"There's Uncle Daav, for instance—Val Con's father—gone these twenty-five Standards and more. Nova forgets that he went for Balance, not anger. Not that it makes much difference, gone being gone. But you understand that the First Speaker must plan for yos'Galan to take its place as Korval's Prime Line, should Val Con's thirty-fifth birthday pass and he not, in fact, take up the Ring. She's simply beginning her strategy too early, and with too little information in hand. Korval must find its Nadelm, and the First Speaker must put the question to him plainly. That's all."
"How old is Val Con? Thirty?"
"Just turned," he agreed. "We've got five whole years to find him."
She did not say that a Scout might easily stay hidden for twelve times that long, or that the universe was wide. Instead she bent close, eyes locked on his, lips above his mouth by the breadth of one of Dablin's whiskers.
"You are my man," she said. It was not a command; it was a statement of her belief, open to his contradiction.
He lifted his hands and ran brown fingers roughly into her curls. "With all my heart."
The small gap closed, and she kissed him leisurely, then, yielding to his urgency, harder, hands at his shirt, at his belt; and they made love with body, heart, and mind, scattering pillows and papers every which way and boring Dablin to yawns.
Much later, when they both had had a glass or two and a bit to eat, and had gone upstairs to the bedroom and curled beneath the coverlet, she spoke into his ear.
"Do
you think Val Con's okay? Even if he's not dead, he could be—in trouble."
Shan laughed sleepily and pushed his face into the hollow of her neck. "Trust me, Priscilla. Wherever Val Con is at this moment, he has the best of everything possible."
Miri rapped sharply on the wall at about the height of her shoulder and was rewarded with a solid metallic
thunk.
She sighed in equal parts of relief and frustration. The hallway had no hidden compartments, which meant that she would not have to deal with another bushel of amateur telescopes, or dolls, or jewels—but it also meant that there was nothing resembling a vegetable or vitamin anywhere on this tub, and she had, after all, a half-convalescent soldier on her hands.
One of the other hideys had yielded up a solitary platinum necklace, set with twelve matched emeralds. Val Con had handed it to her with a flourish and a smile. "For you—a hand-cut set."
"You keep it," Miri had told him. "Matches your eyes."
He had insisted, though, and now the thing was in her belt pouch, sharing space with a flawed sapphire, a matching ring and necklace, an enameled disk, a harmonica, and a couple of ration sticks. She would have traded the whole bunch for a handful of high-potency supplements.
"Damn it," she muttered, and settled her back against the cool wall, glaring at the pilfered elegance around her. Val Con had had a lot to say—for him, anyway—about the fineness of the yacht, pointing out the up-to-the-second water purification system, the lighted ceilings and side walls, and even the style and power of the coils they had blown to bits in that desperate Jump away from the Yxtrang.
The boarding crew had pretty well cleaned things out in the initial raid. The galley was bare—even the menuboard had been dismantled and removed. It was just plain, dumb luck that the Yxtrang had not been looking for secret compartments, or else she and Val Con would not even have had salmon and pretzels to eat.
What the hell are you doing here, anyway? she asked herself suddenly. Everything had happened so fast. Married. How in the name of anything holy had she wound up married?
"Damn Liaden tricked me," she told the empty hall. She laughed a little. Tricked three ways from yesterday—married and partnered to a Liaden; sister to an eight-foot, bottle-green Clutch-turtle with a name longer than she was; stranded on a coil-blown pleasure yacht around a world her new husband assured her was most likely Interdicted.
"Bored, were you, Robertson? Life not exciting enough with just the Juntavas after you?" She laughed again and shook her head, pushing away from the wall and starting back toward the bridge. Life . . .
The bridge was a racket of radio chatter and computer chimes in the midst of which a slender, dark-haired man sat quietly. Miri froze in the doorway, heart stuttering, eyes sharp on the stillness of him, remembering another time, not so many days before, when he had been that still and a deadly danger to them both.
Quietly she approached the pilot's board, noting with relief that his shoulders carried only the normal tensions of weariness and concentration—nothing of shock or the abnormal effort of attaining freedom.
Nonetheless, standing unheeded beside him and watching the absorption on his face as he extended a long-fingered hand to minutely adjust a dial, she felt dread stir and chill her, and impulsively put her hand on his wrist, interrupting the adjustment.
"Stop!" he snapped, glancing up quickly.
"Still here, huh, boss?" She pulled her hand away. "Time for a break."
"Later." He turned back toward the board and the senseless chatter coming up from the planet surface.
"I said
now,
spacer!" Her voice carried all the authority of a mercenary sergeant, and she braced herself for retaliation.
His eyes, brilliantly green, flicked to hers, his mouth straight in that look that meant he was going to have his way, come hell or high water—and suddenly he smiled, pushing the hair out of his eyes. "Cha'trez, forgive me. I was lost in the work, and only meant to say that I am attempting—"
"To put yourself in a bad spot," Miri interrupted. "I don't think you been outta that seat for ten hours. You gotta eat, you gotta walk around, you gotta rest—wasn't all that long ago the only things between you and the Last Walk were an autodoc and a scared merc."
There was a long pause during which green eyes measured gray. He was the first to sigh and drop his gaze.
"All right, Miri."
She looked at him suspiciously. "What's that mean?"
"It means that I will take a break now—walk a bit and join you for a meal." He grinned weakly and reached up to brush her cheek with light fingers. "I do tend toward singlemindedness occasionally, despite my family's best efforts." The grin broadened. "I would not have you think that I was brought up as poorly as that."
"Sure," she said uncertainly, sensing a joke of some kind. She pointed at the board. "You still doing the hunt-and-compare bit? 'Cause I can give a listen while you're off-duty."
"It would be of assistance," he said, standing and stretching to his full height. Miri grinned up at him, liking the slim, graceful body and the beardless golden face. She extended a hand to touch his right cheek, and he shifted to drop a kiss on her fingertips. "Soon," he said, and slipped silently away.
Shaking her head at the hammering of her heart, Miri dropped into the pilot's chair and picked up the earphones.
Dinner was prime-grade Milovian salmon, Boolean pretzel-bread, and water, consumed while seated cross-legged on the carpet amid the desolation that probably had been the private quarters of the yacht's owner.
Val Con ate his ration with neat efficiency, as if he were stoking his furnace with protein, Miri thought; as if taste and variety had nothing to do with the act of eating.
She ate more slowly, weary of the taste but forcing herself to finish every bit of the stuff, and finally she looked up to find Val Con watching her closely.
"This whole ship's a loony bin," she groused. "Triple-A prime salmon, telescopes, dolls, jewelry, secret compartments, and a coordinate page filled with Interdicted Worlds. How come?"
"The luxuries are bribes," Val Con said softly. "And the extra compartments are to hide them. Simple."
"Yeah?" She blinked. "Somebody's trading with Quarantined Worlds? But that's—"
"Illegal?" He shrugged. "It's only illegal when someone catches you."
"Hell of an attitude for a Scout."
He laughed. "Did I ever tell you about my grandmother?"
"Don't know when you would've had a chance. What about her?"
He smiled. "She was a smuggler."
"That a fact?" Miri said calmly. "What's the old lady doing now?"
"Forgive me," he murmured. "I should have said my many-times great-grandmother, Cantra yos'Phelium, co-founder of Clan Korval."
She grinned. "Not likely to go around embarrassing all the relatives then, is she?" Then she did a double-take. "Cantra, like the money?"
"Indeed," Val Con said around a sudden yawn. "Exactly Cantra, like the money."
"Better get some sleep, boss," she advised, hoping against all reason that he would forget about the blithering radio and the strings of signals to be overlaid and recorded.
"Not too bad an idea." He yawned again and without ado stretched out, putting his head on her lap.
"What the hell's wrong with you?"
"I'm tired, Miri."
She glared down at his shuttered face. "And you gotta put your head right there?"
One green eye opened. "Shall I put it on the floor?"
"Should you—I'll tell you what's wrong with you. You're spoiled."
The eye closed. "Undoubtedly."
"Rich kid from the good part of town; never had no trouble; never had to rough it; always a soft place to put your head . . ."
"Inarguably. Absolutely. Cantras and coaches. Satins and silks. Malchek and feeldophin."
She eyed him warily, noting without meaning to the long dark lashes and the firm, sweet mouth. "What's malchek and feeldophin?"
Both eyes opened wide, staring upside down into hers. "I don't know, Miri. But I'm certain they must be something."
"Think I'd learn." She sighed heavily and moved a hand to brush the hair away from his eyes. "I ain't good at sleeping sitting up, though."
"Ah. A compelling reason for me to put my head on the floor, I agree." He did so and opened his arms. "Come to bed, Miri."
Laughing, she stretched out beside him and put her head on his shoulder.
The priority gong clanged, and Shan was up in an eruption of bedclothes, slapping the stud before he was fully awake.
"yos'Galan," he snapped into the speaker, only then aware of Priscilla at his side.
"Tower here, Cap'n. Sorry to disturb you."
"That's quite all right, Rusty; I enjoy having my rest broken for crew maneuvers. I assume that you
are
doing a dry run and that there really
isn't
a priority message for me lying somewhere around the Tower?"
"Nosir—I mean,
yessir,
there's a message, all right, pin-beamed to you by name, priority wrap, balance in code. Hit about three minutes ago. But here's what's funny, Cap'n . . ."
"I knew there was a punch line! Don't disappoint me, Rusty."
"Yessir. We tagged the source of transmission as local—just north of Solcintra. Thought you'd want to know."
"We're
in northern Solcintra . . ." Shan frowned. "You didn't by any chance send a priority message to me via the
Passage,
did you, Priscilla? There are more seemly ways to get my attention."
"The thought had occurred to me," she admitted, grinning.
"But action did not follow. Well, I doubt it's someone wanting to sell me a cloak." He touched a quick series of keys. "Transmit at will, Rusty—and thank you for your patience. It occurs to me that I'm becoming ill-tempered in my dotage."
Laughter burst from the comm as the receiver lit and beeped. "How long've we known each other?"
"Gods alone know. I recall the day they carried you on-ship, a babe in arms—"
"And you a gleam in Cap'n Er Thom's eye! Tower out."
"Good-bye, Tower." He shook his head and tapped keys—and the screen lit, displaying a bare line of gibberish, the word PRIORITY shrieking across the top margin. Shan sighed. "What day is it, Priscilla?"
"Banim Seconday."
"Ah, yes, and we're in the second relumma, year Trebloma . . ." He keyed in the information, added his ship-code, and stepped back, slipping an arm around her waist. Before them, the screen shimmered, null-words breaking, reforming, then becoming intelligible.
INFORMATION RECEIVED RE PROBLEM VIA GREENTREES.
COME HOME.
"My sister studies espionage. How refreshing." He sighed again and gave Priscilla a slight squeeze before he withdrew his arm. "Adventures, Priscilla! Were you growing bored?"
"Not especially." She hesitated. "Shall I come with you, Captain?"
He reached to touch her cheek. "This is a Clan matter, beloved, not a ship matter; the first mate has no need to be with me. However, I was to have seen Sennel this morning—if you would do the kindness?"
He read her disappointment, a reawakening of the previous night's uncertainties. "Fear not!" he cried with a gaiety his pattern did not reflect. "I very much doubt that this is a clever plot to whisk me away and marry me against my will to some lady from an outworld Clan—"
She laughed in spite of herself as he went across to the dressing room. He was out again in a handful of minutes, sealing the cuffs of a wide-sleeved blue shirt.
"Only see how obedient I am! My father would have expired of astonishment. First mate and captain are to meet with Delm Intassi this afternoon to discuss a possible cargo. If for some reason I cannot go, take Ken Rik with you and present my assurances to Intassi that nothing less than my First Speaker's word would have kept me from such an important appointment."
"Yes." She had flung the balcony door wide and was staring down into the inner garden, her pattern overlaid with the hum that signaled concentrated thought.
Shan stepped to her side and touched her shoulder. "Priscilla?"
She started just slightly, ebon eyes flashing to his face.
"Will you dine with me this evening? It seems we'd best talk again about the maggot in Nova's head." He took her pale hand and kept his eyes steady on hers. "I will marry no other lady, Priscilla. I swear it to you."
Her eyes filled, even as his did. "Shan . . ."