Korval's Game (46 page)

“We need a ’doc, quicktime,” Nelirikk heard Clonak tell the sentry. “There’s a man down and critical.”

“Mister, those’re ’trang soldiers and all the ’trang I’ve seen lately
want
to die,” the sentry argued.

“Yet you will observe that these particular Yxtrang soldiers appear to wish to live. They’re behaving appropriately, aren’t they? They’ve put down their guns like good children and they’re being very seemly, by my standards, at least,” Clonak’s voice hardened. “Call for an emergency team. Now. You really don’t want the scout over there on the pathway angry with you.”

“Embroider my legend, do,” Daav called, over the sound of a comm unit being engaged.

Nelirikk watched the explorer, seeing her eyebrows pull tight as she strained to follow the conversation.

“Medical assistance is being called for your senior,” he told her in the language of the Troop.

“Yes.” She shot him a look of challenge. “You are Nelirikk Explorer, lieutenant in the troop captained by Miri Robertson. Will you take our oaths and receive us into the Troop in the captain’s stead?”

Certain as he was that the captain—and most certainly the scout—would welcome explorers into their service, and as well as he understood the dilemma behind the question, it was beyond the scope of his duty to stand as oathtaker in the captain’s place.

“I will not,” he said, wishing the Common Tongue possessed even so minor a word as “alas”.

“What’s amiss?” That was Daav yos’Phelium, speaking yet in the mode used between comrades, his bright black eyes darting from the explorer’s face to Nelirikk’s.

Nelirikk sighed. “She—they—came to give an oath and be . . . welcomed . . . into a troop, with a proper captain, to give their lives form and, and duty. We—the ’doc . . .” He stammered to a halt. Both of Daav’s eyebrows were well up, but he waited with explorer-like patience for the matter to be made plain.

“It is cultural,” Nelirikk achieved at last. “A matter of—appropriate behavior. They wish to—they must—offer their oath only to the captain or one who stands oathtaker in her stead. I—I cannot take oaths in keeping for the captain. And they cannot accept anything from the enemy.”

“Ah.” The black eyes gleamed. “And your own oath—to Line yos’Phelium, was it?”

“Yes.”

“Yes. I believe we may contrive.” He stepped toward the watchful explorer.

“I will have your name,” he snapped in his awful Yxtrang.

She lifted her chin, “Hazenthull Explorer.”

“So.” The language shifted to Trade. “Hazenthull Explorer, I offer you compromise. I am kin to the Hero Captain Robertson—blood ties, eh?”

Her mouth tightened, but she gave a short jerk of the head. “I understand.”

“Good. Understand that Captain Robertson’s duties are manifold, including a position of command over the kin unit of which I am a genetic member. The name of the kin unit is Line yos’Phelium. Captain Robertson accepted the oath of Nelirikk Explorer in
the name of this kin unit
.” He tipped his head. “Do you understand this? I do not wish to trick you.”

Once again, she jerked her head. “I understand.”

“Excellent. Attend me closely, now: The customs of kin allow me to take from you an interim oath.”

Hazenthull frowned. “Inter—a
temporary
oath?”

“Just so. In the service of your senior’s life. The ’doc which has been called for is his only immediate chance of survival—Shadia does not use the word ‘dying’ lightly. I do not willingly watch scouts perish, as I believe I said. I require of you an oath that you and yours will serve Line yos’Phelium, in the person of Daav yos’Phelium—that is myself. In turn, I will give you my oath to bring you to Captain Robertson herself, so that she may make what judgment that a captain must, for the good of her troop.” He paused, perhaps awaiting a question. Hazenthull remained silent.

“The term of our oaths,” Daav continued, “shall be concluded when the captain has given her judgment. Can you agree to this?”

There was a long silence. Nelirikk saw the explorer’s eyes narrow, as if she were turning the proposed oaths round in her mind, seeking the trap that she knew must be there.

Nelirikk could have pointed out the ambiguity attending the precise expiration of term, but it was to the Troop’s benefit to acquire the services of other explorers, if it could be managed, and so he held his tongue.

Finally, Hazenthull Explorer gave another of her terse nods. “We are free to offer and to honor these oaths.”

“Splendid.” Daav waved at the patient soldier. “Explain the matter to him.” He flicked a look to Nelirikk. “Assist her, please, Lieutenant.”

“Scout.” Nelirikk bowed slightly and stepped to Hazenthull Explorer’s side.

Some distance up-trail, he heard the sound of a jitney engine, growing rapidly louder.

LYTAXIN:
Erob’s House

“ . . . GRACE OF THE MOTHER
we came through well and whole,” Priscilla was saying.

The transmission was remarkably clear, considering that it was a jerry-rig replacement for the planetary communication net the Yxtrang had shredded. And it was beyond joy to be able to hear his lifemate’s voice, after these long, eventful days of separation. Still, Shan thought, wistfully, it would have been ecstasy, to behold her face, to run his fingers into her curly black hair, to stroke her creamy cheek, to put his lips—

“Shan?”

He shook himself.
Do strive for some breeding, Shan
, he told himself,
will you scorn her voice because you may not have the rest?

“Forgive me, Priscilla, I was entranced by the mental image of you doughty warriors, knives caught between your teeth—”

“Shan . . .”

“Priscilla, you really must spend less time with my sister,” he told her earnestly. “You have her inflection exactly, there.”

From their ship, high in Lytaxin orbit, she laughed. Shan, seated at the desk in the guesting room Erob had ceded him, smiled wryly and stroked the comm’s plastic face.

“Let us make plans for your stay on planet,” he said. “Leave now and I’ll be at the spaceport to greet you.”

The beam hummed empty for a moment, then gave him Priscilla’s sigh.

“Love, you know I need to be with the ship. Ren Zel is able, but—”

“But Ren Zel is not of Clan Korval,” he finished, knowing the necessities as well as she. “Gordy of course is of Korval, and also possesses all of nineteen Standard years. Too young by a year or so to stand command of a starship orbiting a world enduring post-war conditions.”

“True,” she said, her voice soft across the distance that separated them. “And you cannot leave Miri and Val Con while they are so ill.”

“Miri is out of the ’doc,” he said, suddenly recalling that he had not told her that. “Weak as a kitten, of course. Val Con . . .” His throat closed and he shook his head, as if she could see him.

“The techs still believe he’ll be . . . impaired?”

“Impaired.” He grinned without humor. “Yes, they do believe that, and quite ill-natured I find them for it, if you will have the truth.”

“I’m sure you do,” she said gently. “I—when he is out of the ’doc and an evaluation is made, perhaps—”

Shockingly, the portacomm on his belt buzzed. Shan jumped, swore, and thumbed the receive.

“One moment, Priscilla—yos’Galan,” he snapped into the portable.

“Shan—Lord yos’Galan—it is Alys Tiazan. I am in the recovery room with Miri my cousin and two of the Clutch who are her brothers.”

Yes, of course
, Shan thought.
The situation had only lacked eight foot turtles
.

“How delightful for us, to be sure. I shall be down directly to make—”

“Their Wisdoms,” Alys interrupted, with a refreshing lack of deference for his station; “Their Wisdoms say that the songs of the machines are harming my cousin, your sister. They say that the autodoc may be preventing Val—preventing Lord yos’Phelium—from healing completely. The med tech is—” she paused, apparently decided that he could judge the med tech’s state of mind for himself, and finished in a rush. “Cousin Miri says to
get you down here
.” The last four words were in Terran, pronounced in tones so authentically Miri-like that Shan grinned, even as his heart trembled.

“One moment,” he said to Alys, flicking the ‘mute’ toggle. He glanced at the desk unit. “Priscilla?”

Her answer came slowly. “It is possible,” she said, “that the rhythm of the machinery is interfering with total healing. It has been known to happen. Rarely.” She was silent, then burst out. “Who knows what may harm them? They are linked, heart and mind, by that—edifice!—no more simple humans than—than the Clutch are. No,” she corrected herself, more calmly. “More human than the Clutch are. And the Clutch may see truly—for their own kind.”

“Then it appears my task has been laid out for me,” Shan said and flicked the portable on.

“Please allow my sister to know that I am on my way to her side,” he told Alys Tiazan. “Ask her, as she loves me, to stay her hand from the med tech until I arrive.”

There was a small snort, as if Alys had half-strangled a laugh, then a demure, “I will so inform my cousin, sir.” The line cleared.

“Priscilla, my love . . .”

“Until soon, Shan.”

“Until soon. May your Goddess send it
very
soon.”

He thought he heard a soft sigh before the connection light went out. Sighing himself, he stood, and left the room at brisk walk.

A short time later, he turned smartly into the hallway containing Miri’s room, and nodded to the guard on duty.

“I am summoned.”

The merc shook his head as he turned to put his hand against the plate. “They call this rest? She might as well hire a band and call it a party.”

The door slid open and the guard waved an impatient hand. Shan strolled across the threshold and—paused.

Immediately before him, two very tall, green persons wearing a truly impressive quantity of tilework across their shoulders and down their backs, confronted an average-sized Liaden woman—which is to say, her nose was not quite level with the equator of the shorter tile-bearing person. That the woman was in high temper was obvious even without the abrasion of her passion against his Healer sense. The Turtles—were invisible to his Healer sight, in contrast to the rather irrefutable physical evidence. Shan glanced aside, locating Alys Tiazan, strategically placed between the med tech and the bed in which Miri wilted against an oppression of pillows, long red hair snarled across one shoulder, eyes closed in a face as white as salt.

Ignoring the med tech’s anger, Shan focused on Miri, catching the shine of mayhem along her pattern, and a fear bordering on terror.

“Cousin Miri,” Alys said. “Lord yos’Galan is here.”

The woman in the bed opened fierce gray eyes and gave him a ragged grin.

“What took you so long?”

“I had to shave.”

The grin widened, briefly, then one hand wavered more or less horizontal, index finger almost pointing at the taller of the two green persons.

“Edger,” she said, hoarsely. The finger moved perhaps the width of a thought. “Sheather.” Her hand fell back to the coverlet. “This is Val Con’s brother, Shan yos’Galan. He’s a Healer. Tell him what you told me.”

“What they told you,” the med tech snapped in a mode perilously close to superior to inferior, “is arrant nonsense! The machines are needful! Your heartbeat must be monitored! Your air must be filtered! Your blood pressure and body temperature must be monitored! Shut down the machines and risk doing yourself needless, preventable harm, Lady. To even think of removing your lifemate, damaged as he is, from the catastrophe unit . . .”

“Quiet.”

One word, quavering on the broken edge of a whisper—terrifying from a woman who could make herself heard amidst the pandemonium of a battlefield.

“ . . . is to kill him outright!” the med tech continued unabated. “These—persons!—are not of Erob’s house medical staff! They—”

“Silence!” Shan snarled, in all the force of Command. The tech’s anger flared and he countered it, barely heeding what he did; merely casting out a glamour of cooling, like a handful of snowflakes. The med tech fell silent, passion melting, bowed and went over to sit in a chair.

“Very good.” He transferred his attention to the turtles, who were yet standing patiently, watching him out of yellow cat eyes.

“Shan yos’Galan,” the turtle on the right—Edger, Shan remembered—boomed in what was recognizably the Liaden High Tongue, though exactly which mode was a bit difficult to determine at this volume. “It is a joy to speak with the brother of my brother.”

“It is an honor to meet one of whom one’s kin has spoken, often and with affection,” he responded in the ritual stiffness of the High Tongue, in the mode of meeting the kin of kin.

“Allow me, also,” said the turtle named Sheather, in Terran, “to express my joy at making your acquaintance, Shan yos’Galan.”

“I’m delighted to meet you, as well,” Shan replied in the same tongue. He glanced over to the bed, saw Miri rigid against her pillows; once again caught the edge of her fear against his Healer sense.

“Please forgive me if I force the topic too quickly,” he said to the turtles, in blessedly quick, modeless Terran, “but I cannot help but see my sister’s distress. The med tech seems to believe that you would have her—and my brother as well—separated from the healing units.”

“These devices are all in discord!” cried the turtle named Sheather. “They interfere with the truesong of my sister’s self. We hear that our brother is more grievously damaged still. I fear—in my heart, I fear—that the machine which imprisons him, helpless and unable to communicate his own needs, may also slay him.”

Shan frowned. “And yet our sister has come successfully out of a similar machine, healed of her injuries and only needing to regain her strength. Many—” What had Val Con said the Clutch called the family of humankind—aha! “Many of the Clans of Men do exactly that, every Standard Year. It is how we heal ourselves of physical wounds.”

“Yet, as my younger brother will have it, we hear discord emanate from yon devices and know too well the damage that may be done. Our sister is surrounded by those things which leach her strength, and make her path to full vibrancy into a perilous journey, uncertain of a happy outcome.” Edger blinked his eyes solemnly. “Our sister tells us that you are one who may see into the fabric of others, and who may reweave somewhat that which has become unwoven.”