Sharon Lee: Adventures in the Liaden Universe. Collaterial Adventures

Now that , Pat Rin thought, his anger abruptly gone, was coming rather too strong. It wasn’t as if Korval had never produced a rogue. Rather too many, if truth were told—and most especially Line yos’Phelium. Taking up trade as a gamester was the merest bagatelle, set beside the accomplishments of some of the honored ancestors.

He came to the edge of the rug. Nova continued to stand at menace in the center, her attitude too—old, somehow. Too tense. And now that he brought his attention to it, he saw that her face was tight with an adult’s deep and hopeless grief—and that her eyes were black, amethyst all but drowned in distended pupils.

Too, she stood in something very close to a fighter’s stance… and was not quite looking at him.

Pat Rin frowned. Something decidedly odd was going on. Perhaps she was acting out some part from a melant’i play? Though why she should do so, here and now, was beyond his understanding.

He held the diagnostic kit up before those pupil-drowned eyes.

“Come now!” He said, with brisk matter-of-factness. “We’ll be at work into the next relumma if we stop every hour to play-act!”

The blind, grief-ridden face turned away from him.

“How many times will you fail?” she whispered—and the voice she spoke in was not her voice.

Pat Rin felt a frisson of horror. He cleared his throat.

“Nova?”

“Die dishonored,” she mourned and sagged to her knees, palms flat against the carpet. “Cursed and forgotten.”

He caught his breath. This was no play-acting. He couldn’t, off-hand, think of any swift-striking disease that caused hallucination. There were recreational pharmaceuticals which produced vivid visions, but—

“Cursed,” Nova moaned, in the voice of—The Other. And there was no drug that Pat Rin knew of which would produce that effect.

Come to that, it was not unknown for Korval to produce Healers, though such talents usually did not manifest until one came halfling. Not that this… fit… bore any resemblance to his limited experience of Healer talent.

Dramliza?

But those talents, like Healing, usually came with puberty. And, surely, if one were dramliza….

Crouched on the rug, Nova looked distinctly unwell. Her grief-locked face was pale, the black eyes screwed shut, now; and she was shivering, palms pressed hard against the carpet.

Clearly, whatever the problem was, she needed to be removed from the carpet, and brought away to a place where she might lie down while he called a medic to her—and her father.

Pat Rin put the diagnostic kit on the floor and went forward. When he reached the grieving girl, he knelt and put his hands, gently, on her shoulders.

“Nova.”

No reply. Her shoulders were rigid under his fingers. He could see the pulse beating, much too fast, at the base of her slender throat.

Fear spiked Pat Rin—the child was ill ! He made his decision, braced himself, slipped his arms around her waist and rose, lifting her with—

The quiescent, grieving child exploded into a fury of fists and feet and screams. He was pummeled, kicked, and punched—one fist landing with authority on his cheek.

Pat Rin staggered and went down on a knee. Nova broke free, rolled, and snapped to her feet, the carpet knife held in a blade-fighter’s expert grip.

Blindingly fast, she thrust. Pat Rin threw himself flat, saw her boots dance past him and rolled, coming to his feet and spinning, body falling into the crouch his defense teacher had drilled him on, ready to take the charge that did not come.

Nova looked at him—perhaps she did look at him—and tossed the blade away, as if it were a stylus or some other harmless trifle, ignoring it as it bounced away, safely away, across the rug and onto the workroom floor. Niki, brought down from her comfort-spot by the noise, stalked it there, tail rigid, and smacked it smartly with a clawed paw.

Slowly, Pat Rin straightened, forcing himself to stand at his ease.

Something terrible was happening, and he was entirely out of his depth. He should, he thought, call the Healers now. And then he thought that he should—he must —get her off of the rug.

Perhaps persuasion would succeed where force had failed. He took a breath and shook the hair that had come loose from the tail out of his face. His cheek hurt and he would make odds that he would have a stunning bruise by evening. No matter.

He cleared his throat.

“Nova?”

No answer. Pat Rin sighed.

“Cousin?”

She raised her head, her eyes were pointed in his direction.

Ah, he thought. Now, how to parley this small advantage into a win?

He shifted, and looked down at the carpet. An old carpet, a treasure—a Quidian Tantara, the pattern as old as weaving itself. How Luken would love this rug.

Alas, he sorely missed Luken and his endless commonsense just now. What would he do in this eldritch moment? Cast a spell? Trap the offending spirit in a tea box?

Pat Rin looked up.

“Cousin,” he said again, to Nova’s black and sightless eyes. “I… scarcely know you. If you must treat with me this way, at least show respect to our common Clan and tell me clearly which melant’i you use.”

He bowed flawlessly, the bow requesting instruction from kin.

Something changed in her face; he’d at least been seen, if not recognized.

“Melant’i games? You wish to play melant’i games with me ? I see.”

Chillingly, she swept a perfect bow: Head of line to child of another line.

“Lisha yos’Galan Clan Korval,” she said in that strange voice, and bowed again, leading with her hand to display the ring it did not bear. “Master Trader. It is in this guise, Del Ben, that I became aware of your perfidy in dealing with bel’Tarda.”

Del Ben? The name struck an uneasy memory. There had been a Del Ben yos’Phelium, many years back in the Line. Indeed, Pat Rin recalled, there had been three Del Ben yos’Pheliums—and then no more, which was… peculiar… of itself. He remembered noticing that, during his studies of the Diaries and of lineage. And he remembered thinking it was odd that a yos’Phelium had died without issue, odder still that the death was not recorded, merely that Del Ben vanished from the log books between one page and the rest.

Nova’s black eyes flashed, she laughed, not kindly. “Look at you! Hardly sense enough to see to your wounds! Well, bleed your precious yos’Phelium blood out on the damned rug if you will, and live with the mark of it. This—I am old. I am slow . I could never have touched the man you wish to be. But you—always, you do just enough to get by, just enough to cause trouble for others, just enough—

“Bah,” she said, interrupting herself with another bow: Cousin instructing cousin. “This one? Well, cuz, I had thought myself well beyond the time of my life where I must marry at contract. But not only will I wed a bel’Tarda because of you, I will bring them into the Clan because of you.”

Pat Rin froze—what was this ?

She swept on, a child chillingly, absolutely convincing in the role of Clan elder.

“Ah, yes, smirk. I have seen the contracts. Tomorrow, I will sign them. Do you know that the dea’Gauss and bel’Tarda’s man of business met this week? No—you might have, had you checked your weekly agendas, but when have you ever done so? Did you know that, between them, they decided that your life was insufficient to Balance the wrong done bel’Tarda?”

There was a laugh then, edgy and perhaps not quite sane. “Do you know that we are forbidden by Korval to kill you? But no matter, cuz, I am to both carry the bel’Tarda’s heir, who will replace the man who suicided as a result of your extortion, and to oversee the rebuilding of their business—likely here on Liad!—since the heir and his heir died in the fire. The only proper Balance is to offer our protection, bring them into Korval, and insure that their Line lives on. For you—you nearly destroyed the whole of it! And you?”