The Complete Ivory

by Doris Egan

  "She's busy," I assured Kylla, returning. "I think we can safely get away for an hour."

  "She won't be a problem to anybody?"

  "Oh, they'll find things for her to do. There's still the floor cleaning, and the unrolling of the clean rugs, and hauling down the tapestries…" I grinned wickedly. "All that domestic stuff she probably never sees at home."

  Kylla laughed. I was glad to see it. If you've never met her before, let me assure you that Kylla is a tower of strength as a rule. / usually go to her for comfort. This junior wife stuff must really have gotten to her, I thought.

  But she must have been pulling herself together, because as we descended the stairs she said, "So how are things going in the offspring department for you and Ran?"

  I groaned. "Gods, Kylla, you've only just stopped bugging me about the wedding."

  "That was a full year ago. —So how is it going?"

  We barged out the front door, into the summer sunlight, and I signaled for a wagon-cab.

  It was midway through the evening, just edging into darkness, the trees outside blending into shadows and the heat finally lifting a notch, when Ran entered the house. He entered tentatively, glancing around the downstairs parlor.

  I said, "The floors are all clean and the rugs are back in place. It's safe to come in."

  He nearly jumped a foot. I put down my book, and stood up from the divan behind the shelves where I'd been reading.

  "Uh, Theodora. I thought you might have gone out." Imagine a male version of Kylla, with shorter hair and without the facepaint. When I got next to him, I could smell the expensive perfume that he bought in an exclusive shop three streets away. When I got next to him, he kissed me. He put some extra effort into it, as well he might under the circumstances. Ran is no fool.

  Once I could breathe normally, I said, "How was Braece?"

  "Oh, much the same. Any new client appointments while I was gone?" he asked, changing the subject instantly.

  Well, if I'd wanted a furniture mover I would have married one. I let it go. "As a matter of fact, there were. Two Net messages left while I was out with Kylla today."

  "Kylla was here?"

  "Wait, you'll like this. One of the messages was from the gracious sir Kempler Taydo. He'd like an interview tomorrow, with a, quote, 'view to possible employment of your services,' unquote."

  Ran looked amused. "Taydo of the Department of Sanitation? Is this the same Taydo we were asked to assassinate three days ago?"

  "The very." I put my arms around his waist."Summer silliness."

  "I'll say. Three groups of vultures circling over the same piece of budget. And with the Imperial Auditor looking on, the first one to move will be the first one executed, once the dust settles."

  "I swear, Ran, I don't know how anything official ever gets done on this planet." We walked back to the divan. "Are you hungry? I saved a bowl of grapes and some seed cake."

  "That's very nice of you, considering I—considering how busy I was in Braece."

  I started toward the larder, then turned. "What is it about this summer, anyway? This is the fourth assassination we've been offered."

  "And every single one of them too hot to touch. Never mind, we'll get a good commission soon."

  "That's not what I mean. Don't people come to you for anything else any more?"

  "Sweetheart, people rarely ask a sorcerer to do nice things. They rarely ask trial lawyers to do nice things. They rarely ask soldiers to do nice th—"

  "I know what you're saying. Hazards of the profession. But whatever happened to love potions and luck spells? Why don't we get a nice newly wed couple asking for the blessing of random chance on their first year?"

  Ran lay back on the divan and put his hands behind his head. "Is it nice to confuse someone into thinking they're in love with you? As for the newly wedded couple, it's a well-known law of magic that luck can only be bunched in one place by taking it away from someplace else. Practically all sorcery is at somebody else's expense."

  "Then why do it?"

  He said simply, "I was brought up to do it." Then he added, "And I'm very good at it." He was, too, the top of his profession. Ran doesn't make idle statements.

  I sighed and went down the hall to the larder. His voice called after me. "And it brings in money for our House."

  "All right, all right."

  He said something else while I was cutting the seed cake, but I missed it. I went back inside with the plate and handed him a large glass of water, which he drained at once. It's a long ride from Braece. "What did you say?"

  He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his robe. "I said, how's Kylla? I didn't know she was coming over today."

  I sat down beside him. "Oh, Ran, I think you should talk to her. She's upset."

  He put down the bowl of grapes. "What's the matter?"

  I told him about Lysander's wedding options.

  "No sister of mine—nobody from the first branch of Cormallon—is going to be anybody's junior wife."

  I nodded, unsurprised. "Kylla said you would say that."

  "I'm going to call Lysander right now—" He got up, took a few steps, then stopped, as rationality took over from the sting of what he would consider an insult. "No. No, I'd better find out what kind of pressure he's under, and all the details. Yelling at him won't get us anywhere."

  "You want to run an investigation?"

  "I hate to take the time. If they're really pressing him— I'll call him, courteously, and ask him, courteously, if he'd like to discuss the matter. How do I look? Do I look upset?"

  "You look courteous."

  "Good." He headed for the Net terminal in the downstairs office, and I followed. I settled myself in the stuffed chair in the corner—one of six in our house Ran had had made just for me—so that Lysander could see me when he came on. Family allies use the visual circuit as good manners, and manners required me to match them by not hiding the fact I was listening.

  The call found him in the Shikron office building, I recog-

  nized the surroundings. Why was Lysander keeping such late hours?

  "Hello, Ran. Hello, Theodora." He looked tired. "Can I help you with something?"

  He could be forgiven the phrasing; we'd never gone out of our way to call him, individually. If it were a social occasion, we would have left a message with Kylla at their house on the canal.

  "Lysander, we're sorry to disturb you, we didn't realize you were at work. Uh, Kylla came by today… Theodora says she was a little upset…"

  He nodded, like a man receiving a sentence. "It was about Eliana Porath, wasn't it?"

  "Yes," said Ran in a neutral voice. "We were hoping you could tell us more about what's going on."

  Lysander let out a long breath. "Do you know why I'm still at work? I'm avoiding my relatives. I've got a flag on for every Shikron caller, telling them I'm busy handling an import crisis." He opened a drawer, pulled out a half-empty bottle of wine, and set it firmly on the table beside him.

  "Imported Ducort," noted Ran.

  Lysander nodded.

  Ran said, still neutrally, "Do you want to talk about it?"

  Lysander ran a hand through his dark hair, cut in fashionable capital mode, and opened his blue embroidered outer robe, now full of wrinkles. I'd always thought of him as a nice fellow, but rather forgettable; Kylla, however, had been in love with him for years. She'd succeeded in marrying for love alone in a world where that was rare. Perhaps more impressive, I understood that she'd engineered an affair with him on Cormallon territory back when her grandmother was still alive, a feat of planning and sheer nerve that wartime generals would be lucky to match.

  He said, "It's politics, of course."

  "Of course."

  "Kylla won't believe that. I haven't even met Eüana Porath. I've been negotiating with her brother Kade—"

  "You've been negotiating?" Ran's voice was sharp.

  "Talking. I should have said talking. To keep them satisfied and the council off my b
ack. Ran, I am in kanz so deep—"

  His voice cracked with stress, and he covered it with an obviously false throat clearing. Ran said, more gently, "My brother, I'll be happy to help you any way I can, but you have to make it clear to me: You really don't want this wedding to go through? You'll pass up an alliance with a noble family?"

  Lysander threw a paranoid glance around his empty office and stepped nearer to the Net. "Are you joking? If this goes through, Kylla will torture me for the rest of my life."

  Ran and I looked at each other. There was some truth to this.

  I spoke up. "Where do things stand now?" Ran was doing pretty well with this man-to-man stuff, but I wanted a practical view of what we were up against.

  Lysander said distractedly, "The Poraths are giving a house party on Greenrose Eve. Supposedly it's a holiday celebration, but considering they haven't given a party in about ten years, it's got to be so that I can get a look at Eliana without anybody's honor being officially at stake. That doesn't meant they won't take it personally when I turn her down," he added in a lifeless tone.

  I said, "They're pushing this ahead pretty quickly, aren't they? That's just four days away."

  "I understand their treasury's practically empty. —Don't hint about that to anyone, though! I'm not supposed to know it!"

  "Lysander, of course not." I allowed the tiniest note of offense to creep into my tone. He was under a lot of pressure, but there was no reason to treat me like a typical barbarian when it comes to House secrets.

  "I beg your pardon. —Wait! Ran, I can get you both invitations! You can get the lay of the land…"

  Ran was shaking his head, looking alarmed. "Ah, I don't think that's a good idea—" He hated formal House affairs with a passion, particularly where the nobility were involved. Born into the second layer of aristocracy, he nevertheless regarded the Six Families the way everyone on Ivory did who was outside them: with a mixture of respect, distrust, and a basic knowledge that they were all out of their minds.

  "No, it'll be a perfect chance for you to see what's going on!" Lysander's voice was enthusiastic. "Sorcerers have their ways of finding things out, don't they?"

  "Don't believe everything you hear about sorcerers—"

  "Oh, of course not! I'm so glad you called tonight. There's still time to get the invitations sent around!"

  "Lysander—"

  "I'd better get busy. Theo, I'll tell Kylla you're coming! She'll be thrilled!" He disconnected, rather with haste, I thought.

  " 'Thrilled' is a strong word," I said, into the sudden silence of the office.

  My husband and I looked at each other. Finally he said, "It looks like we're going to a party."

  Chapter 2

  I don't like Selians.

  I don't know if you've ever been to the lovely world of Tellys, land (according to the brochures) of powdery beaches, flaming sunsets, and labor-saving devices of all kinds. Not to mention the only one of the four habitable planets in our sector, that I hadn't set foot on—which, considering the cost of interstellar travel and the fact that I'm a private citizen, is a pretty impressive score, don't you think?

  I'd never paid a great deal of attention to Tellys. I'd never planned on visiting there, and my studies were in other areas—cross-cultural myth and legend mostly, at the university on Athena, a field that involved a wide scan of the past but not much of the present. Standard culture is, well, pretty much standard; oddball, out-of-the-mainstream worlds like Ivory are rare. Tellys didn't have a lot to interest me, though I did think I might one day include it in a grand tour after a long and distinguished career as an Athenan scholar.

  Of course, I hadn't actually planned on coming to Ivory originally either, and look how that turned out.

  Anyway, most of Tellys is a relatively normal variant of Standard society, no great surprise, but clustered up and down the spine of mountainous islands bisecting the Eternal Sea we have the Selians—the People of the Sealed Kingdom. And I don't like them.

  This is a prejudice based on personal experience—rather a contradiction in terms, but I don't know how else to phrase it. I had no opinion at all on Selians until I'd met a few of then, and gods, it's amazing how consistently unpleasant each new one is. Every one of them so absolutely secure about his superior place in the scheme of the uni-

  verse. I know that this just stems from their repulsive (to me) philosophical beliefs, but it gets on my nerves anyway.

  You might call this inconsistent in me, since I've always been tickled by the shameless egos of Ivorans. But the Ivoran ego seems—how can I put this—innocent in some essential way. Their high opinion of themselves doesn't seem to require grinding down you and me for contrast.

  I'm glad the Selians are still a minority on Tellys, and it always depresses me a little to hear the occasional newscast saying how they're gaining power there. But if I hadn't learned it before, my time on Ivory had taught me that compromises sometimes have to be made with people you'd rather avoid. So I took off my jewelry and cosmetics, put on my best outerrobe for courage, and slipped out of the house one afternoon while Ran was away. Then I walked the three miles to the Selian Free Medical Wing of the Tellys Institute.

  Tellys has a technological lead on the rest of us, and it extends to their medicine. Some Athenans and even Ivorans have taken medical training on Tellys, but they never stay to practice there: Non-natives are forbidden from joining the Physicians Union. Away from the drugs and devices so hard to get outside Tellys, their training doesn't count for as much as it might. But the Selian Clinic was staffed by Tellys doctors with all the latest equipment, and that's why I was there that quiet afternoon, when the rest of the capital was keeping the Day of Meditation. Tonight was Greenrose Eve, and the city would be jumping; today it was dead.

  I had an agenda, of course. As far as I was able to determine, nobody had yet proven that Ivorans were a genetically different species. But they'd been separate from the rest of us long enough for it to be possible, and the experts I'd tried in the capital had been pretty tight-lipped about it. Ran and I had been married for a full Ivoran year, and I thought it was time to check my implant—it really should have dissolved by now—and learn what risks, if any, a pregnancy would bring. This was to be my baseline exam.

  Physician Technocrat/2 Sel-Hara greeted me after a short wait. He was not much taller than I was, young, with the dyed-white hair of a pure high-caste Selian, though I noted he'd adapted to local custom sufficiently to wear a jewel in one ear. It was a large, blood-red stone and he wore it like a peacock. Not many men can carry off such drama, but clearly Physician Sel-Hara was not one to suffer self-doubts. Probably the knowledge, that he was performing his two years of altruistic duty, and could soon go home secure in the fact that paradise was his, gave him a certain edge over his patients.

  "Theodora of Pyrene," he said, rather neutrally, though I thought I saw a flash of passing contempt in his eyes when they moved over my Ivoran clothing. It may have been my imagination. "Far from home, are you not?"

  I made a noncommittal sound.

  "I've looked through the history you submitted," he said. "Over here."

  I wanted to hold onto my wallet pouch—it contained certain items that as a sorcerer's partner I don't like to be away from—but he took it from me for no good reason I could ascertain and gestured me toward the examining table.

  Scanners of all kinds they had in abundance, but like all doctors, Physician Sel-Hera felt that nothing could replace an eyeball inspection. For this, a Tellys-style variation of the same device used in the back hills of Ivory provinces for centuries was employed (aggressively, by Physician Sel-Hara). Unfortunately, in addition to succoring the indigent, this clinic specialized in well-paying Ivoran citizens lured in by the reputation of barbarian medicine, and the speculums were built to scale. To the scale of the average Ivoran woman, that is, not a barbarian a bit on the small side even on her home planet. After a quarter hour of effort Physician Sel-Hara dropped the third one
into a sterilization bucket and said again, "We will try a smaller size."

  For those of you who know what this means, I know I have your sympathy and I thank you for it. For those of you innocent of these procedures, let me sum up the experience by saying it was painful.

  "There should be discomfort, but no pain," protested Sel-Hara when I suggested that perhaps he should skip to the smallest size right now. Or better yet, after I'd taken a week or so off to heal. "After the exam, I can make an appointment for you to see the Clinic Psychologist, if you wish."

  Implying that I was unbalanced for even thinking such a thought. You see why I love dealing with Selians.

  The more assertive among you are probably wondering why I didn't tell him off then and there. But you have to bear in mind that a young woman with her legs up in a cold draft, trying to control involuntary tears of pain, is not in a good psychological position to take the offensive. Besides, he had information I wanted.

  He tossed a fourth speculum into the sterilizer. Ever since that day, I've regarded those things the way ancient criminals must have regarded thumbscrews.

  "I need to know…" I got out, working to keep the tremor from my voice, "if… there's any reason… gods!… I can't have… a healthy child."

  "You will wait for the final report," stated Discomfort-But-No-Pain Sel-Hara.

  "But I mean… do you know of any reason… why an Ivoran and an outworlder…" I gasped and lost control of my grammar.

  Sel-Hara was apparently annoyed by the fact that I was not working harder to collude with him in the unreality that he was not causing me pain. He interrupted, in the flat accents of an implanted language, "This is not the time for talking. This is the time for listening." Then he added, as an afterthought, "How can I tell in any case? You say your husband will not come in to be examined."