Melissa Scott - Shadow Man

“So what do you want, Raven?” Tendlathe said at last.

Warreven took a deep breath, and Tatian realized that this was what 3e’d been waiting for. “I want this over,” 3e said. “So I’m prepared to make a bargain with you. Let me off-world—I can claim asylum, I know that much about Concord law—and I’ll go, and not cause you any more trouble. You can make whatever deals you want with Dismars, or whoever’s speaking for the Modernists now, and I won’t interfere. But if you don’t let me go, I’ll do my very best to make sure you not only have to fight the whole question of gender law through every step of my trial, but I’ll make very sure that everyone knows you killed your father.”

“No one will believe you,” Tendlathe said. “And you are responsible, Raven. None of this would have happened if you’d kept your mouth shut.”

“I opened a door,” Warreven answered. “You walked through it.”

For the first time, Tendlathe flinched, the merest shiver of taut muscles, but Warreven saw it, and smiled. “Plenty of people will believe me, Ten, you’re not universally loved. I can make your life impossible—even if we can’t fight you, there are enough of us wrangwys to guarantee you won’t have an easy time running things.”

“The Modernists won’t help,” Tendlathe said. “Dismars has already disavowed your actions.”

“I’m not surprised. Issued a bulletin from somewhere safe outside the city, no doubt,” Warreven said bitterly. Then 3e shook 3imself. “Look, I’m offering you a way out, Ten. You can take what you’ve got, pull things together, or you can get revenge. I’m prepared to give you that. Either one.”

There was another little silence, and then Tendlathe smiled faintly. “Opening another door?”

Warreven smiled back. “I suppose, yes. And there is a price.”

“Well?”

“Leave the off-worlders out of this.” Warreven tilted 3er head toward Tatian. “This is our business, yours and mine.”

“Mhyre Tatian was seen helping you,” Tendlathe said.

“So expel him, or have his people recall him,” Warreven said. “If you absolutely have to. But let the company alone.”

There was another pause, longer this time, and then, slowly, Tendlathe nodded. “You have twenty-six hours to get off planet, Warreven. After that, the deal’s off.”

Warreven smiled thinly. “Agreed.” Ȝe looked down then, looking for the remote, and Tatian touched the key that ended the connection. The screen went blank, and Warreven took a deep breath.

“Look, I—I’m sorry to have gotten you into this. Of everything, I wish I could have gotten you out clean. It’s the best I could do—I think it’s the best anyone could do, and the company should be fine, but—” Ȝe broke off again, shaking 3er head. “I’m sorry.”

Tatian set the remote carefully back in its niche, unable quite to believe what had happened. “The—Masani was bound to recall me anyway, after this. And we do a lot of business with a lot of mesnie s. We should be all right.”

“But will you?” Warreven tipped 3er head to one side.

Tatian took a deep breath, overwhelmed, suddenly, by the possibilities. Will I be all right? he wanted to say. I’ll be better than all right: I can go home—go back to Kaysa, back to Jericho, hell, I can even get my damned implants fixed, and by technicians that I know will know what they’re doing. Even if Masani fires me—and I know %e won’t—it’ll be worth it. He could already imagine Kaysa’s response, laughter first, at the absurdity of it all, and then the sudden fierce embrace. She would be glad to have him back—that had been clear in their last exchange of mail—but not half as glad as he would be to be back with her….

“You didn’t have to get involved,” Warreven said, “didn’t have to do any of this. I’m sorry.”

Tatian shook his head, responding as much to the pain in the other’s voice as to the words. “No. I—it sounds stupid, but I did have to help you, or try to, anyway.” He shrugged. “It’s what I said last night, you’re right. What you were trying to do is the right thing. I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing. Sometimes you have to do something.”

“But your job—”

“Masani’s not going to fire me,” Tatian said firmly. “As for leaving—I’m going home, Warreven. I’m not sorry about that. What about you?”

Warreven laughed then, not a pleasant sound. “I have money, and I can still get at it. Tendlathe can’t block the off-world bank networks without annoying the pharmaceuticals even further.”

“That wasn’t exactly what I meant.” Tatian stopped, tried again. “What about the gender laws? You started this. How the hell can you back out now?”

Warreven’s gaze flickered, but 3e answered steadily enough, “I already tried fighting him, and look what happened. I don’t know how to fight the mosstaas , I don’t know if we can fight the mosstaas , and not all the wrangwys were on my side to begin with. Now they certainly won’t be, and you’d need all of us, and the Modernists and some of the mesnie s to beat Tendlathe now. There’s no chance of any compromise if I’m here—Tendlathe is stupid enough, no, angry, enough, to make a martyr of me, and that would mean there’d be no way to get the laws changed. Not to mention that I have no desire to be a martyr.”

“What about Temelathe?” Tatian asked. “Are you going to let him get away with that—killing his own father, for god’s sake?”

“Do you think I have a choice?” Warreven shook 3er head. “It would be my word against his, Tatian—nobody else is going to come forward, no matter what they saw, not if it means speaking against the Most Important Man—and people will believe what they want to believe, anyway. It won’t do any good.”

“But he won’t revise the laws,” Tatian said again. “And the Modernists won’t push him on it, we saw that last night. Which still leaves people like you—the people you said you were speaking for last night, damn it—outside the system. Not quite human, you said that yourself.”

“And I don’t have a side anymore,” Warreven answered. “As you said last night.”

“Haliday, for one, and what’s-3er-name, Destany,” Tatian said. “Aren’t they your side?”

“Hal has money, too, and 3e’s in the off-world hospital,” Warreven said. “Malemayn can take care of 3im until 3e’s well enough to decide what 3e’s going to do—and Mal can take care of Destany’s case, too, for that matter.”

“Can he?”

“He’ll have to,” Warreven answered. “Do you really think it’ll do either one of them any good to have me around? It’ll be hard enough to disassociate me from the case—I doubt Mal can win it, now, though maybe he can get Destany off planet as a refugee, ask for asylum, or something.”

Ȝe shook 3er head. “I don’t want to abandon them, Destany or Haliday—especially Hal—but I can’t help them now. I can only hurt them at this point.”

“You can’t just walk away,” Tatian began, and broke off, shaking his head in turn.

“Watch me,” Warreven said. Ȝe took a deep breath. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t say how long I’d stay away.” Ȝe caught 3er hair, wound it into a loose twist, then seemed to realize what 3e was doing and released it. “But right now—I opened a door, all right; it just wasn’t the one I thought it was.” Ȝe smiled suddenly, almost whimsically. “Which I suppose is typical of Agede, when you think of it. But if there’s a door open at all, any chance not to get more people killed, then I’ve got to take it. I could maybe try to be a demagogue, lead the wrangwys in rebellion, but I didn’t exactly do it well last night. Look, Tatian, we don’t have a tradition for this, for revolution—we don’t even have a word for it, like we don’t have a word for herms, and I don’t know how to make one happen. We’ve got plenty of words for protest, for objections and obstruction and compromise, all the subtleties of ranas and presance and clan meetings and the spirits and their offetre , and I know how to do all of that. I’ve trained all my life to manipulate that system, and it’s not going to work this time. We need something new—there’s going to be a revolution, there’s going to have to be one now, because Tendlathe can’t keep this system stable forever, but I don’t know how to make it happen. Off-world, in the Concord—well, I can learn what I need there.”