Local Custom (35 page)

SHAN TOOK HER HAND listlessly and went without any of his usual chatter down the long hallway toward Doctor yo'Kera's office, Mouse clutched tight against his chest.

Anne eyed him worriedly. According to Mrs. Intassi, he had passed a restless night, his sleep broken by bad dreams and bouts of crying. It sounded remarkably like Anne's own night and she wondered, half-dazedly, if she had caused her son's unrest or he had caused hers.

She shook her head.
Sure and there's plenty of pain for everyone to have their own share.
Er Thom's night would have surely been no better; she recalled the look in his eyes, as he begged her to tell him what was wrong.

Annie Davis, I hope you know what you're doing.

But after all, she told herself, working the lock on Doctor yo'Kera's door, there was nothing else to do. By now, Daav would have told Er Thom that Anne had lied when she had agreed to be his lifemate. Er Thom could not possibly forgive such a lie, such a strike at his melant'i. Of course, he would come after her—but he would do so in any case, once he found Shan was gone. It was her intention to be firmly within Terran jurisdiction by the time Er Thom finally caught up with her.

"Ma?" Shan looked up at her from heavy-lidded silver eyes. "Where's Mirada?"

Oh, gods. She dropped her bulging briefcase and went to her knees, gathering her son's small body close.

"Mirada can't come, Shannie," she whispered, cheek tight against his hair. "His clan needs him."

He slipped his arms around her neck, she felt him sigh, then: "We stay here? With Mirada?"

"No, baby," she whispered and closed her eyes to hold back the tears. "We're going home—to visit Uncle Dickie. A nice, long visit."

She thought briefly of her post on University: Good-bye tenure track. Well, she could get a job on New Dublin, surely. She could be a translator at the Port, or a teacher of Standard Terran in the private school.

Or she could raise sheep. Her arms tightened around her son.

"I love you, Shannie."

"Love you, Ma." He pushed back against her arms and lifted a hand to her face. His fingertips came away wet. "Sad."

"Sad," she repeated, voice cracking. She tried a smile; it felt wrong on her face. "We'll be happy again. I promise."

She stood and lifted him onto the table; plucked Mouse from the floor and laid it across Shan's knees.

"I'm going to call a cab," she told him. "Then we can go to the Port."

It took a few minutes and some ingenuity to thread the university's comm system, but she finally got an outside line and placed her call. The cab was promised in fifteen minutes, at the secondary door, as directed. Anne nodded to herself and cut the connection, glancing around Doctor yo'Kera's cluttered, comfortable office for the last time.

In an ocean of hurt, the pain of leaving his work undone, of walking away from the mystery of missing corroboration, was imbued with special flavor. Jin Del yo'Kera had been her friend, steadfast down a dozen years. In a way, she had loved him. Gods knew, she owed him more than she could ever repay. To leave him this way, with his research in shambles, his brilliance dimmed in the memories of his colleagues . . . 

She shook her head, denying the tears that made a glittering riot of the book-crammed shelves. Turning from the shelves, she found herself contemplating the flat-pic of three Aus at their sheep station: Mildred Higgins, Sally Brunner, Jackson Roy. Strong, straightforward people they seemed, smiling out of the battered frame. People who would see nothing odd in teaching a Liaden scholar to shear sheep.

The flat-pic was slightly wrinkled, as if someone had lately had it out of its frame and reseated it imperfectly. Or, Anne thought, perhaps the picture was so old the paper was beginning to dissolve. She had a moment's urge to take the thing off the wall and smooth the pic tidy. Shaking her head at the impulse, she turned back to Shan.

"Time to go, laddie," she said, swinging him to the floor. "Hold tight to Mouse, now."

She picked up her briefcase, took her son's hand and stepped out into the hall.

Shan uttered a sharp squeak and fell silent, his hand gone cold in hers.

Fil Tor Kinrae finished his bow and smiled, coldly, up into her eyes.

"Scholar. How fortunate that I meet you. We have much to speak about."

Anne inclined her head and allowed a note of irritation to be heard. "Alas, sir, I am unable to accommodate you today. I am bound for the Port."

"Then I am twice fortunate," he said in his curiously flat voice. "I go to the Port, as well. Allow me to drive you."

"Thank you, no. I have transport." She made to go past him down the hall, but he was abruptly before her.

The gun in his hand was quite steady. He was pointing it at Shan.

"You do not seem to grasp the situation, Scholar," he said, and the mode was Superior to Inferior. "You will allow me to drive you to the Port. You will continue to do precisely as I command. Fail, and I shall certainly harm—that." The gun moved minutely, indicating Shan.

"He's only a child," Anne said slowly. Fil Tor Kinrae inclined his head.

"So he is. Walk this way, if you please, and pray do not do anything foolish."

HE CAME TO HIMSELF in the gray of foredawn, face crushed into the hearth rug, one outflung hand clutching a tattered piece of red silk and a tawdry, fraying love knot.

His body ached amazingly, but that was no matter. His mind was clear.

He had dreamed.

Baffling, grief-laden dreams, they were, that robed the veriest commonplace in twisty, alien menace until his stomach churned with the strangeness of it and his head felt likely to burst asunder.

There were tolls demanded, now and again—he gave what was asked: His ring, his fortune, his peace. In return he was promised safe passage through the surrounding menace. He was promised love, melant'i and a return of peace.

The toll-man demanded his son.

"He's my son, Er Thom!" he cried out and felt as if his heart were broken anew. "He's a Terran citizen! Your clan doesn't know and your clan doesn't care!" He covered his face and wept aloud.

"I came home," he whispered distractedly, "and you were gone . . . "

Full awake, lucid and calm, he rolled to his back, careless alike of complaining muscles and ruined finery. He stared up at the gray-washed ceiling and considered his own folly.

Of course Anne did not care of Shan's place in Line—that would be to think as a Liaden. To think as a Terran—to think like
Anne
—one would weigh the answers to such questions and find in them proof that the man she had asked to guard her melant'i—the man she loved too well to allow his
sacrifice
—had willfully cheated her, stolen her child and placed him beyond her reach—forever.

Comes the same man pursuing his suit and Anne is flung headlong and frightened into a game so complex it might well give a seasoned player pause.

The man cries lifemates—does he lie? He had lied once, had he not? Assume he lies—necessity demands it. Lie to him in return, a little; better, allow him to deceive himself. Play for time, play for the single, slender moment of escape.

She had played well—brilliantly well, for one unused to the game. Yet she had been unable, even for necessity, to lie entirely. Honor would not allow her to wear the ring he had given.

He wondered, lying there, if she had known her confidence to Daav would end thus, with Er Thom safely out of the way, and her path clear from nursery to space port. It seemed likely.

He sighed and moved his head from side to side against the floor.

Anne's window of opportunity was today—this morning. She would take it—she must, or all play was for naught. He rather thought she would try to barter Moonel's jewelry for passage away, an enterprise she might find more difficult than she had supposed.

His course was clear. He spared a thought for his brother—but it seemed he was beyond feeling any new pain. The Healer would soon arrive; she must find an empty room when she did.

He came to his feet, wincing a little at the protest of his muscles, and went along to the shower, stripping off his formal clothes as he walked.

MUSCLES EASED BY A hot shower, Er Thom dressed in plain, serviceable trousers, plain shirt, comfortable boots. Each of the boots carried a cantra in the heel.

The belt he ran around his waist carried two dozen cantra between the layers of leather; the cunningly-made silver buckle could be traded either for melt-price or as an artwork.

From the lock-box he took other sorts of money: Terran bits, loops of pierced shell and malachite, rough-cut gems. These he disposed in several secret pockets about his person, and closed the safe on a dozen times the amount he had taken.

He shrugged into his leather pilot's jacket, feeling it settle heavily across his shoulders. Coins were sewn between the outer lining and the inner; more coins weighted the waist.

For a moment he fingered his jewel-box, frowning—and decided against. He pulled a second, smaller box toward him, lifted the lid and brought the gun out.

Quickly, he cracked it, checked it, reassembled it and slipped it into a jacket pocket. Extra pellets went into still other pockets. He closed the box and put it meticulously back in its place.

So. He looked around his room, reviewing his plan.

Anne's first object must be to leave Liad. Thus, he would find her at the Port. Necessity might dictate that she bear her son away, but she loved Er Thom yos'Galan. He knew that. She would allow him to come close enough to speak to her—close enough to touch her.

The gun weighed like a stone in his pocket. For a moment he hated it with an intensity that should have been shocking—then he shook the emotion away. He must make haste. Daav would be here with the Healer very soon.

Pilot quick, he went back to the parlor and opened the window wide. The door was unlocked; he didn't bother locking it or scrambling the access code. Such tactics would scarcely slow Daav. The best plan was to be gone, and quickly.

He spared a glance for Jelaza Kazone, stretching tall and true across the valley, visible sign of Cantra yos'Phelium's love for Jela, her partner, and the father of her child. Tears pricked his eyes; he dashed them away, swung over the sill and began the downward climb.

DAAV RAN ACROSS TO the open window, heart in his mouth.
Gods, no, he would not—

But his brother's broken body did not lie on the path so far below. Indeed, a cooler perusal of the vine that grew along the window and below discovered disturbed leaves, torn runners, crushed flowers—damage one would expect a climber to inflict.

Daav swore, though with more relief than anger, for it was an appalling climb down a sheer rock wall and the vine very little aid, in case one should fall.

"However, he did not fall," Master Healer Kestra commented from behind him. "So you may lay that fear aside, if you please."

He turned back to her and bowed fully. "My apologies, Master Healer. It appears my brother had—business elsewhere."

"Urgent business," she agreed in her dry way. She paced to the hearth rug, bent to pick up a scrap of red fabric and a bit of gold ribbon.

"The room," she murmured, her face losing its accustomed sharpness as she reached for nuance beyond the mere physical.

"The room tells me of great distress, of two people—wounded, yet fighting for understanding—of—resolution . . . "

"Two?" Daav demanded, for surely Er Thom would not have been so disobedient as—A breeze from the window mocked the thought.

From the hearth-rug, Master Kestra frowned. "Two? Of course—No. No, I believe you are quite correct.
Three
people. But surely one is—a child? A rather exceptional child. I would be interested in making the child's acquaintance, I think."

"It had been intended," Daav said as his mind raced, placing piece against piece until he had the shape of how it must have been.

The lady would not leave without the child,
he thought, with icy calm.
Er Thom would not stay without the lady. The luck send I'm in time to catch them at the Port!

"Master Healer, I am wanted urgently elsewhere."

She turned from her study of the mantelpiece and gave him a look of sleepy amusement, running the red-and-gold ornament absently through her slender fingers.

"Go along, then. I shall await your return."

Without even a bow he was gone, running at the top of his considerable speed.

A few moments later the sound of a landcar's engine came through the open window and faded rapidly into the distance.

The Healer sat cross-legged upon the hearth rug, dreamy-eyed and languorous. She smoothed the tattered little love token flat on her palm, closed her eyes, and prepared herself to listen.

 
To be outside of the clan is to be dead to the clan.

—Excerpted from the Liaden Code of Proper Conduct

SHE SPOKE ONCE ON the ride to Solcintra Port, to offer their captor the jewels in her briefcase, in trade for their freedom.

"I am not a patient man, Scholar," Fil Tor Kinrae replied without sparing a glance at her face.

Anne sat back in the short, cramped seat, shoulder bumping the opaqued window, put her arms around her son and tried to think.

Marksmanship had been part of her required course of study at the Academy of Music. She had never been comfortable carrying a gun, though, and given the habit up on her return to New Dublin.

Of course, she attended the mandatory self-defense practice course for faculty every other semester. But the prospect of taking a gun away from an undoubted professional while ensuring he did not shoot her child iced her blood.

Perhaps a chance would present itself when they left the car. If she could keep between Shan and the gun—in her lap, Shan twisted to push his face against her breast.

He hadn't uttered a sound since his squeak of terror in the hallway, miles and minutes ago. Anne lay her cheek against his hair and stroked him silently, hearing the echo of his fright, feeling her own muscles tense in response.