Necessity's Child (Liaden Universe®) (41 page)

“Rys is the ideal to which we strive,” Udari said solemnly, his eyes still dancing.

Kezzi snorted and then said briskly, “Brother, the school is moving! On the morning after tomorrow, our students will go by taxi to the Consolidated School, to meet the students like us, from other classes ’round the City Above.”

“This is a change.”

“Yes. The Ms. Taylor says it will be exciting, and that we’ll learn even more and . . . and put ahead the plan of the Boss Conrad, that Surebleak should work for itself, like a
kompani
, instead of like gaggles of
gadje
.”

“All of that?”

“All of that—and more. She says,” Kezzi added, reserving judgment.

“And how will you travel to this new school? Or will you?”

“I will,” she said, faintly surprised to find that she had never really questioned that. “I’ll take the taxi with Syl Vor, from our mother’s house, so that none need come up the hill. I spoke to Mother about it, and she agrees. She said that . . . grandmother would wish it so.”

“So she would,” Udari agreed. “You’ve done well.”

Kezzi smiled, pleased.

* * *

“Your sister asserts on your behalf that your tutor was not kind. I wonder why she said it.”

Syl Vor sighed.

“Because I told her so,” he said slowly, and then, because it was true, “and because she was in the same room and saw us speaking.”

Mother nodded.

“She is an apt reader of faces and stance, is she not?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He paused, considering her face, but saw nothing but her usual cool and calm expression. “Ms. ker’Eklis said she was going to speak with you, ma’am.”

“And so she did. Tell me, my child, do you willfully withhold proofs from your tutor?”

“Willfully? No, of course not! I—” He bit his lip, remembering Grandaunt Kareen’s lessons. A person of
melant’i
did not make excuses, but it was permissible to explain one’s actions. In the present case, however . . .

“Is there a difficulty, my son?”

“I am not certain if I am about to give a reason or an excuse,” he confessed.

“Ah. This can sometimes be knotty, until one has achieved a certain level of experience. Pray allow me to sort it out for you.”

“Yes, ma’am. Of course, I shouldn’t withhold proofs, but in this case, I hadn’t prepared a proof. Ms. ker’Eklis asked me the answer to a velocity problem, and I answered her. Then, she said—she asked if I had the proof for, for that ‘rather astonishing assertion,’ and I didn’t, having only just answered her, you see. I was beginning to frame it—the proof—and she said she was waiting, and I—”

He met his mother’s eyes firmly.

“I said to her that she had been waiting for less than a minute, and she . . . quite properly reminded me that . . . many unlooked circumstances may occur in thirty seconds. A pilot must be quicker than disaster. I know that.”

One golden brow rose. “Do you, indeed?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “We—at the Rock—it is what we practiced, all the time, even when lessons were done. We practiced being quick—Quin and Padi and I—so that we could prevent . . .” He stopped, thinking of Shindi and Mik, and Grandfather, and Grandaunt, too, who had all of them depended on their quickness, and their skill. He blinked and cleared his throat. “So we could prevent our enemies from prevailing.”

There was a small silence, and then Mother said, matter-of-factly. “I see that I have not spoken as closely as an aunt should, with Quin.”

Syl Vor looked up at her, startled.

“Mother, Quin did nothing but what he ought! He was the eldest, and our, our pilot, should we have needed one. It was difficult, for you know Quin does not at all like to put himself forward, but he made sure that we were prepared!” He took a hard breath. “And he certainly never said that I should be pert with my math tutor! He would’ve rung down a terrible scold on me for losing my temper and set me to do all the proofs in the chapter by hand!”

“I . . . see. And Ms. ker’Eklis, what did she do?”

Syl Vor half-smiled. “She set me to do all the proofs in the chapter. Taking as much time as I cared to,” he added, not quite able to entirely suppress his bitterness.

“Have you finished them?”

“Yes, ma’am. But . . .”

“Yes? Is there more?”

“I don’t know that Ms. ker’Eklis will wish to teach me anymore,” he said, utterly miserable. “I was not . . . convenable.”

“Perhaps you were not,” his mother said briskly. “However, Ms. ker’Eklis was, as your sister said—and as I agree—not kind. She has been dismissed.”

“Dis—” He stared at her. “But, math—Mother, the math we have at—at the day-school is very basic. I—”

“Peace, my child. Eventually, you will have another tutor. In the meanwhile, you and I will continue along in the module together. Pray have the goodness to send your work to my screen before you retire this evening.”

“
You
will teach me?” He didn’t know whether to be horrified or gratified, though naturally more time with his mother must be grati— But he had been maladroit; his mother’s eyebrows were well up.

“I do assure you that I have the required concepts.”

“Yes, ma’am, I—thank you, Mother. I will be very glad to learn from you.”

“And I will look forward to learning from you, my son.”

* * *

Rys had not returned to the
kompani
.

Udari had made the rounds, several times—checking at Jin’s hearth, in the garden, at the hearth Droi shared with Vylet and Kezzi, at the workroom, where Pulka toiled alone over a broken heat sensor.

He went to the forge, and there unwisely put the question to Rafin, who, upon hearing of the woman and the knife, laughed uproariously and slapped his thigh.

“So the cock has a woman in the City Above! What would you? Surely, he must demonstrate his renewed energies to an appreciative audience!”

“He said that he didn’t know her,” Udari said.

“But he knew the knife, eh?”

“The knife fit his hand, so he kept it. Wouldn’t
you
? It was a good knife.”

“Any knife that fits my hand is a knife unto my hand,” Rafin said, and gripped Udari’s shoulders, not ungently. “Come, Brother. Rys is a man, not a child. A man newly able to walk, and to run. It might be that a walk to the spaceport seemed good, if only to prove to himself that the leg won’t fail. Eh?” He gave the shoulders a shake.

Udari stepped back.

“Ah, you don’t believe me! Your care for your brother speaks well of you, but I think—I
do
think, Brother—that you worry in vain. Rys will be back tomorrow, or at the most the day after, pockets bulging with thread of every color, and a story or two to tell us.”

“There is wisdom in what you say,” Udari said, which was courtesy from a brother to a brother, and left the forge soon after.

At last, having checked the gates, and the record of those who had entered them, and stopped for a cup of tea and a song at Jin’s hearth, in company with Memit, Isart, and Gahn, he returned to his own place, and sat himself down on his blanket.

It was in his heart to go to the
luthia
, and put his trouble before her. Yet, Rafin had the right of it. Rys was no child, to be curtailed by an adult’s hand on his shoulder. Very likely, he had become drunk on his own powers—a man who had thought never to walk again might count a hike down the whole length of the planet as a prayer worth making.

As for the woman . . .

She had known more of Bedel business than a
gadje
had right or reason to know. It might be that she was a matter for the headman. He thought to seek her out, then thought that Rys might, after all, have gone on that errand.

Best, thought Udari, to wait for Rys to return. They would smoke and speak together as brothers, finding between them what was best to do.

Having taken this decision, he felt somewhat less distressed, and after a few minutes’ commune with the hearth and with his soul, he rolled himself into his blanket and speedily went to sleep.

* * *

It had grown cold and dark during the time that he walked. He shivered and pulled the hood out of the collar of his coat and up around his face. This, he could do with ease. He could even pause in his purposeful striding—but not for long.

What he could not do—he could not turn and walk in a direction of his own choosing, nor could he call out to any of those he passed on the street.

The rules under which he labored thus established, and after an initial period of disorientation, he walked calmly and with purpose, as if he were quite aware of his destination. The fact that he
didn’t
know where he was bound seemed of . . . little importance. He would arrive, and all would be, for the first time in a very long time, well.

This refrain did more than once waft through his head, like a misplaced lyric to a half-remembered song. He, foolishly, found it comforting.

And so he continued, walking briskly but without overt haste, until he turned into a street terrible by the standards of even this terrible city; a street that had been uncleanly razed, with broken walls standing solitary amid ankle deep rubble, wires like demented vines snaking along the riven pavement.

Midway down the street, on the side opposite, stood three houses, side by side, the rest of the row having collapsed in whatever cataclysm had taken the street to ground. The first house had no outside wall; it would, Rys thought, have lost that when the house next to it had fallen. He supposed that the third house would be in like state, though was not granted the opportunity to see if he was correct.

His brisk stride took him at an angle across the street and up the steps of the middle house.

The door opened under his hand and he crossed the threshold into a dim hallway. He barely had time to push the door closed before his determined legs took him off again, down the hall, three, six, nine, twelve steps, to another, very tightly closed, door.

This time he did not try the knob. Rather, he raised his off-hand and knocked three times.

He heard nothing, and wondered, briefly and distantly, what would happen if no one opened to him. Would he be released from the . . . compulsion that had brought him here? Would he be able to return—to return . . .

A rill of discomfort ran inside his head. He took a breath, and deliberately recalled Silain’s hearth, the blanket spread, the metal teapot with its various small dings, and the bottom darkened by heat.

Silain also he saw, her hair swept back from a broad forehead to lie on her shoulders like fog on the mountain; the wrinkles softening her face; the black eyes, and noble nose . . .

The door before him opened.

So well had he fixed Silain in his mind’s eye that for a moment the person before him made no sense. She might have been said to have been Silain’s antithesis—her face gold-toned, the features drawn with a timid hand, excepting the hard lines around her mouth, her short hair dry as old grass, her eyes a pale and frigid blue.

She smiled, which etched the lines deeper, and extended a hand to cup his cheek. He tried to recoil; he wanted no touch and no notice from this woman, whoever she was, but his body merely stood there, as if it were an automaton whose gearing had run down.

“Rys Lin pen’Chala,” she murmured, and he was distantly horrified, that she knew his name. “And in so much better case than when last we met. Truly,” she said, looking him up and down with an air of proprietary pride, “this is
much
better than I had dared to hope for. I must think of a way to thank your brother for his care of you.”

That this woman might come near Udari—
that
woke a shiver from his stupid body, and the woman laughed.

“You flatter me,” she murmured, cold fingers caressing his cheek.

He tried to find his voice.

He tried to find his
will
, struggling with the inertia that trapped him in this place, with this . . . person. Pain flashed and flared inside his skull; he welcomed it as something immediate, something
true
. He pushed, as he had often done, seeking now not an errant memory, but his freedom.

His life . . .

“Peace, peace, little bird, you will harm yourself beforetime,” the woman said, raising her other hand to his face. She held him between her two palms, not gently, and said, very clearly . . .

“
Vaslet kyr novin Rys Lin pen’Chala.”

It was nonsense, neither Liaden nor Terran nor any other language in his ken. He ignored it . . . tried to ignore it, yet the words had a peculiar, poisonous resonance. He struggled—struggled against the poison, for his liberty—

And all at once he ceased to struggle, his muscles turned to water, and his thoughts to misty dreaming.

“Excellent,” the woman said, releasing him. She turned her back and walked into the room.

“Come here,” she snapped.

He had no sense of having moved; he merely arrived within the bright-lit room. The source of that light was a lantern of Liaden Scout issue, which sat on a scarred round plastic table. Beside the table were two chairs: one full in the light; one in comfortable dimness.

“Sit down.”

The chair sagged under his weight; the glaring lamplight hurt his head. He lowered his eyes . . .

“Look at me!”

He stared at her across the searing pool of brilliance, saw the icy glitter of her eyes.

“What is your name and condition?”

“Rys Lin pen’Chala, Field Agent.”

“I am Agent of Change Isphet bar’Obin. You are under my command, Field Agent pen’Chala. I apprehend that you are presently experiencing symptoms consistent with a field agent who is not on-mission. Be of good cheer; you will very soon be relieved of your distress, and will no longer be disturbed by doubt, or by any division of loyalty. Before you are granted that happy state, I regret that I must perform some rough and ready repair. I cannot risk failure.” She moved forward until he had to lean back in the rickety chair in order to keep his eyes on hers.

“I fear,” she said, “that you will find this uncomfortable.”

She smiled and bent to him, the words flowing warmly into his ear on the soft exhalation of her breath.