Sharon Lee: Adventures in the Liaden Universe. Collaterial Adventures

He opened his eyes—not too far—and swallowed as the dim light assaulted him. Lashes drooping, he took careful stock.

The dream—it had somehow become the dream of late it seemed—was both frequent and bothersome enough that he’d considered once or twice taking it to the Healers.

On other mornings, those not quite so fraught with physical complaints, his considerations had always led him to reject the notion that the dream was prophetic, for hadn’t he been tested by the dramliz, several times over, at the order of the Delm-in-Keeping as well as at the order of his mother? And the dream never gave face to child, nor location to tree or cliff….

The dramliz tests were remarkably similar to the piloting tests—somehow he always managed to fail without knowing exactly what it was expected of him. Of course the wizards claimed they weren’t expecting anything of him, but neither his mother nor anyone else seemed pleased by the results—not fast enough for pilot, nor possessed of whatever some thing the dramliz probed for—

Well, and he had long ago understood that neither the clan’s ships nor the clan’s allies among the Healers or the dramliz would provide his sustenance, and he had begun casting about for what he could do to support himself, for he was a young man, holding in full measure all the stubborn pride of his House. He would take not a dex from the clan that could not use him. His quartershares could accumulate in his account until the cantra overran the bank and flowed down the streets of Solcintra.

So he had cast about. He could shoot, of course, but one could scarcely make a living as a tournament shooter. Uncle Daav’s happy experiment of giving him a gun and target practice at Tey Dor’s had brought him close to the gaming set, who had no qualms about dealing with someone not a pilot, or not able to tell the future through true prophecy…

Early last evening, however, he had a moment of prophecy. It came when he overheard his mother speaking with Guayar Himself. It seemed that Guayar knew a certain house which had need of one well-placed, and well-taught, and well-versed in the Code, and able to travel with a group of children, teaching as well as protecting, she’d suggested that she knew of just such a person.

Travel with children ?

He had been on his way out, intending to stop at the parlor only long enough to take graceful leave of his parent and exchange pleasantries with her guest. Rag-mannered though it was, he allowed himself to forgo these duties and instead left immediately by a discreet exit that did not require him to pass the occupied room.

Once outside, he had gone, not to Tey Dor’s, which had been his first, and perhaps best, inclination, but to a minor establishment which catered to the aspiring gamester. There he had accepted most of the proffered beverages, which was not his habit.

Now, his head hurt abominably, of course, and his stomach was uneasy, though not quite in revolt. Mixed fortune, there. He supposed he should rise, shower and prepare himself to meet the dubious pleasures of the day. After all, it wasn’t as if he had never been drunk before.

In truth, he was rarely drunk, being a young man of fastidious nature. Certainly, he was never drunk while gaming, and last night’s losses at the piket table were ample illustration of his reasons, thank you.

Sighing, he raised his hands and scrubbed them, none-too-gently, over his face, relishing the friction.

Gods, what a performance! He was entirely disgusted with himself, and not the most for his losses at cards. At least he had retained sense enough not to enter the shooting contest proposed by pin’Weltir!

At least—he thought he had. His memory of the later evening was, he discovered to his chagrin, rather… spotty.

His stomach clenched, and he took a deeper breath than he wanted—and another—forcing himself to lie calmly, to wait for the memories to rise… There.

He had turned pin’Weltir down, and when the man insisted, he had refused even more forcefully—by claiming his cloak and calling for a cab. He remembered that, yes. Too, he remembered entering the cab, and the driver asking for his direction. He remembered saying, “Home,” an idiotic reply emblematic of his state, and the driver asking again, doggedly patient, as if she dealt with drunken lordlings every night—which, he thought now, in the discomfort of his bed, she might very well.

After that, he remembered nothing, though he supposed he must have managed to give her the direction of his mother’s house—and if his mother had been late at her studies and had observed his return. He wondered if people died of hangovers, and, if so, how he might manage it.

A spike of red pain shot through his head and he twisted in the bed, gagging, eyes snapping open to behold—Not the formal bedchamber he occupied in his mother’s house, but the badly shaped, sloped ceiling chamber where he had spent many peaceful childhood nights.

Despite the headache, Pat Rin smiled. Drunk into idiocy he may have been, but his heart had known the direction of home.

SOME WHILE LATER, showered and having taken an analgesic against the headache, he glanced at last night’s bedraggled finery, flung helter-skelter on the simple, hand-tied rug. He bit his lip, ashamed of this further untidy evidence of his debauch, then gathered it all up and took it into the ’fresher, where he bundled the lot into the valet to be cleaned and pressed.

Returning to his bedroom, he paused at the old wooden wardrobe, coaxed open the sticky door and was very shortly thereafter dressed in a pair of sturdy work pants and a soft, shapeless shirt.

Closing the wardrobe, he considered himself in the thin mirror: A slender young man, dark of hair and eye, cheekbones high, brows straight, chin pointed, mouth stern. In his old clothes, he thought he looked a laborer, or a dock worker, or a pilot at leave—then he glanced down at his long, well-kept hands and sighed.

Looking back to the mirror, he frowned at the mass of wet hair snarled across his shoulders. The torentia was all the kick this season, and Pat Rin yos’Phelium Clan Korval, apprentice at play, naturally wore his hair so, spending as much as an hour a day combing and curling the thick, unruly stuff into the long, artful chaos fashion demanded.

But not today. Today, he turned ’round, snatched a comb up from the low bureau and dragged it ruthlessly through the tangled mass until it hung, sodden and straight. Putting the comb aside, he raised both hands, pulled his hair sharply back, holding the tail in one hand while he rummaged atop the bureau, finally bringing up a simple wooden hair ring, which he snapped into place.

The lad in the mirror presented a more austere face, now, without the fall of hair to soften it. Indeed, he might have been said to be quite fox-faced, were it not the general policy in the circles in which he lately moved that Pat Rin yos’Phelium was comely.

Poppycock, of course, and tiring, too. Almost as tiring as Cousin Er Thom insisting upon endless repetitions of tests taken and proved—

No.

He would not think of Cousin Er Thom—of Korval-pernard’i. And he assuredly would not think of tests.

In fact, he would go downstairs to tell Luken that he was to house.

“Good morning, boy-dear!” Luken said, looking up with a smile. The manifest he had been studying lay on the tabletop amidst the genteel ruins of a frugal breakfast, the tree-and-dragon—Korval’s seal—stamped in the top left corner of the page.

Despite everything, Pat Rin smiled, and bowed, gently, hand over his heart. “Good morning, father,” he replied, soft in the mode between kin. “I trust I find you well?”