by Sharon Lee
The next moment, he was ashamed of himself. Run, and leave a crewmate alone to Balance with strangers? Far better to have a mate at one’s side in such a wise. Though it would, Er Thom allowed, possibly have been more comfort to Mechanic pin’Ethil, had the mate who stood at his side been Petrella yos’Galan herself.
Their female escort laid the amber wand on the desk before the sternest face of all, murmuring respectfully. “Here’s the evidence, Mr. Straudman.”
Mr. Straudman neither acknowledged her nor glanced down at the wand. Instead, he stared at Mechanic pin’Ethil, his eyes cold in his pale face.
“Stealing, Liaden?” he asked, his Trade flat and rapid. “We don’t like to have people stealing from us.”
“I understand,” said Mechanic pin’Ethil, in a calm, if slightly breathless voice. “The error is mine and I will endeavor to repair it.”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” the man behind the desk said. “We know just what to do with thieves.” He smiled somewhat, and Er Thom felt his hands curl into fists. He took a breath and moved forward one step. The man who had escorted them here grabbed his arm.
“Stop.”
Er Thom inclined his head. “Very well.” He waited until he was released, then forced himself to meet the cold eyes of the man behind the desk.
“I am Er Thom yos’Galan Clan Korval. This man is a member of the crew of Dutiful Passage. The ship will pay whatever fine is considered just and then we will leave. It is not yours to punish this man, though it is… acknowledged… that Balance is owed.”
Beside him and one step behind, he thought he heard Mechanic pin’Ethil groan.
The man behind the desk blinked, once, He looked to the woman who had carried the wand.
“Dutiful Passage? And Clan Korval?”
“Yes, Mr. Straudman.”
Mr. Straudman was seen to smile again, a habit Er Thom wished he would give over, and leaned forward, almost companionably.
“And your name is yos’Galan, is it? Well, well.” He looked around at the others, some of whom looked less pleased than he—or so Er Thom thought.
“It seems to me we have a profit on the evening,” Mr. Straudman said, and pointed his cold eyes at Bor Gen pin’Ethil. “Maybe we ought to pay you a commission, grease-ape.”
Mechanic pin’Ethil sighed. “Come, sir. Would you dice with the Dragon?”
“Not in a month of bank days,” the Terran replied immediately. But this isn’t dice. This is a simple sale.”
He looked at Er Thom. “How much do you think captain yos’Galan will pay to get you back?”
Er Thom stared, thinking that it was just like his mother’s humor, and his foster mother’s, too—to declare herself well-pleased to be shut of an irritable, irritating boy, and wish the cold-eyed man joy of him.
And perhaps that was the key.
He moved his shoulders, and showed empty, apologetic hands to man behind the desk.
“One has a brother, sir. I fear you would find the price not to your liking.”
The cold-eyed man frowned, and leaned back suddenly in his chair, as if Er Thom had made a particularly clever move in counterchance. Er Thom held his breath, wondering what the man saw.
“So you’re worthless, are you?” Straudman said eventually. “Why don’t we just call Captain yos’Galan and make sure that’s the case before I do anything rash?”
“Because,” said a bland voice behind Er Thom, “you will but irritate the good Captain, friend Straudman, and bring her eye upon the Juntavas. A poor business all around.”
The man behind the desk frowned, his cold gaze leaping beyond Er Thom’s shoulder. “The kid says they won’t buy him back.”
“He tells you nothing but the truth.” Scout Pilot Rod Ern Arot strolled into Er Thom’s view, then went past him to lean against wall by Straudman’s desk. “His brother is the one you want, if you intend to profit by selling dragon-cubs to the Dragon. This one’s the extra.”
“So, now what?” said the man behind the desk, for all the worlds as if the Scout were a trusted advisor.
The Scout moved his shoulders against the wall. “While it is true you are unlikely to profit by selling this boy back to yos’Galan, it is also likely that the presumption of offering him will gain you her attention.” He snapped upright. “Let them go.”
Straudman frowned. “Both of them?”
“A first class mechanic is something the yos’Galan will miss,” the Scout said simply.
For a moment, there was silence, then Straudman nodded and waved a hand at the room in general.
“Get them out of here.”
“I’ll take them,” said Scout pel’Arot. “It’s time I was back at station.” He moved forward, beckoning to Er Thom with his two-fingered hand. “After me, cub, And try not to trip over your own feet.” Which, Er Thom thought, was really uncalled for. Though it was nothing compared to what Daav had to say to him, some few minutes later, at the head of the Avenue of Dreams.
* * *
PETRELLA YOS’GALAN sighed gently, and folded her hands atop her desk. In the chair facing her across the desk, Er Thom recruited himself to await her judgment, the echoes of Daav’s thundering scold still ringing in his ears.
In the right hands, silence and stillness were potent tools, as he well knew, his foster mother being past master of both. Whether his true-mother shared that mastery he did not know—though he expected that he was about to learn.
His mother closed her eyes, sighed once more, and opened them.
“Since your cha’leket has exercised duty of kin and spoken to you frankly on the subject of endangering yos’Galan’s heir by choosing to confront the Juntavas planetary administrator in his very office, we needn’t discuss that further.” She paused before inclining her head courteously.
“I will say, first, that your instincts do you honor. Your reported assessment of Mechanic pin’Ethil’s state—that he was unwell—has been verified by the ship’s healer. I am assured that the compulsion to continue play once one has begun, to the cost even of one’s melant’i, may easily be lifted by the Master healers at Solcintra Guildhall. Accordingly, Mechanic pin’Ethil will be sent home for Healing.” She glanced down at her folded hands, then back to his face.
“I will, of course, write to his Delm. It would honor me, if the crewmate who offered him care in his disability would assist me in composing this letter.”
Er Thom blinked. He? Almost, he thought he heard Daav, laughing inside his head: Yes you, idiot, who else.
Hastily, he inclined his head. “I would be honored to assist, ma’am.”
“Good.” Another pause, another long moment’s study of her folded hands.
“All honor to you, also, that you chose to lend Mechanic pin’Ethil your support.” She raised one hand, though Er Thom had said nothing. “I know that you have said that there was no choice open to you in this; that your duty was plain, as the mechanic’s crewmate and as the sole representative of Korval present. However, it must be recalled that you are but a halfling, and it was perhaps not… quite… wise of you to go unarmed into an unknown and possibly dangerous situation.” She smiled, faintly. “I had said we would not repeat the course flown by your cha’leket. Forgive me, that there must be some overlap in approach.”
Er Thom inclined his head. “Daav was plain with me, ma’am; I’m an idiot child, unfit to be left alone.”
Improbably, her smile deepened. “Ah. Well, perhaps our approaches do not overlap so very much, then. I would say to you that those of the Juntavas are at best chancy and at worst deadly. Korval has an… arrangement… with the Juntavas, dating back many years—the appropriate citations from the Diaries will be on your screen at the beginning of your next on-shift. Please read them and be prepared to discuss them with me over Prime meal.” She did not wait for his seated bow of obedience, but swept on.
“For the purpose of this conversation, let us say that the agreement between Korval and the Juntavas is one of mutual avoid
ance. The Juntavas does not touch Korval ships. Korval does not interfere with Juntavas business. Matters have stood this way, as I have said, for many years.” She frowned over his head, as if she saw something on the opposite wall of her office that displeased her, sighed, and continued.
“The meat of the matter is that, despite this long-standing agreement, despite the fact that the Scouts keep watch—the Juntavas is not a safe host. That the gentleman you… spoke to… would have killed you out of hand is, perhaps, unlikely. For Mechanic pin’Ethil…” She moved her shoulders. “Mechanic pin’Ethil is not of Korval, though he serves on a Korval ship. The Juntavas is clever enough to use that distinction to advantage.”
His horror must have shown on his face, for his mother gave him another of her faint smiles before asking. “Tell me, my son, what would you have done if any of the armed persons in that office had decided to kill Mechanic pin’Ethil?”
Er Thom stared. Visions fluttered through his head, too rapid to scan, and finally he lifted his hands in exasperation. “I—something. I am a pilot of Korval. I would have done—something.”
A small pause.
“Ah, yes,” his mother said softly. “There is a long history of doing… something… among the pilots of Korval.” She smiled at him and in that instant looked the very image of her twin. “I believe we had best accelerate your defense instruction, pilot.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He inclined his head.
“Hah.” She considered him out of abruptly serious blue eyes, once again unmistakably his true-mother. “I would offer—as elder kin, you know—that we have all of us bid farewell to the comforts and the companions of childhood in order to learn our life-trades and begin to shape adult melant’i. I would say that—here is one who recalls the day she watched her sister walk into Scout Academy without her, and who later that same day was shown her quarters onboard the old Dutiful Passage. I assure you that the ache in one’s heart does ease, with time, and with the necessities of daily duty.” She raised her hand stilling his start of denial.
“I do not say that you will cease to love, my child. I merely say—you will become an adult.” She smiled once more, sweet as Daav. “With luck.”
Er Thom grinned, then inclined his head. “I thank you, for the instruction of elder kin.”
“So.” She glanced aside at the clock on her desk. “It is time and past time for you to be abed. Come to me at Prime, and mind you have those entries read.”
“Yes, mother.” He stood, made his bow and moved toward the door.
He was nearly to the door when he heard her speak his name.
“Ma’am?” He turned to find her standing behind her desk, slowly, she bowed the bow of honored esteem—
“Sleep you well, pilot of Korval.”
Breath’s Duty
Delgado, Leafydale Place. Standard Year 1393
IN HIS YOUTH, fishing had bored the professor even more thoroughly than lessons in manners, though he had more than once made the excuse of fishing a means to escape the overly-watchful eyes of his elders, over fine, he had come to enjoy the sport, most especially on Delgado, where the local game fish ate spiny nettles and hence could be hooked and released with no damage to themselves.
It was an eccentricity his neighbors, his mistress, and his colleagues had come to accept—and to expect. Periodically, the professor would set off for the lake region and return, rejuvenated, laden with tales of the ones that had gotten away and on-scale holograms of the ones that had not.
So it was this morning that he parted comfortably from his mistress, tarrying to share a near-perfect cup of locally-grown coffee with her—the search for the perfect cup and the perfect moment being among her chiefest joys—and with his pack of lures, dangles, weights and rods set off for the up-country lakes.
The car was his other eccentricity—allowed however grudgingly by the collegiate board of trustees, who were, after all, realists. The work of Professor Jen Sar Kiladi was known throughout the cluster and students flocked to him, thus increasing the school’s treasury and its status.
The car was roundly considered a young person’s car. While fast, it was neither shiny nor new; an import that required expensive replacements and a regimen of constant repairs. Its passenger section had room enough for him, occasionally for his mistress, or for his fishing equipment and light camping gear, Not even the board of trustees doubted his ability to drive it, for he ran in the top class of the local moto-cross club and indulged now and then in time-and-place road rallies, where he held an enviable record, indeed.
The local gendarmes liked him: He was both polite and sharp, and had several times assisted in collecting drunk drivers before they could harm someone.
His mistress was smiling from her window. He looked up and waved merrily, precisely as always, then sighed as he opened the car door.
For a moment he sat, absorbing the commonplaces of the day. He adjusted the mirrors, which needed no adjustment, and by habit pushed the trimester. The sun’s first rays slanted through the windshield, endowing his single ring with an instant of silvery fire. He rubbed the worn silver knot absently.
Then, he ran through the Rainbow pattern, for alertness.
The car rumbled to life at a touch of the switch, startling the birds napping in the tree across the street. He pulled out slowly, nodded to the beat cop he passed on the side street, then chose the back road, unmonitored at this hour on an off-week.
He accelerated, exceeding the speed limit in the first few seconds, and checked his mental map. Not long. Not long at all.
* * *
HE GRIMACED AS he got out of the car—he’d forgotten to break the drive and now his back ached, just a bit. He’d driven past his favorite fishing ground, perhaps faster there than elsewhere, for there was a lure to doing nothing at all, to huddling inside the carefully constructed persona, to forgetting, well, truly, and for all time, exactly who he was.
The airfield was filled to capacity; mostly local craft—fan-powered—along with a few of the flashy commuter jets the high-born brought in for their fishing trips.
On the far side of the tarmac was a handful of space faring ships, including seven or eight that seemed under constant repair. Among them, painted a motley green-brown, half-hidden with sham repair-plates and external piping, was a ship displaying the garish nameplate L’il Orbit. The professor went to the control room to check in, carrying his cane, which he very nearly needed after the run in the cramped car.
“Might actually lift today!” he told the bleary-eyed counterman with entirely false good cheer.
As always, the man smiled and wished him luck. L’il Orbit hadn’t flown in the ten years he’d been on the morning shift, though the little man came by pretty regular to work and rework the ship’s insides. But, who knew? The ship might actually lift one day. Stranger things had happened. And given that, today was as good a day as any other.
Outside the office, the professor paused, a man no longer young, shorter than the usual run of Terran, with soft, scholar’s hands and level shoulders beneath his holiday jacket, staring across the field to where the starships huddled. A teacher with a hobby, that was all.
An equation rose from his back brain, pure as crystal, irrevocable as blood. Another rose, another—and yet another.
He knew the names of stars and planets and way stations light years away from this place. His hands knew key combinations not to be found on university computers; his eyes knew patterns that ground-huggers might only dream of.
“Pilot.” He heard her whisper plainly; felt her breath against his ear. He knew better than to turn his head.
“Pilot,” Aelliana said again, and half-against his own will he smiled and murmured, “Pilot.”
As a pilot must, he crossed the field to tend his ship. He barely paused during the walk-around, carefully detaching the fake pipe fittings and connections that had marred the beauty of the lines and hidden features best not noticed by prying eyes. The hardest thing was school
ing himself to do a proper pilot’s walk-around after so many years of cursory play-acting.
L’il Orbit was a Class A Jumpship, tidy and comfortable, with room for the pilot and co-pilot, if any, plus cargo, or a paying passenger. He dropped automatically into the co-pilot’s chair, slid the ship key into its slot in the dark board, and watched the screen glow to life.
“Huh?” Blue letters formed Terran words against the white ground. “Who’s there?”
He reached to the keyboard. “Get to work!”
“Nothing to do,” the ship protested.
“You’re just lazy,” the man replied.
“Oh, am I?” L’il Orbit returned hotly. “I suppose you know all about lazy!”
Despite having written and sealed this very script long years ago, the man grinned at the ship’s audacity.
“Tell me your name,” he typed.
“First, tell me yours.”
“Professor Jen Sar Kiladi.”
“Oho, the schoolteacher! You don’t happen to know the name of a reliable pilot, do you, professor?”
For an instant, he sat frozen, hands poised over the keyboard. Then, slowly, letter by letter, he typed, “Daav yos’Phelium.”
The ship seemed to sigh then; a fan or two came on, a relay clicked loudly.
The screen cleared; the irreverent chatter replaced by an image of Tree-and-Dragon, which faded to a black screen, against which the Liaden letters stood stark.
“Ride the Luck, Solcintra, Liad. Aelliana Caylon, pilot-owner, Daav yos’Phelium co-pilot, co-owner. There are messages in queue.”
There were? Daav frowned. Er Thom? his heart whispered, and he caught his breath. Dozens of years since he had heard his brother’s voice! The hand he extended to the play button was not entirely steady.
It wasn’t Er Thom, after all.
It was Clonak ter’Meulen, his oldest friend, and most trusted, who’d been part of his team when he had been scout captain and in command such things. The date of receipt was recent, well within the Standard year, in fact within the Standard Month…
