Plan B (5 page)

Val Con took her hand, led her to the couch by the refreshment table and sat down. "Miri." He tugged gently at her, patting the cushion beside him.

For a moment he thought she'd refuse, yank her hand free and stomp away, as he had been certain she would earlier, and he with no choice but to follow his lifemate. . .

"Hell." She flumped down next to him and dropped her head on his shoulder. "You're more trouble than you're worth, you know?"

"Shan has often expressed that view," he said, sighing in mock remorse. "The two who know me best cannot both be in error."

She snorted a half-laugh; stirred and sat up. "That kid who died—Kea? She was a pilot."

"So are you."

"Like hell—" The door clicked and she swallowed the rest of that argument.

Emrith Tiazan stopped before the couch and held the disk out to Miri, bowing with careful equality. "This has tested genuine." She straightened and looked at Val Con. "Genes, you believe?"

"I have no doubt," he said calmly. "You will, of course, wish to attain your own surety."

"Of course." She went across the room to the desk comm and touched a button. In a very short while, the door opened to admit the young doorkeeper. He flicked a nervous glance at the couch, then bowed deeply to Emrith Tiazan.

"My delm desires?"

"You will go to the older storehouse and find in Room East 14 a large package stasis-locked and wrapped in blue silk. Bring it here. You will bid Win Den tel'Vosti attend me here. You will likewise bid the senior medical technician, adding that she shall bring her sampling kit."

The boy touched his tongue to his lips, bowed, turned—

"An Der."

He glanced back over his shoulder. "Yes, Aunt?"

"You will speak to no one, excepting tel'Vosti and the senior med. You will go to the storeroom alone and bring what I require away with your own hands."

The boy bowed again. "I hear," he said—and ran.

"Well, Emrith?"

The old man leaned on his stick in the center of the room. "To what do I owe this interruption of my studies?"

"Studies!" The delm stared at him for a moment, then moved a hand, directing his attention to the couch. "I make you known to Val Con yos'Phelium, Second Speaker for Clan Korval. Korval, my kinsman, Win Den tel'Vosti, thodelm."

"So." The brown eyes watched with seeming amusement as Val Con stood and made his bow.

"My Lord tel'Vosti."

"My Lord yos'Phelium." The return bow was more complete than Miri would have expected, given the cane. "Your father was a rare one for Counterchance."

"So my uncle has told me, sir."

"Er Thom yos'Galan? Now
there
was a demon for the game! Very good he was—a thoughtful, subtle player, no shame. We came even, the times we played. But Daav . . . I believe I may yet owe him a cantra. Perhaps two. I'll consult my account books. Do you play?"

"A bit, sir, but not to match my uncle."

"Pity." The brown eyes sharpened. "You'll want to have that wound looked after, of course, before you meet the House."

Wound? What wo—
Sleep learning surfaced and Miri gulped against the sudden
understanding
of what it meant, to be a Liaden with your face scarred . . . .

"Thank you, sir," Val Con was saying calmly. "It's healed cleanly."

"Win Den." Emrith Tiazan began, but tel'Vosti had come to attention, as if he were a corps captain facing another, and half-sketched a salute.

"It is your campaign, sir."

"
Win Den
." This time his delm's voice could not be ignored. She moved her hand. "I am told that this lady is Miri Robertson Tiazan."

Miri came to her feet and bowed into those amused brown eyes.

"Well, and why not?" said the old gentleman, returning the bow with a certain flair.

"Lady yos'Phelium," Val Con murmured in the room's sudden stillness and tel'Vosti straightened with a laugh.

"Aha! A man who wishes to be absolute of his assets! My felicitations, sir! Perhaps you are not so poor a player of the game as you would have me believe." He glanced back at Miri.

"You are a soldier?" he asked, in the almost-friendly mode of Comrade.

"I was," Miri said, allowing him the mode, though not without a few mental reservations. "I retired a year or two ago."

"Indeed? At what rank?"

She eyed him warily, wondering where this line of questioning was going; wondering, with a sudden spurt of panic, if he was trying to figure her melant'i and if it was going to come up to par. "Master sergeant."

"Master sergeant." He said it like a caress. "And your age is?"

"Twenty-eight Standards." She considered him, the lurking amusement, the straight shoulders, the cane, the mane of pinkish hair. "More or less."

He laughed and glanced at Emrith Tiazan, who stood, grim-faced and silent, near the desk.

"So you tell me you retired two years ago, with the rank of master sergeant. A private troop, perhaps? Industrial?"

"No," Miri had to tell him, against a building wave of dread. "Mercenary unit." She mustered enough nerve to glare into his perpetual amusement. "I was with the Gyrfalks before I retired. I began in Lizardi's Lunatics, which is how I came to be a sergeant in the first place. We got into a spot of trouble, command-chain broke down. . ."

"So you were made field sergeant." tel'Vosti tipped his head. "But your rank was upheld, once the—trouble—was past. And the Gyrfalks raised the stake by a star."

Suddenly, amazingly, he bowed. "A Master of mercenary sergeants by the time you attained twenty-five Standards! A significant feat, Lady yos'Phelium, for I have seen the Gyrfalks in action. Their conduct is always professional and they are most resourceful. Their services do not come cheap—am I correct, Emrith?—but they are worth their weight in cantra, each of them. Korval does well to guard his assets."

The door clicked, and opened to admit the wide-eyed doorman, barely seen behind the flat crate he carried against his chest. After him came a stern dark-haired woman in a crisp coverall: the senior med tech.

"Great," Miri whispered to Val Con, as tel'Vosti and the delm turned away to deal with the new arrivals. "Now maybe we can get this over and get outta here."

The crate had been placed against the desk, and the blue silk drawn away. Emrith Tiazan knelt before it and with her own hands loosened the seals. An Der helped her rise, a solicitous hand at her elbow, a ready arm by her waist.

She shook him off and stepped back. "Open it," she said harshly, and the boy bent to comply.

Val Con drifted forward, Miri at his side. They stopped to the right of Win Den tel'Vosti, who stood with both hands covering the knob of his cane, no amusement at all in his face. The med tech had shrugged and gone over to the couch, perching on the wide arm and watching the proceedings with a sort of distant interest.

An Der wrestled the cover loose and stepped away.

The med tech drew a noisy breath in through her teeth.

Nobody else moved at all, and Miri frowned, wondering why an old mirror should be the focus of such tension, such expect—

"Oh, shit," she breathed, and moved away from Val Con's side, staring at the reflection that didn't move—didn't move because it was a painting—a portrait, not a mirror. A portrait of a woman in flying leathers and loose-laced white shirt, arms crossed under slight breasts, legs braced wide, gray eyes direct in a willful, intelligent face, and the copper-colored hair done in a single long braid, wrapped three times around her head.

"Miri Tiazan," Emrith Tiazan said, voice still strained. "Who left the clan in disgrace."

"Who put the clan in disgrace by leaving," tel'Vosti corrected. "Be precise, Emrith."

"It is disgrace to ignore the delm's order!"

"But she never did ignore it—as you well know. She merely asked leave to postpone contract wedding until love's seed should bear fruit. Tamishon was in no great hurry, being content to know the contract was valid and eventually would be fulfilled. Four month's delay was no cause to abort the babe." He turned to Miri and bowed slightly, indicating fuller information forthcoming.

"The lad was dead, you see—she'd get no other child from him. And Baan Tiazan was a tyrant who ruled both his daughters hard, eh, Emrith?" He moved his shoulders when she gave no answer, amusement back in his eyes.

"She was not always dutiful, understand—that would be unlike her name. But she acquiesced in the large things, and made shift to come the sophisticate, in company."

Miri shook herself. "She ran away to have her kid," she finished, in Terran, too shaken to sort through sleep-learned modes. "She crashed on Surebleak and couldn't get home. . ."

"Is that what came of her?" tel'Vosti asked softly. His Terran was better than the delm's. "We had wondered."

She shook herself again, ran the Rainbow, fast, to get distance from the shock of the picture and the tension focused now on her. "I'm guessing," she told tel'Vosti. "She's dressed like a pilot—and there ain't any reason to choose Surebleak, when you got the whole galaxy ahead."

"So," he said, and looked ready to say more.

"There will be a gene test," Emrith Tiazan snapped. "Med Tech, attend your duty!"

The tech came to her feet, looking open-mouthed from the picture to Miri. She looked finally at the old lady and bowed, rearranging her face into an expression of cool interest.

"As you say," she murmured, and drew a flat kit from her utility pocket. "If the young lady will attend me here. . ."

The blue dress felt nice.

It looked nice, too, Miri decided. In fact, she looked amazingly respectable for a woman who had lately been a mercenary master sergeant, a bodyguard, a fugitive from justice, a woman of all work, and a singer.

Whether she looked respectable enough to please the circus gathering in the reception room below was something she'd find out far too soon.

She took one last turn before the mirror, admiring the way the bluestone necklace lay just right against her throat. She was wearing her hair loose, held back with a set of deceptively simple silver combs. Central stores, located in the cavernous belowstairs had provided dress and combs. The necklace and matching ring were hers, gifts from Val Con, from a time when gifts from Val Con were potentially deadly.

"Very elegant," she told her reflection, and bowed pleasure at making acquaintance, remembering to include the hand-gesture one used toward newly-met kin.

"Gods," she said, and came slowly erect, as if the woman in the mirror might jump her. "Oh, gods, Robertson, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?"

Val Con's dressing room—the 'apartment' set aside for their use was bigger than Zhena Trelu's whole house, back on Vandar—was on the opposite side of the bedroom. There were three other rooms—a parlor, an office and a bookroom, plus a bathroom the size of Lytaxin spaceport and a balcony that looked out over the East Garden.

A huge bed commanded the bedroom. Flowering vines grew up two of the posts and all over the canopy, dripping long tendrils like flowering curtains around the sides. Miri shook her head. Liadens . . . A whole room just to dress in, a garden growing in the bedroom, and a bunch of other stuff, here and there, apparently just done for pretty. She bit her lip, recalling the apartments she'd lived in as a kid, an endless succession of rats, peeling synth-lam walls and near-paneless windows leaking Surebleak's frigid winter winds.

"Forget it, Robertson," she whispered; "you ain't going back there. Never going back there."

The bed-flowers were pale blue with soft white stripes, lightly and agreeably perfumed. On impulse, she pulled one free and tucked it behind an ear as she continued across the cream-and-blue carpet to Val Con's dressing room.

He caught her eyes in the mirror as the door opened, and smiled.

"Cha'trez."

She tried to smile back—saw her reflection's mouth wobble and then straighten in distress as the big gray eyes got bigger, taking in the ruffled white shirt, the rich dark trousers, the green ear-drop and finger-ring—all the accouterments of a Liaden gentlemen about to attend a formal dinner.

Val Con spun, eyes and face serious.

"Miri? What is wrong?"

"I—" she shook her head and managed to dredge up a half-convincing grin. "You look like a Liaden, boss."

"Ah." His face relaxed and he came across to her, lifting a hand to touch her hair. "But, you see, I am a Liaden, which no doubt accounts for it."

"That's probably it," she agreed and sighed. "You ready to go face the lions?"

One brow rose. "Clan Erob? Hardly lions."

"Yeah, and suppose that gene test comes out negative?
You're
OK, but I ain't the kind Erob usually has to supper."

"And the portrait of Miri-eklykt'i?" He touched the flower behind her ear with a gentle forefinger.

Miri sighed, recalling with a certain queasy vividness the face of the woman in the old painting. The resemblance was spooky enough if she
was
that one's granddaughter. . .

"I don't guess coincidence'll cover it, huh?"

"It seems unlikely in the extreme." He touched the flower again, then drew it from its resting-place.

"Not," he murmured, "for this sort of dinner."

"Huh?" Miri followed him into the bedroom. "It's against the law to wear flowers to dinner?"

"This particular flower," said Val Con, placing it gently in a cut crystal water glass, "is an aphrodisiac."

She blinked at him; blinked at the canopy. "And they've got 'em growing all over the bed?"

"What better place?"

"Right." She closed her eyes, willing tense muscles to relax.

"Miri?"

She looked at the pattern of him inside her head—bright and clear and beloved—then opened her eyes and grinned wryly at the proper Liaden gentleman before her.

"Tell you what, boss: This whole masquerade's gonna come crashing down over something as stupid as that flower. If you hadn't been here to tell me before I went on down, I could've blown everything."
Everything
, she thought: His melant'i; the melant'i of Line yos'Phelium; her own insignificant amount—all gone. Because of a flower.