Mouse and Dragon

Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon

Chapter Thirty-Three

Korval is contract-bound to stand as Captain to all the passengers until released by the Council of Clans, the successor to the Transition Committee. I should've written that contract looser, but who knew we'd even survive?

—Excerpted from Cantra yos'Phelium's Log Book

The window was open, admitting the sounds of the nighttime garden. Inside, the room was cozily bathed in butter-yellow light. Daav was stretched on his side on the sofa, reading his letters. Aelliana, on the chaise, with Lady Dignity's chin on her ankle, looked up from her screen, and considered him.

“Did you say something?”

He raised his head, black eyes dancing.

“I did not, though I might have done.” He rattled the paper in his hand. “Here's an invitation for Kiladi to teach a guest seminar on cultural genetics. Impossible, of course, but one cannot help to be proud of his accomplishments and the notice he receives from his peers.”

“Why is it 'impossible, of course'?” Aelliana asked. “Scholar Kiladi has much to offer. Some of his students at least found him to be of use.”

“One of his students,” Daav amended, shaking his hair back from his face.

Aelliana smiled. He had thought to cut his hair when they became lifemates, which was the custom of the tribe of the grandmother whom he honored. He had allowed, however, that the decision ultimately rested with his wife and that the grandmother would never gainsay the mother of another tent.

“You may drag a crimson fish across my path, but I will not be diverted,” she told him, pleased to recall Anne's phrase. “Even to alter the thought of a single student is sometimes enough reward for all a teacher's efforts. It is the duty of scholarship to share, and to illuminate. Scholar Kiladi publishes—and so he ought!—but that is no substitute for teaching.”

“To teach, Kiladi would need to absent himself—and myself, his willing vessel—for somewhat more than a relumma.”

Aelliana moved her shoulders. “There's no trick to that. We have already established that we may absent ourselves from the homeworld in the service of our courier business—which I have no intention to give up, you know! If Scholar Kiladi must remain a stranger to your kin, then it is simplicity itself to take ourselves out and away, and offload the Scholar at whatever port he likes. In the meanwhile, I will hire me a Guild copilot and work the ports, returning for the Scholar at a prearranged time and place.”

Daav smiled and her heart constricted in her chest.

“You've given this some thought, I see? Who knew you would take so well to subterfuge?”

She bent a serious gaze upon him. “I had a good teacher.”

Daav laughed, and folded the letter. “Well, it is a plan—but a plan, I think, for the future. Let us first have our child in arms. I do not wish to be apart from you when the event occurs, nor do I wish you to be in the hands of a hired copilot, docked on a third-tier world, when the child decides.”

He was worried still, Aelliana thought. They had had a Healer and a physician, neither of whom felt that the birth was beyond her. She suspected that his concern had root in her past, to which he now had access, as she had access to his. The heightened sensitivity, the Healer had said, was an effect of her pregnancy and would become less potent once the child was delivered. How much less potent, he had not ventured to say, nor whether Daav would retain his late-found ability to experience her as she did him.

“Perhaps Scholar Kiladi might plead a prior commitment,” she said, “and ask them to place him on the lists for next year,”

Daav nodded. “I will suggest that course to him,” he said, and smiled again, tenderly. “I love you, Aelliana.”

It was enough to bring tears to her eyes. She blinked them clear.

“I love you, Daav.”

Having mutually renewed their bond, Daav returned to his mail and she to her paper. They worked comfortably for some time; Aelliana so immersed that it was not until she reached the end of the section and had closed her screen that she realized that Daav was very still, indeed, and that he had been so for some time.

Carefully, her eyes on him, she put the screen on the table next to the chaise, and shifted her ankle from beneath Lady Dignity's chin. There was a taste in the air, sharp but not unpleasant, like ozone, which she equated with profound thought.

“Is there something that requires solving?” she asked, rising. She smoothed her robe, watching him. So very still . . .

He sighed sharply and looked up.

“Alas, it appears that the little difficulty in the Low Port is beginning to drift upward to Mid Port. Clarence's efforts are all for naught, which leaves me not knowing precisely what to think, as my most constant source of information in the matter is Clarence.”

Someone was targeting pilots in the Low Port; she had read Clarence's dispatches, as well as some less detailed reports from other persons of Daav's acquaintance.

“Do you think that Clarence is lying to you, van'chela? What could be his reason?”

Daav shook his head, brows drawn, which made him look fierce, indeed. She received, as if wafted on the breeze from window, one scent among many, a sense of frustrated dismay, and a hard edge of—

“Daav!” She stepped forward, more quickly than she had intended, one hand extended, as if to ward the very thought. “You cannot consider assassinating Clarence!”

He grimaced and held his hand out. She took it, and allowed herself to be brought down to sit on the sofa, her back against his belly.

“I would very much rather consider assassinating any number of other people, rather than Clarence. Alas, he puts himself in harm's way.”

“You do not know that!” she protested.

"No, I don't. However, Clarence is not usually so ineffective. Time and again, he closes—only to find himself grasping a fistful of smoke. If this culprit is so clever as to elude him consistently on what he likes to call his port, that is very worrisome, and it may be that Clarence requires some aid which he is too proud—or too dismayed—to ask for.

“If, on the other hand, it is Clarence's office that is the source of these instances of pilot disappearances, cargo thefts, and shipnappings, it benefits him to provide false information.”

He fell silent; Aelliana, leaning comfortably against him, felt the force of his intelligence at work, and something else. Something—a memory?

“What is it? Has this happened before?”

Daav breathed a laugh, which she read as carrying an undercurrent of resignation.

“I have no secrets from you, my lady.”

“Indeed,” she said, “there must be a way for you to have them, if they are vital to your joy. We ought to explore the subject with a Healer. For the moment, however—”

“Yes.” Daav sighed.

“Many years ago,” he said slowly, “my mother was still alive. She had heard of a situation in the Low Port of which she could not approve. Someone, you see, was stealing pilots. Clarence was newcome to Liad and to his station as Boss. My mother did not know him, as she had known his predecessor—and to be fair, she probably did not expect that he would last more than a relumma, following the pattern of the two replacements previous to him.”

Aelliana held up a hand. “This predecessor. Would your mother have asked her for information, had she still been in office?”

"Very likely; they had a very good working relationship. However, Boss Toonapple not being available, and Clarence an unknown, she sent me down to Low Port to gain the lay of the land and to see what I might find.

"To keep a long tale as short as I might—I found a pilot-taker and Clarence, he having been on the same scent. We took her together, but alas we could not keep her. As I was shortly thereafter called back to the Scouts, Clarence mounted a thorough inspection, aided by my mother, and the predations—stopped.

“I had until this day always believed that Clarence was as earnest in keeping his port safe for pilots as was Korval, and that the thief we had taken together—was as little of his as she was Korval's. Now, these reports, they raise suspicions, and while I am not happy to entertain them, yet they must be invited in and scrutinized, despite—or even because—I would rather not.”

Aelliana twisted, drawing her feet up and he shifted to allow her room to lie down, her back tight against his chest, her head under his chin. He put his arm around her, his hand resting on the mound of her belly.

“You intend to do something,” she murmured. “What is it?”

“Can't you read it?” he teased.

“I can't,” she confessed. “Which makes me believe that you don't know.”

“Well reasoned. In fact, the only thing I can think to do is as my mother did before me: Send me down to Low Port to spy out what I might.”

That was accompanied by a thrill of positive dread, whether it was hers or his scarcely mattered.

“Low Port is very dangerous,” Aelliana murmured. “You had said it yourself.”

“So it is, but I am stealthy.”

“Will you go with Clarence?”

“That would rather defeat the purpose,” he pointed out. “In fact, I would hope to pass through and come out again without him knowing I had ever arrived.”

“You will take Er Thom, then.”

“What? With Anne about to be delivered?”

“It is nearly six weeks before the child is due. Surely, you don't plan that long a visit?”

“I don't,” he said shortly; she read clearly that there was no moving him on that point.

She took a breath, considering the problem. Surely, he was correct; if some agency operating out of Low Port was taking pilots and endangering ships, then that agency must be discovered and destroyed. However—

“You will take me, then,” she said, firmly.

He was silent and perfectly still for the space of two heartbeats. Then, he rubbed her belly gently and spoke. “That I will not.”

“Daav—”

“Aelliana, it is not as if this were my first foray; I have been to the Low Port many times. I intend to go in, look, listen, and speak with a few people who are known to me. At best, I will find a clue that Clarence's folk have overlooked, or a route that they have not explored. At worst, I will verify that we stand against ghosts who lure the unsuspecting into the mists and steal their self-will. I do not say that I will be as safe as I am this moment, nor that it will be possible to avoid a fight. However, I do think that I may contrive to come away again with nothing more distressful than a dirty face, and in good time for the birth of our own child.”

“To go without a partner is not wise, van'chela. Consider Avontai, where one of us would not, I think, have prevailed. The situation required both.”

“Ah.” He relaxed slightly. “At Avontai, we had to step forward. In Low Port, I will keep to the considerable shadows, and become the most invisible Scout you never did see.” He rubbed his chin against her hair.

“While it is often wise to to be partnered, in some instances, it is best to go quickly, quietly and alone. Two draw the eye in Low Port. One, who does not wish to be seen, is . . . less likely to fall into peril. And, you know, it is not as if I were entirely without backup. You know where I am going and that I intend to deprive myself of no more than two nights with you. If I fall astray, you will do as you see best, Delmae.”

He would not be argued and there didn't seem to be, she thought, any way to stop him, short of holding him at gunpoint. Nor, in truth, was she at all certain that she should prevent this foray. The situation was serious, and growing more so. Korval was ships, and ships required pilots, never minding the clauses in the ancient contract between the Captain and the passengers which she had only lately been set to study, along with the various diary entries that must be known to the delm.

“When do you go?” she asked quietly.

He sighed. “Tonight.”

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