Local Custom (24 page)

Er Thom sighed lightly and put his napkin aside.

"Excuse me, friend," he said softly, and went off in the wake of his mother.

 
A Dragon will in all things follow its own necessities, and either will or will not make its bow to Society. Nor shall the prudent dispute a Dragon's chosen path or seek to turn it from its course.

—From the Liaden Book of Dragons

"YOU WILL HAVE THE goodness to explain," Petrella announced as the patio door closed behind the butler, "why
three
messages to your personal screen have gone unanswered from the time of sending to this moment?"

Er Thom bowed. "Doubtless because I have not gone by my rooms since an hour before last evening's Prime meal, nor have I collected messages from the house base."

Petrella took a deep breath, fingers tightening ominously around the head of her cane. A breeze played momentary tag with the flowers at the edge of the patio, gave up the sport to tease the sleeves of Er Thom's robe, then veered again, showering Petrella with flower-scent as it chased off.

"Mother, allow me to seat you," he murmured, slipping a solicitous hand beneath her elbow. "You will overtire yourself."

It was just such gentle courtesy as he was wont to offer. Tears filled Petrella's eyes as she accepted it, though she could not have said whether they were tears of rage or of love.

Love or rage, her voice shook when next she spoke.

"If you think that I will close my eyes to any impropriety you and that—
person
—chose to perform in this house—"

"Forgive me." He did not raise his voice, but some slight edge, immediately recognizable to those who were of Korval—and those who dealt with them—warned her to silence.

"Professor Davis is a guest of the House," he continued after a moment, voice unremittingly gentle. "The Code teaches us that the well-being of the guest is sacred. Professor Davis is—accustomed—to depending upon me for certain comforts; she felt herself adrift among strangers, alone on a world far different than her own. Shall I doom her to sleeplessness and worry from a concern for
propriety
? Or shall I offer accustomed and much-needed comfort, that she might rest easy in our House?"

"All from concern for the guest," Petrella said acidly. "I am enlightened! Who would have considered you possessed the genius to twist Code in such a wise, all with an eye to gain your own way!
I
had thought you a person of melant'i, but I see now that judgment—and the judgment of your foster mother—was in error. I see that what I have is a clever halfling, strutting his own consequence and flaunting his faulty understanding for all the world to see! Never fear that I am too ill to lesson a disobedient boy. Give me that ring!"

Er Thom froze, eyes wide in a face gone somewhat pale.

"Well, sir? Will you have me ask it twice?"

Slowly, then, he raised his hands; slowly, drew the master trader's amethyst from his finger. He stepped forward and bowed, and lay the ring gently in her palm.

"So. We have at least a base of obedience upon which to build. You relieve me." She clenched her fingers, feeling the edges of the gem cut into her palm. "With this ring you give me your pledge, Er Thom yos'Galan. You pledge you will withhold such—comforts—as you have been accustomed to provide the Terran scholar, beginning immediately. Carry through your pledge and in eleven day's time, when her guesting is done, you may ask me for your ring." She gripped the gem tighter as she spoke, grateful for the slight, simple pain.

"Fail of your pledge and I shall return this ring to the Trade Commission, and ask that your license be withdrawn."

There was little chance that the Trade Commission would revoke the license of Master Trader Er Thom yos'Galan. But a request for revocation would mean a review. And a review would suspend Er Thom's ability to trade for a minimum of two Standard Years.

Er Thom drew a deep breath. Perhaps he meant to speak. If so, he was rescued from that indiscretion by the cheery voice and sudden advent of his cha'leket.

"Good-morning, all! What a lovely day, to be sure!" Daav paused beside his foster-brother and made his bow, all grace and easy smiles.

"Aunt Petrella, how delightful to see you looking so rested! I am come to speak with the guest. Is she within?"

"In the dining hall," Petrella told him, with scant courtesy, "when last seen."

"I to the dining hall, then." He turned and caught Er Thom's hand. "Good-morning, darling! Have you been naughty?"

Er Thom laughed.

Daav smiled and raised the hand he held, bending his head to kiss the finger which the master trader's ring had lately adorned.

"Courage, beloved," he said gently. Then he loosed his brother's hand and vanished into the house.

"Another mannerless child!" Petrella snapped peevishly, flicking her hand in dismissal. "Leave me," she commanded her son. "Take care you recall your pledge."

ANNE LOWERED HER COFFEE cup, glancing up eagerly as a shadow flickered across the dining room door.

Alas, the shadow was not Er Thom, returning from his interview with his mother, but Er Thom's foster-brother. She rose quickly and bowed good-morning, but some of her disappointment must have shown in her face.

"Ah, it is only Daav!" that gentleman cried, striking a pose eloquent of despair in the instant before he swept his own bow of greeting. "Good-day, Scholar."

It was a bit of incidental theater worthy of one of Jerzy's more manic days and she gave it the laughter it deserved.

"But I thought we'd agreed that I was to be Anne, not 'Scholar'," she protested.

"My dreadful manners," he said mournfully and Anne grinned.

"If you're looking for Er Thom, his mother needed to speak with him for a—"

"Yes, I've seen them," Daav interrupted, leaving Adult-to-Adult and entering Terran. "But it's you I've come to speak with. Have you half-an-hour?" He tipped his head. "There's a room down the hall where we may be private."

"The whole house is full of rooms where people can be private," she told him, coming slowly around the table.

"Have you seen all of Trealla Fantrol? You must be entirely exhausted." He bowed her through the door ahead of him.

"Only a corner of it, I'm afraid." She sighed. "My head's in a muddle. I'm not even sure I can find the 'chora room again."

"So you have seen that," he murmured. "How did you find the omnichora?"

"It's magnificent," she said frankly. "The Academy of Music on Terra has none finer."

He sent her a glance from beneath his lashes, a trick he shared with Er Thom, else she would never have caught it.

"Have you been to the Academy of Music on Terra, I wonder?"

"I was there on scholarship for two years," she said evenly. "Funding slipped in the third year and there was no way my family could—" She shrugged, cutting herself off.

"I went home and finished out college, snared a fellowship and went on to advanced work."

In record time,
she added silently. Driven by the grief of losing her first love, determined to make a success of her second, studying to the exclusion of everything, even—especially—friendship . . . 

"I see," Daav said, guiding her into a small room and pulling the door closed. He waved toward a pair of overstuffed, almost shabby chairs.

"Please, sit. May I give you wine?"

"Thank you—white, please."

The chair she chose was delightfully comfortable, the seat wide enough for her hips, the tall back sweeping 'round her shoulders, and sufficiently high-set that she barely needed to fold her legs at all.

Daav sat opposite her, placing two glasses on the low table between them.

"So, now." He settled back into his chair. "I have questions which must be answered. Believe that I do not wish to distress you in any way." He smiled. "Er Thom would hand me my ears if I did, you know."

She laughed. "Yes, very likely!"

"Ah, you don't think so? But surely it's no more than duty to protect the peace of a proposed spouse?"

"A proposed—oh." She shook her head. "Er Thom told you that he asked me to sign a marriage contract. I turned him down, and if he didn't tell you that he should have."

"He did," Daav said gently.

"Then what—" She frowned, searching his thin, foxy face. "I don't understand."

"Hah." He tasted his wine, considering her over the edge of the glass.

"May I know," he said eventually, "your intentions toward my brother?"

She barely knew, herself. It was plain she would have to give the man up—soon. Unfortunately, it was equally plain that giving him up was like to rip the living heart out of her.

Anne reached for her glass, buying time with a sip of wine. When she had put the glass aside, she was no closer to an answer.

"Should we," she asked, flicking a glance at Daav's face, "be having this conversation in—the High Tongue?"

"Certainly, if you would feel more comfortable," he said agreeably. "But I find Terran so free, don't you? No need to sift through a dozen modes in search of one particular nuance . . . "

She grinned. "It's only that I thought, since I seem to be speaking with the delm—"

"Ah, my regrettable manners! The delm, stuffy fellow that he is, remains aloof for the moment. You are speaking to Daav yos'Phelium, on behalf of his brother, who asked that I talk with you."

"Regarding my intentions?" Drat the man, why couldn't he ask her himself, then?

"Or your feelings," Daav murmured. He tipped his head. "It's an impertinence, I know. Alas, I've always been a impertinent fellow—and my brother is very dear to me."

She glanced up, charmed by his candor.

"Well," she said wryly, "he's very dear to me, too. How I'm going to give him a tolerable good-bye at the end of semester break is more than I can see." She shook her head.

"I should never have come to Liad—I see that now. It was only that he—he came to find me.
Me
. He was in trouble—" she smiled, recalling Er Thom's way of it—"in
difficulty
. And I thought, foolishly enough, that I could help . . . " She glanced aside.

"Nothing foolish at all," Daav said gently, "in wishing to aid a friend."

"Yes, but I should have thought it through," she said, biting her lip. "Naturally, you, or his mother or—other friends—would be more able to help him than—than a Terran." She raised her eyes to meet Daav's black gaze.

"I'm a handicap to him here, whatever his trouble is. But he wanted the delm to count Shan—it was so important—and then I had word from Scholar yo'Kera's associate and—oh, it all seemed to fall into some sort of pattern! Shan would be counted—that was small enough—my friend's associate would get her assistance, and—" She faltered, swallowing against sudden tears.

"And you would help Er Thom extricate himself from his difficulty," Daav finished for her. There was a slight pause. "You didn't think of parting?"

She laughed ruefully. "At the beginning, I was braced—waiting for him to leave. Of course he would have to leave, I knew that. But he stayed and he kept insisting that we go to Liad and I kept insisting that Shan and I would stay on University—" She shook her head.

"Quite a donnybrook—and all wasted effort. Er Thom got his way, of course—
that
should teach me not to argue with a master trader! The more we were together, the less I thought of parting. He was with me and I loved him—more now—much more now—than—before." She glanced down, saw her fingers twisted around each other on her lap, sighed and looked up. "Is that what you wanted to know?"

Daav's eyes met hers with a curious intensity.

"You never thought of a lifemating?" he asked.

Anne frowned. "I'm Terran."

"And a Terran wife must necessarily be a burden," he commented dryly. "Yet, if he offered a lifemating—"

"No." She shook her head decisively. "No, I couldn't let him do that. It's not—necessary—that he make such a—I'll be able to—to show him a dry face, when it's time to leave."

"Will you?" His voice was very soft, one eyebrow well up.

Anne looked at him, feeling the tightness in her chest. "Yes, I will," she said with a certainty she was a long way from feeling. "I've done it before, after all."

"I MIGHT INDEED GIVE him his ring back," Petrella informed her nephew tersely. "He knows what he must do to earn it."

"Yes, but only consider the unnecessary speculation awakened in the minds of the idle," Daav urged, "does he but go into Solcintra thus."

"There is no reason for Er Thom to go into the city."

Daav stared. "Why, there is
every
reason for him to do so!" he cried. "The normal demands of his duty take him to Solcintra and the Port many times over a twelve-day." He checked his pacing. "Unless you've relieved him of those, as well?"

"Certainly not," she said, righteously. "Only the Trade Commission may relieve a master trader of his duties."

Daav clamped his jaw against a sharp return to that and mentally reviewed a Scout's relaxation exercise, deliberately bringing his anger under control.

"Aunt Petrella," he said after a moment, with credible, if fragile, calm. "If you believe Er Thom will keep from duty simply because you choose that he not wear mark of rank, you have a very odd view of his character."

"Thank you!" she snapped. "I choose to teach him obedience, sir, as I told you last evening. You will not interfere in this."

"You wish to shame the clan's master trader before the Port entire and claim it's none of mine? Aunt—"

She struck the floor with her cane. "I will not have him interpreting Code for his own benefit!"

Daav froze, staring at her out of wide eyes.

"Isn't that what it's for?"

Petrella glared, thin chest heaving with rage, hands gripped like talons about the head of her cane.

"I may die before your eyes this moment," she said grimly, "and leave you a wrongheaded, disobedient boy as thodelm. It's no less than you deserve."

"I don't
want
a dog broken to heel!" Daav shouted, control and gentle-speaking alike be damned. "I want intelligence, clear sight, strength of duty—as my mother did before me! And I tell you now, Chi's sister, if you break Er Thom yos'Galan, you break Korval!"