Lee, Sharon - Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon

“Aelliana, if you must lift—”

She raised her free hand and set her fingers across his lips, stopping the words. He grew very still, as if he had turned off his very thoughts.

“In fact,” she said, voice shaking, “I must lift. To Binjali's Yard at Solcintra Port. Pray, do me the honor of sitting my second.”

Her heartbeat was overloud in her ears: one, two, three, fo—

Daav pressed her hand and released it, moving slightly to one side, so that her fingers fell away from his lips.

“The honor will be mine, Pilot,” he said, with careful gentleness. “However, we should settle a thing, before proceeding further.”

He leaned over and placed her box on the copilot's chair. Straightening, he considered her out of serious black eyes, then bowed, with deliberation.

She was not much accustomed to moving in the polite world, and for an instant the mode confused. All at once, she had it: delm-to-one-not-of-the-clan. She bit her lip, and took a breath as Delm Korval looked down at her.

“It is possible that Korval has presumed,” he said, the High Tongue striking her ears like so many crystalline pebbles. “Pilot Caylon, speak your truth without fear of offense. Is it your wish—and yours alone—to be taken into Korval's protection?”

Aelliana took another breath and met his eyes. The shift in melant'i had been unexpected, and momentarily shocking, but she found herself much more at ease than she had supposed she ever would be, come face to face with the most powerful delm on all of Liad.

“If it must be said before Korval to be true,” she said slowly, “then I say that I wish—very much—to come under Korval's care. That I share this desire with Daav only warms me; it does not compel me.”

Korval inclined his sleek head and reached into his jacket. A moment later, he held out to her a pin in the shape of Korval's sigil, the Tree-and-Dragon.

“Wear this whenever you venture beyond Korval's grounds. It will mark you out as one who rests beneath the Dragon's wing.”

“I thank you,” Aelliana said, formally, and took the token from his hand. By the time she had affixed it to the collar of her jacket and looked up, Daav had her box stowed in the net between the pilot and copilot stations, and was webbing into his chair.

“Lift for Solcintra, Pilot?” he asked, looking up at her with a half-smile that made her chest tighten.

“Lift for Solcintra it is,” she said, with as much composure as she was able, and took her place in the pilot's chair.

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Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon

Chapter Seven

Home is where the heart is.

—Terran proverb

The Luck settled sweetly onto its coldpad. Aelliana gave the board one last, comprehensive sweep—all lights green—looked over to her lanky copilot and smiled.

“Please tell Tower that we are berthed and will be taking systems down.”

He nodded and touched the comm key. “Ride the Luck down, Binjali's Yard. Pilot Caylon's putting her to sleep.”

“Affirmative, Ride the Luck. Welcome home, Pilot Caylon.”

She took a breath and, when Daav did not immediately close the line, another.

“Thank you,” she said, pitching her voice as if to be heard at the back of a crowded classroom. “I am pleased to be home.”

Daav nodded, flicked the key off, and began to shut down the copilot's station.

“Accustom myself?” she asked him, her fingers moving effortlessly along the controls, as if they knew what to do of themselves.

“Tower did seem sincere,” he answered, his tone so bland that it could only mean mischief. “You will notice that they did not welcome me home.”

“That was very wrong of them,” she said, matching his intonation as nearly as possible. “Open the line and I shall have them make amends.”

He laughed, and gave his board one last flick before leaning back in the chair, grinning.

“In truth, it is . . . a relief to be ignored. And I would not have Tower abused.”

“Abused!” Her hands had finished shutting down the pilot's board. She spun her chair to look at him. “As if I could abuse anyone!”

“Could you not?” he asked, and there was a thread of seriousness beneath the mischief that gave her pause.

“It is true that I . . . struck Ran Eld,” she said slowly, “but my object—as Trilla has taught me—was to run away.”

He appeared to consider that, his gaze straying over the dark board.

“The difficulty with running away,” he said slowly, “as with most solutions, is that one must judge when it will answer—and when it will not.”

He focused on her. “I do not say, in the case, that running away would not have served you, and well. But, sometimes, we must stand and fight, Aelliana, and be deliberate in the mayhem we choose to inflict.”

She bit her lip, feeling again the blaze of her anger, the smooth swing of her arm, the jolt, when the back of her hand, weighted with the Jump pilot's ring, connected with her brother's cheek.

“I fear that I was not . . . thoughtful in the inflicting of mayhem.”

His lips twitched. “Happily, the knack may be acquired.”

“Through practice?”

“Alas.”

“And yet, I don't know that I could . . . coldly . . . harm someone. Without anger as an impetus . . . ”

“Anger is a chancy copilot,” he said, suddenly rising, arms over his head. When his stretch was done, he looked down at her, his expression almost sleepy. “As I have cause to know. Does it please you to exit, Pilot? The hull is cool.”

Jon dea'Cort was leaning over the workbench, eyeshields on, using what seemed to Aelliana to be one of Patch's whiskers to tweak the internals of a device no larger than her palm. A few steps out, she hesitated, not wishing to disturb his concentration, but he spoke without raising his head.

“Back already, are you?” he asked, his tone distinctly grumpy.

“Indeed, we are, Master,” Daav answered, and Aelliana saw Jon's shoulders stiffen.

Carefully, he withdrew the probe and placed it on the bench, straightened and pulled the eyeshields up and off.

For a heartbeat, he said nothing. Indeed, he seemed to Aelliana to be cataloging her face, her person. She stirred, stilled—and Jon smiled.

“Pilot Caylon. You're a bold sight, child.”

Her eyes filled. “Jon—” She swallowed, unable to find words adequate to the riot of emotion that enveloped her.

“Jon—I thank you, for . . . for all of your care.”

“There's no need to thank me for that, math teacher,” he said, turning away with a sudden briskness and peeling off his gloves.

“And yet,” Daav murmured, “one might be grateful for the sunlight at the end of a bitter night, and thank it, most sincerely, for its warmth.”

“Lecturing your elders again, Young Captain?”

“It's this standing at the head of my clan, you see,” Daav explained earnestly. “It puts the most absurd notions into one's head.”

Jon considered them both. “Finally got 'round to telling her, did you?”

“Too late, as you'll make your point, but yes.”

“It is not Daav's fault that my brother is—was—an aberration,” Aelliana stated firmly.

“That's said fair enough,” Jon said. “But you would never have had to endure last evening's adventure, if you'd known your copilot for a Dragon.”

Aelliana tipped her head. “Possibly that is true, but it hardly matters now. And, if I had not been the target of Ran Eld's anger one more time, then I would not have had the Healers, and I—I think that having the Healers was a very good thing, indeed.”

“There are less risky roads to a Healer, math teacher,” Jon said, and threw up his hands. “I bide by your judgment, and not another word from me.”