Mouse and Dragon

Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon

Chapter Twenty

Norbear—Size: 16–22 cm; Weight: 121–180 g. Furred quadrupedal mammal with a burrowing habit; soft dense coat, ranging in color from grey, brown, black, orange, white and mixed. Herbivore. Fearless and lively disposition, natural empath. Adapts well to domestication. Banned on certain worlds. Check port rules before importing.

—Courier Wildlife Guide, Fourteenth Edition

The back door opened onto a service platform overlooking a thin alley harshly lit by vapor spots. Aelliana stood quietly at Daav's side, doubtless trying to figure out what it was that he saw which eluded her.

In fact, he saw only an empty alleyway, and some bits of trash fluttering in the corner made by the intersection of ramp and foundation.

“It's stopped snowing,” she observed.

“So it has.”

“I wonder, van'chela, why we exited this way, rather than by the main door?”

It was a fair question, and one that a new pilot might with honor ask of a port-wise comrade. The pity being that he had no answer nearly so fair to offer her in return. Scout instincts, pilot instincts—things learned through bone and blood, recalled by the deep mind, acted upon, and never questioned . . . How did one explain, without seeming to be perfectly demented? Worse, how did one teach, except as one had been taught—by trial and error, and the occasional laceration or broken bone?

Still, he told himself, rallyingly, there must have been a reason, mustn't there have, Daav? Only take a moment to reflect, and no doubt it will come to you.

He cast his mind back to the main room: the dance floor, the charmingly attired wait staff, the tables made private by the wafting smoke. Had there been a potential for danger, an . . . oddity, damn Clarence and his ghosts! The tension in a shoulder; the attitude of a head? Some small thing set slightly out of place? An object that ought to have been there, noticed only by its absence?

He sighed.

“I don't know,” he admitted. “Forgive me, Aelliana.”

She looked up into his face, her eyes deeply green in the sulfurous light.

“Forgive you? For heeding your training, which has kept you safe on dozens of ports, and in far stranger places? I can scarcely find that a fault, van'chela, nor any cause for forgiveness. Had your training been less thorough, or yourself less advertent, I might never have met you, nor known what it was I lived in lack of.”

If, indeed, her brother had allowed her to live so long. Horror shivered through him; it had been so near a thing, their meeting so much a matter of chance . . .

“Daav? Is there something amiss?”

“Nothing amiss,” he said, forcibly shaking off the chill, and producing a smile to soothe her. “I was merely thinking that the luck moves along strange pathways.”

“So it does,” she agreed, and glanced about them once again. “If there is nothing here for us, do you think that we might leave?”

“In fact, I do!” He preceded her down the ramp, in case the fluttering litter should suddenly turn feral, and nodded to the left as she joined him on the alley's floor.

“I propose that we find us a convivial place for a glass and a bit of supper, now that we're at leisure.”

Aelliana tipped her head, her stance wistful. “I had hoped to see more of the port.”

Of course she would, he chided himself; this was her first new port—her first world that was not the homeworld! Who would not wish to walk such streets and marvel that she had come so far?

“There's no requirement that we find supper at the first shop displaying a glass,” he pointed out, and was rewarded by her smile.

“There isn't, is there?” she said. “We are free to meet our own fancy. Let us, if you will humor me, walk.” She held out her hand, inviting, and he stepped forward to take it in his own.

“By all means, let us walk and observe the port! It has been an age since I've been at leisure to tour.”

* * *

They bought bowls of stew from a cart outside of a greens market, and fresh-squeezed juice from a stall inside. Leaning on the railing at the observation window, they ate while watching pallets of vegetables being offloaded from rail cars, to ride the conveyors into the vendor area below.

After, they went back out onto the port and walked, taking turns choosing their direction. At some point in their meanderings the snow began again, riding a freshening breeze. Aelliana shivered and turned up the collar of her jacket, curling her hands into warm pockets.

They found a bakery open at the edge of what might have been a day-side business district, ate lemon squares and drank hot tea at a tiny round table while in the back the baker prepared the next day's dough.

Warmed by tea and sugar, they went on the prowl again, pausing by a map board so that she could discover the locations of such landmarks as the Portmaster's Office, the Pilots Guild, Healer Hall, and Port Security. There were pointers to various ferries: the Ocean Line, the Mountain Line, the City Line—and the shuttle to the Pleasure Quarters.

“The Pleasure Quarters?” she murmured. “What do you suppose that is?”

“I am without information. Shall we find if the shuttle is running and explore?”

Her laugh was swallowed by a yawn.

“Perhaps tomorrow,” she said. “For tonight, van'chela, I think it might be time to seek our ship, and our bed.”

“Well enough,” Daav answered. “It's always good to have a plan for the morrow.” He considered the map briefly, and raised a hand to trace out a route.

“If we go north, past Avontai Port 'change, we'll cut the corner of the Entertainment District, and so come back to the public yard.” He glanced down at her. “Or shall we find a cab?”

“I think I can walk so far—unless you're chilled?”

“My legs are long, and walking keeps the chill away.”

“Then we are in accord. Lead on, sir.”

He smiled and led them back across the square.

“I remember when you insisted on sir,” he said.

Aelliana chuckled. “And I remember when you insisted on 'Daav'—or 'pilot,' if I must.” She slipped her hand into his pocket and curled her fingers 'round his. “Each as stubborn as the other—even then. I wonder . . . ” She paused.

“Wonder?”

“The boy to whom we delivered the dulciharp. I wonder how he will go on, in his changed life. If he will be happy, or become a master, or if his delm will bid him stay . . . ”

“Ah, but it is the fate of couriers never to know the end of the tale. We fly in, deliver our package, take up our cargo—and fly out. We are agents of change only insofar as we have adhered to the terms of our contract. Those things that we set in motion go on to their fruition, without our knowledge and beyond our aid.”

They crossed a boulevard that must, Aelliana thought, be very busy by day, and turned down a street sparsely illuminated by the spill of night lights from sleepy shop windows. The snow had stopped again, leaving glittering arabesques around darkened signs, icy scallops at the edges of windows.

“Asleep, Pilot?” Daav murmured, when they had traversed the block in companionable silence.

“Merely content. It's very quiet, isn't—”

“No!” The cry shattered the crystalline quiet, like a knife thrown through glass. “No, give it back!”

She felt a jolt of adrenaline, a shock of necessity, and she was running, hot on Daav's heels, toward the scream, which was, one small, rational part of her mind pointed out, surely unsafe. They ought to be running away, to find a call box, or a proctor—

“Don't let it get loose!” That was another voice, angry and perhaps a little afraid.

She rounded the corner, swinging out so that she not slam into Daav, who had frozen into near invisibility, watching.

Halfway down the thin alley, a pilot was on his knees in a drift of snow, arms raised, hands reaching, every line etched with desperation. Before him were ranged five port toughs, their ranks opening to receive a sixth, carrying a bag that had surely been reft from the downed pilot.

“Give it back!” If words could bleed, these did. “I have money . . . ” He reached into his jacket, pulled out a pouch, his hand shaking so that the coins jangled clearly.

“Take it—the jacket, my boots—take what you like, but return—”

A rock smashed into the wall just beyond the pilot's shoulder. He cowered, throwing his hands up, a small, broken sound escaping from his throat.

“Please . . . ”

“Please . . . ” One of the six sobbed, mockingly. “We saw what you have in this bag and we know how to deal with it!”

“No! Give it back! I'll take it offworld!”

Another rock came out of the cluster of tormentors.

The pilot gasped when it struck his arm.

“Stop that!” someone shouted, her voice strong in the Command mode. Aelliana was standing at the downed pilot's side before she realized that the voice was hers, and that her position was unsafe in the extreme.

“Another one!” “Is she holding another?” “Search her!” “Take them both down!”

A rock flew toward them, its trajectory flat and purposeful. Aelliana saw its course unwind inside her head, saw that it would strike the pilot's unprotected head, and danced sideways. She snatched the missile out of the air as if it were a bowli ball, allowing the energy to spin her, releasing as she came back around, sending the rock back, low and fast, into the crowd, directly to the one who had thrown it—

Bone broke with an audible crunch, followed by a scream and a disturbance among the crowd.

“My ankle! She broke my ankle!”

“Enough!”

That voice brooked no disobedience; the crowd froze, the screams subsiding to moans. Aelliana maintained her position between the wounded pilot and harm, as Daav strode toward the crowd.

“You!” he snapped. “Surrender the pilot's case!”

“Oh, no you don't!” came the returning snarl. “It's a norbear in here, and it's bound for the river with a rock in the bottom of the bag to keep it company.”

Behind her, Aelliana heard the pilot whisper a scream.

“Give me the bag,” Daav repeated. “I am a Scout captain. I hereby take possession of the contraband item and will dispose of it in the prescribed manner.” He paused, his hand extended. “Which is not throwing it in the river.”

“It'll take over your mind,” someone else in the crowd shouted. “Scout captain or not!”

“If he is a Scout captain!”

“Am I not?” Daav demanded and flowed forward, swift and silent, his hand suddenly on the bag holder's shoulder.

“Surrender the norbear,” he said softly. “You do not wish to incite my pilot to further violence against you.”

There was a general mutter, a moan of “My ankle . . . ” and that quickly the bag was in Daav's hand and five of them backing away.

“But what about him?” demanded a voice from the rear. “The proctors will have business with him, bringing that perversion here!”

“We will take care of the pilot,” Aelliana heard her voice assert. She bit her lip.

“I suggest,” Daav said, stepping to her side, “that you disperse. One of your number has injured herself and requires medical attention. That is your first order of business and your closest concern. These other matters will be taken care of appropriately.”

Perhaps it was the absolute certainty of Daav's voice; perhaps it was the continued whimpering of their downed comrade. Whichever, the crowd faded away, and very shortly they were alone in the alley with the wounded pilot.

“Thank you, Scouts, thank you . . . I am in your debts . . . ”

The pilot thrust clumsily to his feet, slamming his uninjured arm against the wall with no regard for bruises. He extended an unsteady hand.

“I'll be off now. I swear, we will be off-planet before dawn, and never come back here. Just be good enough to hand me the case—”

“You're wounded!” Aelliana protested. “Daav, we must find him a medic!”

There was a small pause, then Daav went to one knee on the alley floor. He opened the top of the case, just a little, and peered inside. A furry hand crept over the edge, and gripped his finger.

The wounded pilot whined, high and futile in the back of his throat.

Daav sighed.

“You're quite safe,” he told the bag, at his most matter-of-fact. “Recruit yourself now and allow us to do what must be done.”

He closed the bag and swept gracefully to his feet. The glance he spared for wounded pilot was . . . not kind.

“My pilot and I will escort you to the Healers,” he said, which, Aelliana thought, was sensible. The Healers would have an autodoc, and it was plain that the pilot had sustained other, less visible injuries. He shook where he stood, and his posture was of one who expected a blow to fall at any moment. Aelliana swallowed against a sudden surge of tears. So had she been, and look what wonders the Healers had wrought for her.

“There is sense in what the Scout says,” she said gently. “Come, let us go to the top of the street and hail a cab.”

The Healers kept a small house in the port; barely larger than the bakery at which she and Daav had eaten their lemon squares, hours or days ago. What they lacked in scope, however, they more than made up for in action. Scarcely had the door opened to them than the wounded pilot was whisked away upstairs, while they and the case were left to stand in a chilly parlor considerably less spacious than The Luck's piloting chamber.

“Perhaps,” Aelliana said, when half a glass had fallen and no one had yet come to speak with them. “We should simply leave the . . . case, van'chela, and return to our ship.”

The item under discussion was sitting on the floor against his leg. He glanced down thoughtfully. “That might, after all be—”

“Nay, nay! The case and its contents must go, and also the noisy empath! You, my lady mathematician, are just the woman to take them both in hand!”

A thin man with a well-lined face and fading ginger-colored hair swept into the parlor, pale robes trembling about him.

“I beg your pardon?” Aelliana stammered. “We are here in aid of another pilot, and—”

“Yes, yes! It was well that you brought him to us; we can assist—but not until that creature is well away, and you!” He spun to stare up into Daav's face. “You are disrupting every Healer in the Hall!”

“My apologies to the Hall,” Daav murmured.

He took a breath, closed his eyes, and seemed to—to step away from himself. Aelliana gasped, for truly he burned less vividly inside the dingy little room. He opened his eyes, and her heart cramped; his gaze was remote, as if he looked across a distance too great to bear interest, or humor, or love.

“Daav . . . ”

She stepped forward, hand rising—her wrist was caught by the Healer, his bony fingers surprisingly strong.

“Yes, that is well done and I thank you!” he said snappishly, apparently to Daav. “Maintain yourself thus, and give respite to those who shielded themselves in time to avoid a headache! Pilot—”

He turned to Aelliana, releasing her with a small bow. “As improbable as it seems, this man will do as you tell him. Tell him, I implore you, to take up the norbear and go away with you, back to your ship and off of Avontai, immediately!”

“We had thought,” Daav said, in a too-calm voice, “to leave the norbear in the care of the house. The Healers on Liad often take charge of such strays.”

“This is not the homeworld!” the Healer snapped, and sighed. “Forgive me—you are not informed. We dare not keep the creature here, Pilots. Avontai has a horror of such things as mind control—we are barely tolerated—and only if we are careful not to interfere too much! To hold a norbear in-house would be to destroy the Hall. We cannot allow even such limited aid as we may offer to falter on one life—any life. You have interfered in an alleyway brawl, which you surely know better than—and now you must pay the price. Remove yourselves to a place of safety greater than Avontai. We have summoned a cab—go now!”

Aelliana met Daav's remote black gaze and shivered.

“What is your name?” she asked the Healer.

“I am Hall Master Ver Sev. Feel free to use my name with the Portmaster. Now, will you go? Every moment those two linger here is a moment that those in pain are without surcease.”

She could, Aelliana thought, scarcely be so coldhearted as to remain in the face of such distress. She cleared her throat.

“Daav?”

“Aelliana, it is well,” he told her in that too-calm voice.

She doubted it, but there again, if departing this place won him wholly back to her, then she wished to tarry not one heartbeat longer.

“If you please,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Bring the . . . norbear and let us go.”

Calmly, he bent and picked up the case.

The Master Healer sighed, noisily. “Just through there, Pilot. The cab awaits.”

Carrying the case, Daav left the parlor first. As Aelliana followed him out into the foyer, she heard Master Ver Sev say, softly, “Thank you, Pilot.”

The Luck's hatch sealed securely behind them, and Aelliana spun, fright and confusion flaring into anger.

“Daav yos'Phelium, stand forth and tell me what has happened!”

He tipped an eyebrow; she thought his gaze was sharper now, but he maintained a reserve that was both unfamiliar and unwelcome.

“What would you know, Pilot?”

“What is that—that norbear? Why must we take it off-world? Is it dangerous? Where are we to take it? What happened to you?”

“A comprehensive beginning list,” he murmured, and his eyes were sharper; his expression sardonic, his whole self coming back into focus.

“As for the norbear . . . ” He dropped to one knee and opened the bag wide.

“Come out now, rogue, and show yourself to the pilot. Understand, I can do nothing if she decides to space you, or to bake you and serve you up for tea. She is the final authority here, and it is she whose patronage you must win.”

As before, a small, furry hand rose to grip the side of the case. The hand rested for a moment, was joined by a second, and then a pair of round ears, a round head and large, liquid eyes. It paused with its nose level with the case, as if giving her a moment to accommodate herself.

“It understands?” she asked Daav.

“To a certain point. The questions being—which point, and whether he also misunderstands or only ignores one.”

She frowned at the creature, knelt, and tapped the deck before her with a forefinger.

“Come here, norbear.”

It blinked, as if considering the request, then all at once it was scrambling out of the case, sliding and hitting the deck firmly on its rounded rump. Undeterred, it performed a graceless somersault, got all four feet oriented and bumbled toward her. It tried to stop on the spot she had indicated, but its claws got no purchase on the decking and it slid the last distance, bumped into her hand, skittered a little, and sat, one paw braced on the deck and the other on her knee.

She stared down at it. A less offensive creature would be difficult to imagine, yet neither the crowd's horror nor the Healer's fear had been feigned. It bore her scrutiny with the good humor that seemed its chiefest characteristic; not so large as a cat, nor yet so small as a mouse, its brown fur was shot with ripples of orange. Aelliana bit her lip, fighting a desire to laugh—and another, to gather it up and rub her cheek against its plush fur.

Instead, she raised her head and looked to her copilot, who was watching the proceedings with interest.

“This is a creature so dangerous that it must be put to death on sight, and all of its kind are banned from Avontai Port?”

“From Avontai entire, if I understood the Master Healer correctly. As for dangerous—there are some humans who are susceptible, and some of norbear kind, I expect, who are rather loud—”

The norbear turned its round head to regard him, as if wounded.

Daav grinned and inclined his head. “As one who is also loud may say without prejudice. The pilot we found was, I expect, extremely susceptible, and our rogue there has already admitted to loud.”

“But—mind control?”

“Norbears are natural empaths. If you are melancholy, a norbear may help you feel . . . better. If you are frightened, a norbear may leach your fear. Someone who is in . . . a great deal of pain—as I suspect our rescued pilot was—might quickly become addicted. After all,” he added softly, “there are few delights more poignant than the absence of pain.”

Aelliana looked at him sharply, felt the discrete prick of claws through the fabric of her trousers and looked down.

The norbear met her eyes, and stood up on its hind legs, reaching one hand high.

Barely considering, Aelliana picked the creature up and brought it up to her shoulder, where it settled itself as if it were the most natural thing in all the worlds. It caught a disordered lock of hair in its hand and leaned companionably against her ear. There came a contented buzzing, growing slightly louder.

Aelliana looked to Daav.

“It's purring.”

“Apparently he does not wish to be served up for tea.”

“That's all very well, but where are we to take it? Liad?”

Daav frowned slightly.

“I think not,” he said eventually. “But I may know better, later.”

“Oh? And how will that be?”

“I propose to retire with our guest to the acceleration couch, to make sure of his comfort while you lift us to an outer orbit. It may be that two loud empaths will share dreams during such a time. At the very least, we may all rest once we are safely off-world, and be able to make better plans on the morrow.”

Aelliana closed her eyes, feeling a certain creeping weariness.

“It has been a full evening,” she said, and rose, the norbear riding her shoulder easily.

Daav rose as well, and moved toward her, face watchful.

“What happened to me,” he said softly, “is a . . . method, somewhat like the Rainbow. It's true that my presence sometimes dismays Healers, especially those already under stress. I was not absent from you, Aelliana, only . . . at rest.”

She sighed, not understanding, but lacking the energy to pursue the topic further at this moment.

“Very well, sir. If you will take our passenger and render—him?—safe and comfortable, I will call the Tower and postulate an urgent packet from Master Ver Sev at Healer Hall.”

Daav smiled. “Excellent, Pilot.”

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