by Sharon Lee
The rest of the Surebleak side of the party—those being the shopkeepers and owners of port properties—seemed to have decided among themselves that dark pants, dark vest, and a white or pastel high-neck sweater was now ’bleaker formal wear. Which, Miri thought, struck a good balance between practical and respectful.
The TerraTrade Survey Team was keeping together, making a knot of white and blue, TerraTrade colors. At the moment, they were talking with Etienne Borden, portmaster on nightside, and Nelsin Wasnyak, who owned a hot drink and snack counter on the main port.
“We’re not quite overdressed,” Miri commented.
“Ours is a complicated melant’i,” Val Con said. “In this instance, twice complicated. We are of course the Road Boss, charged with keeping the Port Road open—a position of some immediate interest to the survey team. And we are also Korval, which will scarcely be of less interest. Not only have we newly adopted Surebleak as our home port, but the request for an upgrade came from the Korval master trader.”
“So we gotta look the part,” Miri said, glancing down at her sleeve.
Fancy as they were, she had to remember that her clothes were pretty subdued by Liaden standards. In general Liaden formal was grand and glittery. ’Course, Liaden culture as a whole subscribing to the idea that the more complex a thing was, the better it had to be, there were rules about what to wear when, depending on time of day, size of function, melant’i of the honored guests and/or the host, and whether or not the individual getting dressed up had any kind of point to make, which, being Liaden, they probably did.
“Well,” Miri said, slipping her hand into his. “Might as well go down and mingle, since we went to the trouble of getting dressed.”
“I agree,” he said, nodding at the cluster of blue and white. “I suggest that we first pay our respects to Portmaster Liu, then introduce ourselves to the survey team.”
“And be back home in time for supper,” she added, as they turned away from the overlook.
“That,” Val Con said earnestly, “is a very good plan.”
* * *
Their names were Peitr Veloz, Soreya Kasveini, and Rhia Gokero. They’d been a TerraTrade Port Survey Team for sixteen Standard Years, and the letter from TerraTrade to the Surebleak portmasters had praised them highly, leaving the impression that if they weren’t the top team, they were so close as made no difference.
Surveyors Gokero and Kasveini said pleasant things about the reception, the portmasters, the vendors, and the bosses they had so far met. They looked forward to getting down to the work of amending the incomplete port file, and while they couldn’t promise anything on behalf of headquarters, they hinted at a commitment to getting Surebleak’s case settled quickly.
“If the office of the Road Boss may assist,” Val Con said, “please do not hesitate to call on us. The port office is open every day, barring emergencies, and you will find one of us on the desk.”
“That’s very kind,” Surveyor Kasveini said. “We did a quick review of the information packet provided by Portmaster Liu and saw that the road report was included. It’s encouraging that there is now an office to oversee traffic into and out of the port. The previous, aborted survey stated that the Port Road was essentially impassable, preventing the flow of goods and personnel.”
“Removing that impediment to trade was a top priority with Boss Conrad and the Council,” Val Con said, which wasn’t exactly factual, though it wasn’t quite a lie.
“Of course it was a top priority!” Surveyor Veloz snapped. “Clan Korval must have an open port or it will strangle and die.”
Miri blinked up at him.
“That doesn’t mean an open port and an open road are bad things, does it?” she asked interestedly.
“No, of course—” Surveyor Gokero began, but her teammate cut her off.
“The bad thing is that our team has been brought in to legitimize Korval’s new home port, when Korval continues to comport itself as an outlaw along the trade lanes. TerraTrade should withhold any formal rating of Surebleak port until Korval has vacated the planet.”
Miri felt Val Con’s temper spark, and looked to Surveyor Kasveini, who had introduced herself as team leader.
“Is this TerraTrade’s official stance?” she asked mildly. “Does the survey team not intend to do its work here?”
“Of course we intend to do our work! We will concern ourselves with the operation, facilities, and temperament of the port. The survey team does not have the power to impose sanctions.”
“But TerraTrade does, and should!” Veloz snapped. “It is of very great concern when an organization with a known history of violence establishes a new base on a world also known for violence, and petitions TerraTrade for a rating upgrade! We’ve seen how much Korval cares for trade, or for the law, when one of its premier tradeships holds a space station hostage to its own safety—a move that was no more or less the action of a pirate—”
“Peitr!” Gokero snapped, her face pale.
“You’re out of line!” Kasveini added. “Stand down, Surveyor!”
Miri shivered against the wave of cold anger coming off Val Con. She drew a breath and thought the calm colors of the Rainbow—which immediately frosted over.
“Ms. Robertson, Mr. yos’Phelium,” Surveyor Kasveini said quietly. “Please, you must not regard my colleague’s outburst. Our team is here to do an honest and objective study of Surebleak Port. We have given the portmaster our timetable and the list of those key persons we will wish to interview as well as the conditions and items which are standard to any survey.
“After we have completed our work, we will send our report to headquarters, including the documentation we received from the portmaster’s office. The rating committee will then study those materials and make a determination. That is the process, and we will follow the process without prejudice. I am at a loss to know where Surveyor Veloz has acquired these…opinions, but as team leader, I assure you I will monitor his work on the survey closely, to be certain that there is no lack of objectivity.”
Val Con, coldly seething, inclined his head. Miri filled in the blank.
“Thank you, Team Leader, that’s reassuring.” She paused, but the only thing she was getting from Val Con was a blizzard. Best to slip away, then. Fine.
She inclined her head formally, mirroring Val Con’s nod to the inch.
“We’ll leave you now.”
Kasveini and Gokero bowed. Veloz thought he wouldn’t, but then suddenly decided for courtesy. Miri suspected encouragement from Kasveini, who was standing next to him, though she didn’t actually see the team leader kick him.
Miri took Val Con’s arm and moved them off in the direction of the buffet.
* * * * *
The second device was in the tube. The engineer sat her station, awaiting the captain’s word.
The captain, in her turn, awaited word from the comm officer.
That person was on screen, busy in his tower, sorting incoming feeds, his face stern with concentration. Abruptly, he looked up, a quick hand-sign indicating that second seat was needed on comm.
An elder pilot moved from the observer’s chair to the copilot’s station as the former second relocated to third chair, slipping the comm bud into his ear.
The ship was now three light-hours from the primary on the other side of the system, and comm traffic was more complex, fresher, than it had been at their former location.
“Scout transmission, Captain,” third chair reported. “Detached duty.”
He paused, listening; nodded.
“They are monitoring incoming traffic, working in concert with the planetary port. We are out of their range.”
“Comm?”
“Nothing, Captain.”
The captain smiled.
“Engineer, deploy number two at will.”
“Yes, Captain.”
* * * * *
Val Con spent the ride home brooding, which, Miri admitted, could be said for her as w
ell.
It didn’t matter that Pale Wing’s captain had apologized and resigned just as soon as her ship and people were safe, so she wouldn’t be making that particular mistake on a Korval ship again. It didn’t even matter that Pale Wing had been under attack from three hunter ships that were under the control of the Department of the Interior, no matter that the official finding had been that they had a contract with local security.
It didn’t matter that Korval had prevented a hostile takeover of Liad itself.
What mattered to those who hadn’t been there, who didn’t even have all the information necessary to have an opinion—what mattered was the actions, in isolation. These—these are the actions of a pirate!
’Course, it didn’t help, either, that Clan Korval had been for a long time suspect on its own homeworld, where the stay-at-home folks barely considered them Liaden. And that was before Er Thom yos’Galan had started the new clan hobby of taking Terran lifemates.
She’d figured it would take time and effort to redeem Korval’s good name to the universe, and in the meantime, the clan would find business partners and allies who had sense, or facts, or who were willing to listen to reason.
What she hadn’t foreseen—nor had Val Con or any of the rest of his generally savvy kinfolk—was that the Department of the Interior would hold a grudge. In fact, they’d expected that the DOI would fold up after the strike that took out their headquarters and their top people. But they hadn’t fully understood the conditioning that even the least of the DOI’s operatives labored under.
The long and short of it was, Miri thought, they couldn’t give up. Not ’til somebody or something straightened out the kinks the DOI’d put into their brains.
Worse, according to the Scouts, the new commander of agents had set about recruiting more operatives.
On that cheerful thought, Nelirikk pulled the car into its usual place by the side door and cut the power.
“Thanks, Beautiful,” Miri said. “You’re off duty.”
“Yes, Captain,” Nelirikk said and popped his door with unusual alacrity, crossing the patio quickly.
The side door opened to admit him.
“Hey,” Miri said, watching the door close behind Nelirikk. “You busy this evening?”
“Do you have something to suggest?” Val Con answered, and she caught a little flare of interest through the fog of frustration.
She slid across the seat until her hip was pressed against his, put her hand on his thigh, and her lips against his ear.
“Wanna dance menfri’at with me?”
Delight leapt from him like a bolt of lightning, even as he turned his head and nipped her earlobe.
“Yes,” he breathed. “Very much.”
* * * * *
The third package had been deployed. The ship was now on an approach, and the planet had seen them.
“Comm?” the captain asked quietly.
“Nothing, Captain. I have the roster of ships on port. Chandra Marudas is not among them.”
There came a cheer from the crew. The captain outright grinned, the furry entity on her knee bounced in unfeigned delight.
“Right, then. Kara, Win Ton—you’re off-shift. Clarence, you’re on first board. When we change shift, Joyita will take first; I’ll sit second.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Kara and Win Ton left the bridge. Clarence cocked a sapient eye at the captain.
“Making that call now?”
She shook her head and rose, having shifted the norbear from her knee to the armrest.
“No sense sending a pinbeam; I’ll wait ’til we’re close in and call direct.”
He nodded.
“Reasonable. Just we don’t wanna go in without any warning. There’s security.”
“I met him,” the captain said, with a note of strained patience in her voice, as if she and her second mate had gone ’round this argument before—perhaps more than once.
“We will do nothing to endanger ourselves,” the ship said suddenly. “You may rest easy, Clarence.”
He grinned, eyes on his boards.
“Well, now you said so, I guess I will. Off-shift, Theo?”
“Off-shift,” she agreed, and brought one slim hand up to cover a yawn.
* * * * *
They’d started with the practice forms, but that wasn’t what either of them wanted; Val Con varied in the midst of a classic close-and-break, sweeping low, taking advantage of the high center she’d taken in order to close.
She threw herself into a backward somersault, landing in a crouch, grabbed the foot that was coming toward her, twisted and let him go over her shoulder before she dove flat, rolling, knowing that he’d come up fast, balanced and on the offense, and she had to get distance and height.
She continued the roll, coming to her feet and flat out running toward the wall, with him two steps behind her if that much, even as she jumped, hitting the wall feet first at the level of his head, pushing away into another somersault, landing flat-footed and centered behind him.
He spun into her fist, taking the punch to his shoulder, twisted right and down, got one hand behind her knee and pulled, his momentum taking them both down.
She recovered first, grabbing his wrists and kicking into a roll that brought her on top and them both gasping for breath.
“Yield!” she managed, holding his wrists, glaring into green eyes bright with exertion.
“Never will I yield,” he declared. “Death before dishonor!”
She blinked.
“Hey, really? Because I thought you were a smart guy.”
He laughed, broke her grip, wrapped both arms around her and kicked them into a roll that ended when his back hit the wall. By that time, Miri was laughing, too, and they lay there, arms around each other, until they were reduced to a sweaty, intermittently giggling pile, his face against her neck and her cheek on his hair.
They had passed into a gentle doze, still wrapped in each other’s arms, neither one eager to move, when Jeeves spoke.
“Master Val Con. Miri. A guest has arrived. Mr. pel’Kana has placed him in the Yellow Salon.”
The Yellow Salon? Miri thought. It wasn’t every visitor—or even every hundredth visitor—who got put in the Yellow Salon.
Val Con had come up on one elbow, brows drawn together.
“Has our formidable visitor a name, I wonder?”
“He gives the name Uncle, represents himself as being on business of the clan, and seeks an audience with Korval,” Jeeves said, and added, “He is alone.”
“Oh,” Val Con said softly. “Is he?”
Jeeves didn’t answer; there wasn’t any need to answer.
Val Con looked into her eyes.
“Well, cha’trez? Shall we see Uncle?”
“I don’t think we got any choice, do you? We better shower first, though.”
“Agreed.” He kicked gently, rolled them once, and let her go, sitting up and flicking a glance toward the ceiling.
“Jeeves, please ask Mr. pel’Kana to inform the guest that the delm will be with him in good time.”
“Yes.”
“We will scarcely be elegant,” Val Con said, “if we use the resources available here.”
Miri sat up.
“He comes with no warning and without what belongs to us; he’s lucky we’re showering first,” she said.
Val Con grinned, rose to his feet, and extended a hand to her.
“Do you disagree?” she asked, taking his hand and rising every bit as lightly as he had.
“No, I agree in every particular,” he said, putting his arm around her waist as they moved toward the shower, “because I’m a smart guy.”
II
For somebody who cast a legend as long and as wide as the Uncle did, the man himself was pretty compact, younger looking than Miri had expected, dressed to swagger in a well-used jacket with a vaguely military cut and a faded smear of color on one shoulder, like maybe it’d once been a hash mark. His hair w
as short in front, longer than the collar of the jacket in back, dark brown with the last inch or so lacquered bright red. Gold ring in the right ear, and a short dark beard that did nothing to soften a strong, stubborn jaw. So far as his face and his body language went—excusing the beard—he might’ve been Liaden born, neutral as you’d like, and then some. Really, Miri thought, if it wasn’t for the eyes, you’d hardly know you were facing a man in a mortal rage.
He had been perusing the shelves when they entered, and he turned, smooth and calm, bowing to their honor, all right and proper.
“Korval,” he said. His voice was even and pleasant.
Miri felt a niggle inside her head and just knew that Val Con was going to give him honored guest of the House, so that’s what she bowed, too, right in sync with him.
“Uncle. Be welcome in our House,” Val Con said in the High Liaden mode of delm-to-guest-of-the-House.
“Peace upon it,” came the reply, which wasn’t one of the several Miri knew to be rote in the situation, though the Uncle said it like it was rote, and his glare no softer for the speaking of it.
There was something, she thought, familiar about that glare. She tried to remember where she’d seen it, or something real close to it, lately, but the memory didn’t rise.
Well, she thought; it’ll come. In the meantime, might as well cut to the chase and find out all the good news at once.
“I confess myself at something of a loss,” she said, drawing those dark, angry eyes to her. “While we are, of course, more than pleased to see you—and in such good health—I had supposed that, when your business allowed you to come to us, you would be accompanied by our elder who has long been in your care.”
“That had been my intention. However, in the current circumstances, it seemed, may I say, the course of prudence to hold your elders in continued safety until my sister and I have exchanged fond greeting.”
Miri blinked. So did Val Con. At least, she assumed that the mental bobble she felt from him was the equal of a blink.
“Forgive me,” he said to the Uncle. “Your sister?”
