Dragon in Exile - eARC (19 page)

Miri slowly uncurled from the chair, and looked up at Val Con, who had also come to his feet.

“You think there’s any possibility that our pleasure will be greater for having been delayed?” she asked.

He smiled, and reached out to untie her sash.

“There is,” he murmured, sliding the robe from her shoulders, “only one way to find out.”

Chapter Twenty

Surebleak Port

Hazenthull had favored the dawn watch since her days as soldier-in-training. Dawns on Temp Headquarters were swift and terrible, as the day-wind sprang out of the well of night, tearing the black and crimson shroud from across the sullen orange face of the primary.

Since those early days, she had taken dawn watch many times, on many worlds. And while no other dawn could match the glory of the homeworld, she had found most to be interesting, and…attractive, in their own way.

Liad’s dawn was long and slow. The arrival of the star’s day-face was preceded by fans of pale green and yellow light, blue edges fading into the deepening green sky until at last the golden primary itself arrived and smiled upon the world.

Truth said, Hazenthull had found Liad’s dawn, after the novelty had worn away, to be somewhat…vapid. It was pretty enough, but it lacked energy. It lacked
variety
, which Hazenthull, who had become, over the course of many dawn-watches, something of a connoisseur, found pleasing. Too much sameness, she thought, sapped a soldier’s purpose.

Surebleak’s dawn, now…

Surebleak’s dawn suited Hazenthull very well, indeed. One never knew, if the sun would visibly rise at dawn, or if the sky would be shrouded in cloud, salted with snow, or all a-glitter with ice-fog. When the primary did show its face, it might be bright yellow, or grey, or even a misty white.

Surebleak’s dawns were
interesting
.

“Half-bit for your thoughts,” Tolly said from beside her. They had the dawn-watch today, moving up and down the quiet streets like swirls of mist, themselves. Surebleak Port went to bed for a few hours between mid-dark and dawn; most of the shops closed, though Andy Mack’s Repairs was always open, and Korval’s own yard, and Nelsin’s Grabasnak. And the portmaster’s office.

And Port Security.

“I was thinking that the dawn is beautiful,” Hazenthull said, and added. “And I just now thought that I admire the Terran language, for just such words as
beautiful
.”

“Is a nice one today, isn’t it?” Tolly said, looking up into the lightening sky. “But other languages got words like
beautiful
, Haz.”

“Yxtrang does not, and it is still the ruler I use to measure other languages.” She sighed. “I ought to find another, I think.”

“No, you’re right, Yxtrang’s real efficient for some work, but describing art isn’t what it’s best at.”

She looked down at him.

“You speak Yxtrang?”

He met her eyes, and shook his head.

“Nah. No more’n a couple words, I guess. Too hard on my throat. What I do is
listen
Yxtrang. It’s a talent.”

Several of the members of Clan Korval had
talent
, which enabled them to perform wonders as diverse as walking through walls and hearing the thoughts of others. Lady Anthora’s
talents
were…particularly unsettling, and beside which a
talent
for understanding a language one did not speak was a mere commonplace.

They turned the corner by Andy Mack’s Repair Shop. The bay door was open, and the harsh blare of repair lights scored the walk. Hazenthull heard voices from somewhere inside the bay—and looked down in surprise at Tolly’s hand on her arm.

He jerked his head in the direction they had come from, and without a word, fell back.

Hazenthull hesitated, listening.

“Nah, nobody like that ’round here. Tell you what, anybody who’s a mechanic on-port’s worked here some time or ’nother. So, I’m guessing your fella just ain’t here.”

Hazenthull turned and walked, cat-foot, back the way she had come.

* * * * *

“Is this again the man you had worked for, and do not wish to work for again?” she asked the question, quietly, while they leaned against Nelsin’s counter, mugs of coffee in hand.

Tolly’s mouth was a straight, hard line. Usually, with Tolly, it was the smile, the joke, sometimes, the misdirection, though she thought he did less of that with her than with others. This, then, had become something serious. Something that he could no longer afford to ignore.

“Will you challenge this person?” she asked.

He snorted, and shook his head.

“No percentage in it. Damn.”

“Did you come here, to Surebleak, to escape this person?”

She asked the question carefully, for she did not wish to hint that Tolly had taken the coward’s part. Tolly was not a coward; she had been his partner long enough to know that. There were reasons why a soldier might hide; reasons aplenty to run. Tolly would have his reasons.

“I’d had another spot in mind,” he said, putting his coffee cup on the counter. “Contact of mine—somebody I’m…often…able to trust—suggested Surebleak as a place where I’d find opportunity, and my…ex-employer would find it inconvenient to follow.”

He sighed, and ran his hand through his fair hair.

“Guess he’s got a job that’s worth a little inconvenience to him.”

“But you no longer work for him.”

“Well, see; that’s kind of a matter of opinion.
I
think I no longer work for him. His opinion’s pretty much the opposite.”

Hazenthull sipped her coffee.

“What will you do?” she asked eventually.

“Good question.”

“Boss Conrad’s wife is a Judge,” she said, carefully. “She might give a third, and binding opinion.”

Tolly laughed.

She put her cup down, offended.

“No, hey, Haz, don’t take it that way! It’s a great idea! Just thinking about a Juntavas Judge being called to sort out this whole mess—it makes me laugh. That’s a good thing—clears out clogged brain passages.

“So, what I’m going to do is finish up my coffee and get back on the round.”

Hazenthull nodded.

“And if you see or hear this person who hunts you?”

“I’ll do a fade and catch up with you,” he said. “If I stay invisible long enough, he’ll go. He’s done it before.”

“Andy Mack said he guessed the other one’s fella—
your fella
, he said—was not on the port.”

“You gotta love Mack. Remind me to take him a case o’beer.”

“All right,” Hazenthull said, and finished her coffee.

Tolly finished his, they called good-mornings to Nelsin and walked away, down-port.

* * *

There had been time enough in the early morning for a gentle revisiting of last night’s energy, followed by a brief return to sleep, before duty woke them again.

They presented themselves at the usual hour, showered and seemly, to the breakfast room, finding it occupied only by Posit, one of the elder cats. She yawned at their entrance and stretched along the window cushion, exposing her belly to the wan light of a Surebleak summer morning.

Fast broken, they parted—Miri to the nursery for an hour with Talizea before she went down to city.

“Appointment with the story-telling committee,” she told him. “Kareen says,
everyone who grew up here is a primary source
, and apparently neither delm nor Road Boss is a high enough card to get me out of telling what it was like, back before Liz come and signed me up for the Merc.”

“You will be instrumental in forging the new world culture,” Val Con said.

“So, I’ll get a card that says
Founder
, will I?”

“Should you like to have one?”

“Nah, then everybody would know who to blame.”

She kissed him.

“On your way to the office?”

“I will walk over and see Mr. Shaper first, on Shan’s business. Then, yes, the office. We are dining with Nova this evening. Shall I come home, first?”

“’Less business keeps you late. If we go down together, Nelirikk can have the night off.”

“I will come home, then,” he said. He took her hand and raised it, bending to place a lingering kiss on her knuckles.

“Until soon,
cha’trez
.”

* * * * *

It would have saved time, to simply drive around to Yulian Shaper’s front door. However, Yulian Shaper was a man of great wariness, and one of those things of which he was especially wary was cars driving into his front dooryard. His policy in the case of such visitations—his wariness being of an order that required a great many self-imposed rules and policies in order to allow him to interface with the world, at all—was to refuse to acknowledge a hail, or a knock upon the door, or any other attempt at communication. Though one received the distinct impression that the car was well-noted, and whomever had driven it under close surveillance.

It was also well to recall that, among his many other virtues, Yulie Shaper was a crack shot with his long arm.

All those things being so, it was simply kinder to everyone’s nerves, to walk to Yulie Shaper’s house.

It was, for Surebleak, a fine morning, and Val Con was glad of an opportunity to stretch his legs.

In no particular hurry, for it would not do to arrive too suddenly into Yulie Shaper’s orbit, suddenness being another of those factors that provoked distrust in him, he strolled across the browning lawns, turning right at the formal front gardens, to skirt the long rows of vegetables—the gardener had been as good as her word, he saw with satisfaction. The house would certainly not want for vegetables.

Eventually, then, he came to the crack in the planet’s surface. Korval had settled its house in an abandoned quarry, and the edges had not been an exact fit, which ought not, Val Con thought, crouching down to inspect the seam, astonish anyone familiar with Korval or its enterprises.

They had, at Yulie Shaper’s suggestion, filled the crack with native earth. This had eventually settled, to reveal a lesser, but still significant, gap between Liaden soil and native Surebleak soil.

They had again applied native earth, and it, too, was settling. There would be, Val Con thought, at least one more application of soil, perhaps as many as three, before the crack in the world was fully healed.

If only the other cracks in the world were so easily mended.

He ran his hand over the crisp Liaden grasses, the raw seam, and the moist Surebleak grasses, and sighed.

Well. One did what one could.

He rose, brushing his hand off against his thigh, and surveyed the land next door.

Yulie Shaper’s native vegetables seemed slightly further along the path to ripeness than those in Korval’s home garden. Still, lacking a midsummer snowstorm, there would be vegetables aplenty. Yulie’s livelihood came from the sale of vegetables and other foodstuffs, mostly at the market in Melina Sherton’s turf. He also, from time to time, brought items to Korval’s kitchen door—indeed, he received the impression that Yulie and Mrs. ana’Tak, the cook—were famous friends.

“He says it is what neighbors do, sir,” Mrs. ana’Tak had said, when Val Con has asked after the pedigree of a particularly handsome bunch of root vegetables, he was given to know were called
torups
.

“He also said,” Mr. pel’Kana continued, “that he had too many for himself, they don’t go well at the market, and they don’t
save good
. If we had no use for them, they would go to the compost heap.”

“He gave me a recipe,” Mrs. ana’Tak said, taking the conversational ball back from the butler, “from his grandmother’s
receipt book
. I will make it up for Prime tonight; it ought to be savory.”

Surprisingly enough, cooked and mashed torups had been savory, and Val Con had directed the gardener to occasionally give what they had too much of to Mrs. ana’Tak, for Mr. Shaper.

Rubbing his hand down his thigh, Val Con surveyed the land before him. Yulie Shaper’s land loved him well, and sheltered him from prying eyes on those frequent occasions when he preferred not to be seen.

He breathed in, gently, tasting the air; listened to the small breeze combing through leaves; and let his eyes unfocus slightly.

There was a cat, under a broad leaf at the edge of the garden; another beneath a short shrub a-blaze with scarlet berries; and a third in the low branch of a tree.

Of Yulie Shaper, there was no sign, but then, he had more than this one garden spot to occupy him.

Val Con stepped over the crack in the world, and walked—carefully, hands in full view—along the path that skirted the garden, and wound its eventual way to the house.

He passed the compost heap, which showed signs of having recently been turned; and ducked beneath low-hanging branches heavy with ripening fruits. Several of the resident cats found his passage interesting enough to join him, one weaving ’round his ankles, while another dashed ahead, coming to sudden and unpredictable stops.

The path went from dirt to stone, framed by tall stalks, each surmounted with a blood red flower the shape of a trumpet. The house itself was very near, only around another curve. He could see, between gently waving branches, the front gable—

Somewhere very close by, a firearm was discharged. The pellet whined as it passed his ear, and Val Con was down, rolling for the dubious cover of the long-legged flowers, cats scattering in all directions.

Another shot passed well over his head, and Val Con came cautiously to one knee beneath his honor-guard of flowers, and spoke to a tall blue bush just ahead and on the opposite side of the path.

“Mr. Shaper, it is your neighbor, Val Con. I wish to speak with you on a matter of mutual interest, if you have time for me.”

There was a long moment of silence, in which Yulie Shaper perhaps reviewed his rules and policies for the concepts of
neighbor
, and
mutual interest
.

The bush shivered, very slightly, and a long, spare man stepped onto the path, his rifle held in two hands, across his chest.

“Didn’t hit you, did I? Thought I missed that first shot.”

Val Con stood, and showed his empty hands at shoulder height.

“The pellet sang to me on its way past my ear,” he said. “I am unhurt.”

Yulie nodded, his cap shadowing his eyes.

“Rifle’s been pulling to the right, lately. Gonna hafta rebore. Sorry—don’t shoot at neighbors, usually. You know that. Good neighbors you been, too. My cats like your cats. That Mrs. ana’Tak, she makes some tasty cookies. You had her cookies?”

“Many times. I particularly like the ones that have jam in the center.”