Dragon in Exile - eARC (33 page)

However, Father never inadvertently insulted. Looking at the glittering eyes in the flushed face across the table, Quin wondered if the insult had been inadvertent, after all.

“There were other tables open, sir,” Quin said, keeping his voice mild, and in the mercantile mode.

“The tables were open, but there were no dealers present,” the lordling told him. He was, as were most of the others of the tour, in evening dress. Very ornate evening dress that included several ribbon bouquets placed about his person, in hues of green and gold.

In, Quin thought suddenly,
Korval’s colors
of green and gold. He took a deliberate breath and ran a pilot’s mental exercise, to calm his temper.

“If you come to Surebleak, sir,” Quin said. “You must expect to find Surebleakeans at the Sticks table. I have two bundles on offer: the local variation of twenty-four Sticks, plus the pick; and the full Solcintran bundle with which
your lordship
is of course very familiar.”

The emphasis on
your lordship
came straight out of Terran; it was badly done of him; and the patron was not so drunk that he did not understand that he had been made the object of a private jest.

His already flushed face flushed more deeply.

“
Who are you
?” he demanded.

“The Sticks dealer, sir. Will you have a game?”

“I will know the name of the man who thinks he may laugh at Ran Dom vin’Aqar.”

Grandmother says that well-bred people do not allow their temper rein
, Quin told himself.
She probably thought you were intelligent enough to understand why
.

He gave Ran Dom vin’Aqar a small, and proper, bow of introduction, between equals.

“My name is Quin yos’Phelium Clan Korval.”

Ran Dom vin’Aqar pulled himself up as straight as the drink would allow, and tried to look down his short nose at Quin, who was the taller. Father could bring that manner off—Quin had seen Father look down his nose at Cheever McFarland
many
times.

Let it be known that Pat Rin yos’Phelium need not soon fear Ran Dom vin’Aqar’s superior grasp of mode or
melant’i
.

“There is no Clan Korval!” the drunk lordling stated, loudly enough that all the Liaden speakers in the room stopped talking at once, and all the non-Liaden speakers looked nervously toward the door.

“You are clanless!” Ran Dom vin’Aqar continued, his voice edging upward. “Avert your face!”

Almost, Quin laughed.

Almost, he slapped the silly lordling’s cheek.

Having overridden both of those disastrous impulses, he lifted an eyebrow, and stated, as one informed to the uninformed.

“I am not clanless; merely my clan has been banished.”

“Korval has been written out of the Book of Clans!” the lordling shouted.

“That is a matter of record-keeping concerning the Liaden Council of Clans,” Quin said calmly. “Korval and Korval alone decides when or if the clan exists.”

He leaned forward over the Sticks table and
looked down
at Ran Dom vin’Aqar.

“
Clan Korval exists
.”

“Yes, exactly so,” his father said.

He came forward on Natesa’s arm, he in Liaden evening dress, and she in something utterly inappropriate for Surebleak, though entirely appropriate to Natesa. Quin thought that it might be the dress of her own never-discussed homeworld. It was bright yellow, and spangled with what might have been diamonds; it clung to her slender shape, baring one strong, supple arm, covering the other, cascading to the floor, where a slim, tawny leg was alternately revealed and hidden as she walked.

“Barbarian,” snarled Ran Dom vin’Aqar.

Quin took a breath—and let it out, carefully

Natesa turned black eyes upon the lordling, and slowly examined him, from head to boots, the very faintest hint of disgust on her fine face, as if he were a particularly loathsome sort of beetle.

Then she looked beyond him, and smiled in perfect delight.

“Quin! Welcome home.”

“Mother,” he said, the first time he had given her that. “I am glad to be here.”

“We must to home in truth, however,” Father said, and turned his head to speak to those about them.

“The Emerald Casino is closing for maintenance and restocking in twenty minutes. Please cash out now, and visit us again, in eight hours, local. Quin, will you come?”

“Yes, Father,” he said. He closed and locked the Sticks drawer and walked past Ran Dom vin’Aqar as if he was not standing there, still, shaking in what might be either rage or fear, to take the hand that Natesa held out to him and slip her arm through his.

The three of them strolled about, to all the major stations, his father repeating his message. He also heard Cheever McFarland’s voice, and those of various of the translators.

Slowly, at first, and then with more energy, the patrons moved toward the cash-out cages.

Quin, and Natesa, and Father continued onward through the throng, Father bowing to this one, or that, or pausing now to exchange a pleasantry.

At last the room was empty, and the doors locked against the approaching night.

Father left them to stand before the bar, and looked out over the exhausted staff.

“Go home and rest. The casino opens in eight hours. If you are scheduled for the morning shift, and you have worked less than two full shifts today, you will come in then. There will be extra help on hand at that time, but they will need your patience and your guidance in order to best assist.

“Please be assured that your work during this unprecedented event will be suitably rewarded. A bonus based on net profits received during the time
Lalandia
is in port will be paid to each of you. Details will be made available as we gain time to breathe.”

A laugh, tired but willing, rippled through those gathered.

“I have held you here long enough. Go—go home. Eat. Rest. And thank you, all of you, for your courage and your fortitude.”

Somebody in the back of those assembled began to clap. Soon they were all clapping and whistling.

“Thank you, Boss!” Woody called out. “Everybody say it now,
thank you, Boss
!”

It was loud, but it was obviously heartfelt, and finally they had done, and went away to their various homeplaces, and Father sighed largely, and turned ’round to look at them—Quin, and Natesa, and Cheever McFarland.

“Peace,” he said, “and quiet. Let us, by all means, go home.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Jelaza Kazone

Surebleak

“Certainly, the relocation has done the lawns no good,” ker’Emit sniffed, as the tour bus lumbered up the long drive toward the house. “You remember how lush the grasses were?”

“Alas, you have the advantage of me,” said vel’Siger, who was younger than his seatmate. “I have never been to the homeworld.”

“Well! yos’Galan—
Korval-pernard’i
, you understand—would never have allowed this piebald arrangement. A high stickler, Er Thom yos’Galan;
he
would not have been caught opening up a hole in Solcintra!”

“The young dragon’s fault lay in getting caught, then?” vel’Siger asked lightly.

“He could scarcely avoid it, being off-world as he has been,” Cozin said from the seat behind. “No, Er Thom would have arranged for it to seem that someone else had done the damage, while he was present at a gather in Chonselta, and half the city swearing to his attendance!”

“My grandmother, the old delm, would have done the same—if she found it necessary, of course!” said ker’Emit. “The older generation—you won’t find their match for wit
or
guile today.”

“And certainly not in Val Con yos’Phelium,” kin’Joyt said haughtily. “Upstart puppy. Yes—look at those lawns! He allows his clan to meet the planetary standards. And this business of selling admissions to the house and gardens? Why, when I was a child, my aunt took all of us children to the public days at all of the High Houses. On Jelaza Kazone’s day, Korval’s head gardener took us through the formal gardens and showed us the key to the maze. Inside, we were conducted through the public rooms by the butler, and at the end, we were served tea and cakes on one of the front patios. It was pleasant and completely unexceptionable.

“That was in Daav’s day, of course.” she sniffed again.

“Well, that’s the point of the thing, isn’t it?” Cozin said. “Korval is no longer a Liaden clan; the Council saw to that. They might do business as they have been, outworld—Tree and Dragon Family, indeed!—but surely, now, they are
Surebleakeans
. It would scarcely be in keeping with their new
melant’i
to have the lawns in better case than those around them.”

“Here,” said ker’Emit, as the bus rounded a long curve. “There is the house. Perhaps there will be tea and cakes on the patio!”

“Not in this weather, I hope,” kin’Joyt said. “Even Val Con yos’Phelium must offer his guests a parlor, and the comfort of a small fire.”

“What would Surebleakeans offer?” Cozin asked. “I learn that the natives believe this to be summer—and quite warm, besides!”

“The gate is closed,” vel’Siger said, suddenly. “Perhaps instead we will take our tea in town.”

“They must honor the admission ticket!” ker’Emit snapped. “We can’t have come all this way, in this appalling weather, for nothing. The contract—”

“The contract,” said vel’Siger, “was with the tour company, after all.”

“Who had made all the arrangements!” kin’Joyt said loftily. “Were we to individually purchase tickets from Korval’s
qe’andra
?”

The bus came to a gentle stop. The driver opened the door, and stood.

“I will inquire if there is a problem,” she said. “Perhaps there was a miscommunication. On such a world, who can tell but that a message has gone astray.”

She exited the bus.

Scarcely was she gone than kin’Joyt was on her feet and moving down the aisle, and that, of course was the signal for the rest of them to stand and, jostling somewhat, exit the bus.

The driver was at the gate, and vel’Siger could see a single person on the far side, strolling down from the house toward them. One of the groundskeepers, perhaps, wearing rough trousers and a black jacket open over a dark sweater. His concession to the weather, which was quite bitter, was that the collar was turned up, and his hands were tucked into the pockets of his jacket.

“You, fellow!” the bus driver called. “We are the tour from
Lalandia
. Open for us.”

The fellow made no answer until he came to the gate, where of necessity he stopped, hands still tucked comfortably into his pockets.

“I’m afraid that I will not,” he said, his voice soft, but carrying, for all of that; “open the gate. Please turn around—the drive is quite wide enough—and return to the city. You have no business here.”

“We have admission tickets!” kin’Joyt snapped, pushing forward. “We are entitled to a tour of the house and the inner garden. I am specifically interested in observing the tree. We were never let into the inner garden during the old public days.”

“For very good reason,” the young man at the gate said, in his soft voice. “I doubt you would find the tree to your liking. Nor you to the tree’s liking, though I suppose that must be thought a separate issue.”

A faint rumble reached vel’Siger’s ears, as of wheels on gravel. He looked beyond the young man, and spied a red-haired woman approaching, carrying a child on her hip, and escorted by a…mechanism, with an orange ball perhaps meant to mimic a head. The woman was dressed like the man, though she had at least taken care to bundle the child properly against the weather.

“What do these people want?” the woman asked as she reached the young man’s side.

“They wish to tour the house,
cha’trez
; and to observe the tree.”

Fine brows lifted over grey eyes, and she shifted the child, who laughed at grabbed at her long braid.

“That would be ill-advised,” she said, and looked directly at kin’Joyt.

“Go home,” she said, and the mode was captain to passenger.

This was no groundskeeper at all, vel’Siger realized, with a chill that had nothing to do with the weather.
This
was Korval Themselves, with the heir, and the mechanism could only be yos’Galan’s former butler, about which rumors flew. Its brain had motivated an ancient war machine, that was the most persistent rumor. It yet carried military grade weapons, that was the other rumor.

vel’Siger leapt forward and snatched at kin’Joyt’s sleeve.

“Come away!” he said urgently, and turned to face the other passengers.

“There has been an error,” he said loudly. “We disturb Delm Korval, and we are invited to withdraw. We should do so. Immediately.”

“
I
will not!” snapped kin’Joyt. “I paid an admission and I signed a contract.”

“That may be so,” Val Con yos’Phelium said. “However, you did not sign a contract with Korval, nor did you pay your admission into our accounts. I suggest that you have been cheated, and that your ire is best directed at the tour company. There are
qe’andra
a-plenty in the city, and at the port. Your recourse is there, not here.”

“There is no Korval!” ker’Emit said, unwisely, in vel’Siger’s opinion. He cast a worried glance at the mechanism, but it stood as still as a metal sculpture, the ball surmounting it glowing an inoffensive shade of orange.

“Did you not study the Code?” demanded the red-haired woman—Miri Robertson Tiazan, vel’Siger recalled her name now, from the announcement in the Gazette. Her mode was now as from instructor to student. Which was, he thought, appropriate, as she delivered them a lesson in Code.

“The clan ceases to exist when the delm so decrees. The delm of Korval has not so decreed. That the Council of Clans struck Korval’s name from its member book speaks to the Council’s necessities, which are not Korval’s necessities.

“Korval exists. You stand on private property belonging to Clan Korval, which has been duly registered with the Bosses of Surebleak. This is not a botanical garden—or a zoo.

“Go away.”

The child in her arms crowed loudly, and shook her small fists above her head.

“Indeed,” said Val Con yos’Phelium. “The imaging on your transport must tell you that you have in fact arrived at Jelaza Kazone. This is the base of Clan Korval.

“I add my own suggestion to that of my lifemate: Leave now, and take your complaint to the tour company’s representative. The tour administrators have deceived you. They have taken your money in earnest of a promise that they could not fulfill. I repeat, there are many competent, Guild-certified
qe’andra
in the city and at the Port; you do not lack for recourse.

“I shall not leave until I have placed this hand on the trunk of this
tree
of yours,” kin’Joyt cried, striding toward the gate; “and I have paid for the right to do so!”

No one seemed to have an answer for this, and in the silence that followed, there came a small, creaking noise, as if of a small branch, shifting in the wind.

Val Con yos’Phelium looked upward.

The sound came again, slightly louder as the wind—doubtless the natives considered it a balmy summer zephyr!—suddenly increased.

“Scatter!” Miri Robertson shouted. “Go to ground!”

vel’Siger needed no second encouragement—he leapt, pushing ker’Emit before him, and taking them both to the ground, hands and faces burned by dead grasses, and behind them, the earth boomed, and they
bounced
, amid shouts and screams, and a male voice speaking High Liaden in the mode of Authority.

“Please stand and count off. If you are unable to stand, please remain where you are.”

There came a voice, trembling…”One…” and another, slightly bolder…”Two…”

vel’Siger helped ker’Emit to his feet, adding, “Six” and “Seven” to the count. yos’Galan’s robot stood at the gate. Behind the robot, Val Con yos’Phelium, his lifemate and heir could be glimpsed. A heated conversation appeared to be in process.

vel’Siger turned then, daring to look about him. A…tree branch the length of the tour bus lay in an indentation of its own making upon the drying lawns. It seemed to be not quite dead wood; there were some very few green shoots along its length.

Swallowing, vel’Siger forced himself to look closer, but if kin’Joyt’s body lay beneath, it was entirely covered by the branch.

He drew a breath, and heard in that moment, a breathy and uncertain, “Eighteen.”

Tears started to his eyes.

“Anyone who wishes to place their hand against the tree’s bark may do so now,” Val Con yos’Phelium said inside the gate. “Please make haste, for if your bus has not cleared our drive within the next twelve minutes, the house will call the local law-keepers and have you taken to the Whosegow and charged as vandals.”

“I call mark,” the device at his shoulder stated. “Eleven minutes forty-eight seconds remain.”

ker’Emit began to limp toward the bus; vel’Siger followed. Others of their company also were moving in that direction, save one only, her grey hair disordered and mud streaking her coat.

kin’Joyt’s steps were by no means certain, but she approached the branch. She bent, and she placed her palm against the bark.

“I hope you die here,” she said, her voice pitched to carry. “Cold and alone.”

She straightened then, and walked, not hurrying, to the bus, where the driver was waiting to assist her up the ramp.

The driver then bowed toward the gate—honor to a delm not one’s own—and climbed into the cabin and engaging the engine.

It was to her credit, vel’Siger thought, shivering in his warm seat, that she kept the bus scrupulously to the surface of the drive, and delivered no further trauma to the lawns.

* * *

“While you were gone, I took the liberty of making an adjustment to your security arrangements, my son. I hope you will not find that I have overreached.”

They had just enjoyed an excellent dinner, and were tarrying over a second glass of wine in the dining room—Father, Natesa, Quin, and Cheever McFarland. Father was looking less exhausted now, though he would, Quin thought, surely profit from an early night. By contrast, he was feeling quite energetic, and contemplating a walk in the relatively mild evening.

But, here—an adjustment in his security arrangements?

“I hope I haven’t lost Skene,” he said, and meant it. Skene’s presence hardly weighed on him at all, and she had a gift for knowing when he wished to talk, and when he did not wish to talk.

“I would certainly not remove Ms. Liep from your service without an urgent reason,” Father said, smiling slightly. “In this instance, I have added, not subtracted. Ms. Liep does occasionally need time off, and it seemed that you had sent me a fitting solution to the problem of her back-up.”

Quin frowned at him.

“I, Father?”

“Boy forgot what he did before he lifted,” Cheever McFarland said, sipping from his glass. Cheever McFarland was drinking beer, as he did not care for wine.

“Well, I did tell Villy that I would go to him immediately I was home,” Quin said, recalling that clearly. “As he was not at his table when I came to the Emerald, I believe that I will walk down to Ms. Audrey’s when we are done here, and redeem my word.”

“Very good,” Father said amiably. “You may take your new ’hand with you.”

“But who—” Quin stopped, and looked from his father to Natesa, who was smiling slightly.

The memory rose, and with it, a sense of horror.

“Security Officer pen’Erit?” he cried. “But he doesn’t speak Terran!”

“He does now,” Cheever McFarland said. “Sorta.”

Quin eyed him. “
Sorta
?”

“He does, of course, need to practice what he has learned,” Natesa said, while Father sipped wine, looking wearily amused. “His days since you lifted have been divided between sleep-learning Terran, and being inducted into the household. Pat Rin did not stint his curriculum. I imagine the poor man would welcome a chance to simply provide security, without a lesson dinning in his ears.”

Quin looked to his father.

“I sent him to you because I thought you might find him a place!”

“And so I have found him a place. His gratitude toward yourself is firm; indeed, he confided Mr. McFarland that he found you a well-mannered and gracious young man, such as anyone would be pleased to serve.”

Quin felt his ears warm.

“He will think he is my father.”

“Do you know? He seemed remarkably clear on the identity of your father. I think there is very little danger of that error being made.”

“Quin, if you mean to go to Audrey’s house, it really might be best to have pen’Erit by you. Especially this evening.”