Liaden Universe 18: Dragon in Exile

by Sharon Lee

  “Stop!” Rafin bellowed. “Tell me that you will stop!”

  “I will,” Rys panted, “but they—”

  “They are held by your brothers. You are safe, now, little one. Struggle no longer. So. I release you, yes?”

  “Yes,” Rys agreed, and Rafin let him go, patting him on the shoulder in a way that was perhaps meant to be soothing, and turning him to face his four erstwhile pursuers, now each in the care of one of his brothers.

  “These,” Garat said, “we have seen these several times. Why do you come to this district, gadje?” he snapped, shaking the man he held by the back of the neck.

  “There’s—there’s a city down there, under the warehouses,” the man gasped. “We figured prolly you wanted to share.”

  “Pah!” Rafin said. “We do not share with thieves.”

  “So,” said the man with the crushed kneecap, “there is a city down there.”

  “We are down there,” Rafin said. “And others much like us, only more fierce.”

  “The Bosses have given us the place, which is our place,” Udari added. “Should we come to your place and sit down at your table? Will your wife share her bed with us?”

  “We can find you,” Garat said. “We will find you. And we will watch you.”

  “We will do these things,” Rafin said, sounding almost cheerful. “And maybe your food will taste a little strange, sometimes, only sometimes. And maybe your head will hurt—but not always. We will think on these matters, among brothers. But, I get ahead of myself! First, there is something you must know.” He put his hand on Rys’s shoulder.

  “You think that I stopped my brother from striking you because I was afraid for him, eh?”

  The knife-fighter swallowed, Udari’s blade lying sweet against his throat.

  “Yes,” he croaked.

  Rafin slapped his knee.

  “I knew you for a fool! No! I stopped him because I did not want him to kill you. Not because I love you—I do not think I could love you, though you have some little skill with a knife—but because I love him, and I would not have him mourn your death.”

  “Death,” one of the others muttered.

  “You doubt?” Rafin asked. “Here, we will show you!”

  He released Rys and stepped aside, reappearing in a moment with the staff one of the attackers had dropped.

  “Ironwood,” Rafin said, hefting it. “Good. Now, you will see why I stopped this, my brother, from striking you with his fist.”

  He placed his feet firmly, flexed his knees, and held the ironwood staff between his two gloved hands, across his body.

  “Brother, I ask that you strike this staff as you had been about to strike the fool your brother embraces.”

  Rys took a breath, looked ’round at the men who had been trying to kill him, and then into Udari’s face.

  His most-loved brother smiled, and nodded slightly.

  Rys folded his metal hand into a fist, cocked his arm back, snapped forward one step—and struck the staff.

  Splinters flew as the ironwood shattered. Braced as he was, Rafin rocked back. One of his attackers cursed in the local dialect.

  Rafin turned slowly about, empty hands held high, slivers of ironwood caught in the palms of his gloves.

  “That is what you must remember from this encounter,” Rafin said. “Now, we will return you to your places, and you will tell the tale of this night among your brothers. You will warn them that we will not be preyed upon. And that even the smallest of us is deadlier than you can know. Brothers, please.”

  Shadows shifted. The man with the broken kneecap was flung, not gently, onto the back of the knife-fighter, who staggered under his weight.

  “Brothers,” Udari said, and they turned with their captives, leaving Rys and Rafin alone.

  “How are your hands, Brother?” Rys asked.

  Rafin shrugged.

  “They sting. Without the gloves, I would have broken fingers.”

  Rys swallowed, thinking about the force of that blow, and what he might have done to the knife-fighter’s face.

  “If you had not run, we would have come to your side sooner,” Rafin said.

  “I did not want them to find the gate.”

  “So said Pulka, and Udari, too.”

  Rafin dropped a heavy arm around his shoulder, and pulled him into a rough hug.

  “Come, now, Brother. Let us go home.”

  “What do you want to try first?”

  Quin was lying on his side across the wide bed, his head propped on his hand; Villy sat beside him, cross-legged, one hand on Quin’s knee.

  “Do I need to go at them one at a time?” he asked. “I was thinking of a—” he frowned, fair brows pulling together, then smiled.

  “I was thinking of a multistrand approach.”

  “Excellent,” Quin said. “A multistrand approach lends itself well to the Trigrace curriculum. If we choose well, the strands will reinforce each other. So”—he smiled—“what do you want to try first?”

  “Well, if you put it that way . . . protocol lessons is important. We’re getting more Liadens and not-Surebleak folk coming in. My job’s to make them feel good, but if I stand too close, or not close enough, or if I touch what I shouldn’t, then the customer won’t be happy. And . . . if I can do or say some added little thing that makes them feel warm and homey—that’ll go a good way toward making them feel happy, already.”

  Quin nodded.

  “So, basic kinesics, with a concentration on Liaden protocols. What else?”

  Villy looked aside, and it seemed to Quin that his pale skin had taken on a rosy tinge. He held his breath, wondering if he should notice the blush, or ignore it.

  Finally, he said, softly, something he’d heard among Father’s staff when one was shy of offering an . . . unsophisticated notion.

  “I promise not to laugh.”

  Villy turned his head so fast, his hair fell into his eyes. He shook it back with a soft chuckle.

  “That’s fair. I wanna go forward with my math, see?”

  Well, of course he did. In Quin’s experience, everyone wished to go forward with their math.

  “You will have to take a placement test,” he said, “so that your course of study will begin at the proper level. What else?”

  “Is there something—broad? Something that’ll give me an overview, at the same time letting me figure out what else I’d like to know?”

  “General studies, basic,” Quin said promptly. “That is a good choice.”

  He rolled over onto his stomach, and reached down to the floor, where the portable computer sat.

  “I will set up the basic curriculum,” he said. “It will take a few minutes. You may begin general studies and kinesics immediately. You must complete the tests before you may begin math.”

  “Right,” Villy said, his hand on Quin’s shoulder now as he peered down at the computer screen. Quin set up Villy’s student account, with himself as tutor, moved the necessary modules, and showed Villy how to access the learning space.

  “You may begin at will,” he said, rolling over onto his back. “I had notified Director Faro that I will be tutoring, so all the necessary files will be available to us.”

  “That’s good,” Villy said, and then, “Quin?”

  He looked up. “Yes.”

  “Do you need a hug, sweetie? You’re still lookin’ peaky.”

  He took stock, but all that came to him was that he was tired. However, Villy was a hetaera, and therefore sensitive to the needs of others.

  “Do I need a hug?” Quin asked.

  Villy frowned. “I’m asking,” he said.

  “And I am asking,” Quin answered. “You are the expert on pleasure and comfort in the room.”

  Another frown, this one thoughtful, followed by a decisive nod.

  “Okay, then. The expert says, yeah, you could use a hug. Come on up here to the pillows.”

  He obeyed, coming to rest on his side, his head on a pillow li
ghtly scented with something agreeably sweet. The bed shifted, and he felt a long body press gently against his back. Villy settled one arm over Quin’s waist and gave a deep sigh. Without meaning to, Quin echoed it, feeling his muscles loosen.

  “There we go,” Villy murmured. “You comfy, hon?”

  “Yes,” Quin answered softly.

  “Me, too. You don’t have to worry ’bout anything, right? Just relax, and let all that trouble go.”

  There came another deep, satisfied sigh, that Quin repeated, following it into sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jelaza Kazone

  Surebleak

  Everything considered, Miri thought, it had been an instructive interlude, starting with Pat Rin’s arrival last night in a towering fury, and demanding immediate speech with the delm. Lucky for the delm, she and Val Con’d gone for a walk in the garden before heading upstairs, else the delm would’ve heard all about how Quin had only nearly escaped being an Object of Balance, and the members of the Liaden Council of Clans deserved, each one, nothing so rigidly proper as having each of their heirs threatened at gunpoint, while snuggled up in Val Con and Miri’s warm robes and fuzzy slippers.

  Mad as Pat Rin was, that’s how cool Natesa’d been, but . . . well, Natesa didn’t get mad; she got even. Which was pretty much where Pat Rin stood, give or take an edged phrase or six—along with an extra dollop of outrage because the Council of Clans was in violation of the contract in which the terms of Korval’s exile were set out.

  “An entire katrain of qe’andra to craft it,” Pat Rin had said, “with an eye toward Balance between all parties! Read before the entire Council; every delm receiving a copy of the final contract with the instruction that it was a Document of Common Cause, and all members of all clans were to be made aware of its contents— And a woman walks into a rug shop on Surebleak Port with the express purpose of Balancing the death of her heir, dead of Korval’s necessity!”

  Yeah, it had been quite the sound-and-light show.

  The delm had heard the whole business, including that Quin and Luken were overnighting at Audrey’s, an arrangement that struck Miri as particularly sensible; promised action after due thought, and all the rest of the formal rigamarole, which actually seemed to calm Pat Rin down a considerable bit.

  After all that, the delm left the room; they all four shared a glass of wine, and so to bed.

  Anyhow, a certain amount of temper was expected in the day orders, it being a family of hotheads, and herself marrying like to like.

  What Miri hadn’t expected was the spit-and-hiss they’d gotten from Ms. dea’Gauss when they’d brought her in after breakfast to dump the whole mess into her lap, which, her being Korval’s qe’andra, was exactly where it belonged.

  “That is in clear violation of the terms negotiated!”

  Those were fighting words, right there, and never mind the snap that fair shattered the polite coolness of the High Tongue, or the two spots of darker gold high on her cheekbones, which could only be attributable to anger.

  Miri’d been nothing short of flabbergasted, but apparently Val Con had been expecting something like this.

  “Indeed,” Val Con had said, keeping to mode, “it could hardly be plainer. We rely upon you to handle this matter in the most advantageous manner possible. Please draw upon House resources for whatever you may need. The pinbeam is of course open to your needs. A Korval ship and a pilot are yours to command at any hour, should you be required to travel to the homeworld.”

  “Yes, thank you. First, I will send this information to our office on Liad. It may be possible that one of the elders dea’Gauss who remained with their clients on-world will be able to take this to the Council in proxy. If not . . .” She moved a hand in a sharp, off-with-their-heads gesture.

  “I anticipate. First, the transmission. Then, whatever is necessary. They skirted the edge of honor and called for a skewed Balance at the beginning of this, when the delms’ lives were called in forfeit.

  “That wiser heads prevailed does no honor to the Council, or to Liad. Korval chose not to contest the order of exile, and the katrain worked to restore some measure of correctness to the order and the terms. Had there been true Balance present in the proceedings, the Council of Clans would have commended Korval for its service to the homeworld, and the Captain for his care of the passengers.”

  “However,” Val Con said, his voice about as warm as a deep winter dawn, “that is not how matters fell out. We must play the cards in our hand.”

  “Indeed, indeed. Forgive an unseemly passion. I will see this matter properly rectified.” She bowed, from servant to lord, and left them, the door closing softly behind her.

  Miri sighed, gustily.

  “And I thought Pat Rin’d gotten up a head of steam.”

  Val Con looked to her. “You think it an overreaction?”

  “Seems to me that what we got is one grief-struck mother deciding on the edge of the hour to hurt somebody just as bad as she got hurt. Pat Rin and Ms. dea’Gauss are acting like it’s a conspiracy on the part of the Council of Clans to unilaterally wipe us out.” She grinned. “Which, if it is, they gotta stand in line.”

  “There are, indeed, many before them,” he agreed. “And that is why we must be certain that all we are confronted with is one distraught mother. If the Council has failed of some portion of its agreements . . . if it has failed of ensuring that every clan member of every clan has been made aware of the facts of Korval’s exile; if it has failed to make plain that there are very real penalties attached to ignoring the guarantees the Council gave on behalf of all Liadens, then those matters must be rectified.”

  He smiled.

  “It would be best, if the line stabilized.”

  It would be best, she thought, but did not say, if the line started to shrink.

  “Well.” She stood. “I told Kareen I’d talk to her this morning about this job we gave her. What’ve you got?”

  “Mr. Brunner and I are scheduled to speak. He wishes to keep us abreast. Also, I have some papers to review on Shan’s behalf.”

  She paused.

  “They find the deed to that island he likes?”

  “Ms. dea’Gauss believes so. If so, then we must suppose the Council of Bosses to be the heir to the Gilmour Agency. How convenient, that Pat Rin is in-House.”

  She laughed.

  “He might not think so.”

  “Or he may. I believe there is a Council meeting this evening. If there is room on the agenda, we might have this settled quickly.”

  “And since we gotta be there anyway, to give the Road Boss report . . .”

  “Exactly,” he said, and came to his feet. “Will you and Talizea do me the honor of joining me for lunch?”

  “It sounds good. I’ll swing by and talk to Lizzie. If her schedule’s not too full, sure—we’ll both be there.”

  “Excellent.”

  He bent and kissed her lightly on the lips.

  “Until soon,” he murmured, and left her.

  Baker Quill jumped every time the door to her shop opened, which, given the fact that her shop was one of the best things about this end of the street, and got a lot of traffic, made for a lot of jumping.

  Still, Bosil couldn’t blame her, with Baker Quill’s ma havin’ got burnt out and then made an example. Boss Conrad and the rest of the Bosses, they didn’t allow none of that bidness no more . . . but it was hard to remember that when a guy come in demanding the insurance.

  They was, Bosil thought, just too used to the old ways, yet. The new way, it looked pretty good, but, problem was . . . it was new. Hard to believe it was gonna stick around.

  He’d tried to explain to the baker that there was Patrol all up and down the street, checking in with the other shopkeepers and asking them did a guy come in for insurance, and if the answer was yes, how come they hadn’t called the Boss or the Watch on it?

  Prolly, Bosil thought, they’d been afraid—remembering the old ways. And ther
e it was, right there, if the streeters didn’t start believing in the new ways, and actively wanting them to stick around, then . . . the old ways would come back.

  He was thinking about that, and trying to work out how to get the streeters behind the new ways, when for all they knew, sooner or later Conrad would get retired, and the next Boss would start in, just like Moran—the guy Conrad’d retired—and the old ways would come back again, only worse . . .

  Thinking about all that, he got took by surprise, some.

  The bell over the door clanged, like it’d been doing all morning, and he didn’t even look up until he heard a man’s voice say. “You got your insurance ready, Baker?”

  “No, I ain’t,” she said, and Bosil heard her voice quaver, even as he slid off the stool he’d been perching on in the front corner of the bakery. “I ain’t paying you no insurance.”

  “’S’at right?”

  The guy was your typical insurance collector—big and mean and not too bright. Didn’t have to be bright to scare people and take their money.

  “How come you ain’t payin’? Your little toy here not makin’ any money?”

  “I ain’t paying on account of it’s illegal to collect insurance money.”

  The guy blinked, and then laughed right out loud.

  “Illegal? Says who?”

  “Says Boss Conrad and the Council of Bosses,” Bosil said, bringing his gun up, and unhooking the binders from his belt. “You’re under arrest.”

  The guy turned quick enough, gun in hand. He brought it up, not even bothering to aim. The pellet hit the window by Bosil’s head and shattered it.

  Bosil ducked, throwing his arm up to shield his face from flying glass, and by the time he was in position again, the insurance guy had shot three baskets full of bread sticks and rolls off the shelves, and was aiming for the clock hanging on the front wall.

  “Pay your insurance, or you get made an example,” he said over his shoulder to the baker. “That’s how it works.”