The Dragon Variation (10 page)

He wriggled again, imperatively. Anne loosened her grip, found herself looking up into Er Thom's face.

Very solemn, that face, and the violet eyes shadowed so that she longed to reach out and touch him, to beg his pardon for having doubted—

Enough of that, Annie Davis,
she told herself sternly.
You touch the man and lose your sense—only see how it happened yestereve.

"It was necessary that I have clothes," Er Thom said gently, fingers brushing the bag at his hip. "Also, I have arranged that food be delivered to your dwelling—" His hand came up, fingers soothing the air between them. "It was seen that food was in shortage. I mean no offense, Anne."

"No, of course not," she whispered, and cleared her throat. She took Shan's hand and rose, looking down into her friend's beautiful, troubled face. "Er Thom—"

His fingers flickered again—indicating more information forthcoming.

"It is also necessary that I engage a—a
room
. This has not yet been done. If you desire to keep our son by you, I will complete this task." He hesitated, slanting a glance at her face from beneath thick golden lashes.

"I ask—may I visit you this evening? After supper?" He inclined his head. "It will be entirely as you wish, Anne, and nothing else. My word upon it."

"A room?" she repeated, looking at him in astonishment. She took a breath. "Er Thom, how long are you staying here?"

He glanced aside, then back to her face.

"Three weeks, you had said, until you might come to Liad."

"I said no such thing!" she protested, and felt Shan's hand tense in hers. She took another breath, deep and calming. "Er Thom, I am not going—" Then she remembered the letter in her sleeve and the unknown scholar's plea.

"Anne?"

She bit her lip. "I—perhaps—I will—need to go to Liad," she said, suddenly aware that it was cool on the Quad and that she had dashed out without snatching up a jacket. "A friend of mine—a colleague—has died, very suddenly, and I am asked to—" She shook her head sharply. "I haven't decided. The news just came this morning."

"Ah." He inclined his head and murmured the formal phrase of sorrow for a death outside one's own clan: "
Al'bresh venat'i.
"

"Thank you," Anne said and hesitated. "You can stay with us, you know," she heard herself say. "I know that the couch isn't what you're used to . . ." She let the words die out, even as Er Thom's fingers flickered negative.

"I do not think that—would be wise," he said softly, though the glance he spared her was anything but soft. "May I visit you, Anne? This evening?"

"All right," she said, around a surprising tightening of her heart. "For a little while. I have—examinations to grade."

"Thank you." He bowed to her, touched his fingertips to Shan's cheek.

"This evening," he murmured and turned, boot heels clicking on the Quad-stones as he walked back toward the surrey station.

"'Bye,
Mirada
!" Shan called, waving energetically.

Er Thom glanced back over his shoulder and raised a hand, briefly.

"C'mon, Shannie," Anne murmured, looking at her son so she wouldn't have to watch her lover out of sight, as she had done once before. "Let's go home."

The most dangerous phrase in High Liaden is coab minshak'a: "Necessity exists."

—From
A Terran's Guide to Liad
 

 . . . GUIDE THE DELM'S
attention to the appended gene-profile for Shan yos'Galan, who has twenty-eight Standard Months.

"The mother of this child is Anne Davis, native of New Dublin, professor of comparative linguistics, Northern Campus, University Central, Terran Sector Paladin.

One regrets that a profile for Professor Davis is not at this time available. Although professional necessities have denied her the opportunity to pursue her own license, she is descended of a line of pilots. Her elder brother, Richard, holds first-class-pending-master; her mother, Elizabeth Murphy, had held first-class, light transport to trade class AAA. The records of these pilots is likewise appended, for the delm's information.

It is one's intention to bring the child with his mother before the delm's eyes on the second day of the next
relumma
, the earliest moment Professor Davis may be released from the necessities of her work. One implores the delm to See the child welcomed among Korval, to the present joy and future profit of the clan.

One also begs the delm's goodwill for Professor Davis. She is a person of
melant'i
who is owed Balance of Korval through the error of the clan's son Er Thom.

In respect to the delm,

Er Thom yos'Galan.
"

"Twenty-eight Standard Months?" Daav stared at the screen, torn between disbelief and a woeful desire to laugh. "I should allow that a matter to resolve, indeed!"

On the desk beside the pin-beam unit, Relchin lifted his head and stared daggers of outraged comfort, which tipped the scale firmly to laughter. Daav chucked the big cat under the chin and hit the advance key, calling up the appended gene-map.

"Well, and the child's out of yos'Galan," he admitted to Relchin a moment or two later. "But what's it to do with me if a Terran lady sees a way to combine profit with pleasure? Especially where there's young Syntebra so eager to wed an a'thodelm and do the thing by contract and Code, with no untoward scandals." He skritched the cat absently behind the ears.

"Er Thom wants to buy the Terran lady off, that seems the gist of the thing, don't you think? And he wants the boy for the clan, though as Aunt Petrella and my sister will no doubt both inform us, Shan is
not
a yos'Galan name." He frowned at the gene-map once more.

"Child might well be the devil of a pilot. Er Thom's very good, you know, Relchin. One needs make a push to stay abreast of him—though it won't do to let him know that, of course. The clan is always eager to welcome pilots . . . The matter comes down to the lady's price, as I see it—and the lady's price must be high, indeed, else why did he simply not pay it out of his private account?"

The cat vouchsafed no answer and after a moment Daav called up the records of the lady's brother and mother.

"Adequate, certainly, but the lady herself is no pilot. Who can say but she's no more than a bumble-fingered pretty-face and the child takes all from her? Only see how it is with Kareen, eh, Relchin? Though it must be recalled that yos'Galan, at least, has always bred true."

He was quiet for a time then, absently stroking the cat and staring not at the screen but at a point just above it.

"No, it won't do," he announced at last, snapping out of the chair and striding to the bar. He poured himself some misravot and wandered out into the middle of the room, holding the glass and glaring down at the rug.

"Has Er Thom run mad?" he inquired, perhaps of the cat, which was busily washing its back. "Implore the delm to See a child unacknowledged by yos'Galan? Put the clan into uproar, set thodelm against delm, open vistas untold to Kareen's despite and all for the sake of an untried child and some person named
Anne—
"

He stopped, dropping into a stillness so absolute the cat paused in its ablutions to stare at him out of wide yellow eyes.

"Anne Davis." He sipped wine, pensively, head cocked to a side. "Anne Davis, now." He sighed lightly. "It really is too bad, the things Scout candidates are required to read. But is it the identical Anne Davis, I wonder? And
was
it Anne Davis at all? Certainly it was linguistics—and rather startling in its way. My pitiful memory . . ."

Talking thus to himself, he went back to the desk, set aside the wine and opened a search program. In response to the command query he typed in a rapid half-dozen keywords, struck "go" and leaned back in his chair.

"Now—" he began, looking significantly at the cat.

He got no further. The first chime signaling a match had barely ceased when the second, third, fourth, fifth sounded. There was a pause of less than a heartbeat before the sixth and final match was announced and by that time Daav was blinking in bemusement at the screen-full of information his first keyword had produced.

"Ah yes," he murmured, touching the 'continue' key. "Exactly so."

Anne Davis' list of publications ran two full screens, including the compilation and cross-check of major Terran dialects Daav had half-recalled. He noted the work had been upgraded twice since; the version he had read had been her doctoral paper.

He also noted that the focus of her study had undergone a fascinating shift of direction, the seeds of which were certainly to be found in that earliest work. Yet the intellectual courage required to begin the painstaking sifting and matching of Liaden and base-Terran, not to forget the language of the enemy—Yxtrang—seeking commonality . . .

"A concept worthy of a Scout," Daav murmured, ordering the entire bibliography for his private library with a flash of quick golden fingers across the board. "Bold heart, Scholar. May the luck show you fair face."

The biography, accessed next, jibed very well with Er Thom's letter. Heidelberg Fellow Anne Davis, author of many scholarly papers (list appended) in the field of comparative linguistics, was indeed a native of New Dublin in the Terran Sector of Faerie. She possessed one sibling, Richard Davis, pilot; and was descended of Elizabeth Murphy, pilot, deceased, and Ian Davis, engineer, also deceased.

She was listed as the parent of one child, Shan yos'Galan, born Standard Year 1357.

"And a matter of very public record," Daav commented wryly. "One begins to comprehend Er Thom's feelings in the matter."

Eyes still on the bio, he reached out and spun the pin-beam screen around.

"A person of
melant'i
, forsooth," he murmured, frowning at the letter. "Is it possible he begs a
solving
for the lady? True enough, she will have no delm to solve for her, and if the child is to come to Korval . . ." He rescued his wine glass and leaned back in the chair, staring at the cloud-painted ceiling and sipping.

On the desk, the cat stirred, stretched and walked over the small gap to the man's lap, leisurely making itself comfortable.

"It may be alliance she wants," Daav murmured, toying with the cat's ear. "No bad thing, there, Relchin—and Professor Davis in pursuit of a notion likely to have found approval with Grandmother Cantra. There's University of Liad, after all, just over the valley wall—and all the lovely native speakers . . ."

The cat purred and moved its head so the man's fingers were tickling its chin.

"Simple for you to say so," Daav complained. "
You're
not asked to solve for one outside the clan! Nor is the coming of this child to Korval at all regular. What
can
Er Thom have been about?"

But the big cat only purred harder and kneaded Daav's thigh with well-clawed front feet.

"Stop that, brute, or I'll need a medic." Daav sighed. "Perhaps I should travel to University, see the lady and—no." He finished his wine and reached out a long arm to set the glass aside.

"Best to read the letter precisely as written, Relchin, eh? In which manner we must graciously respond to our erring a'thodelm and solicit details upon the nature of Korval's debt to Professor Davis."

So saying, and to the cat's disapproval, he spun the chair around to the pin-beam unit and began to compose his reply.

SHAN MADE A HEARTY
dinner and went to bed without demur, a circumstance so unusual that Anne felt his forehead for signs of fever.

There was none, of course, which she had known in that secret pocket of her heart where she also knew if he slept or waked, was calm or distressed. The child was tired, that was all.

"
Mirada
wore you out, laddie, didn't he just?"

"
Mirada
?" Shan's lashes flickered and the slanting brows pulled together. "
Mirada
?

"Later, Shannie," Anne soothed, brushing the white hair back from the broad, brown forehead. "Go to sleep now."

But she had no need to coax; her inner sense told her sleep had already laid its spell.

Out in the great room a few minutes later, she shook her head at the parcels that had been delivered from the local grocer. Gods only knew where the man thought she was going to put all the various goodies he'd ordered, which included two tins of fabulously expensive, real-bean coffee.

"Well, and perhaps some of it will be for himself," she murmured, turning her back on the pile and resolutely picking up the first examination booklet.

She was very nearly half-way through the lot when the doorbell sounded, startling her into a curse.

"Ah, there, Annie Davis," she chided herself as she crossed the room, "always losing yourself inside the work . . ."

"Good evening." Er Thom bowed low as she opened the door—the Bow of Honored Esteem, she thought, frowning slightly. Most usually, he greeted her with the Bow Between Equals. She wondered, uneasily, what the deviation meant.

"Good evening," she returned, with as much calm as she could muster. She stepped aside, motioning him in with a wave of her hand. "Come in, please."

He did, offering the wine he carried with another slight bow. "A gift for the House."

Anne took the bottle, uneasiness growing toward alarm. Er Thom usually brought wine on his visits—a Liaden custom, she understood, which demonstrated the goodwill of the visitor. But he had never before been so formal—so
alien
—in his manner to her.

Clutching the symbol of his goodwill, Anne attempted her own bow—Gratitude Toward the Guest. "Thank you. Will you take a glass with me?"

"It would be welcome," he returned, nothing but stiff formality, with all of her friend and her lover hid down in the depths of his eyes. He moved a graceful hand, showing her the cluttered worktable and piles of exam booklets. "I would not, however, wish to interrupt your work."

"Oh." She stared at the desk, then at the clock on the shelf above it. "My work will take me another few hours," she said, hesitantly. "A break now, for a few moments, to drink wine with—with my friend . . ." She let it drift off, biting her lip in an agony of uncertainty.