Sharon Lee: Adventures in the Liaden Universe. Collaterial Adventures

“Well enough, well enough!” His foster father waved a ringless hand toward the sideboard. “There’s tea, child, and the usual. Have what you will and then sit and tell me your news.”

His news? Pat Rin thought bitterly. He turned to the sideboard, taking a deep breath. Luken, alone of all his relatives could be trusted to honestly care for Pat Rin’s news, and to take no joy in his failures.

He poured himself a glass of tea, that being what he thought he might coax his stomach to accommodate, and returned to the table, taking his usual seat across from Luken, there in the windowed alcove. Outside, the sky shone brilliant, the sun fully risen. Odd to find Luken so late over breakfast, dawn-rising creature that he was.

“Are you quite well?” Pat Rin asked, around a prick of panic. “I had looked to find you in the warehouse….”

Luken chuckled. “Had you arisen an hour earlier, you would have found me precisely in the warehouse,” he said. “What you see here is a second cup of tea, to aid me in puzzling out just what it is that Er Thom means me to do with these.” He picked up the manifest and rattled it gently before dropping it again to the table.

In addition to his melant’i as Korval-in-trust, Er Thom yos’Galan wore a master trader’s ring. Interesting goods, therefore, had a way of coming into his hand, and it had long been his habit to send the more interesting and exotic textiles to Luken’s attention.

Pat Rin assayed a tiny sip of tea, eyeing the manifest half-heartedly. “Sell them?” he murmured, that being the most common outcome of rugs sent by Er Thom, though two, to Pat Rin’s knowledge, were on display in museums, and one covered the white stone floor of the Temple of Valiatra, at the edge of the Festival grounds.

“Not these, I think,” Luken said picking up his tea glass. “It seems that the clan is divesting itself of the Southern House and the place is being emptied—including the back attics, which I daresay is where these were found.”

Korval was selling the Southern House? Not a heartbeat too soon, in Pat Rin’s opinion. He had been to the place once, and had found it dismal. Nor was he alone in his assessment. While most of Korval’s houses enjoyed more-or-less steady tenancy, the Southern House most often sat empty, undisturbed by even the housekeeper, who had his own quarters in another building on the property.

“Perhaps Cousin Er Thom wants a catalog made?” Pat Rin offered, taking another cautious sip of tea. Though rugs Luken dismissed as back attic fare hardly seemed likely candidates for cataloging and preservation.

“He doesn’t write. Only that the house is being cleared, and that these might interest me.” Luken sipped his tea, and moved a dismissive hand. “But, enough of that. Your news, boy-dear—all of it! I haven’t seen you this age. Catch me up, do.”

It hadn’t quite been an age, the two of them having dined together only a twelveday ago, though there was, after all, the news which was no news at all….

Pat Rin looked down into his glass, then forced himself to raise his head and meet Luken’s gentle gray eyes.

“Korval-pernard’i bade me take the test again, yesterday.” He felt his face tighten and fought an impulse to look away from Luken’s face. “I failed, of course.”

“Of course,” his foster father murmured, entirely without irony, his expression one of grave interest.

“I don’t know why,” Pat Rin sand, after a moment, “I can’t be left in peace. How many times must I fail before they will understand that I am not a pilot, nor ever will be?” He took a breath, and did glance down, his eye snagging on the manifest, the upside down tree-and-dragon, sigil of the clan in which he was second of two freaks, his mother being the first. “If I am asked to take the test again, I will not,” he stated, and raised his glass decisively.

“Well,” Luken said after a moment. “Certainly it must be tedious to be asked to take the same test repeatedly, especially when it is so distressful for you, boy-dear. But to speak of turning your face aside from the word of Korval-pernard’i—that won’t do all. Husbanding the clan’s pilots falls squarely within his duty—and determining who might be a pilot, as well. He doesn’t send you to the testing chamber only to plague you, child. If you were feeling more the thing, you’d see that.”

It was gently said, but Pat Rin felt the rebuke keenly. Yet Luken, as nearly all the rest of his kin, was a pilot. Granted, a mere third-class, and there had lately been a time when he would have given all of his most valued possessions, had he only been given in exchange a license admitting that Pat Rin yos’Phelium was a pilot, third class.

He told himself he didn’t care; that five failures would teach him the lesson Cousin Er Thom refused to learn.

He told himself that.

“Child?” murmured Luken.

Pat Rin looked up and smiled, as best as he was able around the headache.

“I hope I didn’t disturb your rest when I came in last night,” he said softly.

Luken moved his shoulders. “In fact, I had been late in the showroom, and was just coming up myself when you were dispatched from your cab.”

Blast. He didn’t remember that. Not at all.

“I’m afraid that I was a trifle disguised, last night,” he said, around a jolt of self-revulsion.

“A trifle,” Luken allowed. “I guided you to your room, we said our sleepwells and I retired.”

None of it. Pat Rin bit his lip.

“I made rather a fool of myself last night,” he said. “Not only did I fall into my cups, but then I was idiot enough to play cards—and lost most wonderfully, as you might expect."

“Ah.” Luken finished off his tea and put the glass aside. “You also told me last night, as we were negotiating the stairway, that you had come away early because a certain—pin’Weltir, I believe?—had become boorish in his insistence that you shoot against him, then and there, which is not, perhaps, entirely idiot.”

He had already determined that for himself, but a part of him was eased, that Luken thought so, too.

“Some things,” he admitted, “I did correctly.” He tipped his head, then, and shot a quick glance into Luken’s face, where he found the gray eyes attentive

“Do you care, father? The trade I have set myself to learn, that is.”

Luken spread his hands. “Why should I care? From all I understand, it’s a difficult study you undertake in order to ascend the heights of a profession which is exhilarating and not without its moments of risk.” He smiled. “I would expect, of course, that you will rise to become a master, if masters of the game there be.”

“Not—by that name,” Pat Rin said, thinking of those who had undertaken his education. “But, yes. There are masters.”

“And you aspire to stand among them?”

Well of course he did. Who of Korval, present or past, had not sought to stand among the masters of whatever profession or avocation they embraced? Certainly not Luken.

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

“It is well, then,” his foster father judged. “That you will mind your melant’i and keep the honor of your House pure, I have no need to ask.”

He paused for a moment, reaching absently to his empty glass, and letting his hand fall with a slight sigh. Pat Rin got up, bore the glass to the sideboard, refilled it and brought it back.

“Gently done,” Luken murmured, his thoughts clearly somewhere else. “My thanks.”

“It is my pleasure to serve you, father.”

“Sweet lad.” He had a sip from the refilled glass and looked up.

“I wonder if you’ve given thought to setting up your own establishment,” he said. “It occurs to me that bin’Flora has a townhouse for lease in a location near the High Port.”