The Sardonyx Net (18 page)

Mindful of the heat, he walked slowly north, toward Main Landingport.
 

Rhani listened as Dana and Binkie left the house. Like a cat waking, she shook herself. She was ashamed of her ill temper. She made herself pick up the topmost bank report. She worked through the first page. The second page blurred. She could not seem to keep her attention on it.
 

Amri knocked. “Shall I straighten the room for you, Rhani-ka?”
 

“Yes, go ahead.” She lifted the report. But the rustle of the sheets annoyed her. “Leave it. Go away,” she snapped. Frightened, the girl scuttled off. Exasperated with herself, Rhani almost threw the paper to the floor. She laid it gently on the desk. She had not slept; she could not concentrate; none of this was Amri's fault.
 

It's Abanat, she thought. It distracts. She stood up. She could not be comfortable inside the grim old house. The park was close, a step. She would take a walk. Founders' Green was private and safe: the iron fence and the gates kept it cut off from idle traffic. Leaving her room, she went downstairs.
 

Corrios was in the hall. He grunted at her: it meant, “
All right?
”
 

“I'm fine,” she said. Her sunshades hung from the hook. “I'm going for a walk.”
 

Corrios stood in her path as she turned toward the door.
 

She had snapped at Amri; she would not snap at him. Gently, she said, “What is it?”
 

His face was distressed. “Don't.”
 

“Don't what?” she said with heavy patience.
 

He jerked a thumb at the door.
 

Her pulse thudded. She said, “Did Zed tell you to lock me in?”
 

He shook his head.
 

“Then this is your own idea. It's a bad one.”
 

He folded his arms. In the dim hallway, he was immeasurably bigger than she, a mountain. Rhani glared at him. Her fists clenched. “Corrios Rull, this is stupid. You are not going to keep me in if I want to leave.” Her raised voice echoed down the hall.
 

He said nothing.
 

Tense with fury, Rhani said, “Very well. You've worked for Family Yago for fifty years. You'll lose that place in three seconds if you don't move from that door. One. Two.” She opened her mouth to say, “Three.” Corrios stepped aside. Rhani slid the door open and slammed it behind her.
 

She ran down the steps to the street, ears ringing with rage. She couldn't remember the last time she'd slammed a door. Sunlight fell like a hand upon her shoulders. She slowed. She unclenched her fingers, knuckle by knuckle. Anger was a waste of time. She dusted her palms together. There. She was no longer angry. She crossed the street to the Green and walked along it, tapping the fence. Shaded by thick tree trunks, the iron spikes were cool. She heard the voices of children quarreling in the park. She changed her mind. She walked south, to the broad, crowded Boulevard.
 

The entertainers were out: jugglers, dancers, musicians all competing vigorously for the attention of the tourists. At one street corner, an ebony-skinned acrobat performed a graceful backbend, muscles rippling. Rhani stood and watched her for a while. At last she went on. Her head began to feel hot. She touched her hair; it was dry as Chabadese grass. She had forgotten how the light in Abanat ricocheted off walkways and walls and clothing, and she thought: Stupid, you should have brought a parasol.
 

Oh, well. If she wanted one, she could buy one. She sauntered down the Boulevard.
 

Suddenly, across the street, she saw Dana. She lifted a hand to wave him to her. But the person—who, she realized, was in fact
not
him—did not see the gesture, and walked quickly by. The apparition was disquieting. She walked another block, and seeing where her feet had carried her, started to smile. She faced a gray house, much like her own. But someone had carved an axe, posed to strike, on the façade, in place of her own Yago “Y.”
 

She went to it, knocked, and was admitted.
 

The Dur house smelled of wax, the wax of beeswax candles, imported from Belle. Domna Sam had burned them profligately, preferring them even to sunlight. Over the years the smell had soaked into the walls and curtains and rugs of the house and even into the stone shell itself. A slave ran within to announce her; a second slave ushered her through the front hall to the parlor. Ferris Dur rose to greet her. He was taller than she, and bulky—loose-fleshed, she thought. He had the pale complexion of someone who has spent little time in the sun.
 

In that, Rhani thought, if in nothing else, he resembles his mother. He had brown eyes, too, like Domna Sam. She had not thought very much of him, Rhani knew. “He plays with toys!” she had said once. “Toys, from a Dur!” Rhani had no idea what she had meant. Ferris was reaching to grasp her hand. She pressed his briefly, and drew her fingers back. He seemed to want to hold on to them.
 

“Rhani Yago,” he said. “I just received your message. This is a pleasant surprise. Please be seated.”
 

“Thank you,” Rhani said. She glanced around the parlor. It was not a room she knew; Domna Sam had always invited visitors upstairs to her bedroom. Ferris had turned the room into his office, with desk and com-unit. It was filled with dark, heavy furniture and portraits of long-dead Durs. It had to be the only room in the house that didn't smell of candles. She sat in a chair. A slave came in with a platter of food and a decanter of chilled wine.
 

Rhani said, “I hope I haven't upset the workings of your household.” The slave poured the wine. She wore a broad dorazine smile.
 

“My household would be in poor straits if it could not accommodate itself to a visit from Rhani Yago.” Ferris snapped his fingers; the slave withdrew. “Are you comfortable?”
 

“Yes, thank you,” Rhani said. She sipped the wine. “This is delicious.”
 

Ferris flushed with pleasure. He was wearing a red robe, trimmed with kerit fur. He stroked the fur lightly. “I hope all is well with Family Yago.”
 

Sweet mother, Rhani thought, is he always this stilted and formal? No wonder his mother couldn't bear to have him around! Let's see: I'm facing a dorazine shortage, the kerits are dying at Sovka, and people are trying to kill me. Matching Ferris' formal tone, she said, “Quite well, thank you. I hope all is well with Family Dur.”
 

“Nothing's wrong that I can't handle,” he said sharply. He smoothed the robe again. The unconscious gesture seemed to calm him.
 

Rhani said, “I admire your self-confidence.”
 

He peered at her, and she realized that he thought, or feared, that she was making fun of him. What a silly, awkward man! She said, “Ferris, were you coming to see me this afternoon on a social visit?”
 

He shook his head. “No. I rarely make social calls.”
 

Inwardly, Rhani sighed. “You know,” she said, “I received your letters. I'm afraid I found them a little peremptory.”
 

He looked abashed. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I'm afraid I pay less attention to the niceties than my mother did.”
 

Domna Sam never bothered to be delicate either, Rhani reflected, but she at least knew how. She leaned back in the chair. The images of dead and forgotten Durs looked down their painted noses at her from the walls.
 

“Well,” she said, “shall we talk business? As I recall, your letters said you had something very important to discuss with me. ‘Business of import to Chabad ...'?”
 

“Yes,” said Ferris. “It is important. I would like to propose an alliance between Family Dur and Family Yago. A permanent alliance.”
 

Rhani frowned. Clearly he was not talking about a kerit farm.
 

She said, “What sort of permanent alliance?”
 

He licked his lips nervously. “A marital alliance,” he said, and went on before she could talk; “I know what you're thinking; Yagos don't marry. Neither do Durs. I am thinking of it primarily as a business arrangement.”
 

Marriage? Rhani thought. He's crazy, that's all. He wants to marry me? She wondered if this could be one of Domna Sam's schemes. For Domna Sam's sake, she would listen. “Perhaps you could be more specific,” she said.
 

He leaned forward. “I propose,” he said, “that you and I marry, and have a child—at least one child, but that would be up to you—upon whom we could settle a joint inheritance. This agreement would enable our two Families to unite finances as well as lines. The investment advantages of such a merger would be tremendous. It could be profitable for both Families, and for Chabad.”
 

Rhani rubbed her chin. “The other Families will be quite disturbed,” she pointed out.
 

He shrugged. “So what?”
 

“It runs counter to all our customs.”
 

“Yes,” he said, “but then, it could create others.” He reached, and took a piece of cheese off the mother-of-pearl inlaid tray. Rhani's glass was empty; she put it down. The slave shuffled forward to refill it. “No, that's enough,” Rhani said, and the glassy-eyed woman stepped back. The vacant smile was distressing; Rhani looked away.
 

She rarely thought about it, but she had always taken for granted that someday, not soon, she would bear a child. Part of her responsibility as a Yago was to produce an heir. Until then, pills controlled her fertility. She had suppressed as soon as she reached adulthood what it had felt like to
be
a child. When Aliza Kyneth's youngest was born, she visited the house, and Aliza had let her hold the baby. “I feel silly—clumsy,” she had said, cupping the dark fuzzy head to her breast.
 

Imre took his son from her and cradled him with casual competence. He teased, “There's more where he came from if you drop him.”
 

Would it, she wondered, have felt different, would she have felt less clumsy, if she'd been holding her own child?
 

With a slight shock, she realized that she was taking Ferris' proposal seriously.
 

He was watching her anxiously; so, she thought, must he often have watched his mother. “If what you really want is for the Yago and Dur finances to merge,” she said, “why not propose a corporate merger?” She wondered what he would answer.
 

He shook his head. “We can't,” he said. “The Founders' Agreement prohibits it. The only way to change something in the Founders' Agreement is to have a planetary referendum and add a section to the Constitution.”
 

“And marriage between us does not constitute a violation of the Agreement?” she said.
 

“It would, if we did not put fifty percent of our joint capital in trust for the child, or children.”
 

“What control would we retain of this capital?” she said. “Who would execute the trust?”
 

“On Chabad?” he said, surprised. “Anyone we like.”
 

It was true. Rhani smiled, wondering if she could name as executor the Investment Committee of the Yago Bank. Arranging to place fifty percent of Yago Corporation capital in a trust might be difficult, but she thought it could be managed. Or did the statute mean fifty percent of her personal capital? She would have to read the Agreement—something she had not done in fifteen years—or, better still, discuss the entire scheme with her legal staff.
 

She would have to do that anyway, of course. She wondered what the other Families would say about it, and why none of them had ever thought of such a thing. They were so accustomed to inter-Family rivalry, to competition, to spying and bargaining and making secret deals.... Such a merger, she thought, would change utterly the balance of power on Chabad.
 

That was not an unattractive thought.
 

Hesitantly she said, “This could not be our private agreement, Ferris. Our legal departments would have to work out a contract.”
 

“Of course.” His voice was eager. “So you think it's a good idea?”
 

She scowled. “I'm not accepting the offer. I want to think about it.”
 

“Yes, I understand,” he said. He pushed the tray with foodstuffs at her. “Won't you have something to eat?”
 

Because she was his guest, Rhani took an applestick from the tray, and bit slowly through the red rind to the soft white heart. She wondered if Ferris thought they could be lovers. “You know,” she said, “I have always preferred to arrange my own liaisons....”
 

He flushed, deeply embarrassed. “I'm sure we can arrange not to interfere with each others' private lives.”
 

She watched his fingers stroke the fur of his robe, wondering what he was like in bed. The prospect did not excite her. He probably liked to bed slaves. Slaves.... She thought of her brother. What would he think of this? “Is that all you have to discuss with me?” she said.
 

With the first sign of humor she had seen from him, he said diffidently, “Isn't that enough?”
 

Rhani felt suddenly very sorry for him, alone in this great house with only ghosts and slaves on dorazine for company. But pity, she thought, was a bad base on which to do business. It was too bad he was so unattractive.... She stood. Ferris rose. “Thank you very much for your hospitality, Ferris. I shall go home now.”