Certain Symmetry (6 page)

She'd been doing well enough, or so she told
herself now, and had no need to return to the patron model. Only
that the loss of those two houses in her aunt's time and another on
her aunt's death--had eaten at Betea and made her dream, too, dream
of the days when sen'Equa held five houses and there was talk of
building a sixth...

Betea sighed, dropped the letter to her desk
for the fourth time, slipped the sixth-piece into her pocket, and,
restless, went down the ramp into the main room, to see how the
play went on.

Which is how she came to be there when he
walked in the door: High Port, sure enough, with his pretty brown
hair and a blue gemstone in one ear; dressed in a sober, expensive
jacket and shiny boots. She saw the hint of the pistol beneath the
jacket and approved his good sense, even as she went forward to
intercept him.

"May I assist you, lordship?" she inquired,
coming up on him from the right, her hands plainly in sight, out of
respect for the pistol.

Velvet brown eyes considered her at some
length, and then he inclined his head, very slightly.

"Do you know, perhaps you can?" he said, and
his voice was pleasant on the ear. "I am looking for Betea
sen'Equa."

Her stomach clenched, but she put the silly
start of fear aside and bowed deeply, which the high ones cared
about.

"You have found her," she said. "How may I
assist you?"

"I am here on a matter of Balance," the
pretty man told her, "which stands between yourself and Fal Den
ter'Antod."

Betea felt the blood drain from her face.
She might have known that the game would fold someday, and one who
was perhaps a little bolder than the others would send his man of
business, or his delm, or his elder kinsman to Balance the
matter--with her. She touched her tongue to lips suddenly gone
dry.

"Why does he not come himself?" she
asked.

"Because he is dead," the other said, and
moved a hand, showing her the ramp up to the office in her own
establishment.

"Perhaps this is not a discussion you wish
to continue on the open floor?"

Dead? But... Betea clutched at her
disintegrating courage, straightened her back and looked boldly
into the man's dark eyes.

"Please come with me," she said, and turned
away without looking to see if he followed. Somehow, she didn't
doubt that he would.

* * *

THE OFFICE WAS comfortably appointed, the
screens that monitored the playing floor set into the wall above
the manager's cluttered desk.

A quick and subtle glance at the clutter
revealed to Pat Rin the sorts of papers one might find on the desk
of any manager, high port or low--invoices, bills of lading, lists,
and the various correspondence of business. A handwritten letter on
plain paper lay askew in the center of the desk, as if it had been
flung down in haste. A blank comm screen sat to the right of the
general disorder, the keyboard shoved away beneath.

At the center of the room, Betea sen'Equa
turned to face him. She was tall, Pat Rin noted--a little above his
own height, though nothing near Shan's--and lithe, with a girl's
pretty, soft face. Her eyes were as blue and as ungiving as
sapphire--and it was to the woman who had earned those eyes that he
made his bow.

"I am Pat Rin yos'Phelium Clan Korval. I
come to you as the instrument of Fal Den ter'Antod's will. Your
name is written in his debt-book. It falls to us to Balance that
which lies between you."

The hard blue eyes considered him,
emotionless; the round, girl's face betrayed only youth.

"Please tell me how Fal Den came to die,"
she said, and her voice did waver, just a little. "I saw him only
days ago..."

"He died by his own hand," Pat Rin told her
and used his chin to point at the dark screen. "If you permit, I
will call up the report from news service."

She glanced at the screen, and stepped to
one side. "If you please."

He moved to the desk, tapped the power key,
called up the public archive, and stood aside.

Betea sen'Equa came forward, frowned at the
synopsis, reached down and called for more information, then stood
looking at it for far longer than it should have taken her to read
it. Eventually, however, she recalled herself and turned to Pat
Rin, her face somewhat paler than it had been.

"What is written next to my name," she asked
steadily, "in Fal Den's debt-book?"

She had offered him neither a chair nor
refreshment, which discourtesy was irritating. Pat Rin discovered
himself more inclined to believe the debt lay on the lady's side,
which did no honor to his duty. If Fal Den himself had not known
which of the two of them was owing and owed...

Pat Rin inclined his head. "I regret. Only
your name appears. It is the very last notation in the book,
written on the day of his death, and it is very possible that the
process that ended with his self-murder was even then at work."

She stared at him, eyes and face without
expression.

Pat Rin sighed. "Perhaps if we speak
together of your dealings with Fal Den on the occasion of your last
meeting, we may discover between us both the fault and the Balance
owed."

Still she stared at him, and she was not, by
Pat Rin's judgment, either a half-wit or a fool...

"Self-murder," she said abruptly. "Are they
certain of that?"

He frowned. "It is what his kin has sworn to
the Council. Have you reason to believe that Fal Den came by his
death in another fashion?"

"Perhaps. I don't..." She spun aside,
rudely, and paced to the far end of the room, where she stood for
the slow count of six heartbeats, facing the wall, showing him her
back.

At last, she took a deep breath, turned and
walked back to the center of the room. She stopped several paces
away and looked boldly into his eyes.

"I know why my name is written in Fal Den's
book," she said, and her voice was as hard as her eyes. "I know who
owes and who is owing. I will tell you these things. For a
price."

"A price?" Pat Rin raised
his eyebrows. "Madam, your name is written in a dead man's book.
You do not bargain price with
me
."

"But I do," she said
sharply. "You may be bound to play by High Port rules, lordship,
but
I
am not. My
mother died at the hand of a High Port lord. She had no book nor no
other high friends to call in her debt, and the lord himself said
the thing was outside of lawful Balance, for she had no Name to
protect her." She crossed her arms under her breasts and now the
bold gaze was a glare.

"I am selling the information you need. You
will buy it, or you will not." She inclined her head, brusquely.
"Your throw, lordship."

It was on the end of his tongue to tell her
that he had no need to buy anything from her -- but that was only
pique, such as would make Luken laugh and bid him to climb down
from the high branches.

Mastering his irritation, he looked at her,
standing tall and stern before him.

The lady has the winning
hand
, he told himself, wryly, which rubbed
ill against his pride as a gamester. And he was not come here, he
reminded himself, as a gamester, but as the agent of Fal Den's
will, upon which the petty prides and irritations of Pat Rin
yos'Phelium had no right to intrude.

He bowed to the lady, very slightly.

"What is your price?"

* * *

VIEWED CORRECTLY, Pat Rin
thought, shaking his lace into order and frowning at his reflection
in the dressing-glass, the situation was piquant. Indeed, one was
persuaded that one's deplorable cousin Shan would find it rich in
hilarity. And, to be just, had it been Shan dressing just now to
attend, of all things, an
express
, Pat Rin might have found
himself more inclined toward laughter.

His partner in this evening's enterprise
could not be dislodged from her conviction that he attended such
affairs as a matter of course on every quarter-day, nor from the
equally demented belief that his very presence held her proof
against whatever predations she imagined that Hia Cyn yo'Tonin
intended to visit upon her.

Though, Pat Rin allowed, fixing the sapphire
in his ear, to be wary of Hia Cyn yo'Tonin proved Betea sen'Equa to
be a woman of sense, however late in her life.

It had taken all of his powers of
persuasion, and not a little High House hauteur to wring the
information he required from Betea after he had given his word to
attend this evening's festivities.

The tale she had told was a simple one, nor
was Fal Den the first to come away from an acquaintance with Betea
sen'Equa lighter by certain equities and certificates of stock.

It would have seemed simple thievery, and
the lady herself the final culprit, yet there was another player in
the game, whose presence muddied the score considerably.

As Betea told it, her first meeting with Hia
Cyn yo'Tonin was mere chance. Pat Rin, who knew the man, doubted
this, but had not thought it appropriate to interrupt the lady's
account with his private speculations.

In any case, Hia Cyn, through design or
mischance, came into the orbit of Betea sen'Equa and very quickly
showed her how she might increase profits. Betea had ambitions, Pat
Rin learned, but not much understanding of the ways of what she
termed 'the high world'.

Hia Cyn brought to her young people--mostly
young men--who were slightly in awe of the gaming world, and
slightly in awe of her, she who was tall and exotic, and who held
modest court within her own houses.

The games were--initially--honest, with
small friendly wagers. But after a time, the stakes would alter. In
the private parlors, the victims would play for small sums until
some point of melant'i or other would be brought into the
conversation and slowly the net would be drawn about them.
Carefully, then, while served sympathetic portions of wine, or
perhaps one of Hia Cyn's special cigarillos, the mark would be
brought to promise against their quartershare, or against their
inheritance. Especially, Hia Cyn liked them to promise something
that would come to them only when the person immediately before
them in their Clan's line of succession came to die.

Thus the stakes were things like quitclaims
to islands, access codes to small and private lodges, the
desperately secret formula of some proprietary process.

This, she learned later; she had delivered
the first few keywords and certificate numbers to Hia Cyn without
ever knowing what they were, earning thereby what he was pleased to
call a "finder's fee." In cash.

No one ever came back to her and confronted
her with their loss, which for a time fed the comforting illusion
that what she dealt in were "might-happens" of no value.

Alas, she was not a lady who allowed herself
to repose long in ignorance. If what she gained for Hia Cyn was
worthless, she reasoned, why then was she paid to procure it?

And so she finally learned that these items
promised at late night in the heat of play were more than a
gambler's losses. They became the very evidence of a
threat--perhaps a mortal threat!--to a person of melant'i. As such,
they were bought back with ridiculous ease, often with items or in
amounts the victims themselves suggested--things that were in one
way or another extremely liquid and little prone to tracking.

Knowledge should have set her free, for
surely even Nameless Port-folk might report larceny to the
Proctors. However, Betea weighed the risk of being implicated along
with Hia Cyn and the all-too-probable outcome of being found the
sole offender, and did not call the Proctors. In any wise, she
said, the trade was slowing down. Indeed, for several relumma, Hia
Cyn introduced her to no one new.

And then, at the beginning of the present
relumma, he had brought Fal Den ter'Antod to her attention.

"And now he has died," Betea had said,
stone-faced in the office above her modest gambling house. "None of
the others cared so much."

She had named those others in the course of
her narration and Pat Rin had taken those names to the redoubtable
dea'Gauss, Clan Korval's man of business, who was even now in the
process of checking accounts with various of the masters of the
Accountants Guild.

Which left Pat Rin free to attend a party in
the deplored and deplorable express mode, with only six hours left
him to correctly place and Balance the error that had brought Fal
Den to his death.

It was well here to reflect upon Fal Den,
Pat Rin thought, and the nicety of his honor, which had not allowed
him to place a debt of which he was uncertain.

Pat Rin sighed and gave his lace a last,
unnecessary, shake. Time and past time to get on with the pursuit
of pleasure.

Express
, indeed.

* * *

THE ADDRESS WAS in Solcintra Mid-Port, on a
street well-known to a certain set of self-styled adventurers and
high rollers. An adventurer he was not, but in the course of
learning to be a high roller, it had sometimes been necessary for
Pat Rin to attend parties on this street. Now an acknowledged
player, he still received invitations to such parties, but of late
he had more and more often discovered himself, regretfully, with a
conflicting engagement. To be seen in the area during a business
day was unexceptional, of course, but to be seen here in the
evening, dressed in all his finery....

At least he was not alone. He saw several
vaguely familiar faces in the distance, all of them younger than
he, each carrying their sealed red packet inscribed with the
legend, "To Be Opened Expressly at the House of Chance."

He bowed distantly in the direction of a
young lady whose name escaped him--her face notable in that Pat Rin
had witnessed the end of a match at Teydor's in which this gentle
became the dozen dozenth of the current year's list. Pat Rin sighed
- no doubt he would be singled out during the Express to give hints
and best wishes, if not to lend countenance to the rather
interesting costume that the lady had found appropriate to wear to
an event that might turn out to be nothing more than an evening of
light play. Indeed, she gained his side as he came up to the
gaudily painted doorway, and just in time he recalled her
name--Dela bel'Urik, Clan Shelart.