The Agent Gambit (70 page)

Hakan barely flushed. "Well, you haven't heard them, so you don't know-and I was going to get to meet them!"

Val Con finished stowing the extra blankets Zhena Trelu had sent and slid close to Hakan on the bench seat, keeping a wary eye on the large hot mug perched precariously next to the driver. "Then," he said, "you may tell us the good news."

"Right," Hakan said again. "The good news is that they've decided-the fair governors-to have a contest for the slot the Capstones would have been in. It'll be open to any trio!"

Miri snuggled in next to Val Con and slammed the door shut as the car began to accelerate.

Val Con stared straight ahead as Hakan shifted and looked at the two of them.

"Well?" he demanded.

"Well what?" Miri asked, then began shaking her head. "No. No. No chance. No way. I don't stand in front-"

Val Con was laughing, eyes straight ahead.

"Miri, I've heard you sing-you're terrific!" Hakan said. "We've got a great chance of winning. All we need to do is come up with a good name-already have a couple for you to think about-and practice today after the duo competition." He glanced at her face. "Look, you don't even have to sing all that much if-"

"No!" Miri exclaimed. In Terran, punctuated by an elbow in Val Con's side, she said, "Stop laughing, you devil!"

But Val Con continued to chuckle, ducking to let the argument bounce back and forth over his head, all the way to the fair.

Miri grumpily folded
the newspapers under her arm as they left the practice room and headed for the competition hall. The problem was not listening to Val Con and Hakan practice. It was listening to the people around them, hearing the remarks-and collecting the papers. The two men were in a world only peripherally connected to Vandar, mumbling about song order and such like, oblivious to the points and the stares and the papers.

They were yesterday's papers, mostly, each with accounts of the battle, and four of the five, including the
King's Press,
featured photographs taken at the awards ceremony. The other paper had sketches that were barely recognizable-and which tipped her annoyance into anger, for the one of Val Con made the scar the most prominent feature on his face.

It was not snowing yet, which was some comfort, Miri thought. She shook her head. Somehow it had been settled that she would sing with them the next day, and she could not even blame the decision on Val Con, who had merely laughed throughout the whole argument. She still needed to come up with a name, though, having rejected out of hand Hakan's favorites: the Gap Trio, the Zhena Robersun Trio, and the Springbreeze Farm Trio.

"Wind'll take these things," she grumbled in Terran. "And I'm damned if I-"

Karooom!

"Wow! It's going to snow now!" Hakan cried. Then he stopped, abruptly realizing that his friends stood rooted in their tracks, heads craned skyward.

Miri's eyes were on one spot in the overcast; she moved her head ever so slightly, following the sound.

"What's the matter?" Hakan demanded, puzzled. "It's only thunder-"

"Hush!" Cory snapped.

Hakan listened, too. True, it had been a rather sudden bit of thunder; there was a distinct but distant rumble trailing away to the northeast and Fornem's Gap.

"That's funny," he said a moment later. "It sounds like the thunder there is echoing against the wind!"

Miri said something in the language she and Cory sometimes used between themselves. She said it three times, progressively louder, as if casting an incantation. "Sonic boom. Sonic boom. Sonic boom."

Cory answered in the same language, moved his shoulders in that foreign way of his, and finished with the same words.

"Sonic boom."

He sighed. "Do you always have this kind of thunder, Hakan? So isolated? No flash of lightning?"

"Well, we get thunder in snowstorms a few times a year-usually means it's going to be a big one. But I think I still hear that-you don't think it's a windtwist, do you? We haven't had one of those since I was a baby!"

"No, I think not, friend. Probably just a squall. I have heard this thunder once or twice-at home-and so has Miri, but we have heard nothing like it here."

The sound faded out; the conversations of the crowd around picked up, and in moments the isolated, far-rumbling thunder was stored away as a strange memory from the Winterfair.

"There!" Hakan said as they arrived at the competition hall. "It was the first cloud breaking its ice!"

He pointed to a gray curtain moving down the side of the mountain, obscuring all behind it.

"Just like Surebleak," Miri said in unenthusiastic Terran. "Except there's too many happy people around. And some idiot skypilot who don't know the local limits!"

"Cha'trez, we don't know that. After all, there is an active Benish aviation industry."

"Yeah? I'll tell you what. You prove that was homegrown or natural, and I'll take the next ten watch details we come up with!"

"Ah, but what if we are done with watches?"

She grinned. "Always wanna hedge your bet, doncha, Liaden?"

"Come on!" Hakan said, grabbing Cory's arm. "They're posting the competition order!"

Grinning, they made appropriate haste.

VANDAR:
Winterfair

The snow pelted Miri
as she wandered through the double-flapped cloth door, cold bit her nostrils, clearing them instantly of the scent of a thousand humans.

Hakan and Cory were scheduled after the next group. Miri grappled with the name once again, struggling to avoid "Hakan and Cory and Miri" or, as Hakan had also suggested, "Miri and Hakan and Cory." She sighed. Hakan's musical talent was balanced by inability to choose a name with a snap to it.

Despite the snow-or because of it-the fair outside the performance hall was lively. The sleds that had been sitting idly in the fields were in full use, ferrying families to and fro; the hill in the distance was masked by the white stuff. The braziers spotted here and there were well tended, and Miri moved slowly toward one, trying not to step on a child.

As a Merc, she had never had much to do with children; certainly she had never developed the amazing talent Val Con had demonstrated yesterday, of being able to talk and patiently answer questions. The man seemed to actually
like
kids!

Good thing, too, Miri thought, 'cause they were
every
where. One was at that very moment angling toward the brazier, followed by a shorter version, both with coats carelessly unfastened and hoods hanging down their backs. They stood in front of the fire and turned their faces into the snow, giggling, until the taller of the two spotted her beside them and smiled.

"Good fair, zhena."

"Good fair, zama," she answered, feeling her mouth curve into a smile. "Button your coats before you go sledding."

The smaller one gave a crow of laughter. "We
been
sledding," he told her.
"Now
we go eat!"

"Good choice," Miri said, and they laughed, waving as they moved away from the fire.

Miri moved down the snow-covered path, admiring the true whiteness of the snow, so unlike the gray precipitation of Surebleak. Kids could be happy here-

She broke the thought off, ears straining against the muffling of the snow, against the soft whisper of flakes striking her coat.

It
was
there! From above the clouds came a thrumming, lurking noise, the sound of a modern craft, hovering.

Fair noise overwhelmed the sound, and for a moment she doubted herself. Then it came again-the kind of sound she had hoped and prayed and cursed for when Klamath had come apart around them, freezing them, frying them, killing them . . . She banished the memory and ran through the Rainbow's sequence so quickly that the colors blurred into a wheel before her mind's eye.

The thrumming sound came again-louder, it seemed-and she turned, resolved to run to Val Con, to bring him out to listen.

What for, Robertson? she asked herself derisively. What's he gonna do about it? Yell? You need a radio, quicktime.

Damn. A radio right here, and no way to send a message! There had to be a way . . .

A man came around the corner of the hall, shrouded in snow and blinded by it. She dodged, blinking up at the hugeness of him, and called out of happier memories, out of hope. "Jason? Edger?"

He stopped, taking shape out of the snow and smiling down at her. "Zhena?"

Miri laughed and apologized. "In the snow I mistake you for someone I know."

"Easy to do when the snow winds come!" he boomed good-naturedly. "Good fair!" He was gone then, leaving warmth behind amid the confusion.

A gong banged in the distance and was echoed by others-the new hour was starting. She rushed into the hall, a name for the trio on her lips.

Hakan and Val Con
were still setting up. Miri moved to a front-row bench and instantly felt Val Con's gaze on her. She smiled, adding quick flutter of hand-talk-Old Trade-that said "Need to talk later." His wave and smile reassured her.

Val Con sat briefly at the piano before the introduction, testing it. He would be playing backup on the guitar in some of the songs, but in the others he would play melody while Hakan sang. A few touches of the instrument assured him; he nodded to someone off-stage, and a white-haired woman in fur boots walked to centerstage amid the stomping of feet and whistling from the audience.

"Next on the program is a new duo. Hakan, of course, is known to many of us; his partner Cory is a recent addition to our area, and we'll all get a chance to hear them right now!"

The music started instantly, and the audience chuckled as the emcee hurried off stage. Hakan waited until she had actually made the wings before he began to sing.

Miri relaxed. So far, no one had mentioned that Hakan and Cory were heroes. She sat back and listened extra hard, studying the music. The Snow Wind Trio was going to have to be damn good to get on the radio.

The applause died away,
and Miri went toward the stage to join the small group at the bottom of the steps. She sighed. If the number of stage-side fans and the volume of applause meant anything, then Hakan and Cory were not the hit they had hoped to be.

Hakan stopped to talk with some friends, and Miri smiled wanly at her husband, surprised at the amount of joy in him.

He swung an arm around her waist and hugged her tight, laughing at raised eyebrows.

"So we are not traditional enough, we two?" he asked in Benish.

"Looks that way, boss," she replied in Terran.

He slanted a bright green glance at her face. "A problem, cha'trez?"

She shrugged and pulled him with her toward the back of the hall. They found seats on the aisle near the door-flaps and settled down just as the next group signaled that they were ready and the emcee came on stage.

"Problem or solution, I don't know," she said carefully. She turned to look him full in the face. "Someone's sitting upstairs, doing circles over the clouds. Not transport class. Say, an unbaffled ship or an out-and-out jet-can't tell with all this other noise. But doing a loiter."

"Ah," he said, and she clamped down hard on the need to ask him what "Ah" meant this time.

"Thing is," she said instead, "I know how to get their attention. If you want to."

Val Con raised an eyebrow, waiting.

"All we got to do," she said, as if she was not certain that he had already thought of it himself, "is get on the radio. This trio gig of Hakan's . . . If you and me can sing something in Terran or Liaden-a round, maybe-one part in Benish, one in Terran, one in Liaden." She saw his frown. "Know it's against the rules, boss, but I can't figure it otherwise. Unless you want to hijack the station!"

"Inefficient, hijacking a station. And you think your idiot sky-pilot will be listening?"

"What the hell do you think she's doing? Way it makes sense is they were doing the frequency scan, like you and me did, homed in on the radio like a beacon, and now they're circling, trying to decide if it's worth a stop."

He nodded. "You were wasted as a sergeant, Miri. You might have been a-"

"Hey! Cory! Miri! Somebody wants us to teach them our playing style!" Hakan called, arriving with two young women and a shy man in tow.

Val Con smiled vaguely at the group; Miri's smile contained a touch of frost.

"Hakan, it is to be flattered," she said more sharply than she had intended. "But us-we need to practice. We must be better!"

Hakan looked crestfallen, his exuberance lost in a mumble.

One of the young women bustled forward and nodded to Miri, as if to an equal. "I am Zhena Wrand. After you have practiced-and played-Hakan tells me you may compete tomorrow-after that, we will work with you! There is a new feel to what Hakan and Cory do. Not revolutionary, mind. But new, not as hide-bound. All these traditionals want nothing more than to hear exactly what they heard last year! You watch and see who wins-a traditional band! Next year, though, I-we-will be so good they can't ignore us!" With that she turned, lifted a hand to her friends, and stalked away.

Hakan stared after them strangely, then his eyes lighted as Kem arrived.

"Hakan and Cory-you did fine!" She smiled, tucking her hand into Hakan's.

"At least some people think so!" Hakan said, pointedly glancing at Miri.

Val Con began to say something, but Miri put her hand out, silencing him.

"Hakan?" she said very seriously. "Do you still want a trio?"

His face actually paled. "Of course, Miri," he stammered. "I didn't mean-"

"Quiet," she ordered, and Val Con bent his head to hide his smile.

"If we have a trio, we do it right," Miri announced. "First, the name. The name should be 'Snow Wind Trio,' unless another-"

"No, that's good. Real good!" Hakan smiled at Kem, tightening his grip on her hand as Miri continued.

"Fine. We settle that much. Now." She pointed back and forth between Val Con and Hakan. "You two, you work good together. Me? I sing some. Mostly before I sing at parties, not on stage. And these is bests-the best groups in Bentrill! We have to be very, very good and traditional-like that zhena said-or different! So different they can't compare. We don't have time to be all traditional. So-we practice being different!"