Timothy Zahn - Cobra Bargain

Returning to his cushions, he emptied the capsule into his incense burner and lit it. The smoke rose into the air, at first thin and fragrant, then increasingly heavy and oily smelling. And as it enveloped him, he took one more try at untying the Gordian Knot that was Jasmine Alventin.

Jasmine Alventin. A mysterious young woman, survivor of an "accident" which no one had witnessed and which therefore no one could confirm. A suspiciously timed arrival at Milika, coincident with a flurry of activity by the Yithtra family's lumber business and fresh metals orders from the Mangus operation. Her speech that of a city-educated business mediator, yet her manners more befitting some ignorant outcast from polite society. And the things she said in that cultured voice-

Even with the artificial calmness of the hypnotic wrapped like a smoky cocoon around him, Daulo still gave muttered vent to his feelings about this one. I want to go with you, she'd said-as if going out in the dead of night to take care of a razorarm was the sort of thing women did all the time. Let me help you-totally laughable coming from a lone woman with neither family nor estate.

It was as if she lived in her own private world. A private world with its own private rules.

And yet she couldn't be dismissed simply as that sort of feeblebrained scatterhead. Every time he'd tried to do so she'd casually done or said something that painted an exact opposite side of her. A half-dozen examples came to mind, the most obvious being her casual understanding of the consequences of having Milika's lake on Sammon family territory. Even more disturbing, she had a distinct talent for deflecting questions that she didn't want to answer... and a talent like that required intelligence.

So what was she? Innocent victim as she claimed? Or agent sent in by someone to cause trouble? The facts fell almost visually into neat organization in front of

Daulo's eyes... without doing any good at all. The Knot remained tightly tied; and the only fresh conclusion he could find at all was that, totally against both his will and his common sense, he was growing to like her.

Ridiculous. He snorted, the sudden change in his steady respiration pattern bringing on a short fit of coughing. It was ridiculous-totally, completely ridiculous. Without position, she was at the very least beneath his own social status; at the very worst, she might be coldly using him to try and destroy everything he held dear.

And yet, even as he gazed mentally at the list of points against her, he had to admit there was still something about her that he found irresistible.

Just what I needed, he groused silently. Something else about Jasmine Alventin that won't unknot. So what could it be? Not her features or body; they were pleasant enough, but he'd seen far better without this kind of threat to his emotional equilibrium. It certainly wasn't her upbringing; she couldn't even make a simple sign of respect properly.

"Good evening, Daulo."

Startled, Daulo twisted around on his cushions, blinking through the haze to see his father walk quietly between the hanging curtain dividers. "Oh-my father," he said, starting to get up.

Kruin stopped him with a gesture. "You weren't at your customary place at evening meal tonight," he said, pulling a cushion toward his son and sinking cross-legged onto it. "I came to see if there were some trouble." He sniffed at the air. "A hypnotic, my son? I'd have thought that after a full day a sleep-inducer would be more appropriate."

Daulo looked at his father sharply, the last remnants of the hypnotic's effects evaporating from his mind. He'd hoped he could rid himself of this obsession with Jasmine Alventin before anyone else noticed. "I've been rather... preoccupied today," he said cautiously. "I didn't feel up to a common meal with the rest of the family."

"You may feel worse tomorrow," Kruin warned, waving a finger through one last tendril of smoke and watching it curl around in the eddy breezes thus created.

"Even these mild drugs usually have unpleasant side effects." His eyes shifted back from the smoke to Daulo's face. "Jasmine Alventin asked about you."

A grimace passed across Daulo's face before he could stifle it. "I trust her recovery is proceeding properly?"

"It seems to be. She's a very unusual woman, wouldn't you say?"

Daulo sighed, quietly admitting defeat. "I don't know what to think about her, my father," he confessed. "All I know is that I'm... in danger of losing my objectivity with her." He waved at the incense burner. "I've been trying to put my thoughts in order."

"And did you?"

"I'm... not sure."

For a long moment Kruin was silent. "Do you know why you're living in this house, my son? Amid this luxury and prestige?"

Here it comes, Daulo thought, stomach tightening within him. A stern reminder of where the family's wealth comes from-and the reminder that it's my duty to defend it. "It's because you, your father, and his father before him have toiled and sweated in the mine," he said.

To his surprise, the elder Sammon shook his head. "No. The mine has made things easier, certainly, but that's not where our true power lies. It lies here-" he indicated his eyes "-and here-" he touched his forehead. "Material wealth is all very good, but no man keeps such wealth unless he can learn how to read the people around him. To know which are his friends and which his enemies... and to sense the moment when some of those loyalties change. Do you understand?"

Daulo swallowed. "I think so."

"Good. So, then: tell me what form this lack of objectivity takes."

Daulo waved his hands helplessly. "I don't know. She's just so... different.

Somehow. There's a... perhaps it's some kind of mental strength to her, something I've never before seen in a woman."

Kruin nodded thoughtfully. "Almost a if she were a man instead of a woman?"

"Yes. That's-" Daulo broke off abruptly as a horrible thought occurred to him.

"You aren't suggesting-?"

"No, no, of course not," Kruin hastened to assure him. "The doctor examined her when she was brought in, remember? No, she's a woman, all right. But perhaps not one from a normal Qasaman culture."

Daulo thought that over. It would go a long ways toward explaining some of the oddities he'd observed in her. "But I thought everyone on Qasama lived in the

Great Arc. And besides, she claimed to be from Sollas."

"We don't live strictly inside the Great Arc," Kruin shrugged. "Only a short ways outside it, true, but outside nonetheless. Who's to say that others don't live even further? As to her claimed city, it's possible that she was afraid to tell us her true home. For reasons I can't guess at," he added as Daulo opened his mouth to ask.

"An interesting theory," Daulo admitted. "I'm not sure how it would stand up to

Occam's Razor, however."

"Perhaps an additional bit of new information would save it from that blade,"

Kruin said. "I've been thinking about the accident Jasmine Alventin claimed to have been in, and it occurred to me that if it happened near Tabris someone there might have either heard the crash or found one of her companions."

"She couldn't possibly have come that far," Daulo objected. "Besides, we checked all the way along that road."

"I know," Kruin nodded. "And I trust your findings. But in such a case as this I thought extra confirmation might be a good idea, so I sent a message there this morning. Someone did hear a sound like a large and violent crash... but not near the road or village. It was far to the north, several kilometers away at the least. In deep forest."

Daulo felt his mouth go dry. Several kilometers due north of Tabris would put the accident anywhere from five to ten kilometers from the place where Perto had found her on the road. The suggestion that she might have made it from Tabris proper-a full twenty kilometers of forest road-had been ludicrous enough, but this-"She couldn't have survived such a trek," he said flatly. "I don't care how many companions she started out with, she couldn't have made it."