Dragon in Exile Read online

  “I understand; I’m a partner in such a relationship myself. I had no sisters, nor did my friend, so we grew to be sisters.”

  “Exactly,” Kareen said. “In the particular case, it was the Delm’s Word that produced two children, one of each Line, so very near in age. It was necessary to avert a crisis of inheritance, as the delm’s first child had proved inadequate.”

  Kamele blinked. The delm’s first child, as she had learned early in their conversations, was Kareen yos’Phelium; and a more adequate woman would be difficult to find. Kamele had not yet discovered all of the lady’s accomplishments, but it was plain that she was a scholar of considerable talent.

  “May I ask?” she asked carefully. “I don’t wish to cause you pain . . .”

  Kareen moved a hand, deliberately, though the meaning of the gesture was lost to Kamele.

  “It is scarcely a secret; all the world knows—knew—that Korval’s Ring passes only into the keeping of a first class pilot, and testing proved that I was no pilot at all. The delm had placed all of her coins on one marker, which was not like her, and thus found herself in need of a more appropriate heir. Nor could she accept the risk of producing a second inadequate child. There is no piloting test for newborns; the proof cannot be made until the child is—or nearly approaches—halfling. So, she ordered the thodelm of yos’Galan to bring a second child to the clan, while she herself did the same.”

  She paused and sent a sharp glance into Kamele’s face. Whatever she saw there, and Kamele hoped sincerely that it wasn’t the pity she felt, convinced her that more explanation was necessary.

  “yos’Galan has never yet failed to produce a pilot. If Daav had not proven, Er Thom would certainly have done. The Ring would have passed to him, averting Korval’s crisis.”

  “But Daav proved to be a pilot.”

  “Ah, yes; a most excellent pilot. Very nearly a natural. It seemed that he was recalling the equations, rather than learning them for the first time, and there was no one, save Er Thom, could match him for speed.”

  “And Val Con is also a pilot?”

  “As good as or better than his father, as I’ve been told.”

  Kamele considered. Kareen’s conversation often produced more questions than answers, and today she had opened several enticing query lines. She was herself a scholar and ached to pursue each, but their hour was more than half done. It would be best to ask something that would produce a more-or-less straightforward—

  “You wonder, perhaps, that, as Daav wore the Ring, how—or do I mean why—he left the clan?”

  Kamele frowned slightly.

  “Jen Sar rarely spoke of his life before coming to Delgado. I’d always thought that something . . . very painful had happened to him, that he didn’t want to . . . revisit, or remember.”

  Kareen inclined her head. “Your instincts are good. Has my nephew shown you the portrait hall?”

  It seemed an abrupt, nearly whimsical, change of conversational direction, and while Kareen was often abrupt, she was never whimsical. Therefore, the portrait hall had a bearing on . . . something.

  Kamele shook her head. “It’s a large house, and Val Con has many demands on his time.”

  “True. I will, therefore, take this pleasant duty from him. Would you care to see the portraits? It is a little distance to walk, but I, for one, have been sitting too long.”

  “We’ll run over our hour,” Kamele warned.

  Kareen smiled.

  “If so, then we may usefully segue into an additional hour of Liaden, if that would also find your favor.”

  Well, that was something, though there was the very real danger that Kamele would miss important information, as her abilities in Liaden were not nearly as advanced as Kareen’s were in Terran.

  A scholar, however, did not flinch from learning. Kamele inclined her head.

  “That sounds very agreeable,” she said.

  Kareen offered an arm; Kamele took it, and they strolled out of the warm little parlor, entirely at ease with each other.

  “What do you want, Rys Dragonwing?”

  Neither question nor tone were welcoming, but that was Droi’s way. That only her voice was sharp, very nearly betrayed pleasure.

  “Only to sit with you, and talk for a moment.”

  “What have you found to talk about, now?” she wondered, never lifting her eyes from her task. Rafin must have brought her his latest gleanings, for she was sorting cables, like to like, out of a tangled, untidy pile.

  Rys sat down on the other side of the pile and teased a thin yellow cable loose from the mass.

  “I have been to visit my brother under Tree,” he told her, keeping his eyes lowered, so that she would not find him too bold and be compelled to strike him for his impudence.

  “How did he value your brother-gift?” she asked. He had told her of his struggles with dream-making on previous visits.

  “High. I believe he will use it to good cause.”

  “Well, then he is not a fool. That is well. It is very trying when one’s brother is a fool.”

  That was perhaps directed at him. He ignored it, placed the coiled yellow cable to one side, and reached again to the pile.

  “I slept overnight in the house of my brother,” he continued, “and met his blood kin.”

  Droi said nothing, though he could tell by the tilt of her head that she was listening.

  “I met his lifemate.”

  “So? What is she like, the headwoman under Tree? Very beautiful, I suppose, in the gadje way, with sweet words in her mouth?”

  “She is very like you,” Rys said, smiling at the cables. “Beautiful in her own way, and of a . . . decided temper. Her daughter will be another such, I do believe.”

  “How old, the daughter?”

  “She creeps, and tests her grip; she is able to detect a stranger in her orbit.” He smiled slightly. “She has a fascination with hair.”

  “Who could resist Rys’s curls?” Droi asked the cable she was slowly extracting from the tangle of its cousins.

  There was certainly nothing he might say to that; to point out that untold numbers demonstrably held the ability to resist him seemed false modesty among a people for whom boasting was an art form.

  He freed and rolled three more cables before Droi spoke again.

  “I have been meditating upon the child we made together.”

  He looked up, expecting to find her face averted, and so met her eyes, which were only black, if their gaze was sharp, with no touch of red or veyness about them.

  “Our child is well?” he asked, around a sudden lump in his throat. Droi was Sighted, though she rarely Saw kindly things.

  Droi snorted lightly.

  “You are a fool, Rys Dragonwing.”

  “I am, yes. A fool who has lost much and would lose no more.”

  “You lose nothing in this hour. Our child is robust. She tells me that she will have curls and black Bedel eyes. So here is another who cannot resist Rys’s hair.”

  He smiled, though he felt the prick of tears.

  “She,” he repeated.

  “That pleases you?”

  “Very much.”

  “Well, then, my purpose is fulfilled; Rys is pleased.” That was plainly waspish; Droi was nearing the end of her patience with him.

  He finished with the cable in his hand, and set it aside.

  “I am bound for the World Above,” he said, keeping his voice light. “Is there anything that I might find for you?”

  “A wise man who has lost nothing.”

  “I do not think that such a man exists,” he said, coming to his feet. “Yet, if he does, I dare not bring him to you.”

  Droi looked up at him. There were two tiny red flames far back in her eyes.

  “Why not?” she demanded.

  “For then he would lose his heart, and that would be cruel.”

  For a moment, it hung in the balance, whether she would snatch up one of the several knives on her person and let
fly at him. Then she looked down, and reached for another cable.

  “Go away, Rys.”

  There was nothing to be gained in trying her further. He bowed, gently, and left her.

  “All of the delms of Korval are represented here,” Kareen said, turning the knob and opening the door. The lights came up in the room beyond, and Kareen, as befit her age, stepped over the threshold first.

  Kamele followed, and stopped, one step into the room, staring.

  “When in company, one does make the attempt to keep one’s face smooth,” Kareen murmured. They had crossed into the extra hour of Liaden lessons during their stroll to this room full of treasure.

  “Would the host not take offense, at my indifference?” she asked, slowly, taking special care with the markers for mode.

  Kareen looked at her sharply.

  “That is an interesting insight,” she said. “I thank you. To your point, if the host is Liaden, she will be more distressed by a . . . frank display of emotion. She might think you—forgive me—a little foolish. Far more dangerously, she may think that you are uncivilized and thus not due those courtesies that are owed to the civilized.”

  “Thank you,” Kamele said. “I will attempt to be . . . civilized.”

  Kareen was seen to smile slightly.

  “You have demonstrated that you are civilized; you have, thus far in your visit, been everything that is convenable,” she said. “It is merely the accessories that you must acquire.” She turned, moving a hand as if to encompass the room and all it contained.

  “But come, there is a particular portrait that I wish to show you, which has to do with your instinct regarding my brother. It will be near the bottom of the room.”

  She again offered an arm, and Kamele took it willingly.

  The pace she set was leisurely; from time to time, she spoke a name, rarely two—“Jeni yos’Phelium, Edil yos’Phelium and Var Ond ter’Asten, Theonna yos’Phelium . . .”—which might have been informative, had Kareen made any indication of which picture she was identifying.

  Kamele felt she must look foolish, indeed, moving her head from side to side, trying to seeing each portrait. She’d have to come back, with a lunch, maybe, and take the proper time to study everything that was . . .

  Kareen stopped.

  “The eighty-fifth delm of Korval,” she said, her voice perfectly level. “Daav yos’Phelium and Aelliana Caylon.”

  Kamele stared.

  Jen Sar Kiladi, born Daav yos’Phelium, had been well into his late middle years when Kamele had met him at a Dean’s reception, more than twenty Standard years before. His demeanor had been grave, his manner gentle. He could deliver a stunning setdown, and his humor had been sly, but he had been . . . civilized.

  The man in the portrait was . . . feral. His eyes were fierce and black under well-marked brows; his lean face was hard; his mouth firm, and his chin decided. His hair—Jen Sar had kept his greying hair cut short—this man’s hair, so dark a brown that it might have been black, had been braided and let to hang over his left shoulder. From his right ear swung an ornament of silver wire, twisted into a primitive design.

  Kamele remembered to breathe. She realized that she was holding Kareen’s arm rather tightly, but her companion made no complaint, nor spoke at all.

  Jen Sar had worn a single ornament, always, on the smallest finger of his right hand. An old silver ring—a puzzle ring, he’d told her when she asked, and then turned the conversation.

  The man in the portrait wore a ring on the third finger of his left hand; the same ring that Val Con now wore: Korval’s Ring, that passed from delm to delm.

  Next to him, holding his hand . . .

  Where he was dark and fierce, the woman beside him was fair and open. Her pale hair had been pulled back into a complex knot; her face was thin, the green eyes direct, her attitude suggesting both intelligence and delight.

  She wore, on the hand that held his, a large and inordinately ugly ring, all gemstones and gaud. On her other hand, she wore . . .

  The old silver puzzle ring that Jen Sar had never put off.

  “She was murdered,” Kareen said, in Terran. “Shot and killed as they arrived at the theater.”

  “He witnessed . . .” Kamele began, but Kareen flicked the fingers of her free hand.

  “Far worse than that, for one of my brother’s proclivities. She understood the situation instantly—she was, of course, also a pilot. She realized that he was the target, and she leapt up before him.” Kareen took a deep, deliberate breath. “He lay unconscious for many days; it was thought that he would also die. When he woke, it was plain that he would never recover himself fully. He made a credible attempt, but in the end, he gave the Ring and his heir to Er Thom, and left us.”

  History was littered with deaths. Even the most civilized scholar became hardened to the murders and betrayals revealed in research. But to have witnessed such violence, to have been so close to death that one woman’s desperate leap was everything that had preserved him . . .

  “His . . . proclivities?” she murmured, her eyes still on Aelliana Caylon’s face, and her joy-lit eyes. Really, the artist had been extraordinarily talented. Or, perhaps she had been inspired by her subjects.

  Beside her, Kareen sighed.

  “You will understand that the delm is the . . . embodiment of the clan. Delms spend lives, when necessary, but, crucially, they husband the clan’s resources, and protect the vulnerable. This was Daav’s training, as the delm’s heir; training that reenforced his natural inclinations. He failed in his most basic duty; he failed his own nature, and he lost, as Er Thom once felt it necessary to inform me, that which was dearer to him than his own life.”

  Kamele managed to move her gaze from the portrait to Kareen yos’Phelium’s face.

  “But she—Pilot Caylon—was also delm.”

  Black brows lifted, perhaps in surprise, before Kareen inclined her head.

  “So she was.”

  “She must have been . . . remarkable,” Kamele said.

  “We were not friends,” Kareen answered. She looked at the portrait, her brows drawn, as if trying to recall why that had been. “However, yes. Before she came to piloting, she was, like yourself, a scholar. Her field was Sub-rational Mathematics, where she held place as one of the foremost practitioners of the art. When she was yet quite young, she revised a crucial piloting tool—the ven’Tura Tables—subsequently saving the lives of many pilots. An extraordinary mind. There are of course copies of her work in the house library, should you wish to peruse them.”

  “Thank you.”

  Kamele glanced beyond Kareen to the portrait next to that of Aelliana Caylon and Daav yos’Phelium: a woman whose bright hair was cut comfortably short, pale blue eyes secretly smiling. There was much in her face that recalled Kareen and, to a lesser degree, Kareen’s brother.

  “Ah.” Kareen turned, and afforded the portrait a light bow.

  “The eighty-fourth delm of Korval, Chi yos’Phelium. One’s parent.”

  “Forgive my ignorance,” Kamele said. “But I wonder if she remained in an . . . emeritus status, after the Ring was passed to . . . Daav.”

  “She might have done so,” Kareen said, as one being judicious. “However, she was another taken untimely from us—murdered by assassins, and my age-mate Sae Zar with her. Daav then rose to the Ring, too soon, as he had always contended, and which I believe to be true.”

  The room was suddenly too warm. Kamele took a breath, and felt her arm taken anew.

  “I have distressed you. Forgive me. It was my intent to inform.”

  “Yes, and you have . . . informed me. But—Delgado is a Safe World. Two murders in two generations is . . . an aberration. Two murders—three!—in two generations in the same family—is unprecedented.”

  “Korval has always had enemies,” Kareen said, as if this were perfectly natural, and not at all disturbing. “Some more deadly than others. But come, let us walk down to the morning room. There should b
e tea at this hour.”

  She turned them, and they moved up the room, toward the door.

  “Now, tell me, if you will, about this concept, ‘Safe World.’ I believe it is outside of my range.”

  There were almost to the door, and Kamele’s eye was caught by a small frame set somewhat apart from the rest.

  “Ah,” Kareen murmured, apparently following her eye. “Yes, that will be of interest. Here, let us come closer.”

  The frame lit as they approached, highlighting what appeared to be an identification card, complete with a fuzzy flatpic of a woman’s face, no more than a suggestion of pale hair, long nose, pointed chin. The words on the card were not in a language that Kamele read.

  “The founder,” Kareen said, “Cantra yos’Phelium.”

  Kamele had been doing her research; here was a name that was familiar.

  “The pilot who brought the Liadens to Liad?”

  “Precisely so. One would have liked a clearer image, but a smuggler would not wish to be remarkable.”

  Kamele sighed, suddenly weary. “A smuggler would have also led a violent life?”

  “One does not suppose so, in normal times. Surely, the primary wish of a pilot working the dark markets would be invisibility? Only see the card; I wager that she might have had a better likeness, but it would not have served her nearly so well.

  “That she was thrown into violence, and into the role of a hero-pilot—well. The times were . . . unsettled. I have a book about Cantra’s life. I read it over and over, when I was a child. If you like, I will gladly lend it.”

  Her reading ability in Liaden might be up to a children’s history book, Kamele thought wryly. She bowed slightly to the other woman. “I would like it, thank you.”

  “Certainly.”

  They turned again toward the door, and exited, Kareen taking care to close the door behind them. “Now,” she said, reverting to Liaden as they turned down the hall. “You were going to tell me about Safe Worlds.”