Liaden Universe 18: Dragon in Exile

by Sharon Lee

  “Commander, I do not,” she stated.

  “Nobody you got a standing joke with, about you being an Yxtrang?”

  Hazenthull shook her head and stated, “No, Commander.”

  She hesitated, considering troop wisdom with regard to volunteering, and decided that additional information would be helpful to this case. “I am not known for my sense of humor, Commander.”

  She heard a small sound from the other side of the prisoner, as if Tolly had sneezed. Commander Lizardi pressed her lips together firmly, and nodded.

  “Thank you, Officer,” she said gravely.

  “I believe my officer,” she said. “She served under my command in action, and I know her to be a truthful and stalwart soldier. You, though”—she glanced down at her screen—“you got quite a record on port, Mr. Kipler. Petty thievin’, havin’ a few too many beers and busting stuff up, decking security at the Emerald. Spent the night in the Whosegow for that one, I see, and paid the fine.”

  The prisoner laughed suddenly.

  “Is that what this is about? You want your piece? Why’n’t you just say so? The cash is in my left inside pocket. You can gimme change.”

  The commander sighed and shook her head.

  “You’re not getting it, Kipler. I’ve got you on conspiracy to start a riot in the Bazaar. That goes right up to the Bosses, on account the Bazaar’s counted as Surebleak turf, not port turf. Conspiracy to riot is something the Bosses take real serious, and unless you come up with the name of that free-spending fella, you’re gonna take whatever they dish out all on yourself.” She paused, head to one side, as if considering.

  “Seems a lot to take on, for twenty cash.”

  The prisoner’s shoulders tensed as he tried his strength against the cuffs, but they held firm.

  “I dunno who it was,” he said, voice urgent. “Some guy, is all. Twenty cash for doin’ nothing much—you don’t turn that down, now, do you?”

  “But it turns out not to be nothing much,” the commander pointed out. “Was he Liaden?”

  “Nah, no! Sleet! What do I gotta do with Liadens? Guy was as local as me.”

  “Now, there’s something useful already. If you cooperate with the Bosses, they might let you off light. Officer Jones?”

  “Commander Liz?”

  “Will you and your partner please escort Mr. Kipler to the Whosegow and see him signed in. Tell the watch officer that he’s in custody of the Council of Bosses.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Tolly said. “Okay, Mr. Kipler, let’s go. Turn around.”

  The man in the orange coat hesitated, as if he would argue—or as if he had thought of something else useful to tell the commander. He turned at last, however, shoulders slumping.

  Hazenthull fell in behind, with Tolly ahead and slightly to the left, the prisoner between. And so they left the commander’s office in good order.

  They were on the balcony. Neither had felt like moving chairs out, so they were sitting on the floor, companionably hip to hip, legs dangling over the inner garden, enjoying a soft breeze that was considerably warmer than the summer air outside the walls. Val Con’s theory was that the Tree was influencing the garden temperature, as for years it had influenced its ecosystem. The tree, in Miri’s private opinion, was way too fond of meddling with stuff that ought to be outside of a tree’s natural concerns.

  “Commander ven’Rathan counsels us to end the prisoners’ suffering,” Val Con murmured.

  That meant, Miri translated, that Commander ven’Rathan had come down on the side of killing the six remaining prisoners. She had a point; they were dangerous; they were expensive; and their training gave them protection against much that Healers did. Anthora and Natesa had managed to break loose a name or two, and a couple of locations, but that was the extent of the information they’d been able to harvest.

  Though, as far as Val Con was concerned, it wasn’t about the information that could be gotten from the agents.

  It was about the agents, themselves.

  “What do the Healers think?” she asked.

  “They think that the prisoners cannot be restored to their former . . . selves. They think—because they have seen it happen—that any attempt to forcefully remove training . . . kills the agent. Horribly.”

  He sighed, and raised his glass for a sip of wine.

  Eventually, he spoke again, his voice expressionless, the way it was when he cared too much about something.

  “The Healers, in a word, believe that continuing to hold the prisoners under such conditions, knowing that they can never be cured, is a cruelty. Master Healer Mithin herself sends to me that she will undertake the . . . necessary releases. She waits upon the Delm’s Word.”

  Miri had been a soldier. She’d seen executions; she’d been, a couple times, part of a firing squad. There wasn’t much objective evidence supporting the supposition that the prisoners in hand were innocent of any particular crime that could be named. They were a drain on resources, and an unacceptable risk with every breath they drew.

  And yet . . .

  If they killed—terminated, released—the prisoners, they weren’t any better than the DOI.

  And that small flaw in the pattern that was Val Con, inside of her head—that would never be mended.

  She sighed, like he’d done, and sipped her wine.

  “Let’s sleep on it,” she said.

  “He said he was collectin’ insurance, Boss.”

  Vessa Quill had been among the first to move into Boss Conrad’s turf when the tollbooths were closed. She had immediately set up a bread bakery in a storefront half a block away from the Boss’s house, and proceeded to capture a respectable clientele. Conrad had spoken to her only a few weeks ago, during one of his walks through his turf, and her plans had all been for expansion: hiring another baker, and perhaps branching out into pastries.

  Now, she was angry, her arms crossed over her chest, and her pale face hard. Nor did the Boss particularly fault her for being angry.

  “We do not collect insurance,” he told her, keeping his voice smooth. “None of the Bosses on the council collect insurance. It is, in fact, illegal, to collect insurance.”

  “Illegal” was not, perhaps, a concept that sat easily with Baker Quill. Indeed, to most of the residents of Surebleak, the concepts of allowed and disallowed behavior were . . . alien to their everyday lives. The reality of the streets had, for several generations, been that strength prevailed. The strongest of all—in terms that favored brute force over mindfulness, or even mere cleverness—rose to become Boss.

  In a rational system, the Boss would have then exerted herself to protect those weaker than herself. On Surebleak, however, the Boss had preyed upon those she should have held safe in her care. In particular, Bosses sold insurance—protection from their own spite—and made examples of those who did not, or could not, pay.

  The sale of insurance had been the very first thing that the Council of Bosses had forbidden in its new table of laws.

  “He said,” Baker Quill continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. “He said he’d burn down my place, if I didn’t have the vig when he come back, in two-day. He’d take some of it in bread, he said, but he wants six hunnert, cash. I ain’t got that kind o’money, and if I did, I wouldn’t pay it. My mam, she paid the insurance money, and what’d it get her? Broke an’ made a zample, ’cause the Boss’s ’hand put ’er money in his pocket an’ tole the Boss she didn’t pay.”

  He bowed his head slightly.

  “I am sorry to hear of your mother’s tragedy. You are very right to bring this matter to me. The Bosses no longer collect insurance, and there is a law”—another uneasy word—“that forbids the collecting of insurance. Anyone caught doing it will be taken up by the Watch, and will be assessed fines.”

  “Fines,” she repeated, and he could believe that she was measuring fines against the loss of her livelihood, and possibly her life.

  “There are other deterrents, for those who persist, but yes, for
a first offense, fines. Now. You say that this insurance salesman has promised to return for his payment in two days?”

  “That’s what he said.” She hesitated, then added, “My old turf, sometimes they come back early; and if you didn’t have the money, they added a surcharge.”

  Gods, what a planet.

  He nodded.

  “Here is what we shall do, if you will consent to it. I shall ask Mr. McFarland, my head ’hand, to assign one of my own security staff to you. This person will leave with you this evening, and will remain at your side until the insurance collector returns for the money. At that point, my staff member will remove this person from your orbit, using what force is necessary, and will bear him to the Watch, where he will be imprisoned until the Bosses call upon him to explain himself.”

  He paused, considering her set face, and asked, gently, “Does this proposed course of action satisfy you?”

  To her credit, she took time for consideration. He folded his hands atop the desk and waited.

  Eventually, she said, “That’ll cover, ’s’long’s he don’t have backup. If he’s got backup . . .”

  “You are correct; that is something which should not be left to chance. We will not leave you without protection. Instead, your security will call the Watch to retrieve the insurance salesman, and will remain with you until it had been ascertained that he is either working alone, or his partner has also been apprehended.”

  She nodded once, decisively. “That’ll do it, then.”

  “Excellent. Let us bring Mr. McFarland in our conference.”

  He touched a button on his desk. The office door opened almost immediately, and Mr. pel’Tolian stepped within.

  “Sir?”

  “Please tell Mr. McFarland that we have need of his expertise in my office. And please ask Cook if we may have refreshments.”

  “Yes, sir; at once.”

  Mr. pel’Tolian withdrew.

  “Is there anyone else—a family member, or a close friend—who might also be in danger from this person who is selling insurance?”

  Baker Quill frowned.

  “I’m by myself,” she said slowly. “But it comes to me, Boss, that fella must’ve been up and down the whole street with this; not just me.”

  “Indeed,” he replied. “We shall make certain of that tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, but why am I the only one here, talking to you about this?”

  That was an excellent question and likely had something to do with enculturation. or an instinct toward denial, or . . . Val Con would be able to tell him. It would, perhaps, be useful to know. For now, he could only offer the simplest probability.

  “Perhaps they were afraid,” he said to Baker Quill, and turned his head as the door opened to admit Cheever McFarland’s not inconsiderable bulk.

  “Evenin’, Boss. You wanted to see me?”

  Mr. McFarland had taken the baker away, leaving him blessedly alone. He closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and wondered if Natesa had returned home yet, from her tasks in town. Perhaps they might have a quiet dinner, alone. Quin was with Luken, helping with the arrangement of the port annex shop . . .

  The door to his office opened.

  He opened his eyes and in the same instant snapped to his feet—and relaxed, feeling foolish, as his lifemate closed the door behind her and turned to face him, elegant brows arched above ebon eyes.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “Very nearly,” he answered, going across the room to her.

  She entered his embrace with enthusiasm and kissed him thoroughly. Arm in arm, they walked toward his desk.

  “I wonder if we might dine in our room,” she said. “I am . . . somewhat weary.”

  He laughed softly. “I was only just thinking the same thing. Yes, of course—Quin and Luken will be dining at the port. But, what has happened to tire you?”

  Natesa rarely admitted to weariness; to hear her say so concerned him . . . not a little.

  “Stupidity tires me,” she said. She released him and sat on the corner of his desk. He sank into his chair, looking up into her face.

  “What happened?” he asked again.

  “Why, some fool had declared an entire street to be Juntavas turf. She proposed that all the shopkeepers would henceforth pay her a percentage of their business, and further let it be known that she had the means to enforce this. I heard of it from Jerfin Marx when I stopped by to find if his son had fully recovered from his misadventure. She had apparently only left him, but she moved fast. I found her three blocks distant, informing a bewildered greengrocer of these new arrangements, and asserting that she had the whole might of the Juntavas behind her.

  “Naturally, I needed to hear more, so I took her aside to ask for her code number. She denied having any such thing. I then asked for her handle, and she denied having one. She is now being held by the Watch until the answer to my inquiry through the Judges’ office is answered.”

  She sighed, and closed her eyes. “I fear that we are beset by amateurs, my love.”

  “I fear it, also.” He rose, and took her hand. “Come, let us retire. I will ask Mr. pel’Tolian to bring us a cold dinner and a bottle of wine.”

  “Two bottles of wine and you have a bargain.”

  “Done!” he said, with a grin, and raised her hand to his lips.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Jelaza Kazone

  Surebleak

  It was snowing, despite it being summer: a gentle drift of dainty flakes sparkling against the twilight sky. “Farmer’s friend,” they called such warm-weather flurries on Surebleak, where snow was always possible, and warm an exercise in relativity.

  The man at the door stood with his hands in the pockets of his coat, listening—to the wind, to the dwindling whine of the taxi’s motor, to the rapid pounding of his heart.

  The door was of dark wood, and of a considerable age: the carved edges of the Tree-and-Dragon that adorned it were smooth, as if every member of every past generation of Korval had run their hands over it, on homecoming. He felt an urge to do so himself, for was he not a son of the House?

  Well . . . no. In point of fact, he was clanless, which was to say that he stood as the sole survivor of his clan. He had, however, been declared a brother of a son of the House, a dubious and dangerous honor that he had accepted only after taking counsel of his grandmother, and his . . . other . . . brothers.

  The ties that bound him to the delm of Clan Korval were of a bitter forging, but no less compelling for that. Who, after all, could know the heart of a man returned from hell as well as one who had made the same journey?

  So it was that, having prepared a brother-gift appropriate to their bond, he had dressed in the finest clothes that could be found for him, and gone out alone from the kompani, down the road, and away from the city, to this ancient house from another world, where now, facing the door and the clan sign, his courage failed him.

  Rafin would scarcely credit it, he thought wryly, the fingers of his right hand curling inside his pocket. Nor did he suppose that this door, of all doors on the planet of Surebleak, was unwatched.

  Surely, the security system knew he was here. If he did not gather himself to ring the bell within, so he suspected, the next dozen beats of his craven heart, he could expect that the system would act to protect the house.

  Well.

  He took a breath, feeling his resolve, if not his courage, firm, and considered the door anew.

  A palm pad was set into the right side of the door’s frame—an awkward placement, though it was certain that the house had his imprint on file. He recalled it being taken, during the time he had been held here for interrogation.

  At the left side of the door was a simple rope, attached to a brass bell, now frosted with snowflakes.

  He raised his hand, grasped the cold rope and pulled, once.

  The bell clanged, loud enough to hurt the ears. Before the complaint had died away into the fading twilight, the door opened inward, and a man
dressed in Korval livery stepped into the breach.

  “Good evening, sir,” he said, speaking the High Tongue in the mode of doorkeeper.

  “Good evening.” He answered in the mode of visitor to the house, for he was that, as well. “I am Rys Lin pen’Chala, and I am come to speak with my brother Val Con yos’Phelium.”

  “Certainly, sir. Please, come in out of the weather.”

  The butler stepped back, and Rys stepped forward, into a wide hallway that was more comfortable than grand; wooden walls and floor gleaming under soft yellow lighting.

  “May I have your coat, sir?”

  “Certainly.”

  He slipped out of the overlarge garment, and surrendered it to be hung neatly on a wall hook next to what might have been the butler’s own coat.

  “Follow me, sir,” he said, and Rys did, down the hallway, passing closed doors of what must be the formal receiving rooms, and into an interior hallway.

  A stranger would not be brought so far into a clanhouse, unless accompanied by a member of the House. But he—he was the brother of a son of the House. Melant’i attached to such persons.

  Another turn, and the butler opened a door with a bow.

  “Here you are, sir. And, may I say—welcome.”

  It was the sort of thing an old retainer might say to a returning son, but almost too warm for the brother of such. It disturbed him—and then he forgot the matter as he stepped into the room—

  And stopped, heart stuttering.

  He was in a small, informal dining room, where all the family who were to House had apparently gathered to share Prime meal . . .

  . . . Every one of whom was looking at him.

  “Rys!”

  A tall, slim man rose from the table and came forward, hands outstretched, smiling broadly. Brown hair, green eyes, a clan ring glittering from one of those shapely hands, by which he would be recognized as Delm Korval.

  His brother Val Con.

  “Well come! Well come!” His shoulders were gripped and held in a brother’s emotional embrace. Tears started to his eyes, as shocking as they were unexpected; he blinked them hastily away as he looked up into his brother’s face.