Necessity's Child (Liaden Universe®) (31 page)

He laughed. “If you can’t guess, you’ll need to wait until you see it! Now, tell me—how was your mother today?”

“She seemed well. I only saw her at the meal. Before it, my . . . brother taught me a game of coins and questions.” She hesitated, chewing her lip. “It might be a thing for the headman.”

“Not for the
luthia
?”

“I don’t—” She shook her head in frustration, and paused to bend and pull on Malda’s ears. “I don’t know,” she told Udari.

“Well. Can you teach this game to me? Maybe I can help you know.”

“Yes! Will you be able to learn today?”

“Yes.”

Kezzi sighed. The Bedel said,
A burden shared is a burden halved
, and it certainly felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

“There’s another thing,” she said, as they walked into the shadow of the warehouses. “Two other things.”

“Tell me.”

“The boy—Syl Vor, my brother. His . . .
kompani
—clan. They are the People of the Tree.”

“I’d guessed this.”

“Yes, but—in the place they left, they were called
dragons
.”

Silence from Udari for as many as four hands of steps, then a soft sigh.

“I will dream on it. And the third thing?”

She put her hand up to grip the disk hanging ’round her neck.

“I have a watch.”

* * *

“
Luthia
, you have need of me?”

“We have need of each other, headman. Droi, my daughter, tea for us, please, and then you may take yourself to your own hearth.”

“Yes, Grandmother.”

Droi bowed, and moved away. Presently, there came the quiet sounds of tea being poured.

“Has the
luthia
dreamed of the numbers?” Alosha asked, before the mugs were even brought to hand.

Silain sighed, but he was the headman, and he had asked her, after all, to dream.

“The numbers are, as the headman has said, fixed, and we have gone beyond the time when we may be fruitful with each other. To breed with the
gadje
means that we will lose ourselves. In all of this, we agree.”

She looked up as Droi came toward them, soft-footed, bearing mugs.

The headman received his with a nod and a softly spoken, “Sister.”

“Daughter. You watched well for me this day. I release you now to your duty-work.”

“Grandmother.” Droi bowed, pliant and agreeable as a child, turned and left them, silent and dark against the dimness.

Silain turned back to Alosha.

“I have dreamed the decisions taken, and the loss and pain endured by those in the past who left a
kompani
to founder, and
chafurma
to crumple into disaster. In my dreams, twice the decision was motivated by a ship crisis; three times, it was the condition of the planet chosen for
chafurma
that made a proper ending impossible. I ask if the headman has lately dreamed
this kompani
’s purpose.”

He looked at her over the rim of his mug, and for a long moment was silent. When he did at last speak, he answered her question obliquely.

“We were set down at a bad time, when the Gilmour Agency, that opened this world, had just withdrawn. During
chafurma
, conditions grew worse, and—yes, I believe you’re right,
luthia
!—the ship would not risk itself. Now, it is too busy with all the change the Boss Conrad has brought with him, and the ship could not be secret.”

Alosha the headman took a deep breath, and shook his head.

“We, the Bedel of
this
kompani
will not see the end of
chafurma
. We will only see ourselves become
gadje
.”

“That may be,” Silain said sternly, “but equally, it may not be. The youngest of us has been guided by the Sight to a condition which may work to preserve us, and even bring a proper end to
chafurma
. We may need to hazard something of who we are in order to win this, but—”

“But if we are lost, already, what matter? I understand you! Tell me about this hazard,
luthia,
and how we might tempt fortune to favor us.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The room was dark, with only the lamp on the desk lit, and her hair shining with it, head bent over a file.

She looked up on hearing his step, and she—well, she didn’t smile, but her face eased, and she took a deep breath.

“Mr. Golden, I had almost given you up. Did you see my daughter safely home?”

“Roundabout I did, letting her brother so-called Nathan take the visible part.”

She nodded and moved her hand to show him the chair next to her desk. That done, she pressed a key on the house comm, and asked . . . Annis it would be, this time of night, to send in the tea tray.

Mike eased into his chair and stretched his legs out in front of him. She had the heater on like it was midwinter; he felt it beating down on his neck.

“And where, one wonders, does Kezzi live?” Nova asked, leaning back in her chair and giving him her whole attention.

“Right where we both thought she did—up inside the warehouses. I can get back to the door they used tonight. After I saw her safe inside, I did a little walkin’ around, an’ a little standin’ around. Saw some cameras hung up clever, saw some steam coming through the seams in the ’crete-walk. Could be somebody saw me; could be not. Didn’t really wanna spook ’em.”

“I expect that the Patrol may already have done so,” she commented, and looked up as the door opened, admitting Annis with the tray.

She set it down soft on the corner of the desk and managed to raise her eyes to meet Nova’s, which she couldn’t’ve, three months ago.

“Will you be needing anything else, Boss?”

“No, thank you, Annis; the tea will be sufficient.”

“Yes, ma’am. ’Night, Mike.”

“’Night, Annis.” He gave her a grin, and got a full smile out of her before she turned and left, shutting the door nice and quiet behind her.

“Thanks,” he said to Nova, who had filled his usual mug. He picked it up and sipped it, sighing in equal parts satisfied and tired.

“The Patrol,” he said, coming back to her point. “Could be they’ve caused some upset. Was gonna talk to McFarland ’bout that, tomorrow—see what’s been found, an’ who. Look over the sweep pattern, maybe, see if we can adjust it some.”

“A good plan,” she agreed. She leaned back in her chair, a cream-and-blue cup balanced on slim fingertips.

They sat for a few minutes in comfortable silence. The radiant heater finished its cycle and Mike sighed.

Nova smiled faintly.

“Kezzi’s grandmother writes that she favors this new relationship which has found her granddaughter, and feels that it cannot but benefit both principals. She concurs that we two would do best to meet and speak together, and suggests as neutral territory, Joan’s Bakery the day after tomorrow, in the quiet hour.” She looked up, her face guileless.

“Now, what do you think the quiet hour might be?”

“After the breakfast crowd’s gone an’ lunch ain’t got started,” he answered promptly. “I’ll find out the exact o’clock tomorrow.” He tipped his head. “You’ll be meetin’, I take it?”

“If it can be arranged. Soonest begun, soonest done, as my father had been used to say. And as this now appears to have grown larger than Syl Vor’s mere acquisition of a sister . . .”

“Right.”

He sighed again and drank off his tea, stretching out an arm to put the mug on the tray. “Tell you what, it’s lucky Silver took that notion of his. Gives us an in that don’t have anything to do with the Patrol, if they’re livin’ up there.”

“Which did not surprise you,” Nova commented.

“Well, no, it didn’t. But, see, I come up on these streets right here, and it’s always been risky to go near the warehouses. ’S’why I told McFarland we needed to take it slow, send up Patrols to have a look around, see what we oughta know before we start renovatin’.”

“Kezzi’s brother Nathan . . .”

“So-called,” Mike muttered.

She raised her eyebrows.

“Mr. Golden, you must forgive us.”

He eyed her. “What for?”

“It seems that we have been instrumental in making you less trusting. Surely, it must sadden one to see innocence lost.”

He snorted.

“You got the wrong guy, maybe.”

“If you say so, Mr. Golden, then perhaps I do. One would not wish to distress you in any way.”

He forbore from snorting again.

“You was sayin’ about Kezzi and Nathan?”

“So I was. I happened to wonder if they were very similar to each other in appearance. The child is something out of the way, for Surebleak. Of course, if Nathan, so-called, is her true-brother, then it may be that it is merely what you call a
family resemblance
.” She finished her tea and put the cup next to his mug on the tray.

“Well. It may be a topic to introduce with Kezzi’s grandmother, should conversation lag.”

“Sure. She got a name, the grandma?”

“None that she sees fit to commit to paper.” Nova sighed, and rose, looking down upon him with that look that wasn’t exactly a smile.

“I suggest that the day has been long enough, and that we could both use some rest,” she said. “I leave the arrangements for Joan’s Bakery in your hands, as well as the adjustment of Patrol work in the warehouses with Mr. McFarland.”

“Right,” he said, coming to his feet.

She snapped off the desk light and walked across the room, light-footed and graceful in the dim-lit office. He followed her out into the hall, and watched her safe on her way upstairs before continuing to the back of the house, and his room there.

* * *

It was a box of color sticks that Udari had slipped into her pocket as they walked. Kezzi squeaked, and fell to her knees to present it to Malda’s curious nose.

He snuffled and sneezed. Kezzi laughed and put the box tenderly away into the pocket of her sweater, before rising, and looking up to meet Udari’s eyes.

“It’s good that you found these,” she told him, seriously.

He smiled and unwound the scarf from about her neck, hanging it with the rest on the hooks by the inner gate.

“The
luthia
told me that she expects dreaming to go long, and that you were to go to Jin. Do that, and bespeak dinner for us, then meet me in the garden. We can eat and learn together.”

Kezzi hesitated.

“Memit doesn’t want Malda and me to play in the garden.”

Udari grinned.

“I’ll deal with Memit, Sister;
you
deal with Jin.”

She laughed. “Done!”

A turn, a thought, and a turn back to find Udari already walking away.

“Brother!”

He turned, a hand upraised in question.

“After Memit, find us—oh! twigs and pebbles, a double hand of each.”

“I will,” Udari promised, and was gone.

Kezzi made certain her colors were firmly buttoned into the pocket of her sweater, snapped her fingers for Malda, and set off for Jin’s hearth at a run.

* * *

She dreamed the amounts and the mixture, for it wouldn’t do to make a mistake. Not in this. After she had dreamed, she rose from her nest of blankets, moving quietly.

Vylet’s sleeping place was empty; expectable, since it was her turn to pray with Dmitri.

Kezzi’s nest . . . Droi heard a shuddering snore and leaned close. Yes. Kezzi was curled into a complicated knot among her blankets, and the dog, foolish in his devotion, had done his best to lie across her. His nose had gotten under a tangle of cloth and produced the muffled snore.

Droi rearranged the blankets to better use over both, then moved to the back of the hearth, as silent as the plentiful shadows.

Carefully, she made the tonic, and knocked it back, swallowing without tasting, as experience had taught her that such draughts were prone to be bitter.

She smiled at that thought, and washed the glass.

Then, she moved to her chest, opened it, and sorted fabrics by touch before undressing and dressing again. She unwound her hair, brushed it out, then pinned it up loosely. The tonic by this time was making its effects known, and Droi smiled as she worked.

In the shadows around her, half-seen things moved; that was as usual, and comforting in its way. Prudence, though, prudence had her leave her knife behind her, when at last she left her hearth, the hem of the bright skirt brushing bare ankles, the coins on her belt chiming with every step.

* * *

Udari left the child and the dog at her cousins’ hearth, with a promise that he would be ready when she called him to walk out with her on the following morning. From there, he betook himself to the equipment locker, where he withdrew a timer; and went on to the gate he and the child earlier entered. He donned a coat, pulled a dark hat down over his head and let himself out, clicking the timer on.

When he returned, it was to find Pulka just inside the door, frowning and chewing on his mustache.

“Brother,” Udari said, pulling off the hat off, and hanging the coat on a hook. He glanced at the timer, and slid it into his pocket.

“Brother,” Pulka answered. “Did you meet anyone on the street?”

Udari frowned. This was abrupt even for Pulka.

“No, Brother, I met no one. Why?”

“Come with me.”

* * *

“Here, then here, and later, here.”

Udari watched the playback from the watch-cameras. The shadow was circumspect . . . and had by the cameras’ evidence, completely walked around the buildings under which the Bedel held camp.

“Did he make any attempt to enter, or to force the gates?”

“No,” Pulka growled, and shook his head. “Brother, you know that we’ve already sealed too many gates. If this one comes back . . .”

Udari reached to the console and triggered another playback. There was something about the shadowy figure that seemed familiar—the walk, the particular bulk, the—

“Hah!”

“What?” demanded Pulka.

“It’s Mike Golden, who . . . who is under the study of the
luthia
.”

Pulka’s frown became ferocious. “Does she bring him in to us?”

“No, but I think . . . I don’t think that he means us harm, Brother. I will tell the
luthia
—tonight, if she’s not already asleep.”