four, but he’d clearly been expecting only her.

  “My—companions,” Cly Nelbern said to his startled glare. “Captain Fiona and Ms. Lillian Betany, of the Mona Luki.”

  It gave me a chill, being named there, and by the sudden dart of Lil’s eyes, it chilled her, too. But she stayed tight where she was, perched on a chair crammed next to the man—and Cly Nelbern smiled.

  “Well?” she said, and the icy edge was back in her voice. “Where is it?”

  He gulped, sent a hunted glance around the room at my back and firmed his face to look at her.

  “In the office at the Port House, Lady. And that’s where it’s going to stay.”

  Nelbern didn’t frown, which was what I expected. She picked up her drink and had a sip, eyeing him over the chipped rim.

  “Indeed.” She set the glass aside. “That wasn’t our agreement.”

  Mild as it sounded, it was evidently bad enough. The man stared at her dumbly, pale to the lips.

  “Our agreement,” she pursued, still in that mild-as-milk voice, “was that you provide me with a certain item, in return for which I provide you with a particular sum of money.” She stared at him. “That was the agreement?”

  He gulped. “Yes, Lady.”

  “‘Yes, Lady’,” she repeated softly, then leaned suddenly across Lil, to put her face right up to his and hiss: “Then what in the name of the Last Hell do you mean by telling me you don’t have that file?”

  “I-” he tried to pull back, but there was nowhere to go. He licked his lips. “There is a—a Maiden out of Circle House, come to study and catalog the files. She—Lady, I dare not! If Circle House finds me—”

  “What I’ll leave for the Temple to find if I don’t have that file within the day will be far beyond worrying about witches,” Cly Nelbern snarled. “Do you mark me, Pirro Velesz?”

  If he hated the speaking of his name, in that place and in such company, he gave no sign other than the roll of an eye.

  “The Maiden,” he said, “is named Moonhawk.”

  Nelbern leaned back and reached for her glass. “What do I care for her name? If you can’t match wits with a half-grown chit out of Circle House—”

  “Moonhawk,” the man interrupted, with an intensity that raised the hairs along the back of my neck, “is the oldest Name in Circle. Moonhawk is the most
powerful servant of the Goddess—every life she lives is exceptional—historic…”

  “Don’t prate at me like an abo! So the girl had the wit to pick an elite name—she’s still in school. Come to Port House to study the records, you said. Where’s the danger—”

  “The girl,” Velesz interrupted again, “is Moonhawk’s incarnation in this life, Lady. Fact. She is young, but the power abides within her. The danger is that she has not yet relearned control. The training her elders-in-world provide is to ensure that she will not—accidentally—use more force than might be necessary.”

  “Loose cannon.” That was Lil, unexpected and great-eyed, but still well away from fright.

  The man turned his head, eyes easier for looking at her again. “Loose cannon,” he repeated and nodded, a smile coming and going in the second before he looked back to Cly Nelbern. “Power without guidance.”

  “Well, then we’ll see to it that she has no need to expend her powers.” Nelbern finished her drink and put the glass away. “I have a client, can you understand that? An—organization—that has paid me to—collect—a certain fact. The only place this fact has come to light is Sintia. My client has paid for proof. I will provide proof, whether you earn your fee or not.” She looked closely at Velesz.

  “My client is not easily thwarted, you see? Satisfaction earns reward. The wages of inefficiency are destruction and disgrace.” She leaned forward, and I saw fear bloom at last in my sister’s eyes and saw the sweat bead on the man’s face.

  “Disappoint me and be sure that your name will pass higher.”

  “Lady—” he began, but Cly Nelbern had pushed back her chair and turned away, carelessly flinging a handful of coin to the table.

  “Tomorrow midday,” she said softly. “At Diablo’s, in the port. Have it.” And she was gone.

  I half-rose, but Lil stayed put, the fear like lunacy in her eyes. If she wasn’t ship and blood I’d have left her but—

  “Let’s move,” I said, gruff-like, so not to spook her, but she stared at me like she had when Mam died, and never moved a hair.

  “Lil—”

  “Lady Lillian,” that was Pirro Velesz, leaning over to take her hand, oh so gently. His voice was soft, and I seemed to hear it, like a cat’s burr, somewhere in the middle of my brain. “You cannot stay here, Lady Lillian. Go with your captain.”