The Dragon Variation (25 page)

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!"

She straightened in her chair as if he had struck her, sucked in breath for she barely knew what reply—

Too late. Daav was gone.

The
dramliz
want young Tor An's genes. Farseers predict twins from the match and offer the girl-child to us—to Clan Korval—as settlement.
Jela would say that a wizard on board tips the scale to survival—which remains sound reasoning, though we're planet-bound now and in honorable estate, or so the boy will tell me . . .
As it transpires, Tor An met his proposed wife several days ago, through
Dramliza
Rool Tiazan's good graces, I make no doubt! The boy's smitten, of course, so the marriage is made.
Perhaps the girl-child will fail of being dramliz . . .

—Excerpted from Cantra yos'Phelium's Log Book
 

"MASTER MERCHANT BEL'TARDA,"
Mr. pak'Ora announced from the doorway. "Master Pat Rin yos'Phelium."

Petrella glanced up from her desk with ill-concealed irritation as Luken, looking every inch the rug merchant he was, crossed into the room, holding a dark-haired boy of about six Standard Years by the hand.

The man bowed greeting-between-kin, a certain trepidation marking the gesture. The boy's bow, of Child-to-Clan-Elder, was performed with solemn exactitude. He straightened, shifting the brightly-ribboned box he carried from the left hand to the right, and showed Petrella a sharp-featured face dominated by a pair of wary brown eyes.

"Good-day, Luken," Petrella said, inclining her head. For the boy, she added a smile. "Good-day, Pat Rin."

"Good-day, Grand-Aunt," Pat Rin responded politely, nothing so like a smile in either lips or eyes.

Stifling a sigh, she looked to the man, who gave the impression of fidgeting nervously, though he stood almost painfully still.

"Well, Luken? What circumstance do I praise for this opportunity to behold your face?"

The face in question—blunt, honest, and mostwise good-humored—darkened in embarrassment.

"Boy's come to bring a gift to his new cousin," he said, dropping a light hand to Pat Rin's thin shoulder and flinging Petrella a look of respectful terror. "Just as his mother would wish him to do, all by the Code and kindness to kin."

It was perhaps the piquancy of a point of view that could suppose Kareen yos'Phelium capable of wishing her heir to associate in any way with an irregularly-allied child of lamentable lineage that saved Luken the tongue-flaying he so obviously anticipated. Petrella contented herself with a sigh and the observation that news traveled quickly.

Luken moved his shoulders. "No trick to reading
The Gazette
," he commented. "Do so every morning, with my tea."

Petrella, who had failed of her own custom of
The Gazette
with breakfast only this morning, openly stared.

"You wish me to understand that there is an announcement of Shan yos'Galan's birth in this morning's
Gazette
?" she demanded.

Luken looked alarmed, but stuck to his guns.

"Right on the first page, under 'Accepted.'" He closed his eyes and recited in a slightly sing-song voice: "'Accepted of Korval, Shan yos'Galan, son of Er Thom yos'Galan, Clan Korval, and Anne Davis, University Central.'"

He opened his eyes. "That's all. Simple, I remember thinking."

"Indeed, a masterwork of simplicity," Petrella said through gritted teeth and was prevented of saying more by the unannounced arrival of her son, dressed at last in day-clothes.

"Luken. Well-met, Cousin." Er Thom's voice carried real warmth, as had his bow. He smiled and held out a ringless hand. "Hello, Pat Rin. I'm glad to see you."

The tense face relaxed minutely and Pat Rin left his foster-father's side to take the offered hand. "Hello, Cousin Er Thom." He held up the festive box. "We have a gift for Cousin Shan."

"That's very kind," Er Thom said, matching the child's seriousness. "Shall I take you to him, so that you may give it?"

Pat Rin hesitated, glancing over his shoulder at his foster-father.

"Of course you would welcome the opportunity to meet your new cousin," Luken coached gently and Pat Rin turned his serious eyes back to Er Thom.

"Thank you. I would like to meet my new cousin."

"Good. I will take you to him immediately. With my mother's permission . . ." He bowed respect in her direction, gathered Luken with a flicker of fingers and moved toward the hallway.

Petrella gripped her chair.

"Er Thom!"

He turned his head, violet eyes merely polite in a face still somewhat pale. "Mother?"

"An announcement of your child's acceptance," she said, with forced calm, "appears in this morning's
Gazette
."

"Ah," he said softly, and, seeing that she awaited more, added: "That would be the delm's hand."

"I see," Petrella said, and spun back to her desk, releasing him.

HE HAD JUST REVIEWED
the last of the day's pressing business and was considering a climb up the Tree. Seated on the platform he and his brother had built as children, the world below reduced to proper insignificance, surrounded by the benign presence of the Tree—there he might profitably begin to consider Er Thom's tangle.