Mouse and Dragon

Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon

Chapter Six

The number of High Houses is precisely fifty. And then there is Korval.

—From the Annual Census of Clans

“I had become accustomed to keeping such things as—as mattered, in my office at the Technical College,” Aelliana said, as he guided the ground car through Chonselta's thin afternoon traffic.

Almost, he asked if she wished to go there—to her office—but it seemed to him that she had something more to say on her topic, and held his tongue.

“My brother,” she continued, after a moment. “Ran Eld had used to . . . find pleasure . . . in coming into my room after the house was asleep, and, and emptying my drawers and shelves. Of course, fragile things broke, and books were sometimes . . . damaged. Those things that remain are clothes, and—easily replaced,” she finished resolutely.

Anger tightened his fingers on the stick, and a sad pity it was that Ran Eld Caylon's throat did not rest beneath his hand. He took a breath, calming himself, and glanced aside, seeing wide green eyes watching his face carefully.

“If a copilot may be so bold,” he said, keeping his tone cool in consideration of her concern, “your brother was a monster.”

There was a pause, as if she weighed this judgment. He waited, wondering what the outcome of her thought would be.

“Yes,” she said eventually, turning her head to study the passenger's viewscreen. “Yes, I fear that he was.”

“Do you wish to go to your office?” Daav asked, eying the readout on the driver's screens. The deciding turn was two blocks distant—right for Chonselta Technical College, left for the spaceport.

“Not today, I thank you; it is the long break, and what is there is safe enough for now.”

He nodded. “We to the spaceport, then, Pilot.”

“That sounds—excellent,” she replied and fell silent once more.

Daav did not press her, having thoughts of his own to pursue. The more he heard of Aelliana's life, clan-bound, the more he wondered that she had managed to survive at all. All very well for Master Kestra to praise her strength, but the horrors under which she had struggled to thrive—surely, he thought, she might have been given some small comfort?

Instead, she had been given a kinsman bent on doing her what damage he might, and who reveled in her pain. She could count on no moment of privacy; hold in fondness no fragile geegaw; be certain that a walk down the main hallway of her very clanhouse would not result in bruises—or worse.

His anger was building again. Grimly, he brought his heartbeat down, smoothed his breathing.

Small wonder she had spoken so distantly of her daughter, he thought, remembering how cold she had seemed, entirely unlike the woman he knew. With her brother on the lookout always to harm her, how could she regard her child? The best she might do for the girl was disdain her, and hope that Ran Eld Caylon never looked in her direction.

“Daav?” Soft as it was, Aelliana's voice jolted him.

He turned his head briefly and offered her a smile.

“Aelliana?”

She extended a hand, rested it on his arm; withdrew with a sigh.

“You—I feel that you are distressed. I regret it. If it had been possible, I would have gone alone, but—” She gave him a smile, well-intended, but wavering visibly at the edges. “Truly, van'chela, it was only the knowledge that you were in-house that gave me the courage to resist Mizel.”

He blinked and glanced over to her, meeting eyes in which worry was plain. And yet—she felt? Had she informed herself of the state of his unruly emotions through that fleeting touch? Hope rose, twined with confusion, and a measure of disquiet. Perhaps Master Kestra's estimation of her results had been pessimistic? Perhaps Aelliana would, after all, know him as her lifemate? Yet, to subject her—or anyone!—to an intimate knowledge of his thoughts and feelings . . .

“Daav?”

“Forgive me,” he said. “I am stupid today. Notwithstanding, I think we came away from Mizel as gracefully as possible. It was well done of you to invoke Guild law.”

“It was all I could think to do, though it cannot, you know, stand against kin.” she said, sounding rueful. “Cat-ice, I thought it, even for Sinit.”

“Thin as it was, it bore us up, and no one's melant'i has taken harm.”

“Excepting Mizel's.” Aelliana sighed. “She offered me nadelm's duty.”

“You should have been nadelm all along!” he said, more sharply than he had intended.

“Yes, my grandmother thought so, as well. But you misunderstand, van'chela. She offered the duty; I did not hear that she offered the rank.” Abruptly, she pointed at her screen.

“Daav—the turn for the ferry station!”

“Ah, but we have no need to depend upon public ferries.”

She turned to him, lips parted. “You have a ship here?”

“Korval has a yard here,” he said, shifting for the turn.

“It keeps slipping away from me,” she said, slowly, “that you are Korval.”

“Yes, but just at the moment, I am your copilot,” he answered, guiding the car through the gate and gliding to a stop before the yard office. He powered the vehicle down, and pressed his thumb against the ID screen. “Master Fis Lyr was kind enough to lend me the use of the yard's car. Now, if you are game for a small walk?”

“Even a long one,” she said, suddenly gay. “So long as we need not walk to Solcintra.”

“Now, that is too long a walk,” he said, popping his door.

Aelliana laughed, working the mechanism on the passenger's door. By the time he had gotten 'round the car, having paused to retrieve her box from the boot, she was looking around her with frank curiosity.

“Ought we to tell the master that his car is back?” She asked, using her chin to point at the office door.

“It will already have done so, I fear,” Daav said. “Aelliana.”

She looked up at him, surprise edging the pleasure in her face.

He raised a hand, reached inside the collar of his shirt and slowly drew out a silver chain. Depending from it was a set of ship's keys.

Aelliana's eyes blazed. “You brought The Luck!”

“Of course I did. How else?” He slipped the chain over his head and offered it to her. “How could I know my pilot's plans? It could have been that she wished to lift immediately. In which case her ship should be nearer to her hand than Solcintra.”

She grasped the keys tightly, her face tilted up, but not, he considered, seeing anything other than her thoughts. He held himself as still as he might.

I will not, he told himself, influence her by so much as the twitch of a muscle. If she decides after all that lift is less chancy than Liad, even under Korval's wing . . .

“It was very good of you, Daav,” Aelliana said.

“Nonsense, you know that I like a lift as well as you do! And what pilot worth his leather would sit on the ferry by choice?” He leaned forward, conspiratorially “Besides, you know, the ferry takes too long.”

She laughed, and waved her free hand, capturing the yard, the car, and the office in one fey movement.

“If it will please my copilot to produce our ship?”

Our ship. The words thrilled him. It was what she had offered, before—and she had almost died of his refusal. Had he been with her the next morning, when her brother had come to Binjali's in search of her . . .

“Has my copilot,” Aelliana asked teasingly, “forgotten where he left our ship?”

“Indeed no!” he assured her, rallying. “See? I have a map drawn right here on my palm.”

He made a show of turning his free hand up, subjected it to a moment of frowning study and strode off, deliberately long-legged, but not so much that she had any trouble keeping up.

* * *

“A hotpad!” Aelliana threw a hand out and caught Daav's arm, calculating the expense between one breath and the next. Ride the Luck had money in her account, of course, but she was no wealthy merchanter.

“Forgive me, Pilot,” Daav said seriously, looking down into her face. “I should have said—this is where I bring my own ship down, when I fly to Chonselta. A courtesy of the yard, and no expense attached.”

Korval Himself, she reminded herself, yet again. Of course there would be a hotpad available for the delm's use at a Korval yard.

She sighed and looked up at him. “I am . . . somewhat unused . . . to such courtesies.”

“Perhaps you should try to accommodate yourself,” Daav said, still in that tone of utter seriousness. “Aelliana Caylon will doubtless be extended like courtesies.”

“For a few days, perhaps,” she said, frowning. “But it will soon be forgot, you know—our lift.”

“If you insist. However, I would point out that the ven'Tura Revisions are not so easy for pilots to overlook.” He nodded at the ship, sitting proud and beautiful on her hotpad.

“Shall we?”

“Yes!” she said decisively. “We shall!”

She went up the ramp first—her right as pilot and owner. Her hands were steady as she slotted the key. The hatch opened and she stepped inside, aware of Daav's presence at her back, but more than that—aware of the presence, the actuality of her ship.

Before the tragedies of yesterday, she had loved Ride the Luck as well and as truly as she had been able. Though it had given her the courage to defy Ran Eld, she now knew that emotion for a weak and impotent thing. What filled her now was heat, and light; awe and pride—there was no power of which she could conceive that would wrest this ship from her care.

Half-dazed, she entered the piloting chamber, putting a hand on the back of the pilot's chair to steady herself. Her hand showed stark against the white leather, the Jump pilot's ring flashing in the test lights from the waking instruments.

“We could lift now, this minute,” she whispered. “Set a course for up and away . . . ”

“Aye,” Daav answered softly, “so you could. Nothing holds you here but gravity.”

Stricken, she turned, one hand rising toward him.

“No,” she breathed, “More than that, van'chela.”

He came forward one short step, and took her hand between both of his. His skin was warm, the band of Korval's Ring cool. She felt longing, and a hesitant sadness.

“Aelliana, if you must lift—”

She raised her free hand and set her fingers across his lips, stopping the words. He grew very still, as if he had turned off his very thoughts.

“In fact,” she said, voice shaking, “I must lift. To Binjali's Yard at Solcintra Port. Pray, do me the honor of sitting my second.”

Her heartbeat was overloud in her ears: one, two, three, fo—

Daav pressed her hand and released it, moving slightly to one side, so that her fingers fell away from his lips.

“The honor will be mine, Pilot,” he said, with careful gentleness. “However, we should settle a thing, before proceeding further.”

He leaned over and placed her box on the copilot's chair. Straightening, he considered her out of serious black eyes, then bowed, with deliberation.

She was not much accustomed to moving in the polite world, and for an instant the mode confused. All at once, she had it: delm-to-one-not-of-the-clan. She bit her lip, and took a breath as Delm Korval looked down at her.

“It is possible that Korval has presumed,” he said, the High Tongue striking her ears like so many crystalline pebbles. “Pilot Caylon, speak your truth without fear of offense. Is it your wish—and yours alone—to be taken into Korval's protection?”

Aelliana took another breath and met his eyes. The shift in melant'i had been unexpected, and momentarily shocking, but she found herself much more at ease than she had supposed she ever would be, come face to face with the most powerful delm on all of Liad.

“If it must be said before Korval to be true,” she said slowly, “then I say that I wish—very much—to come under Korval's care. That I share this desire with Daav only warms me; it does not compel me.”

Korval inclined his sleek head and reached into his jacket. A moment later, he held out to her a pin in the shape of Korval's sigil, the Tree-and-Dragon.

“Wear this whenever you venture beyond Korval's grounds. It will mark you out as one who rests beneath the Dragon's wing.”

“I thank you,” Aelliana said, formally, and took the token from his hand. By the time she had affixed it to the collar of her jacket and looked up, Daav had her box stowed in the net between the pilot and copilot stations, and was webbing into his chair.

“Lift for Solcintra, Pilot?” he asked, looking up at her with a half-smile that made her chest tighten.

“Lift for Solcintra it is,” she said, with as much composure as she was able, and took her place in the pilot's chair.

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