Lee, Sharon - Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon

“A most excellent gift,” Daav told him.

Aelliana rose, and held her hand down to Shan, still busy at his toys.

“Don't you want to say hello to your new sister, Shannie?”

“Yes!” he announced and sprang to his feet. “Father said I had to be quiet,” he confided, as they followed Daav and Pat Rin into the parlor. “But he didn't say for how long.”

Anne lay in a chaise, her face sweetly peaceful, her eyes languid. She held a small, blanket-shrouded form against her breast.

“Such a crowd,” she murmured. “When Shannie came there was only Jerzy and Marilla.”

Er Thom touched her cheek.

“Beloved, here is the delm, come to See our child,” he murmured.

“Of course there is,” Anne said dreamily.

Aelliana stepped forward at Daav's side, took the small bundle that Er Thom handed her and cradled it, in an accommodation that was already second nature.

She folded the blanket back, turning so that Daav could also see the tiny face and the halo of golden hair. Her eyes were open—violet, like her father's.

“Korval Sees Nova yos'Galan,” Daav said in the Delm's Mode.

“The Clan rejoices,” Aelliana added, and felt that she had never said anything else so true.

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Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Do not stand between a Dragon and its Tree.

—From the Liaden Book of Dragons

Daav smiled as he knelt beside an overabundant bank of darsibells. The bed should have been thinned some time ago, but he had put the task off, pending the discovery of an appropriate overflow location. Jelaza Kazone's head gardener having only yesterday expressed a need and named an appropriate location in the formal gardens for something very like darsibells, he was now pleased to do the needful.

Aelliana was on an errand at the port, and had taken their child with her. He supposed she would be home soon. They had tickets to the opening of the High Port Pretenders later in the evening.

As always, working in the soil soothed him. The sun warmed his back through his shirt, contributing to a feeling of pleasant dislocation, his thoughts drowsy and slow.

It was a wonder how quickly time fled before joy. The weeks when Mizel had held them apart from each other had each seemed a twelve-year, while the years that had passed since they had at last signed their lines scarcely seemed to encompass days. Indeed, if it were not for the visible evidence of Val Con's growth, he would swear that Kareen's ill-conceived, yet so-useful gather had been but the night before.

He laughed softly. One very long night, in order to properly encompass the courier contracts accepted and fulfilled, Kiladi's seminars taught, Aelliana's papers delivered, and the endless delight of their love for each other.

And then there was their child—another order of joy altogether, mixed liberally with astonishment and dismay. So far, Val Con ruled the nursery in splendid isolation. Not that he was by any means isolated; he spent considerable time with his cousins, and with the nursery crew at Glavda Empri, where one or six of Guayar's next generation was also likely to be found. He was a quiet boy, stubborn, merry, and kind to cats. He was quick with his numbers, as one might expect of Aelliana Caylon's child, and had only to hear a song or a story to be able to repeat it, all but verbatim.

Other things had changed over the long night: The ports had grown chancier; Terran ports, if one were Liaden, chancier still. Ride the Luck carried weapons now—weapons, as Aelliana had it, worthy of Korval's pirate founder, gentle Grandmother Cantra. The Low Port pushed at its limits, reaching stealthy fingers out toward Mid Port's plump pockets, to the point that the Portmaster fielded more proctors, and the Pilots Guild offered warnings to those newly arrived, on a street-by-street basis.

But those were distant shadows, even The Luck's arming merely the prudence of pilots who were properly concerned for the well-being of their ship.

He smiled, plying his trowel with a will. Each flower clump united by a common root ball that he excavated, he placed in the moss-lined basket at his side. If it was darsibells Master Rota wanted, it was darsibells she should have.

Turning back toward the bed, he paused, head cocked to one side, listening.

Yes, there were footsteps—two pairs. One pair was running, lightly but not quite evenly; the other walking quick and soft. Aelliana had very nearly acquired Scout steps.

He put the trowel down, set the basket back, and turned to face the path, kneeling as he was. No sooner was he settled then his small son burst 'round the corner, shirttail flying and a tear in the knee of his pants.

“Father!” Val Con cried excitedly, hurtling into Daav's arms. “Father, we saw Clonak!”

Hugging the small, wiry body tight, Daav felt his heart constrict. Clonak had returned to the homeworld several times since the Deluthia affair had relinquished him, unscathed. To all appearances, his sojourn among danger had mended his wounds, and opened for him a new career path. One for which, he said, with true Clonak style, he even possessed a talent.

“How did you find Clonak, denubia?”

“Funny!” Val Con wriggled and Daav loosed him, setting him carefully on his feet and keeping a hand beneath a sharp elbow.

The small face turned up to his, green eyes trimmed with long dark lashes, the low sun striking red from the depths of the dark brown hair. Daav sighed. He was going to be a beauty, this one. All his mother, there.

“He is also,” Aelliana said, and dropping easily to her knee at Daav's side, “at liberty for an entire relumma. I would not let him go until he had agreed to come to us for Prime.”

“Now I understand what kept you,” he said, returning her smile.

“No, what kept me was the young gentleman you see before you. He wished to insist that he accompany us, when next we lift out.”

“Oh, indeed?” Daav looked down into his son's face. “Has he anything to recommend him?”

“Do we allow willfulness to count?”

Daav kept lips straight with an effort. “Only to a point, I think.”

“I know my numbers,” Val Con told him earnestly. “I can help.”

“Doubtless you could. However, the pilot had denied you, in which case there is no more to be said. The pilot decides first and best for her ship.”

“I want to go,” Val Con said, lower lip becoming prominent.

“That is a different pot of tea,” Daav said. “We do not always get what we want.”

“Unless the luck is kind,” Aelliana added, settling on the grass beside Daav. “Have you forgotten your promise, Val Con?”

Green eyes opened wide, and he was seen to rummage in his pocket, from which he eventually withdrew three seedpods.

“The Tree gave them, when we stopped to say good-day,” he explained, holding them out on an only slightly grubby palm.

“That was kind of the Tree, to be sure,” Daav murmured, eying the offerings. “But which belongs to whom?”

Val Con looked down at his palm, brows pulled together, then suddenly smiled and put a finger on a pod.

“This one,” he said triumphantly, “is for me.”

“Very well, then, have it off the table! Which is your mother's?”

Val Con bit his lip, and looked up. “I don't know,” he admitted.

“Ah,” Daav considered the two pods yet on offer, and shook his head. “I confess that I don't know, either. However, I do know mine.”

He plucked it up, feeling it fair vibrate with pleasure against his skin, while Aelliana took the pod remaining, and handed it to him.

“If you please.”

“It is,” he assured her, “my very great pleasure.” He opened the pod and gave her the pieces.