The Dragon Variation (90 page)

Until with a jerk the precious bag was torn from her grip and she was dealt such a blow between the shoulders that she fell to her knees in the alleyway.

She was up in a flash, facing Dagmar with fury. "That's mine! Give it back!"

"Yours?" the other woman sneered as Pimm tel'Jadis came laughing to her side. "That ain't the tale I heard, Prissy." She jerked open the bag and thrust her hand within, rummaging about. Then, uttering a crow of triumph, she raised high a fist in which were clutched the seven silver bangles of a Maiden-in-Circle.

The crowd shrieked.

The first rock caught Priscilla on the thigh as Dagmar brought a fist across her face.

The second rock slammed solidly into her right arm, breaking it with an audible crack.

The third took a rib, and she screamed, rolling into a ball on the filthy alley floor, trying to protect her head while the rocks struck with greater and greater force, and the crowd cried out her names: Liar! Coward! Unperson!

"Priscilla!"

She felt hands on her, and she struggled.

"Priscilla! No,
denubia
, you must not . . . ." The voice was familiar, concerned.

"Lina?" She lay still, hardly daring to believe it.

"Of course, Lina. Who else?" The hands were soft on her face, her hair. "Open your eyes,
denubia
. Are you afraid to see me?"

"No, I . . ." She achieved it and beheld her friend's serious face. "I'm sorry, Lina."

"And I. Such
terror,
my friend. What was it?" The kind hands continued their caress; comfort like a healing warmth enclosed her. Priscilla sighed and shook her head.

"It was nothing. A bad dream."

"Yes?" Lina ran light fingers along Priscilla's jaw and down the slim throat, then laid her hand flat between rose-tipped breasts. "A very bad dream, I think. Your heart pounds."

"I dreamt—I dreamt I was being stoned." She shivered, drew a breath, and tried to recapture inner peace.

"Stoned?" Lina frowned. "I do not think—"

"It is the custom on my—on the world I'm from—to throw rocks at a criminal until she—until she dies."

"Qua'lechi!"
The smaller woman sat up sharply and reached to trace the line of her friend's brow. "No wonder you were frightened." She tipped her head. "But this thing was not truly done to you?"

Priscilla managed a smile. "No, of course not." There, she had found the well-worn way to serenity and set her spirit feet upon it. "I'm not very brave," she told Lina softly.

As Priscilla's lashes drooped and her breathing evened, the Liaden woman frowned. Tentatively she unfurled a mental tendril, as one might with a fellow Healer, extended it along the least dangerous of the lines—and nearly cried out as Priscilla reached the place she had been seeking and firmly closed the door.

* * *

The library door slid open,
and a tall, broad-shouldered person ambled to the center of the room and stood sipping from his glass, quietly regarding the figure hunched over the master terminal. It was perhaps five minutes before she sat back with a sharp sigh and spoke with the ease of long acquaintance. "Are there Healers among Terrans, old friend?"

He considered it, coming forward. "Not formally, I believe." He bent over her screen, frowning at the upside-down characters. "You want 'empath,' my precious. It's listed under 'paranormal.'"

"Paranormal!" Lina's head was up, eyes flashing.

"I didn't put it there," Shan pointed out mildly. "I only offer information. That's where it was when I searched it."

And, Lina realized, he would have done just such a search a few years ago. She smiled. "Forgive me. There was hard work done, if little accomplished. I am—edgy."

He bowed slightly. "I might offer aid."

"So you might." She smiled again and reached to touch his stark cheek. "I thank you, bed-friend and colleague. Grant me grace and offer another time."

"So I will." He drank wine. "Don't stay up all shift, please, Lina."

"Bah! And what of you! Or does the captain never sleep?" She chuckled, then sobered abruptly. "Kayzin was complaining to me that Priscilla is assigned where she has no right to be."

"I heard." Shan shook his head. "What did she want me to do? First she tells me this is her last trip and I must not ask her for decisions concerning future trips, then she takes me to
severe
task for daring to follow her instructions! I tell you, Lina, it's a hard life the captain lives!"

"Alas," she managed around a mouthful of laughter.

He grinned and raised his glass. "Search well, Master Librarian. Sleep well, too."

"Sleep well, Shan."

But he was already gone.

The
Dutiful Passage
broke orbit smoothly and proceeded down the carefully calculated normal space lane to the Jump point and passed without a quiver into hyperspace.

Priscilla ran through the last check, reaffirmed destination and time of arrival, locked the board, and leaned back, barely conquering her grin.

"Not too bad, Mendoza," Janice Weatherbee said from the copilot's seat. She glanced at the chronometer set in the board. "Quittin' time. See you 'round."

"Okay," Priscilla said absently, still watching the grayed screen. It was not the simulation screen this time—it was the prime piloting screen on the main bridge, and she had done it all. She, Priscilla Delacroix y Mendoza, had plotted the course, worked the equations, chosen the coords—done everything, out of her own knowledge and ability.

She closed her eyes against the screen, cherishing the solid wedge of belief in her own ability. For this little time, at least, it seemed not to matter that she was outcast and lawfully nameless, with no more right to call herself Mendoza than Rusty Morgenstern had.

"Sleeping, Ms. Mendoza? It's a very comfortable chair, I grant, but someone else might wish to use it."

She opened her eyes and grinned at the captain, who stood with one hip braced against the ledge and a glass of wine in his hand.

"Sorry, Captain. I was indulging in vulgar self-congratulation."

"Well, that's encouraging," he said, grinning back. "I was prepared to believe you had no faults at all. But now that you admit to gloating, I'm sure we'll get along very well together. Janice is a bit laconic, is she?"

"Maybe she's trying to make up for you," Priscilla suggested, then bit her lip in horror.

Shan yos'Galan laughed. "Could be. Could be.
Some
one should, I guess. Are you working a double shift? Even so, you're allowed an hour to eat—ship's policy. And there's really not much to do here now, is there?" He glanced vaguely at the gray screen. "Seems to be in hand. Why not take a shift or two for yourself?"

"Thank you, Captain," she said. "I will. Good shift."

"Good shift, Ms. Mendoza." He raised his glass to her.

She was to meet Lina and Rusty
for Prime at Seventeenth Hour. Priscilla turned left, away from the lift. There was time for a walk to stretch legs cramped by hours in the pilot's chair.

Hugging her recent accomplishment to herself, she wandered down a quarter mile of hallway, took a down-lift when the way deadended, and smiled at dour old Ken Rik when she stepped off one level below.

I feel good, she ventured, probing the thought as if it were a shattered bone. A mere quiver of pain answered, to be quickly blotted out by another warm thought.

I have a friend. The first real friend since her girlhood on Sintia. The friendship existed independently of the sudden physical relationship. She'd had bed-mates from time to random time, and it was very nice to be loved and petted and—made comfortable. And it was wholly delightful to be permitted to return that grace as best as she was able. But this was not the thing that was precious, that prompted her now to reexamine the plans she had laid out for herself.

Again she heard the sleepy voice of her friend: "Priscilla? Go back to sleep,
denubia
. All is well."

All is well. For the first time in many years she allowed herself to think that it could, in time,
be
well. If she remained a member of this ship, with its odd captain, and clumsy Rusty Morgenstern and Gordy and the old cargo master and Master Frodo and Lina—of course, Lina . . . .

Perhaps if she stayed there . . . if she put Sav Rid Olanek and Dagmar Collier out of mind and concentrated on a future full of friendship, where all might be well . . .

"What are you doing here?"

The sharp voice brought her up short. She blinked at the unfamiliar hallway to which her unheeded feet had brought her, then looked back at Kayzin Ne'Zame and inclined her head. "I'm very sorry. I was thinking and lost my way. Is it restricted? I'll go away."

"Will you?" The first mate was tight-lipped with anger. "You will just walk away, is it so? I
asked
what you are doing here. I expect an answer. Now."

"I am sorry, Kayzin Ne'Zame," she said carefully. "I gave you an answer: I was walking as I thought, and lost the way."

"And you so conveniently lost the way in such a manner that you come to the main computer bank. I will have truth from you, Priscilla Mendoza. Again—what do you here?"

"I don't think that's your business," Priscilla flared. "Since you won't believe the truth, why should I keep repeating it?"

"You!" If she had been angry before, the mate was livid now. "How much does he pay you?" she demanded, her accent thicker by the second.

The Terran looked at her in blank astonishment. "One-tenth cantra, when we reach Solcintra—"

"Have done!" There was a pause while Kayzin looked her up and down. The set lines of her face did not alter; she opened her mouth to speak further, then closed it, eyes going over Priscilla's shoulder.

"Go!" she snapped. "And mind you do not lose your way to this place again. Do you hear me?"

"I hear you, Kayzin Ne'Zame," Priscilla replied evenly. She inclined her head and turned away.

Shan yos'Galan was leaning against the wall, glass of wine held negligently in one hand, arms crossed over his chest.

Priscilla took a breath. "Good shift, Captain."

"Good shift, Ms. Mendoza," he said neutrally. She walked past him and down the intersecting hallway.

He turned to Kayzin. "Correct me if I'm wrong," he said softly. "The crew is allowed access to all portions of the ship?"

"Yes, Captain."

"Yes, Captain," he repeated, his eyes holding hers effortlessly. "Priscilla Mendoza is a member of the crew, Kayzin. I can't think how you came to forget it, but please strive to bear it in mind in the future. Also, it is just possible that you owe an apology."

She drew a deep, deep breath. "Say that you trust her!"

"I trust her," he said flatly, giving her the grace due an old friend.

"You are besotted!"

"Quite sober, I assure you," he said in icy Terran. Then he switched to the High Tongue, that of Lord-Instructing-Oathsworn. "I act, having given consideration to laws of necessity."

Kayzin bowed low, pride of him glowing through her mortification. There were those who said that Er Thom yos'Galan's lady had foisted a full-blooded Terran upon him as his eldest. If those could but see him, standing there, with the eyes spitting ice and the face just so! Who could behold him thus and say he was not Korval, blood and bone?

"Forgive me, Captain," she murmured. "It shall be as you have said."

"I am glad to hear it," he replied in Terran.

Arsdred Port roared.
It pushed, yodeled, shoved, sang, shimmied, stripped gleaming naked, and swathed itself head to toe in bright colors and glittering gems. Much of the noise—and most of the color—was contributed by the people behind stalls, before storefronts, and beside carts piled high with Goddess knew what. These were Arsdredi, dark-skinned Terrans, doe-eyed, hook-nosed, and voluble. They wore layer upon layer of gauzy, brilliant cloth and hawked their wares, sweatless, in the glare of the midday suns.

Some of the clamor, to be sure, was generated by those for whom the wares were displayed. Thronging the narrow streets were members of half a dozen races: Terrans of all description; graceful Liadens, dark-lensed Peladins, hairless Trimuvat, silent Uhlvore. Priscilla started, catching a gigantic figure out of the corner of an eye, wondering if even the Yxtrang stopped here—but it was only a towering Aus, golden-haired and full-bearded, head bent as he addressed a booming remark to the tiny woman skipping at his side.

"Firegems, pretty lady? The finest here—for you—so pale your skin, so black your hair! For
you,
beautiful lady, what else but azure? A mere twentybit—sacrificed on the altar of your beauty! Only try and see how it becomes you."

"Cloth, noble lady? Scarves? Crimson, gold, serpentine, xanthin, indigo! Wear them about your head, twist them 'round your waist—a fair price, noble."

"Porcelains, lady? Guidebooks . . . Ices . . . Incense . . . Gemstones . . ."

Peace.

Priscilla rounded a corner into a less traveled thoroughfare, breathing a sigh of relief. The roster had granted her leave this first day in port. Rusty and Lina had drawn time together on the third, a circumstance that brought a frown to the Liaden woman's face while Rusty shrugged. "Maybe next time."

Secretly, Priscilla was relieved. A leave-companion would have quickly discovered the state of her finances. She was pleased not to burden her friends with that particular information and perhaps be forced to endure kindhearted offers of a loan or, worse, an outright gift.

It was better this way, she thought, strolling along the hot little street. A day of rest before a trying tomorrow. For the roster's other news had been that she was to assist Cargo Master yo'Lanna with the worldside unloading next shift-worked.

She had come to the first cross street when a familiar voice intruded upon her.

"Hi, Ms. Mendoza! Is this your day, too? Want to partner?"