Lee, Sharon - Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon

Relief washed over him—her relief. He caught his breath.

“Van'chela?”

“All's well,” he said, unsteadily, his hand cupping her cheek. “Aelliana, I can—I have your signal.”

Joy flared, and he nearly lost his balance. Aelliana pressed closer to him, her joy joining with his, arousing him—and her . . .

“Perhaps,” Er Thom's voice came quietly from just beyond his shoulder. “Perhaps you had best go home.”

Daav turned his head.

“Brother, we expect a child.”

Er Thom's eyes took fire, and he extended a hand to each, his grip fierce.

“The Clan rejoices,” he said. Releasing them, he stepped back.

“Go now. I will make your apologies to the host.”

“Kareen!” Aelliana brought her hand to her lips, and Daav felt her chagrin.

“The whole purpose of this gather was to show the world how unsuitable I am.”

“She failed,” Er Thom said. “If Kareen were less ruled by spite, she might succeed more often.” He bent gently and kissed her cheek.

“Welcome, Sister,” he murmured, and stepped back. “I will deal with Kareen, and with The Gazette. Now, if you please, take your lifemate home before he embarrasses us all.”

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Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon

Chapter Thirty-Three

Korval is contract-bound to stand as Captain to all the passengers until released by the Council of Clans, the successor to the Transition Committee. I should've written that contract looser, but who knew we'd even survive?

—Excerpted from Cantra yos'Phelium's Log Book

The window was open, admitting the sounds of the nighttime garden. Inside, the room was cozily bathed in butter-yellow light. Daav was stretched on his side on the sofa, reading his letters. Aelliana, on the chaise, with Lady Dignity's chin on her ankle, looked up from her screen, and considered him.

“Did you say something?”

He raised his head, black eyes dancing.

“I did not, though I might have done.” He rattled the paper in his hand. “Here's an invitation for Kiladi to teach a guest seminar on cultural genetics. Impossible, of course, but one cannot help to be proud of his accomplishments and the notice he receives from his peers.”

“Why is it 'impossible, of course'?” Aelliana asked. “Scholar Kiladi has much to offer. Some of his students at least found him to be of use.”

“One of his students,” Daav amended, shaking his hair back from his face.

Aelliana smiled. He had thought to cut his hair when they became lifemates, which was the custom of the tribe of the grandmother whom he honored. He had allowed, however, that the decision ultimately rested with his wife and that the grandmother would never gainsay the mother of another tent.

“You may drag a crimson fish across my path, but I will not be diverted,” she told him, pleased to recall Anne's phrase. “Even to alter the thought of a single student is sometimes enough reward for all a teacher's efforts. It is the duty of scholarship to share, and to illuminate. Scholar Kiladi publishes—and so he ought!—but that is no substitute for teaching.”

“To teach, Kiladi would need to absent himself—and myself, his willing vessel—for somewhat more than a relumma.”

Aelliana moved her shoulders. “There's no trick to that. We have already established that we may absent ourselves from the homeworld in the service of our courier business—which I have no intention to give up, you know! If Scholar Kiladi must remain a stranger to your kin, then it is simplicity itself to take ourselves out and away, and offload the Scholar at whatever port he likes. In the meanwhile, I will hire me a Guild copilot and work the ports, returning for the Scholar at a prearranged time and place.”

Daav smiled and her heart constricted in her chest.

“You've given this some thought, I see? Who knew you would take so well to subterfuge?”

She bent a serious gaze upon him. “I had a good teacher.”

Daav laughed, and folded the letter. “Well, it is a plan—but a plan, I think, for the future. Let us first have our child in arms. I do not wish to be apart from you when the event occurs, nor do I wish you to be in the hands of a hired copilot, docked on a third-tier world, when the child decides.”

He was worried still, Aelliana thought. They had had a Healer and a physician, neither of whom felt that the birth was beyond her. She suspected that his concern had root in her past, to which he now had access, as she had access to his. The heightened sensitivity, the Healer had said, was an effect of her pregnancy and would become less potent once the child was delivered. How much less potent, he had not ventured to say, nor whether Daav would retain his late-found ability to experience her as she did him.

“Perhaps Scholar Kiladi might plead a prior commitment,” she said, “and ask them to place him on the lists for next year,”

Daav nodded. “I will suggest that course to him,” he said, and smiled again, tenderly. “I love you, Aelliana.”

It was enough to bring tears to her eyes. She blinked them clear.

“I love you, Daav.”

Having mutually renewed their bond, Daav returned to his mail and she to her paper. They worked comfortably for some time; Aelliana so immersed that it was not until she reached the end of the section and had closed her screen that she realized that Daav was very still, indeed, and that he had been so for some time.

Carefully, her eyes on him, she put the screen on the table next to the chaise, and shifted her ankle from beneath Lady Dignity's chin. There was a taste in the air, sharp but not unpleasant, like ozone, which she equated with profound thought.

“Is there something that requires solving?” she asked, rising. She smoothed her robe, watching him. So very still . . .

He sighed sharply and looked up.

“Alas, it appears that the little difficulty in the Low Port is beginning to drift upward to Mid Port. Clarence's efforts are all for naught, which leaves me not knowing precisely what to think, as my most constant source of information in the matter is Clarence.”

Someone was targeting pilots in the Low Port; she had read Clarence's dispatches, as well as some less detailed reports from other persons of Daav's acquaintance.

“Do you think that Clarence is lying to you, van'chela? What could be his reason?”

Daav shook his head, brows drawn, which made him look fierce, indeed. She received, as if wafted on the breeze from window, one scent among many, a sense of frustrated dismay, and a hard edge of—

“Daav!” She stepped forward, more quickly than she had intended, one hand extended, as if to ward the very thought. “You cannot consider assassinating Clarence!”

He grimaced and held his hand out. She took it, and allowed herself to be brought down to sit on the sofa, her back against his belly.

“I would very much rather consider assassinating any number of other people, rather than Clarence. Alas, he puts himself in harm's way.”

“You do not know that!” she protested.

"No, I don't. However, Clarence is not usually so ineffective. Time and again, he closes—only to find himself grasping a fistful of smoke. If this culprit is so clever as to elude him consistently on what he likes to call his port, that is very worrisome, and it may be that Clarence requires some aid which he is too proud—or too dismayed—to ask for.

“If, on the other hand, it is Clarence's office that is the source of these instances of pilot disappearances, cargo thefts, and shipnappings, it benefits him to provide false information.”

He fell silent; Aelliana, leaning comfortably against him, felt the force of his intelligence at work, and something else. Something—a memory?