The Dragon Variation (64 page)

Seen thus, without the great green eyes sparking fire, she seemed astonishingly frail—a mere bundle of bone shrouded in the golden velvet of her skin, carelessly wrapped in rusty black and shabby silk. Daav knew a desire to gather her up and hold her against him, head tucked under his chin, as if she were one of his small nephews. He shook the feeling aside: Aelliana was no child, but a woman grown, and none of Korval, beside.

He wondered anew at her clan, who seemingly placed her value so low it cared nothing if she ate or starved, went clothed or naked.

Not permitted to grant a comrade courtesy of the house, is it?
he thought with a recurrence of anger, and sighed. Well, and perhaps her kin misliked Scouts. There were those, in sufficient plenitude, though his darker side noted sardonically that Delm Korval would likely command slavish welcome, whatever hour he might call.

In her sleep, Aelliana stirred, shivered, nestled deeper into the cool plastic seat.

Daav sat up, moving with exquisite care. He slipped off his jacket and tucked it around her, turning the soft leather collar up to shield her face from the eyes of the curious.

Settling back, he thrust his legs out before him and folded his hands over his belt buckle. Eyes half-closed, he reviewed a linked series of exercises, assigning one segment of his mind to keep watch while the most of him dozed.

SHE TRIED TO LEAVE him in Chonselta Port,
arguing that there was no call for him to endure a train ride halfway across the city only to be obliged to return immediately to the port.

"No, but I shan't be returning
immediately
to Port," Daav said, sliding his coin into the box and requesting two tickets. "Unless you live in the station?" He handed her a ticket.

Aelliana stared up into his face, trying valiantly for a glare. "You are quite stubborn enough!"

He sighed, taking her elbow and guiding her toward the platform. "My
cha'leket
tells me exactly the same. It's a burdensome nature, I agree, and far too late to correct it. I am on my knees before the gift of your forbearance."

"Yes, very likely. Daav, nothing ill is going to befall me between here and Raingleam Street."

He looked down at her, eyes wide. "A foretelling,
dramliza
?"

"I am not a wizard! You, however, are entirely ridiculous!"

"Yes, yes, as much as you like," he assured her over the hiss of the train's stopping. "Is this our shuttle?"

She gave it over then with a laugh and marched before him into the compartment.

That was the last laugh he had from her—and very nearly the last word. The closer the train brought them to her clanhouse, the quieter she became, sitting stiffly beside him on the bench, steadfastly staring at nothing.

The train stopped four times to discharge and admit passengers. As it slowed for the fifth time, Aelliana raised her face. Daav bit back a cry of protest: The bright green eyes were shrouded in fog, wary and chill in a face etched with tension.

"Aelliana—"

She raised a hand, forestalling he hardly knew what mad speech.

"This is my stop," she said, and the warmth was at least still in her voice. "I suppose it's useless to ask that you spare yourself a walk and a return alone through an unknown city?"

He smiled for her, keeping his voice light. "I'm a Scout, my friend. Unknown cities are something of a specialty with me."

Her lips quirked a smile. "I suppose they are," she said and stood, moving toward the door.

She made no protest when he took her hand, though the station was hardly crowded. Indeed, her fingers tightened about his as she guided him out to the street.

As urgently as she had cried her need to go home, it seemed that now, with home near to hand, her urgency had deserted her. She led him sedately down thin streets lined with yard-enclosed houses. The further they walked, the smaller the yards became, the more closely the houses crouched, shoulders all but rubbing their neighbors.

Raingleam Street was meager, the public walk crumbling and weed-pocked, the houses brooding over scanty squares of grass held captive by rusting, lance-tipped fences.

"Here." Aelliana stopped before a fence near the top of the way. The grass beyond the lances looked unkempt in the light from the street lamp, a flowering vine softened the brooding facade of the house.

In the puddle of lamplight, Aelliana spun to face him, catching up his other hand in hers.

"Daav—thank you, my friend. For the escort, for the lessons, for—for your care. I cannot—I don't believe I recall when last I spent a pleasanter day."

"Well, as to that," he said gently, feeling her hands trembling in his, "the pleasure has been mutual." He hesitated, glanced over her head to the forbidding house, looked down into a face from which all joy had retreated.

"Aelliana?"

"Yes?"

"I—may I give you my comm number, Aelliana? Call me, if there is need."

She did not laugh, nor ask what need she could possibly have of him, now she was delivered safe back to her kin.

She sighed, seemed to sag—and caught herself, looking up.

"Thank you. You're very kind."

"Not at all." He recited the code for his private line, saw her memorize the digits as she heard them. "There is an answering machine," he told her softly, "if I am not—immediately—to hand."

"Thank you," she said again and stepped back, her hands slipping away with a reluctance he could taste.

"Good lift, pilot," she said from the shadow aside the lamplight. "Have a care, going home."

"Safe docking, Aelliana."

He tarried in the light-splash, watched her cross the walk and open the sagging gate. Her footsteps were light on the flagstones, her figure no more than a thin shadow. The footsteps changed, climbed three wooden stairs; he lost her shape in the larger shadow of the vine.

The porch creaked, a door opened on faintly whining hinges, hesitated, soundless—and shut with a clatter of tumblers falling home.

Abruptly, Daav shivered, though the night was barely cool and his jacket very warm. Almost, he went forward, through the gate and down the path—
Some pretext—some bit of piloting lore you forgot
'
til now to tell her . . .

"Do be sensible, Daav," he chided himself, voice loud in the still street. He turned his back on his inner urgings, on the gate to Mizel's Clanhouse, and retraced the route to the station, walking with determined speed.

"GOOD MORNING, AELLIANA,
how pleasant to have you thus returned to us."

Two steps into the foyer, Aelliana froze, staring into her brother's eyes, recalling all at once the overshirt left behind on
The Luck
, and her hair, drawn back and caught with the ring Daav had given her. Voni erupted from the parlor to her right—where the large window enjoyed an unimpaired view of the street.

"I saw him!" she squealed. "Great, lank-limbed creature flaunting his leather in a respectable street! A Scout or a grease-ape, brother, and Aelliana with no more shame than to be clutching his filthy hands!"

"Gently, sister." Ran Eld was gliding closer, savoring his moment. "I feel certain Aelliana will tell us everything we wish to know about the fellow." He raised a hand heavy with rings and smiled lazily at her. "Won't you, Aelliana?"

She swallowed, mind gone to putty. He meant to strike her, she read that plain in his eyes: He meant to hurt her . . .

"Whatever is the reason for so early a racket?" Birin Caylon peered over the rail, blinking sleepily down at the three in the foyer.

"Ran Eld? Voni? Aelliana, then!
Some
one explain this untimely commotion!"

It was Voni who recovered her wits first. She bowed and flirted her eyes as their mother came stubbornly down the stairs.

"Aelliana was so late coming home, ma'am, we had quite despaired of her!"

"I see," the delm said in a dry tone that indicated she found this explanation wanting. She reached the foyer floor and paused, subjecting first her son and then her eldest daughter to an uncharacteristically penetrating stare. This done, she continued forward and took Aelliana's arm.

"Just come home, have you?" she said pleasantly, turning back toward the stairs, middle daughter in tow. "How delightful it is to be young and able to roister with friends until dawn! I recall my own youth—why, there were twelve-days together when I was scarcely home at all! I was a sad scamp in those days, though I daresay you would hardly credit it—" Talking thus, she mounted the stairs, and Aelliana with her, barely able to believe in her rescue.

At the top of the stairs, Mizel changed her subject, lowering her voice to a level not meant to reach the two left below.

"So, had you a fine, bold day, Daughter?"

"In—Indeed I did, ma'am," Aelliana took a hard breath. "I had meant to be home for Prime, but the time—the time quite got away from us."

"And your friend, I apprehend, was good enough to escort you to our gate. Could you not have offered the house's hospitality, child?"

"Ran Eld—" she swallowed. "Ran Eld has no liking for Scouts, ma'am. And, indeed, my—friend said himself he would seem a rag-mannered fellow, rousing the house at such an hour."

"Very nice of him," Birin Caylon said approvingly. "You must, however, invite him to tea soon so that I may thank him for his care of you." She frowned at Aelliana's start. "It need not trouble you—or your friend—what private opinion Ran Eld chooses to hold of Scouts."

Oh, gods, and if Mizel rebukes Ran Eld for this evening's work—
She swallowed and inclined her head. "Thank you, ma'am."

They had reached Aelliana's door. Birin Caylon smiled and patted her daughter's arm before relinquishing it. "Never mind, child. What is your friend's name, I wonder?"

"Daav," Aelliana whispered, voice catching. She cleared her throat and looked straight into her mother's eyes. "His name is Daav."

If Mizel found anything odd in the lack of surname or clan, she chose not to mention it.

"I see. A well-enough name. Gentle dreams, daughter." She turned and went back up the hall, toward her own apartments.

Trembling in every muscle, Aelliana escaped into her room.

Feed a cat, gain a cat.

—Proverb
 

"WELL, AND WHERE HAVE you been?"
Jon's voice carried an edge of amused irritation.

Daav continued to the counter and poured himself a cup of pitiless black tea.

"Chonselta," he said and threw the murderous brew down his throat with a shudder.

"Chonselta, is it? I suppose that answers for the whereabouts of Pilot Caylon." Jon came forward to perch on the green stool. "I reviewed that tape."

Daav manfully swallowed the rest of his tea and set the mug in the sink. "Did you? And your recommendation?"

"She pilots solid second class—which we'd all known. On the basis of yesterday's adventure—setting aside that I believe the master in charge to be moving matters along rather swiftly—I'd be tempted to write a provisional first."

"If it were board-skill alone, I would agree with you," Daav said, sitting down and bracing a heel on a stool-rung. "However, there are those things of which she knows very little."

"And of which she ought to know much, bound as she is for the wide universe." Jon sighed. "All too true. Second class it is, then. Will you sign it?"

"Yourself, if you will."

"Hah. She know who you are yet?"

Daav lifted an eyebrow. "She does not know my surname, or my clan."

"Quibbled like a Liaden! I'll play that game to the extent it does her no harm."

"And how shall I harm her, I wonder?" Dangerously soft, that question.

"Gently." Jon raised both hands in the age-old gesture of surrender. "Gently, child—I meant no disrespect. Forgive an old man his meddlesome ways."

Abruptly, Daav became aware of tense muscles, of a hand curled closed along his thigh. He shut his eyes, ran the Scout's Rainbow, and felt the tension flow away. Opening his eyes, he offered Jon a smile.

"It is you, rather, who must forgive a young man his equally meddlesome ways—and his weariness." He showed an empty palm. "I mean her only well. If she learns the workings of comradeship through Daav, who flies out of Binjali's, where's harm in that?"

"Well enough," Jon said, lowering his hands. "Seek your bed and we'll say no more about it."

"In a moment." Daav shifted on the stool, sent a quick glance into Jon's face. "Dawn-time brings you rare joy, Master."

Jon sighed. "Now what?"

"A brace of halflings, boy and girl. They claim to be clanless."

"Sending me your lame kittens, Captain?"

"Not at all," Daav said austerely. "They belong to Pilot Caylon."

"Oh, do they? And what does Pilot Caylon want me to do with them?"

"Put them to work, if you think they might be useful."

Jon considered him blandly. "Are they likely to be useful?"

"Possibly. I believe them to be pilot-grade; the girl at least has had some training. They're able-bodied and quick, though not as quick as they think themselves. Cocky, but well-spoken enough when forced to the point."

"A pair of delightful children, I see. All right. I'll hold them, pending Pilot Caylon's pleasure."

"Thank you," said Daav and came to his feet. He tipped his head, looking down into Jon's seamed face. "Find out who they are, if you can manage it."

Grizzled brows rose over amused amber eyes. "I thought they belonged to Pilot Caylon."

"My lamentable curiosity," Daav murmured, moving a languid hand.

Jon laughed. "Sleep well, lad."

"Good evening, Master. I have no shift this three-day."

"All right," Jon said and watched him walk, graceful and tall, across the bay and out the door.

SHE WOKE FROM A DREAM
of rich, easy safety, her mouth still curved with pleasure.

Sunlight bleached the thin blue curtains to gray; the clock on her desk told of an hour approaching mid-day.

The first thought that occurred was tinged with wonder: Ran Eld had allowed her to sleep through breakfast.