Prologue

There was a pause and Uncle's voice came through with a hint of something besides calm control.

"I'm bribing the Tower now and will lift soonest. Get clear of the station and intercept. Dulsey, you'll play tug."

"Waitley, I don't think there's any coffee on board. You'll have to do with whatever tea is in the stasis tins."

Theo looked to Dulsey. Shrugged. Replied:

"I'll manage."

In the middle of the third Jump—the longest one—Theo broke open the second stasis tin, not because she was out of tea in the first tin, but because she'd never had Supa Oong Dark before and had been told it was the best tea in the universe . . . from someone who'd lived on the planet where it was grown.

She could use something right now, all things considered, because she'd fudged her figures slightly and the recalculations were showing that she'd need a really good run-in from Jump if she was to make the schedule. That the Toss was equal to it, she had no doubt, having already developed a deep respect for the abilities and heart of her vessel. That the pilot was equal—

"Well," she said, "you'll just have to be."

She laughed, and wondered if this was why Tranza had taken up singing: to avoid talking to himself.

Theory is that any single Jump is physiologically neutral. Practice said that a single Jump was physiologically neutral. Timing was everything, after all, and there needed, for some reason, to be some time between the end of one Jump and the start of the next else . . . else the body was not entirely recovered from the experience. Time being measured in heartbeats or orbits or—

Third Jump ended, and Arin's Toss was real again, really here, really able to be seen. Theo checked the prefed coordinates, the destination coordinates, caught the gross arrival coords, compared them, corrected them, checked herself twice, had the Toss check itself. Satisfied, she pressed the go-button, throwing her ship into the fourth Jump—and reached for some tea.

Jump glare faded and she'd recalled the rules: she arrived with shields up and all channels open, and with the understanding that purple44 specified a night landing and she checked local time, throwing herself into the First Seat with a will and watching the time count down toward dawn someplace she'd never been.

Coming in at close to two gravity acceleration was tiring, but not as bad as missing the deadline.

There were things to see though, and she took feeds from the planet, mighty Liad itself.

Of ships, there were many she'd never seen before: mining ships, and Clutch asteroids and Juntavas ships openly advertising their affiliation. There were Scout ships and there the silhouette, so long studied: Dutiful Passage!

Other than having no second, the landing sequence was routine; she made contact with planetary control, agreed to drop shields within the planetary defense net, caught her time signals, dropped the ship down, down through nightside to a well-lit landing zone, only to be directed to the darkest corner of the port.

She didn't witness the pallet transfer except by camera: there a remote vehicle of some kind, there a lift working, there the transfer and acknowledgement.

The feeds were on the while, and when she was done, Arin's Toss was quiet. Tea would be good. Breakfast . . . she'd lost track, inside the Jumps, of meals, but she wasn't hungry, really—or tired. She did make tea, and tapped up the news feed for the headlines.

Korval Mystery Move on Tap was the first. Delm Korval Talks to Pilots and Clan, Ignores the World, another. Liad Abandoned, claimed a third.

She tapped that one, scanning the story rapidly.

It turned out that the headline was a little misleading—a lot misleading. Clan Korval had been given a deadline to leave Liad with all its possessions. It seemed that agents of the clan had blown a hole in Solcintra City, which the ruling body—the Council of Clans—had taken badly. Theo could see their point. She paused the scroll.

She'd heard stories about the Tree-and-Dragon, which was how spacers had referred to Clan Korval. They were . . . unpredictable, and, while admired, it was generally agreed that the best course included a wide margin given to Korval. She'd never heard that they were . . . antisocial. But—a hole in the planet? She started the scroll going again.

At the hearing, Delm Korval hadn't bothered to deny or explain the action of the clan, with the result that the Council had acted as they had, to protect the homeworld, and Korval was to leave Liad no later than—

Theo leaned forward and slapped up the local date and time.

Tomorrow.

Her stomach clenched.

"Now, Theo," she said, drinking what was left of her tea. "Or never."

She stood, hesitated, thought of Win Ton, asleep inside the med unit that was only keeping him, barely, alive.

She thought of Kamele, she thought of Father, and she thought of a ship, self-aware and unsocialized, that was out there, somewhere, looking for her.

"Korval is ships," she said.

She went to the galley and made herself another cup of tea. Then, with dawn giving way to day, Theo Waitley called a taxi.

Forty-Two

Day 201

Standard Year 1393

Solcintra

Liad

There was a guard on the front door of the house—Jelaza Kazone was its name, according to the taxi driver—a plump man with a greying ginger mustache and speculative taffy-colored eyes. He wore a Jump pilot's jacket nearly as battered as her own, and a pellet gun openly on his belt.

"And you are?" he asked in plain Terran, sounding only curious.

"Theo Waitley," she answered.

He tipped his head. "Are you, indeed? And your purpose here, Theo Waitley?"

"I need to see the Delm of Korval," she said.

"As does half the planet. Alas, Korval is just a trifle busy at the moment—moving house, you know. You have seen the news feeds?"

"I have," she admitted. "That's why I'm here, now."

The guard considered her seriously. "Is it? What an interesting sense of timing. Have you ID, Theo Waitley?"

One eye on the gun, which stayed peaceably in its holster, Theo put her hand inside her jacket and pulled out her license. She handed it to the guard, not without a pang.

He scanned it, then looked back to her. "The license is newer than the jacket."

"That's because Rig Tranza gave me the jacket off his back when I got the license." Theo was beginning to feel irritable. Also, her knees were starting to shake. Maybe she should have had a meal, after all.

The guard nodded and flipped the card back to her. She snatched it out the air and slipped it back into its pocket.

"Armed, Theo Waitley?"

She looked at him. "Of course."

He laughed, which increased her irritation, then bowed, abruptly formal.

"What matter do you bring before Korval, Pilot?"

She was beginning to suspect that the guard was amusing himself at her expense. "Are you Korval?" she asked.

"Gods forfend!"

"My business," Theo said, trying to sound patient and probably, she thought, not doing that good a job of it, "is with Delm Korval."

It was like she'd passed a test, or maybe he figured he'd gotten all the fun out of her he could. Whichever, he turned his head and called over his shoulder.

"Jarn!"

The door at his back came open and another pilot stepped out, leathers gleaming, gun holstered and very apparent.

"Master Clonak?"

He moved a pudgy hand, directing Jarn's attention to Theo, like she was an interesting kind of flower. "Please take Pilot Waitley to the inner garden and point her on her way."

The garden reminded her of home, with the flowers let to go almost wild, and the bushes trimmed only enough to keep branches out of the faces of the unwary. Jarn's instructions had been to "keep to the path," which sounded simple enough. The challenge was finding the path among the overgrowth of vegetation.

She figured that there were cameras on her, and watchful eyes nearby. Not that she intended any harm to Delm Korval, but it was comforting to think that somebody would come find her, if she got lost.

By the second turn, she realized that she was on course for the tree that was improbably growing out of the center of the house. It had seemed as big as one of Codrescu's arms when she'd seen it from the taxi. Looking up now into a sky lacy with branch and leaf, she thought it might be bigger.

Theo swayed a little when she brought her sights down closer to her level, and closed her eyes until she felt steadier.

The path turned again, tighter and again, drawing her in closer to the center every time. She took a deep breath, trying to clear a head suddenly a bit too heavy, and reviewed her points, carefully worked out during the long Jumps. It stood to reason that Delm Korval was busy; she had to be concise. State her case and stop, that was it.

She heard voices now, or, rather, a voice, so deep that it shook the flowers at the edge of the path.

"Ephemeral and multistranded, it wends through time, space, and song," the voice boomed, "altering the very fabric of the universe. As I see, each day brings a new thread."

Abruptly, the path ended, but that was fine. Right before her was the tree, and—it must be a Clutch turtle! She'd never seen one—well, hardly anyone had. Her eyes on this wonder, Theo stumbled on a surface root, recovered—and almost stumbled again.

Almost invisible beside the Clutch turtle, two people stood hand in hand. They turned, as if they'd heard her stumble, pilot smooth and perfectly in time.

More guards, Theo thought. She continued, carefully, across the root-rumpled lawn. When she judged she was at the proper distance, for people who wanted to talk to Liadens who were neither kin nor comrades, she bowed, as from junior to senior.

Straightening, she found the phrase in Liaden, which she'd've given to the guard at the gate, if he hadn't thrown her by speaking Terran.

"It is necessary that I speak to the Delm of Korval, on business of the clan."

The woman—red hair, grey eyes, and just visibly pregnant—nodded, did a double-take, and looked up to the man.

"Another one?"

Theo tensed.

"Shall you like odds?" he asked, his voice soft. He gave Theo a nod, like they were pilots chance-met on port.

"You are addressing the Delm of Korval," he said in unaccented Terran. "May we know your name?"

Here we go again.

"Theo Waitley," she said, groping after the concise statement she'd put together and memorized.

It was gone—and the guy was looking at her, face oddly familiar, and green eyes serious.

"I'm here because my father's missing," she blurted. "And he told me—he always told me—to go to the Delm of Korval, if ever there was really bad trouble."

She paused, running one hand distractedly through her hair.

Finish what you started, she told herself. Then go on to the rest.

"My father's name is Jen Sar Kiladi," she told the pair of them—were they both the Delm of Korval? Or had she muddled that, too? "He teaches—"

"He teaches cultural genetics," the man interrupted gently, and Theo felt a twist of hope. Father was known here!

"Right," she said. "I mean, you might not think it was a big problem, if your father wasn't where you left him—" What was she saying?

"No, acquit me," the man said. "I would think it a very large problem, indeed."

Was he laughing at her? "He's never done anything like this before—just up and left, in the midle of the term and—"

She stopped, took a breath and forced herself to say calmly, "I got trouble, and since I can't find him . . ."

The man was looking beyond her, and the woman, too—was there a guard behind her? Had she lost her chance, Win Ton and Bechimo, with any chance of finding Father?

"Theo," the man said, in his soft voice. "Look behind you."

Stupid! she told herself, and did as he ordered.

A man was walking over the uneven grass; she didn't need the jacket to see that he was a pilot. Dark hair going grey, angular, interesting face—

"Father!"

She leapt, slamming him into a full body hug, feeling the tears, and the joy, and—

"Father, where the hell have you been?"

Strong arms were around her, then she felt him tousle her hair, like she was a kid, and set her back from him.

"I've been busy, child," he said. He paused, and shook his head, a half smile on his lips.

"I can't tell you how glad I am to see you, Theo. And sorry, as well."

"Sorry!" She stared at him, suddenly afraid, recalling bar stories told of Liaden Balances and lives called forfeit over matters of trade . . .

Father touched her cheek.

"Gently," he murmured. "Sorry because you would not be here if there wasn't really bad trouble."

She nodded. "It's kind of complicated," she began . . .

THE END

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