Changeling (5 page)

Chane dea'Judan stepped into the room, the
door sliding silently closed behind her. He stood where he was,
uncertain, after Eba and two days of silence, what he might expect
from his own kin.

If Aunt Chane will not speak to me, he
thought, I will not be able to bear it.

She paused at the edge of the table and
opened her arms. "Ren Zel."

He almost fell into the embrace. His cheek
against her shoulder, he felt her stroke his hair as if he were
small again and needing comfort after receiving some chance cruelty
from one of his cousins.

"It's gone ill, child," she murmured at last
and he stirred, straightened, and stood away, searching her solemn
face.

"Ill," he repeated. "But the life-price of a
pilot is set by the Guild. I will take the--" He stopped, struck
dumb by the impossible.

Aunt Chane was weeping.

"Tell me," he said then. "Aunt?"

She took a moment to master herself, and met
his eyes squarely.

"A life for a life," she said. "Jabun invokes
the full penalty. Council and Guild uphold them."

He stared at her. "The flight box. Surely,
the Guild has dumped the data from the flight box?"

"Dumped it and read it and sent it by direct
pinbeam to a Master Pilot, who studied it and passed judgment,"
Aunt Chane said, her voice edged with bitterness. "Jabun turned his
face from the Master Pilot's findings--and the request to hold open
review at Casiaport Hall! He called on three first class pilots
from Casiaport Guild to judge again. I am told that this is his
right, under Guild law." She took a deep breath and looked him
squarely in the eye.

"The honored pilots of Casiaport Guild find
you guilty of negligence in flight, my child, the result of your
error being that Pilot Elsu Meriandra untimely met her death."

But this was madness. They had the box, the
actual recording of the entire flight, from engage to crash.

"Aunt--"

She held up her hand, silencing him.

"I have seen the tape." She paused, something
like pride--or possibly awe--showing in her eyes. "You will
understand that it meant very little to me. I was merely astonished
that you could move so quickly, recover so well, only to have the
ship itself fail you at the last instant..." Another pause.

"I have also read the report sent by the
Master Pilot, who makes points regarding Pilot Meriandra's
performance that were perhaps too hard for a father to bear. The
Master Pilot was clear that the accident was engineered by Pilot
Meriandra, that she had several times ignored your warnings, and
that she had endangered both ship and pilots by denying you access
to your board during most of the descent. That she was not webbed
in..." Chane let that drift off. Ren Zel closed his eyes.

"I heard her scream, but I could not--the
ship..."

"The Master Pilot commends you. The
others..."

"The others," Ren Zel finished wearily, "are
allied to Jabun and dare not risk his anger."

"Just so. And Obrelt--forgive us, child.
Obrelt cannot shield you. Jabun has demonstrated that we will
starve if we reject this Balancing."

"Demonstrated?"

She sighed. "Eba has been released from her
position, her keys stripped from her by the owner before the entire
staff of the shop. Wil Bar was served the same, though the owner
there was kind enough to receive the keys in the privacy of the
back office. Both owners are closely allied with Clan Jabun."

Gods. No wonder Eba wept and would not see
him.

"We will mourn you," Aunt Chane said softly.
"They cannot deny us that." She glanced at the clock, stepped up
and offered her arm.

"It is time."

He looked into his Aunt's face, saw sorrow
and necessity. Carefully, tender of the chancy leg, put his hand on
the offered arm and allowed himself to be led downstairs to
die.

* * *

THE HOUSE'S MODEST ballroom was jammed to
overflowing. All of Clan Obrelt, from the eldest to the youngest,
were present to witness Ren Zel's death. Fewer of Clan Jabun were
likewise present, scarcely a dozen, all adult, saving one child--a
toddler with white-blonde hair and wide blue eyes that Ren Zel knew
must be Elsu's daughter.

On the dais usually occupied by musicians
during Obrelt's rare entertainments was a three-sided table. On the
shortest side stood Ren Zel; Aunt Chane and Obrelt Himself were
together at one of the longer sides; Jabun and his second, a
grey-haired man with steel-blue eyes, stood facing them.

In the front row of witnesses sat a figure of
neither House, an old and withered man who one might see a time or
two a year, at weddings and funerals, always wearing the same
expression of polite sadness: Tor Cam tel' Vana, the Eyes of
Casia's Council of Clans.

"We are here," Jabun lifted his voice so that
it washed against the far walls of the room, "to put the death upon
the man who murdered Elsu Meriandra, pilot first class, daughter of
Jabun."

"We are here," Obrelt's voice was milder, but
no more difficult for those in the back to hear, "to mourn Obrelt's
son Ren Zel, who dies as the result of a piloting accident."

Jabun glared, started--and was restrained by
the hand of his second on his sleeve. Thus moderated, he turned his
hot eyes to Ren Zel.

"What have you in your pockets, dead man? It
is my Balance that you go forth from here nameless, rootless and
without possessions."

Slowly, Ren Zel reached into his jacket
pocket and withdrew the two cantra pieces.

"Put them on the table," Jabun hissed.

"He will return them to his pocket," Obrelt
corrected and met the other's glare with a wide calmness. "Ren Zel
belongs to Obrelt until he dies. It is the tradition of our Clan
that the dead shall have two coins, one to an eye." He gestured
toward the short side of the table, still holding Jabun's gaze.
"Ren Zel, your pocket."

Obediently, he slipped the coins away.

Once again, Jabun sputtered; once again, he
was held back by his second, who leaned forward and stared hard
into Ren Zel's face.

"There is something else, dead man. We will
see your license destroyed ere you are cast away."

Ren Zel froze. His license? Were they mad?
How would he work? How would he live?

"My nephew gave his life for that license,
Honored Sir," Aunt Chane said serenely. "He dies because he was
worthy of it. What more fitting than it be interred with him?"

"That was not our agreement," the second
stated.

"Our agreement," said Obrelt with unbreached
calm, "was that Ren Zel dea'Judan be cast out of his Clan, and made
a stranger to his kin, his loss to Obrelt to precisely Balance the
loss of Elsu Meriandra to Clan Jabun. Elsu Meriandra was not made
to relinquish her license in death. We desire, as Jabun desires, an
exact Balancing of accounts."

Jabun Himself answered, and in such terms
that Ren Zel would have trembled, had there been room for fear
beside the agony in his heart.

"You think to buy him a life? Think again!
What ship will employ a dead man? None that Jabun knows by name."
He shifted, shaking off his second's hand.

In the first row of witnesses, the aged man
rose. "These displays delay and impair the death," murmured the
Eyes of Council. "Only his Delm may lay conditions upon a dying
man, and there is no death until the Delm declares it." He paused,
sending a thoughtful glance to Jabun. "The longest Balance-death
recorded stretched across three sundowns."

Jabun glared briefly at the Eyes, then turned
back to the table.

"He may retain the license," he said, waving
his hand dismissively. "May it do him well in the Low Port."

There was silence; the Eyes bowed toward the
Balancing table and reseated himself, hands folded on his knee.

Obrelt cleared his throat and raised his
voice, chanting in the High Tongue.

"Ren Zel dea'Judan, you are cast out, dead to
Clan and kin. You are nameless, without claim or call upon this
House. Begone. Begone." His voice broke, steadied.

"Begone."

Ren Zel stood at the small side of the table,
staring out over the roomful of his kin. All the faces he saw were
solemn; not a few were tear-tracked.

"Begone!" snarled Jabun. "Die,
child-killer!"

In the back of the ballroom, one of the
smallest cousins began to wail. Steeling himself, not daring to
look at Chane, nor anywhere, save his own feet, Ren Zel walked
forward, down the three steps to the floor; forward, down the thin
path that opened as the cousins moved aside to let him gain the
door; forward, down the hallway, to the foyer. The door stood open.
He walked on, down the steps to the path, down the path to the
gate.

"Go on!" Jabun shouted from behind. Ren Zel
did not turn. He pushed the gate open and walked out.

The gate crashed shut behind him and he spun,
his heart slamming into overaction. Shaking, he flattened his palm
against the plate, felt the tingle of the reader and--

Nothing else. The gate remained locked. His
print had been removed from the House computer. He was no longer of
Obrelt.

He was dead.

* * *

IT WAS FULL NIGHT when he staggered into the
Pilots Guildhall in Casiaport. He'd dared not break a cantra for a
taxi-ride and his clan-credit had proven dead when he tried to
purchase a news flimsy with the headline over his photograph
proclaiming "Pilot Dead in Flight Negligence Aftermath." His sight
was weaving and he was limping heavily off the leg that had been
crushed. He had seen Lai Tor in the street a block or an eternity
over, raised his hand--and his friend turned his face aside and
hurried off in the opposite direction.

Dead, Ren Zel thought, and smiled without
humor. Very well, then.

A ghost, he walked into the Guildhall. The
duty clerk looked up, took him in with a glance and turned her face
away.

"You are not required to
speak to me," Ren Zel said, and his voice sounded not quite ...
comfortable ... in his own ears. "You are not required to
acknowledge my presence in any way. However." He pulled his license
from its secret pocket and lay it face down on the reader. "This
license--this
valid
license
--has a debt on it. This license
will not be dishonored. List the license number as "on call," duty
clerk. The debt will be paid."

Silence from the clerk. No move, toward
either the license or the computer.

Ren Zel took a ragged breath, gathering his
failing resources. "Is Casiaport Guildhall in the practice of
refusing repayment of contracted loans?"

The clerk sighed. Keeping her eyes averted,
she turned, picked up the license and disappeared to the back.

Ren Zel gasped, questioning the wisdom of
this play, now that it was too late, his license possibly forfeit,
his life and his livelihood with--

The clerk reappeared. Eyes stringently
downturned, she placed a sheet of printout and his license on the
countertop. Then she turned her back on him.

Ren Zel's heart rose. It had worked! Surely,
this was an assignment. Surely--

He snatched up his license and slipped it
away, then grabbed the paper, forcing his wavering sight to focus,
to find the name of the client, lift time, location.

It took him all of three heartbeats to
realize that he was not looking at flight orders, but an invoice.
It took another three heartbeats to understand that the invoice
recorded the balance left to be paid on his loan, neatly zeroed out
to three decimal places, "forgiven" stamped across the whole in
tall blue letters, and then smaller blue letters, where the
Guildmaster had dated the thing, and signed her name.

Tears rose. He blinked them away,
concentrating on folding the paper with clumsy, shaking fingers.
Well and truly, he was a dead man. Kinless, with neither comrades
nor Guildmates to support him. Worldbound, without hope of work or
flight, without even a debt to lend weight to his existence.

The paper was folded, more or less. He shoved
it into his jacket pocket, squared his aching shoulders and went
out into the night Port.

On the walk, he turned right, toward
Findoir's, taking all of two steps before recollecting himself. Not
Findoir's. Every pilot on Port had news of his death by now.

His comrades would turn their faces away from
him, as Lai Tor had. He might speak to them, but they would not
answer. He was beyond them--outcast. Nameless. Guildless.
Clanless.

Dead.

The tears rose again. He blinked them away,
aghast. To weep openly in the street, where strangers might see
him? Surely, even a ghost kept better Code than that.

He limped a few steps to the left and set his
shoulders against the cool stone wall of Casiaport Guildhall. His
chest hurt; the bad leg was afire, and the street scene before him
seemed somewhat darker than even night might account for.

Ren Zel took a breath, imposing board-calm.
Dispassionately, he cataloged his resources:

A first-class piloting license. A
jump-pilot's spaceleather jacket, scarred and multiply patched. Two
cantra.

He leaned his head against the stone, not
daring to close his eyes, even here, in the relative safety of Main
Port.

They expected that he would go to Low Port,
Clan Jabun did. They expected him to finish his death there. Obrelt
had cast against that, winning him the right to hold his license;
winning him, so he must have thought, a chance to fly. To live.

And how had Jabun countered? Briefly, Ren Zel
closed his eyes, seeing again the three-sided table, the crowd of
cousins, weeping and pale; heard Jabun snarl: "What ship will
employ a dead man? None that Jabun knows by name."

And that was his doom. There was no ship on
Casiaport that Jabun could not name.