Melissa Scott: Shadow Man

“And in the process,” Temelathe said, “you missed a chance to serve your clan and Watch. But, no matter.” He gestured again, drawing Warreven closer. “I want to introduce you to Ser Wile Kolbjorn, of Kerendach. The two of you may be doing business together.”

Kolbjorn held out his hand, the off-world greeting, and Warreven took it warily. He knew Kerendach, of course, any Stiller did: Kerendach was the largest of the Big Six, held most of Stiller’s harvest contracts. They paid the clan in metal and in concord dollars for the various products it gathered from land and sea; if anyone thought Kerendach could pay more, they were careful not to say it. Kerendach had Temelathe’s backing, and that meant there was no point in negotiating. Though why Temelathe thinks I’ll be doing business with them, Warreven thought, I don’t know. Unless they’ve been dabbling in trade. That was more than likely—the Big Six didn’t need the extra income, or the hassles with their own agencies, IDCA, the Interstellar Disease Control Agency, chief among them, that trade inevitably caused, but it was equally inevitable that low-paid clerks and shipping techs would take their chances at that game. “Mir Kolbjorn,” he said, and braced himself for whatever the approach would be.

To his surprise, however, Kolbjorn merely nodded, releasing his hand, and looked from him to Temelathe. “A pleasure meeting you, Mir Warreven. I’ll look forward to further acquaintance. Mir Temelathe, thank you. Please give my best wishes to your daughter-in-law.” His eyes flickered a little at that, darting toward Warreven, but he controlled himself instantly and turned away.

Warreven watched him go, tilted his head to one side. “And what was that all about, my father?”

Temelathe laughed, and flung a heavy arm across the other’s shoulders. “Insurance, my son, for both of you. Trade’s a nasty business, you should have more strings to your bow.”

“If you say so,” Warreven murmured, not bothering to hide his skepticism. Temelathe laughed again, and drew him down from the dais with him.

Fem: (Concord) human being possessing testes, XY chromosomes, some aspects of female genitalia but not possessing ovaries; %e, %er, %er, %erself

The room was artificially lit, and dim, the curtains and sunscreens drawn tight against the day’s fading light. The environ-mental system rumbled in the next room, churning cooled air into the three rooms of the apartment, and the apartment’s current owner listened with half an ear, judging the output. Nothing on Hara was ever quite cool enough—he had been born on one cold planet, had spent his childhood and adolescence on another—and he had reconfigured the room plan so that he slept next to the main cooling vent. It was noisy, but it meant that he could sleep—and it also meant that the current main room, which had been intended as the bedroom, was warmer than he liked. He looked around the table, wondering if he could afford to turn the system down another notch. His employer, New Antioch Pharmaceutical Design, was reasonably generous with its housing allowance, but cooling costs were always astronomical this time of year. Arsidy Shraga sat opposite him, frowning over his set-up pad, lights flickering under his fingers as he tried out three different configurations in quick succession. He looked hot and bothered, but then, he was losing this game, and losing badly. Eshe Isabon, on the other hand, was looking cooler than ever, smiling faintly as he studied the board. %e met his gaze, and %er smile widened for an instant, before %e shifted the next block of pieces into position. Shraga threw up his hands at that and blanked his pad.

“Shit, that finishes me. I’m out.”

“Tatian?” Isabon looked at him, eyebrows lifting.

Mhyre Tatian reached for the dice arrayed on the tabletop in front of him, palmed them without taking his eyes from the pattern of pieces, and selected two of the ten-sided dice. “I’ll go again. Once.”

Isabon smiled more openly. Shraga said, “Remember, the red one’s the tens.”

Tatian acknowledged that with a grin—among friends, it was almost acceptable to cheat a little at queens-road—and rolled the dice. The first, the brown, the single digits, bounced off Shraga’s random-number box and came up five. The red rolled farther, came to a stop above the cluster of blue lights that marked his own home camp, and showed a two.

“Oh, bad luck,” Isabon said, without sympathy.

Tatian made a show of studying the board, but he had needed at least forty to stay in the game. “I’m out.”

Isabon looking sideways, fingers busy on %er wrist pad as %e called up the bets and side bets. “You owe me ten-point-two cd, Tatya. Shraga, you owe me nineteen-nine, and you might as well make it twenty.”

“Like hell,” Shraga answered, his fingers busy on his own pad. “Nineteen-nine is right—or I’ll make it fifteen in metal.”

Tatian gave a rather sour laugh at that—he spent too much of his time making and assessing similar offers; Hara’s indigenes were desperate for metal—and Isabon shook %er head slowly.

“No, nineteen-nine—and in dollars, thank you.”

“Never play queens-road with a fem,” Shraga said, with mock bitterness, and reached into his pocket for his card.

“Never gamble with a fem,” Isabon corrected amiably, and mated his card to %er own. Lights flashed as the transfer went through, and Isabon freed the cards, offering Shraga’s to him with a flourish. “Thank you, ser. And yours, Tatya?”

“Ten-two, you said.” Tatian reached for his own card, pressed his thumb against the veri-lock, and quickly entered the transaction. Isabon took it and returned it a moment later with the green light flashing: transfer complete. Tatian switched it off and stuck it back into his pocket. “Anyone want anything else to drink?”

“I’ll take another beer,” Shraga said promptly, and Tatian suppressed a sigh. Beer—real beer, not the narcotic-spiked, fermented grain drink the indigenes called beer—was imported from off-world and correspondingly expensive. Still, there was no going back on the offer, and he went on into the apartment’s narrow kitchen.

“Isa?”

“Whatever I had before.”

“All right.” Tatian rummaged in the cold box, brought out three frosted bottles, Shraga’s beer and a bottle apiece of quatra for him and Isabon. Quatra was a local drink, one part sweetrum to three parts ruby melon juice; like all the local liquors, sweetrum was strong and rough, and not very consistent, but the sweetmelon juice cut the worst of the flavor. After a moment’s searching, he found a tray and filled a shallow bowl with the sour-sweet mixed-fruit relish. He added his last package of flatbread and carried the precariously balanced cargo out into the other room, setting it on the table beside the playing board.

“Did you hear the news? Aldess Donavie had another miscarriage. Today’s the whatever-they-call-it, the ceremony.”

Shraga winced visibly, and Tatian remembered too late that the other man had a partner and child at home on Cassandra. The same mutation that had produced the five sexes had increased the incidence of miscarriage; almost anyone who had successfully had a child would have lost another early in pregnancy.

“Tendlathe’s partner,” Isabon said, and grimaced. “Sorry, wife.”

Tatian nodded.

“I wonder what Temelathe is making of all that,” %e went on. “I mean, if the dynasty’s going to continue, he’s going to need a grandchild.”

“A grandson,” Tatian said. He still wasn’t completely used to the system, found himself insisting on the gendered words as if that would help him understand.