Accepting the Lance Read online

  If you will be so good as to locate an appropriate house for us, I would consider myself in your debt. It need not be furnished; we will be bringing much of what will be required for our comfort and to host modest entertainments.

  You will of course recall how we were fixed on Liad—a house slightly removed from the city, yet convenient to both city and port would be preferred. If there could be gardens, that would please me, but gardens are not of the first necessity.

  My delm has advised me that he does not wish my household to be mixed with Korval’s, as he wants no unpleasant surmises made by those fixed upon the homeworld.

  I will therefore require a suitable residence for myself, two children and their tutor; three adults of the Line; butler, cook, and understaff. One is informed of Surebleak custom, which requires that persons of melant’i will be accompanied by security personnel. I have hired several competent persons to accompany us and to remain with us temporarily. It is in my mind that we will do better to hire locally, once we are fixed.

  We will expect to remove from the port directly to our residence, and will set ourselves to call upon the neighborhood, and host perhaps a small gather, within twelve days of our arrival.

  You would lighten this duty considerably by providing a list of persons who it will be advantageous to know.

  I may now turn my full attention to those matters which must be accomplished here on the homeworld before I depart. I do so with a great gladness in my heart, knowing that my necessities for journey’s end are in the most capable hands possible.

  Pray convey my very great affection to your lifemate, and my promise to your heir that I will soon indulge myself by making my bow to her.

  Until soon,

  Ilthiria yo’Lanna Clan Justus

  Val Con closed his eyes.

  A house. In fact, a Liaden clanhouse, suitable for immediate residency by an elderly lady of fixed understanding…

  No, he had made an error.

  He scrolled up. Yes, here it was: One is informed of Surebleak custom, which requires that persons of melant’i will be accompanied by security personnel…

  Lady yo’Lanna had been studying. She was both informed and flexible. Indeed, she knew Surebleak for a frontier world—had she not phrased it thus to Nova? That she might wish for a house the equal of Glavda Empri, where she had lived for most of her life, after she had lifemated young Lord yo’Lanna, who had been elevated to Justus Himself with unfortunate promptness…that was precisely a wish—not a demand. She had, he thought, traveled modestly to Liaden worlds, but there was variation, even among Liaden worlds.

  She was also, he recalled suddenly, a great reader and a patron of Scouts. Indeed, she was known for hosting small exploratory soirees every relumma or so, where Scouts were invited to speak on the topic of worlds that they had visited, and what strange customs they had encountered.

  He remembered hearing some complaint here and there regarding those gatherings—Ilthiria’s follies, according to those who were properly world-bound and assured of Liaden superiority. Her follies had been tolerated because of the brilliance of her other, more convenable entertainments.

  Yes! And she had learned Terran. When she came to tea with his foster-mother, which she had done regularly, she would insist that they speak Terran, so that she might perfect her command.

  No. No, not a fixed understanding at all.

  This notion of where the house ought to be situated—a little way out of the city, but not by any means so far out as the Road Boss was fixed…

  He almost recalled something—something he had heard, only recently, at one of the gatherings of Bosses. He couldn’t quite bring it to mind…

  Well. It would come. In the meanwhile, he was reminded that he had a letter to write, as well.

  He reached for his tea, found it tepid, and rose to warm it from the pot.

  Sipping warm tea, he returned to the desk, sat down and called up a blank screen.

  “Jeeves,” he said conversationally.

  “Yes, Master Val Con?”

  “Pray prepare a pinbeam packet for Master Trader yos’Galan. He will want the field judgment, all current information on Tinsori Light and an introduction to Tocohl. I will include a letter to my brother Shan. Also, the delm will be sending instructions.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jeeves.

  Val Con nodded, sighed slightly, and began to write.

  Brother of my heart, I greet you with all joy…

  Surebleak Port

  Scout Headquarters

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

  Shivering with adrenaline as she was, Aelliana made a slow and careful business of walking down the long hall to the cafeteria where she had been directed to await Master Clonak’s pleasure. It had been too long since she had sat a board, she thought, even a sim board. It had been…exhilarating, terrifying, absolutely correct, and horrifyingly wrong…and if she had not scored at least first class, her heart would surely break.

  She considered that last thought as she entered the cafeteria and placed herself at the end of the modest queue.

  No, she decided. Oddly enough, her heart would not be broken should she prove to be less than first class in this new body the Uncle had provided her. She was no Daav yos’Phelium, who had been born with wings, and flying its own reward.

  It had taken a threat to her very life to induce her to embrace her pilot nature. Once she had done so, she had seen it as a tool to gain her freedom. It had taken others—pilots and comrades—to teach her the joy of flight. And once she had tasted the life of a courier, she had embraced her wings willingly.

  Still, she had been a mathematician before she had been a pilot, and one does not simply stop being a mathematician because one has found a second vocation. She had written several scholarly papers while she had been discorporate. Now, she would be able to see them published, assuming Jeeves was able to produce a compelling narrative which made Daaneka tey’Doshi Aelliana Caylon’s prime student, best suited to carry on her work.

  The line moved, and she with it, automatically gathering a cup of tea and a muffin as she passed along.

  At the finish, she stood for a moment, tray in hand, looking about her.

  Daav was not in the cafeteria.

  Well.

  She carried her tray to an empty table, sipped her tea, and sighed, her thoughts returning to their previous round.

  All of their plans had been built on the supposition that they would take up again as courier pilots. That plan died stillborn should only one of them test as first class, though it might be managed if the other tested second. There was also history in play. Despite the many years they had spent together, Daav had met her as a beginning pilot, and it had been his very great pleasure to introduce to her the joys of her new estate. Should she be found to be nothing more than a scholar…

  “If you wish to eschew courier work for scholarship,” he said, his voice sounding perfectly good-humored inside her head, “then we may make a plan that will see you pursuing your study. Recall that I have been a scholar these last twenty Standards as well. Courier pilot is a young person’s game.”

  “We are young people,” Aelliana said.

  “I submit that we are hybrid people, but we may have that argument at our leisure. I am in the sim room with Clonak, reviewing the results of our testing. Would you care to join us?”

  “Yes.” She stood, pocketing the muffin and taking the cup in hand.

  “I am coming.”

  * * *

  “Clearly, you are both in need of more board time,” Clonak said, moving aside so that she might see the screen from her perch on the arm of Daav’s chair. “That, however, is easy to remedy—in fact, the scheme I have in mind for you to prove your tickets will provide ample opportunity for practice at live boards in real space.”

  Aelliana ran her eye down the screen, seeing a pattern of hesitation in her scores.

  “I have forgotten much,” she sa
id.

  “No, Goddess; you remember much. Merely, you are no longer at the level where you might choose correct action without thought. This can be remedied. Note that your times are well within tolerances. Jump is easily within your reach. You simply need practice.

  “Here”—the screen now displayed Daav’s scores—“here, you see such sluggard times as I am astonished to learn were produced by one of Korval, though they are entirely acceptable for mere mortals. Again, what we learn is that the pilot has lately been concerned with matters other than piloting, and must needs refresh his skills.

  “Live boards, live flight, and the uncertainty of real-time will mend”—he leaned back in his chair and swept a hand up and out, as if freeing the scores into flight—“all of it.”

  “And you have a scheme for providing us with these benefits,” Aelliana said, sipping her tea. “What is it?”

  “Odd that you should ask. I propose to foist the pair of you off onto my good friend, Scout Strategist yo’Vremil, who is tasked with overseeing a rather delicate decommissioning. He professes himself delighted to have two such bright new pilots profit from the journey, while he hides in his quarters with his paperwork.”

  Aelliana considered him.

  “Are we called upon to do anything other than pilot?”

  “You will be pilots. yo’Vremil has agreed to having the recording module activated on his ship, so that your performances may be evaluated by your sponsoring master pilot—that would be me.”

  He paused. “There is, however,” he said, looking to her and then to Daav, “a catch.”

  “There always is,” Daav said resignedly. “What is it this time?”

  “yo’Vremil leaves in two hours, Surebleak time.”

  “I see you mean this to be a test indeed,” Daav said. “We will have just enough time to inspect our ship…”

  “And to contact Korval with our plans,” Aelliana added.

  “Yes,” Daav agreed. “That would be mannerly.”

  Clonak leaned toward the board and toggled a switch.

  “Do I have an official agreement from Pilots tey’Doshi and yos’Phelium that they accept, as part of their certification process, sitting as pilots to Scout Strategist yo’Vremil, bearing him to his assigned destination in the manner set forth by him. As this is a test flight, there will be no remuneration for the pilots’ labor; they will be fed and kept as crew. Scout yo’Vremil stands as their immediate supervisor, and may declare the testing done at any time.”

  “I, Daaneka tey’Doshi, agree to these terms,” said Aelliana.

  “I, Kor Vid yos’Phelium, agree to these terms,” said Daav.

  Clonak thumbed off the recorder and rose.

  “Well, Pilots! Allow me to conduct you to your ship!”

  Blair Road

  Boss Nova’s House

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

  “But that’s good news,” Syl Vor said brightly, when they were finally alone in his room at the top of Boss Nova’s house. He paused and considered her, eyes narrowed.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Kezzi said miserably, and then, “No.”

  “Both?”

  “Yes,” Kezzi said.

  They were sitting on the floor, on the soft rug next to Syl Vor’s tall bed. Kezzi sat cross-legged and straight-backed, because she was the luthia’s apprentice and one day would be luthia in her own right, and a luthia did not curl into a ball upon the rug and wail.

  At least not where she could be seen, even by a brother. Kezzi swallowed suddenly, as a Truth woke in her.

  A luthia has no brothers, she thought, or sisters, too. All the kompani are the grandchildren of the luthia.

  Syl Vor, who had been stretched on his side along the rug, his head propped in one hand, suddenly rolled to his feet and went over to the desk.

  He returned in a bare moment, holding a pad of paper and his pen of three colors, and sat facing her, cross-legged.

  “Here,” he said, drawing a line down the middle of the sheet. He wrote “GOOD” at the top of the left space, and “BAD” at the top of the right.

  Kezzi frowned. They had been learning about decision-making models in Life Skills. This thing that Syl Vor offered was a variation of the pro/con method.

  “What decision will I make?”

  He frowned slightly.

  “Mike Golden says that sometimes a problem isn’t really a problem once you change the way you think about it. If you think about the problem as an opportunity, then that helps you to think of ways to use it, instead of having to fix or solve it. If we can look at what’s bad about the ship coming, then maybe we can think about it differently, and make it into something good.”

  Kezzi frowned in her turn, thinking.

  “Mike Golden should have been a headman,” she said slowly, and did not say the other thing that her Sight had shown her: that Syl Vor, too, should one day lead.

  “So!” said he, clicking his pen. “What is good about the ship coming?”

  Kezzi took a breath.

  “We no longer need to worry that it was lost, along with our brothers and sisters,” she said.

  Syl Vor wrote: “ship not lost” and “kin alive” under “GOOD.”

  “What else?”

  Kezzi thought, and turned her hands palm up, fingers curled.

  Syl Vor waited as long as it might take him to count, slowly, to twelve, and said. “Let us go to the other side. What is bad about the ship coming?”

  “We will need to leave Surebleak,” Kezzi said, the words spilling out. “I will—I will no longer be Silain’s apprentice, but will be required to take tests. If I pass the tests, I will be admitted to a class. If I do well in the class, then I will be seated as one of many luthia who advise the captain and the crew of the ship.

  “I will never see you again,” she said, and then, despite all of her intentions elsewise, she cried out in real pain, tears starting…

  “I won’t be able to bring Malda with me!”

  Jelaza Kazone

  • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

  Miri watched the car out of sight before turning back toward the house. She’d argued for the delm’s office today, and Val Con hadn’t fielded anything more than token resistance. Which meant they’d been on the same page, and it really didn’t matter if that was courtesy of the lifemate link, or just a case of great minds thinking alike.

  What mattered was getting him another set and order of problems to chew on, so he could come back fresh to the mess that was Clan Korval’s ongoing personal business. And, truth told, they had to open the Road Boss’s office today—most especially with the survey team from TerraTrade on-port, asking questions, counting heads, reviewing systems, and in general making everybody irritable and nervous.

  There was, Miri acknowledged, as she walked down the hall to the delm’s office, some risk in having Val Con at the same port as the survey team, but after the little dust-up at the reception, she counted on Team Leader Kasveini to make sure it was herself who conducted the interview with the Road Boss.

  And, if it turned out that the team leader wasn’t sensible or wanted to push an issue, then she’d just have to depend on Val Con wanting Surebleak Port upgraded and certified more than he wanted to visit mayhem on idiots who questioned Korval’s honor.

  In the meantime, all they really had to do was to keep their heads down and not do anything outlandish that skewed more attention in their direction. How hard could that be?

  She opened the door to the delm’s office and went directly to the buffet to pour herself a cup of coffee. The scanner was on, which was Val Con’s habit. The names and home ports of ships incoming, and the filed destinations of ships outgoing imparted actual meaningful information to him. To her, not having been raised to have a familiarity of ships and ports and politics, the scanner was at best an occasional amusement and at worst…just noise.

  Still, she didn’t detour o
n the way to the desk to turn the thing off. Today, the calm voices talking over the details of her homeworld’s traffic were…comforting.

  She pulled the chair out, checked to be sure a cat hadn’t taken possession before her, and sat down, tapping the screen on.

  There was mail in the delm’s inbox. Not exactly a surprise.

  She pulled up the first, which was from Ms. dea’Gauss acknowledging receipt of the delm’s direction to discover funding for the clan’s newly acquired space station. She assured them that the project was a priority, and that she expected to have preliminary figures within the week. In the meanwhile, she allowed that a schematic of the station, systems inventory, a list of needed upgrades in order of urgency, as well as a detailed report on the damaged portion of the ring would assist her greatly in her work. Also, if the station keepers would send their estimate of expected traffic and a ranked list of services and amenities required by said traffic, that, too, would be of assistance.

  Miri sipped coffee while she wondered whether the keepers had any notion how much traffic they were likely to see, and what services the Free Ships she understood were expected to be Tinsori Light’s main clientele would want most. Well, they had Tolly Jones to consult there… She shook her head.

  “Gonna be a job of work,” she commented to no one in particular. And that was before anybody figured out how Free Ships paid their bills.

  “Jeeves.”

  “Yes, Miri?”

  “I need to send a pinbeam to Chief Light Keeper Jen Sin yos’Phelium. Text as follows…”

  • • • ✴ • • •

  Val Con yos’Phelium was Road Boss for the day. The duty carried some peril, as he well knew, but he really felt that it was the outside of too much to be obliged to host the senior officer of the TerraTrade survey team a mere five minutes after he had opened his office.

  Still, if he wished Surebleak Port to be upgraded—and he did most earnestly wish for that happy outcome—then it was prudent to display his manners to their best advantage and answer her questions, no matter how impertinent, calmly and completely.