Shadow Man (Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction) (19 page)

Warreven looked at
'Aukai, shutting out the conversation. It didn't really matter, not
unless they could find some way to persuade Reiss's boss--Mhyre
Tatian, he reminded himself, with an odd thrill that he wouldn't
admit was pleasure--to let Reiss make his statement. Beyond 'Aukai,
a frieze of the spirits danced along the wall, Captain and Madansa
and Agede the Doorkeeper with his eyepatch and bottle of sweetrum;
the painted Captain, broad-shouldered, broad-bearded, reminded him of
the feel of Tatian's body against his own as they stood for an
instant in unintended embrace. He dismissed that thought before it
was fully formed: that was not the way to persuade a man who opposed
trade so vehemently.

"What's NAPD's
problem with trade?" he said aloud, and Malemayn glared at him.

"What in all hells
does that have to do with anything?"

"I don't know,
exactly. Bear with me, would you?"

Haliday grinned,
showing sharp, feral teeth. "Raven's the only one with an idea
so far, Mal."

Malemayn threw up his
hands. "Fine."

"I'm sorry, I
didn't mean to interrupt," Warreven began, then shook his head.
"Have a drink, Mal. I think I have an idea."

Malemayn made a face,
but the anger was fading. He reached for the nightwake pitcher,
gesturing with his other hand for Reiss to proceed.

"The Old
Dame--Lolya Masani, %e owns the company--doesn't approve,"
Reiss said. "Partly it's %e doesn't want us getting in bad with
either Customs or IDCA--there's some stuff, semi-recreational, that
we export that's strictly controlled in the Concord, and Customs
could make life very hard for us if they wanted--and partly %e just
doesn't like the idea." He grinned suddenly, "%e's got this
tape %e gives to every newcomer, where %e lays down the law to them.
No new drugs unless %e clears them, and absolutely no trade, %e'll
fire anyone who sells a permit or a residency. And %e's done it,
too."

"So Tatian isn't
opposed to trade per se," Warreven said slowly. "He just
has to make it look good for Masani?"

"I don't know
about that," Reiss said. "I mean, he doesn't approve of the
players--I don't think he'd sell permits even if the Old Dame didn't
say he couldn't."

Warreven waved that
away. "But a case like this, where the trade was well in the
past, and it's just two people who love each other and want to be
together--if we offered him some incentive, some reason to change
his mind, do you think he would?"

"He wasn't exactly
happy when he told me I had to pull out," Reiss said.
"Basically, IDCA made him do it."

Malemayn said, "We
don't have anything to offer."

"Besides money, of
course," Haliday said, "and that would be a little crude,
for dealing with an off-worlder."

Warreven smiled. "But
in four days, assuming the elections go the way Temelathe wants them,
I'm the Stiller
seraaliste
.
I control the sea-harvest, the land-harvest, and everything that's
surplus to the present contracts is mine to sell where I please.
Would that be sufficient incentive, do you think?"

"It's pretty
crude," Malemayn said. "You won't be part of the group legally,
but still..."

"I think it's clean
enough," Haliday said. "But would this Tatian buy it?"

"I don't know,"
Reiss said, sounding dubious. "IDCA won't be pleased."

"I would imagine it
would depend on what you offered him," 'Aukai said. For the first
time since they'd come to the dancehouse, she sounded like the
woman Warreven remembered, strong, decisive, and just a little
contemptuous of the world around her. "Make the price high enough,
and any druggist will stand up to the IDCA."

"We can't do
anything until after the elections," Malemayn said thoughtfully,
and looked at Warreven. "But that still leaves us time. I think
this'll work, Raven. I think it will."

Warreven grinned,
enjoying the praise. If he had to leave the courts, he could at least
use his new position to benefit his partners. Temelathe would expect
no less--and besides, he admitted silently, it would be a pleasure
to annoy the Most Important Man.

Omni: (Concord) one of
the nine sexual preferences generally recognized by Concord culture;
denotes a person who prefers to be intimate with persons of all
genders. Considered somewhat disreputable, or at best indecisive.

Warreven

The room was cold, the cooling
unit turned to its highest power, rattling in its corner. Warreven
shivered and reached for a corner of the topmost quilt, pulling it
half over his naked body. Behind him, Reiss stirred, shifted so that
he was free of the quilts. Warreven could feel him sweating still,
not just from the exertion of sex, and wondered again if all of the
Concord Worlds were cold planets. It had seemed the thing to do, to
invite Reiss home with him, when they were both flushed with the
power of Warreven's idea, but now, lying in the cold bedroom, the
moonlight through the thin fabric of the shutters warring with the
fitful light of the
luciole
in the corner, he wondered if he'd made a mistake after all. It had
been months since he'd even seen Reiss, longer since he'd slept
with him; the sex had been good--Reiss was always good--but it had
somehow reminded him of his days as trade.

"The light," Reiss
said sleepily, and Warreven rolled to look at him.

"You want it off?"

"No, I'm going to
have to go home in a while," Reiss answered, sounding a little more
awake. "I was wondering, is that one of the bug lights?"

They had been speaking
franca
, and
Warreven blinked at the unfamiliar term. "The
luciole
?"

"Yeah. It doesn't
still have the bugs in it, does it?"

Warreven grinned. "Not
in the city, it doesn't. It was my grandfather's, my mother had
it fitted for grid power a few years before she died." He looked at
the softly flickering lamp, a ceramic sphere shaped like a knot of
arbre
vines,
standing in a base like a shallow bowl. None of the holes was bigger
than his thumb: the light had originally been the home of a colony of
luci
, the
luminescent sea-flies of the peninsular coast. In the old days,
before Rediscovery, you made a lamp like that by digging up a colony
of
luci
. The
queens would be confined to the center of the sphere, while the
drones roamed freely, feeding them; each new generation added new
light. "I've never seen a real
luciole
myself, not one that wasn't converted. One of my great-aunts said
they were noisy, always buzzing, the drones all over the place, and
the shelf would get all sticky from the sugar water they used to feed
them."

"Sounds disgusting,"
Reiss said, and ran a hand along Warreven's side. His hand slipped
further, cupped Warreven's breast, and Warreven turned away,
shrugging his shoulder to dislodge him. There was an instant of
tension, a stillness between them like a silence, and then Reiss
stroked the other's back instead, running his fingers along
Warreven's spine in mute apology. Warreven relaxed into that touch
and, after a moment, pulled his hair forward over his shoulder, out
of the way.

"I should go,"
Reiss said, but made no move.

"Suit yourself,"
Warreven answered. "You're welcome to stay." The neighbors
would talk, of course--they always did; he sometimes wondered what
they had gossiped about before the advocacy group had bought the
building--but then, they would talk anyway, once he brought the
quilts to the laundress.

"Thanks," Reiss
said, and sighed, rolling onto his back. "No, I have to be in early
tomorrow--I'm driving Tatian to Lissom to look at a possible
surplus contract--and I don't really want to show up in the same
clothes I wore yesterday."

He kicked himself free
of the last top quilt and sat up, the sweat still a faint sheen on
his back. Warreven rolled over to watch him dress, drawing the quilt
up over his shoulders, glad of its warmth. Reiss was surprisingly
fair where his clothes protected him from the sun; the hair of his
chest and groin was unexpectedly dark against that pallor. Tatian was
even paler skinned, and golden-haired, Warreven thought, like a
spirit in a babee-story, and he wondered suddenly if that meant
Tatian would be blond all over. It was an arresting thought; he
caught himself smiling and shook the image away. It was a mistake to
let himself think of the off-worlder in those terms, no matter how
handsome he was, or how good his body had felt in that momentary
contact. Tatian was just the man he had to bargain with for Reiss's
statement, and Destany's freedom--nothing more, not even an object
of fantasy, not if he, Warreven, wanted to win.

Rana,
ranas
, also
rana
band
,
rana
dancers
: (Hara)
a group of men and women who use traditional drum-dances to express a
political opinion; rana performances are traditionally protected by
the Trickster, and by custom cannot be stopped unless the ranas make
an explicit request for their audience to take political action.
Ranas traditionally wear multicolored ribbons, a mark of the
Trickster, as a sign of their special status.

6

Warreven

Warreven had been drinking
since the polls opened at noon--sweetrum and water, cut one-and-two
so that he could barely taste the alcohol--but even so, he'd
nearly finished the bottle. He glanced again at the media screen, lit
but with sound muted, and turned away as soon as the count for
seraaliste
crawled along the bottom of the display. He was still winning--had
already won, if he was honest with himself, and that meant that the
clan's profits were his responsibility for the next year, until
Midsummer came round again. One local year, twelve kilohours by the
off-worlders' reckoning--twelve thousand and ninety-seven hours,
to be precise--before he would be free again. But the harvest
surplus was squarely in his hands, to sell where he pleased. Daithef
wouldn't approve of that, anymore than he'd approved of
Warreven's candidacy, and had spent the last few days of the
campaign telling anyone who would listen that it would be a full year
before Stiller's profits would be safe again.

Warreven made a face--he
wasn't that incompetent, and in any case a barrel-back clam would
do a better job than Daithef--but admitted that any deal with NAPD
would have to be handled cautiously. The price would have to be to
NAPD's advantage if there was any hope of using the sale to force
Tatian to allow Reiss to bear witness, but it couldn't be too good,
or he himself would lose credibility with the Stiller
mesnie
s.
His plan was beginning to seem more complicated than he'd
anticipated; he grimaced again, putting the worry aside, and poured
the last of the sweetrum into his cup. There wasn't much left, and
he added water to bring the mixed liquid almost to the rim of the
cup.

In the screen, the
image shifted, showing the Glassmarket cleared for the first night of
the Stiller
baanket
.
The major celebrations would take place tomorrow and the next day,
over the two days of the Midsummer holiday, but tonight Stiller would
welcome the clan and introduce the new officers to their people. He
would have to attend, of course, but not for the full night. Once he
had shown himself on the platform, along with the other officials, he
would be free to do as he pleased, to celebrate like another Stiller.
And what I please... not
Reiss's company, this time, but someone like me, another indigene
.
He reached for the monophone and punched in the codes before he could
change his mind.

The routing codes
jingled past, and then there was dead air while the last tone pulsed
steadily. Warreven waited, counting, and was about to break the
connection when a voice answered.

"Æ?"

The secondary screen
lit, tardy, the image streaked with static. Warreven stared at it, at
the visual pickup behind it, and said, "Hello, Chauntclere."

"Raven." Neither
the tone nor the expression were welcoming. "I suppose I should
congratulate you."

"If you must,"
Warreven answered. Chauntclere Ferane stared back at him from the
viewscreen, patently skeptical. His hair and short beard were
streaked with salt stains, patches of odd, paler color, rust and
amber and straw-gold, from a season spent aboard his tender. His
crew, and the divers in particular, would be piebald from the mix of
coral salts, wind, and the kelps they harvested. "It wasn't my
idea, Clere."

"I believe you."

"God and the
spirits!" Warreven glared at the screen, and after a moment,
Chauntclere looked away.

"Anyway,
congratulations. It says a lot for Stiller that they elected a
Modernist."

It was a peace offering
of sorts, though not strictly true--Warreven was more of a moderate,
if not by Ferane then by Stiller standards--and Warreven nodded,
accepting it as meant. "Thanks. And, speaking of celebrations, how
would you like to go to the first-night's
baanket
with me? We wouldn't have to stay long, and I thought we could hit
some of the harbor bars, maybe a dance house or something,
afterward."

There was a little
silence, and then Chauntclere shook his head, mouth twisting in a
grimace that was intended to be a smile. "I don't think that's
a good idea."

"It doesn't mean
anything, I just wanted company."

"And to hit the bars,
and screw around afterward," Chauntclere said. He shook his head
again. "I don't think so."

Don't
flatter yourself
, Warreven thought, but knew better than
to say it. It would take months to talk Chauntclere out of his
anger--
and besides, that
was exactly what I meant. I can't slap at him for getting it right
and saying no
. He said, "Clere--"