There are secrets in all families--

     - George Farquhar, 1678-1707

 

Liaden Currency

12 dex to a tor

12 tor to a kais

12 kais (144 tor) to a cantra

1 cantra = 35,000 Terran bits

 

Standard Year

8 Standard Days in One Standard Week

32 Standard Days in One Standard Month

384 Standard Days in One Standard Year

 

Liaden Year

96 Standard Days in One Relumma

12 Standard Months in One Standard Year

One Relumma is equal to 8 twelve-day weeks

Four Relumma equal One Standard Year

 

Cast of Characters

 

Gobelyn's Market out of New Carpathia

 

Arin Gobelyn, Iza's deceased spouse, Jethri's father

Cris Gobelyn, first mate, La's eldest child

Dyk Gobelyn, cook

Grig Tomas, back-up everything, Arin's cousin

Iza Gobelyn, captain-owner

Jethri Gobelyn

Khatelane Gobelyn, pilot

Mel Gobelyn

Paitor Gobelyn, trader, Iza's brother

Seeli Gobelyn, admin, La's second child

Zam Gobelyn

 

Elthoria out of Solcintra

 

Kor Ith yo'Lanna, captain

Noire ven'Deelin, master trader

Pen Rel sig'Kethra, arms master

Gar Sad per'Etla, cargo master

Gaenor tel'Dorbit, first mate

Ray Jon tel'Ondor, protocol master

Vil Tor, ship's librarian

Kilara pin'Ebit, technician

Rantel ver'Borith, technician

 

Tarnia's Clanhouse

 

Stafeli Maarilex, Delm Tarnia

Ren Lar Maarilex, Master of the Vine

Pet Ric Maarilex, his son

Pen Dir, a cousin, off at school

Meicha Maarilex, a daughter of the house

Miandra Maarilex, a daughter of the house

Flinx, a cat

Mr. pel'Saba, the butler

Mrs. tor'Beli, the cook

Anecha, a driver

Graem, Ren Lar's second in the cellars

Sun Eli pen'Jerad, tailor

Zer Min pel'Oban, dancing master

 

 

 

Day 29
Standard Year 1118
Gobelyn's Market
Opposite Shift

 

"Down all that long, weary shift, they kept after Byl," Khat's voice was low and eerie in the dimness of the common room. The knuckles of Jethri's left hand ached with the grip he had on his cup while his right thumb and forefinger whirled ellipses on the endlessly cool surface of his lucky fractin. Beside him, he could hear Dyk breathing, fast and harsh.

"Once--twice--three times!--he broke for the outring, his ship, and his mates. Three times, the Liadens turned him back, pushing him toward the center core, where no space-going man has right nor reason to be.

"They pushed him, those Liadens, moving through the night-levels as swift and sure as if it were bright world-day. Byl ran, as fast as long legs and terror could speed him, but they were always ahead of him, the canny Liadens. They were always ahead--'round every corner, past every turning in the hall."

Mel, on Jethri's left, moaned softly. Jethri bit his lip.

"But then!" Khat's voice glittered in the gloom. "Then, all at once, the luck changed. Or, say, the gods of spacers smiled. He reached a corridor that was empty, turned a corner where no Liaden crouched, gun aiming for his heart. He paused then, ears craned to the rear, but heard no stealthy movement, nor boot heels sounding quick along the steel floor.

"He ran then, light of heart and all but laughing, and the way stood clear before him, from downring admin all the way to the outing, where his ship was berthed; where his mates, and his love, lay awaiting his return.

"He came to the bay door--Bay Eight, that was where. Came to the bay door, used his card and slipped through as soon as the gap was wide enough to fit him. Grinning, he pushed off in the lighter grav, taking long bounds toward Dock Three. He took the curve like he'd grown wings, singing now, so glad to be near, so glad to be home...

"That was when he saw the crowd, and the flashing lights that meant ring cops--and the others, that meant worse.

"He shouted and ran, waving his arms as if it all made a difference. Which it didn't. Those lifelines had been cut good hours ago, while he had been harried, hounded and kept away--and there was eight zipped bags laid out neat on the dockside, which was all that was left of his mates and his love."

Silence, Jethri's jaw was so tight he thought teeth might shatter. Mel gasped and Dyk groaned.

"So," said Khat, her voice shockingly matter-of-fact. "Now you see what comes to someone who cheats a Liaden on cargo."

"Except," Jethri managed, his voice breathless with tension, though he knew far better than what had been told--Khat on a story was that good. "Excepting, they'd never done it that way--the Liadens. Might be they'd've rigged something with the docking fees--more like, they'd've set the word around, so five ports later Byl finds himself at a stand--full cans and no buyers, see? But they wouldn't kill for cargo--that's not how their Balancing works."

"So speaks the senior'prentice!" Dyk intoned, pitching his voice so deep it rumbled inside the steel walls like a bad encounter with a gabber-hook.

"C'mon, Jeth," Mel put in. "You was scared, too!"

"Khat tells a good story," he muttered, and Dyk produced a laugh.

"She does that--and who's to say she's wrong? Sure, you been studying the tapes, but Khat's been studying portside news since before you was allowed inside ship's core!"

"Not that long," Khat protested mildly, over the rustle and scrape that was her moving along the bench 'til she had her hand on the controls. Light flooded the cubby, showing four startlingly similar faces: broad across the cheekbones and square about the jaw. Khat's eyes, and Jethri's, were brown; Dyk and Mel had blue--hers paler than his. All four favored the spacer buzz, which left their scant hair looking like dark velvet caps snugged close 'gainst their skulls. Mel was nearest to Jethri in age--nineteen Standards to his seventeen. Khat and Dyk were born close enough to argue minutes when questions of elder's precedence rose--twenty Standard Years, both, and holding adult shares.

Their surname was Gobelyn. Their ship was Gobelyn's Market, out of New Carpathia, which homeworld none of them had ever seen nor missed.

"Yah, well maybe Jethri could tell us a story," said Dyk, on the approach of mischief, "since he knows so many."

Jethri felt his ears heat, and looked down into his cup. Koka, it had been--meant to warm his way to slumber. It was cold, now, and Khat's story was enough to keep a body awake through half his sleep-shift. Even if he did know better.

"Let him be, Dyk," Khat said, surprisingly. "Jethri's doing good with his study--Uncle's pleased. Says it shows well, us having a Liaden speaker 'mong us."

Dyk started to laugh, caught something in her face and shrugged instead. Jethri wisely did not mention that his "Liaden speaking" was barely more than pidgin.

Instead, he drank off the dregs of his cold koka, managing without much of a shudder, then got himself up and across the room, right hand still fingering the ancient tile in search of comfort. He put the cup in the washer, and nodded to his cousins before he left to find his bunk.

"Good shift," he murmured.

"Good shift, Jethri," Khat said warmly. "Wide dreaming."

"Sleep tight, kid," Dyk added and Mel fluttered her fingers, smiling. "Be good, Jeth."

He slipped out of the cubby and paused, weighing the likelihood of sleep against the lure of a history search on the fate of Byl--and the length of Uncle Paitor's lecture, if he was found reading through his sleep shift again.

That was the clincher, his uncle being a man who warmed to a scolding. Sighing, Jethri turned to the right. Behind him, in the cubby, he heard Dyk say, "So tell us a scary one, Khat; now that the kid's away."

 

* * *

 

Having found sleep late, it was only natural that Jethri overslept the bell, meaning hard biscuit and the dregs of the pot for breakfast. Chewing, he flipped through the duty roster and discovered himself on Stinks.

"Mud!" he muttered, gulping bitter coffee. It wasn't that he begrudged his cousins their own round of duty--which they had, right enough; he wasn't callin' slackers--just, he wished that he might progress somewhat above the messy labor and make-work that fell his lot all too often. He had his studies, which was work, of its kind; emergency drill with Cris; and engine lore with Khat. 'Course, him being youngest, with none on the ladder 'neath him--that did go into the equation. Somebody had to do the scutwork, and if not juniormost, then who?

Cramming the last of the biscuit into his mouth, he scanned down to dinner duty--and nearly cussed again. Dyk was on cook, which meant the meal would be something tasty, complicated and needful of mucho cleanup. Jethri himself being on clean up.

"That kind of shift," he consoled himself, pouring the dregs of the dregs into the chute and setting the cup into the washer. "Next shift can only be better."

Being as they were coming into Ynsolt'i Port next shift, barring the unexpected, that at least was a given. Which realization did lighten his mood a fraction, so he was able to bring up a thin, tuneless whistle to stand him company on his way down to the utility lockers.

 

* * *

 

He worked his way up from quarters, stripping the sweet-sheets off sleeping pallets, rolling up the limp, sweat-flavored mats and stuffing them into the portable recycler. Zam, Seeli, and Grig were on Opposite; the doors to their quarters sealed, blue privacy lights lit. Jethri left new sheets rolled up and strapped outside their doors and moved on, not in any particular scramble, but not dallying, either. He had it from experience that doing Stinks consumed considerably less time than was contained inside a duty-shift. Even doing Stinks thoroughly and well--which he had better or the captain'd be down his throat with her spacesuit on--he'd have shift left at the end of his work. He was allowed to use leftover duty time for study. What had to be measured with a fine rule was how much time he could claim before either Uncle Paitor or the captain called slacker and pulled him down to the core on discipline.

Stinks being a duty short on brain work, the brain kept itself busy. Mostly, Jethri used the time to review his latest studies, or daydream about the future, when he would be a trader in his own right, free to cut deals and commit the ship, without having to submit everything to Uncle Paitor, and getting his numbers second-guessed and his research questioned.

Today, the brain having started on a grump, it continued, embroidering on the theme of scutwork. Replacing the sheets in his own cubby, he tried to interject some happy-think into what was threatening to become a major mood, and found himself on the losing side of an argument with himself.

He was juniormost, no disputing that--youngest of Captain Iza Gobelyn's three children--unintended, and scheduled for abort until his father's golden tongue changed her mind.

Despite unwelcome beginnings, though, he was of value to the ship. Uncle Paitor was teaching him the trade, and had even said that Jethri's researches into the Liaden markets had the potential to be profitable for the ship. Well, Uncle Paitor had even backed a major buy Jethri had suggested, last port, and if that didn't show a growing faith in the juniormost's skill, then nothing did.

That's all right, the half of himself determined to set into a mood countered. Uncle Paitor might allow you value to the ship, but can you say the same for your mother?

Which was hardly a fair question. Of course, he couldn't say the same for his mother, who had put him into Seeli's care as a babe and hadn't much use for him as a kid. When his father died--and only owning the truth--captain'd had a lot of changes to go through, one of them being she'd lost the lover and listening post she'd had since her second voyage out of her homeship, Grenadine. She taken three days of wild-time to try to recover some balance--come back drunk and black and blue, proclaiming herself cured. But after that, any stock Jethri'd held with his mother had vanished along with everything that had anything to do with his father, from photocubes to study certificates to his and Jethri's joint collection of antique fractins. It was almost as if she blamed him for Arin's death, which was plain senseless, though Seeli did her best to explain that the human heart wasn't notoriously sensible.

Quarters finished, and in a fair way to seeing that mood set in plate steel, Jethri went down to Ops. The door whined in its track when it opened and Jethri winced, sending a quick glance inside to see if his entrance had disturbed anybody at their calcs.

Khat was sitting at the big board, the captain shadowing her from second. Cris, on data, glanced over his shoulder and gave Jethri a quick jerk of the chin. Khat didn't turn, but she did look up and smile into the screen for him. The captain never stirred.

Dragging the recycler to the wall, he moored it, then went back to the door, fingering the greaser pen from his kit belt. He pulled open the panel and switched the automatic off. Kneeling, he carefully penned a beaded line of grease along the outer track. The door whined again--slightly softer--when he pushed it open, and he applied a second row of grease beads to the inner track.

He tucked the pen away and stood, pushing the door back and forth until it ran silent in its tracks, nodded, and switched on the automatics again.

That minor chore taken care of, he moved along the stations, backmost first, working quick and quiet, replacing the used sweet-sheets with new, strapping fresh sheets to the board at each occupied station.

"Thanks, Jeth," Cris said in his slow, easy voice. "'preciate the door, too. I shoud've got it myself, three shifts back."

Thanks from Cris was coin worth having. Jethri ducked his head, feeling his ears heat. "'welcome," he murmured, putting the new mat down at second and reaching for the strap.

The captain stood. "You can replace that," she said, her cool brown eyes barely grazing Jethri before she turned to Khat. "Keep course, Pilot."

"Aye, Cap'n."

She nodded, crossed the room in two long strides and was gone, the door opening silently before her. Jethri bit his lip, spun the chair and stripped off the used sheet. Glancing up, he saw his cousins pass a glance between the two of them, but didn't catch its meaning, being short of the code. He smoothed the new mat into place, stowed the old one with all the rest, unmoored the recycler and left.

Neither Khat nor Cris looked 'round to see him go.

 

* * *

 

Stinks was a play in two parts. Between them, Jethri took a break for a mug of 'mite, which was thick and yellow and smelled like yeast--and if anyone beyond a spacer born and bred could stomach the stuff, the fact had yet to be noted.

One mug of 'mite delivered a cargo can load of vitamins and power nutrients. In the old days, when star travel was a new and risky undertaking, crews had lived on 'mite and not much else, launch to planetfall. Nowadays, when space was safe and a ship the size of Gobelyn's Market carried enough foodstuffs to supply a body's needed nutrients without sacrificing taste and variety, 'mite lingered on as a comfort drink, and emergency ration.

Jethri dunked a couple whole grain crackers in his mug, chomped and swallowed them, then drank off what was left. Thus fortified, he ambled down to the utility lockers, signed the camera out, slotted the empties and a tray of new filters into the sled and headed out to the bounceway.

 

* * *

 

Ops ran Market's grav in a helix, which was standard for a ship of its size and age. Smaller vessels ran whole-ship light-, or even no-grav, and weight work was a part of every crew member's daily duty roster. Market was big enough to generate the necessary power for a field. Admin core was damn' near one gee, as was Ops itself. Sleeping quarters was lighter; you slept strapped in and anchored your possessions to the wall. The outer edges of the ship, where the cans hooked in, that was lighter still--as near to no grav as mattered. On the outermost edge of E Deck, there was the bounceway, a rectangular space marked out for rec, where crew might swoop, fly, bounce off the walls, play free-fall tag, and--just coincidentally--sharpen their reaction times and grav-free moves.

It being a rec area, there were air vents. It being the largest open atmosphere section on the ship, it also had the highest amount of ship air to sample for pollen, spores, loose dust, and other contaminants. Jethri's job was to open each vent, use the camera to record the visual patterns, change the camera to super and flash for spectrographic details, remove the used filter, install a fresh, and reseal the vent. That record would go right to command for analysis as soon as he plugged the camera into the charge socket

Not quite as mindless as replacing sweet-sheets, but not particularly demanding of the thought processes, either.

Mooring the sled, he slid the camera into the right pocket of his utility vest, a new filter and an envelope into the left, squinted thoughtfully at the position of the toppest vent--and kicked off.

Strictly speaking, he could have gone straight-line, door to vent. In the unlikely circumstance that there'd been hurry involved, he would, he told himself, curling for the rebound off the far wall, have chosen the high leap. As it was, hands extended and body straight, he hit the corner opposite the vent, somersaulted, arcing downward, hit the third wall with his feet, rising again, slowing, slowing--until he was floating, gentle and easy, next to the target vent.

Bracing himself, he slid the door open, used the camera, then unsnapped the soiled filter, slipped it into the envelope and snapped in the replacement. Making sure his pockets were sealed, he treated himself to cross-room dive, shot back up to the opposite corner, dove again, twisted in mid-dive, bounced off the end wall, pinwheeled off the ceiling, hit the floor on his hand, flipped and came upright next to the sled.

Grinning like a certified fool, he unsealed his pocket, slotted the used filter, took on a clean one, turned and jumped for the next vent.

 

* * *

 

It might've been an hour later and him at the trickiest bit of his day. The filter for the aromatics locker was special--a double-locking, odor-blocking bit of business, badly set over the door, flush to the angle with the ceiling. Aromatics was light, but by no means as light as the bounceway, so it was necessary for anyone needing to measure and change the filter to use their third hand to chin themselves on the high snatch-rod, knees jammed at right angles to the ceiling, while simultaneously using their first and second hands to do the actual work.

Normal two-handers were known to lament the lack of that crucial third appendage with language appropriate to the case. Indeed, one of Jethri's fondest memories was of long, easy-speaking Cris, bent double against the ceiling, hanging over the vent in question, swearing, constantly and conversationally, for the entire twenty minutes the job required, never once repeating a cuss word. It had been a virtuoso performance to which Jethri secretly aspired.

Unfortunately, experience had taught him that he could either hang and cuss, or hang and work. So it was that he wrestled in silence, teeth drilling into lower lip, forcing himself to go slow and easy, and make no false moves, because it would be a serious thing if an aromatics spill contaminated the ship's common air.

He had just seated and locked the clean inner filter, when the hall echoed with a titanic clang, which meant that the cage had cycled onto his level.

Jethri closed his eyes and clenched into the corner, forcing himself to wait until the wall had stopped reverberating.

"It's settled," the captain's voice echoed in the wake of the larger noise.

"Might be settled." That was Uncle Paitor, his voice a rumble, growing slightly fainter as the two of them walked outward, toward the cans. "I'm not convinced we've got the best trade for the ship in this, Iza. I'm thinking we might be underselling something--"

"We've got space issues, which aren't leaving us," the captain interrupted. "This one's Captain's Call, brother. It's settled."

"Space issues, yeah," Paitor said, a whole lot more argumentative than he usually was when he was talkin' to the captain, and like he thought things weren't settled at all. "There's space issues. In what case, sister o'mine, you'd best remember those couple o'seal-packs of extra you been carrying in your personal bin for damn' near ten Standards. You been carrying extra a long time, and some of what's there ought to get shared out so choices can be made--"

"No business of yours--none of it, Paitor."

"You's the one called kin just now. But I'm a trader, and what you got's still worth something to somebody. You make this trade and that stuff ought to be gone, too!"

"We'll chart that course when we got fuel for it. You done?"

Paitor answered that, but Jethri only caught the low sound of his voice, no words.

Cautiously, he unclenched, reached for the second filter and began to ease back the locks, forcing himself to attend to the work at hand, rather than wonder what sort of trade might be Captain's Call...

 

* * *

 

Later, in the galley, Dyk was in a creative frenzy.

Jethri, who knew his man, had arrived well before his scheduled time, and already there were piles of used bowls, cruets, mixers, forks, tongs, spoons and spice syringes littering every possible surface and the floor. It was nothing short of awesome. Shaking his head, he pulled on his gloves and started in on first clean up.

"Hey, Jeth! Unship that big flat pan for me, willya?"

Sighing, Jethri abandoned the dirties, climbed up on the counter and pulled open the toppest cabinet, where the equipment that was used least was stowed. Setting his feet careful among the welter of used tools, he reached for the requested pan.

The door to the galley banged open, Jethri turned his head and clutched the edge of the cabinet, keeping himself very still.

Iza Gobelyn stood in the doorway, her face so tight the lines around her mouth stood in stark relief. Dyk, lost in his dream of cookery, oblivious to clear danger, smiled over his shoulder at her, the while beating something in a bowl with a power spoon.

"Good shift, Captain!" he called merrily. "Have we got a surprise ordered in for you tonight!"

"No," said Iza.

That got through.

Dyk blinked. "Ma'am?"

"I said, no," the captain repeated, her voice crackling with static. "We'll want a quick meal, no surprises."

The spoon went quiet. Dyk put the bowl aside, real careful, and turned to face her. "Captain, I've got a meal planned and on course."

"Jettison," she said, flat and cold. "Quick meal, Dyk. Now."

There was a moment--a long moment, when Jethri though Dyk would argue the point, but in the end, he just nodded.

"Yes'm," he said, real quiet, and turned away toward the cabinet.

The captain left, the door swinging shut behind her.

Jethri let out the breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, slid the flat pan back into its gips, closed the door, and carefully got himself down to the floor, where he started back in collecting dirties.

He was loading the washer when it came to him that Dyk was 'way too quiet, and he looked up.

His cousin was staring down at the bowl, kinda swirling the contents with the power spoon turned off. Jethri moved a couple steps closer, until Dyk looked at him.

"What was you making?" Jethri asked.

"A cake," Dyk said, and Jethri could believe it was tears he saw in the blue eyes. "I--" he cleared his throat and shook his head, pushing the bowl away. "It was a stupid idea, I guess. I'll get the quick meal together and then help you with clean up, right?"

Dyk wasn't a prize as a partner in clean up, and Jethri was about to decline the favor. And a cake--why would he have been after making a cake, just coming into port? Another one of those everybody-knows-but-me things, Jethri thought, frowning at his larger cousin.

Something about the set of his shoulders, or even the tears, Dyk not being one to often cry, counseled him to think better of refusing the offered aid. He nodded, trying to remake his frown into something approaching agreeable.

"Sure," he said. "Be glad of the help."

 

 

Day 32
Standard Year 1118
Gobelyn's Market
Jethri's Quarters

 

 

Jethri was behind closed door--which he didn't usually do on his off-shift--because the volume on the recorder was iffy at best, and besides, there were a couple of the cousins who weren't all that happy to hear Liaden words, even if they was spoke on archive, by a relative.

"If you trade with Liadens, trade careful, and for the gods' love don't come sideways of honor."

One upside of having the door closed was an unimpeded view of the gift Dyk had given him two ports back, to much guffawing at the entrance hatch. The Unofficial Up-To-Date Combine Com-Code Chart issued by Trundee's Tool and Tow. Besides the codes, most of which hadn't changed in the dozen or so years Jethri had been aware of them, there was a constantly changing view, in simulated 3D, of the self-declared "Best Saltwater Bathing Beach in the Galaxy."

Jethri had--on several occasions, truth told--tried to count the different views offered by the chart. Dyk had helpfully showed him how to change the pace, or even stop on a particular image. Jethri discovered, by plain accident, that you could "tune out" the images of people without bathing suits--or the ones with bathing suits, for that matter, and also how to close up on the people and the sand, blocking out the long, unsettling sweep of sky.

His eye was caught now by a series that intrigued him. A couple, hand in hand, moved across several images, walking along the sandscape by the roiling, splashing waves, each wearing a suit (if something covering only a very small part of the anatomy could really be called a suit!) Both suits had decorations on them, shapes very much like his lucky fractin. The woman's suit was basically white, with the fractins arrayed in several fetching patterns, but they were blue, with the lettering in yellow. Her partner's suit was blue, the fractins white and the lettering black, which was like no fractin he'd ever seen--not that he thought he'd seen them all.

The distraction of the woman's shape and beauty, and the way she moved, made it hard for him to pay attention to the old tape. He sighed, so loud he might have been heard in the companionway if anyone was there to listen.

He had work to do. They were set to put in at a Liaden port right soon, and now was time to study, not indulge high-oxy dreams of walking hand-held with a lady 'way too pretty to notice a ship-kid...

Teeth chewing lower lip, he punched the button on the recorder, backing up to the last sentence he remembered hearing.

This set of notes was old: recorded by Great-Grand-Captain Larance Gobelyn more than forty Standard years ago, dubbed to ship's library twenty Standards later from the original deteriorating tape. Jethri fiddled with the feed on the audio board, but only succeeded in lowering the old man's voice. Sighing, he upped the gain again, squinting in protest of the scratchy, uneven sound.

"Liaden honor is--active. Insult--any insult--is punished. Immediately. An individual's name is his most important possession and--"

"Jethri?" Uncle Paitor's voice broke across Cap'n Larance's recitation. Jethri sighed and thumbed 'pause'.

"Yessir," he said, turning his head toward the intercom grid set in the wall.

"Come on down to the trade room, will you? We need to talk over a couple things."

Jethri slipped the remote out of his ear. As senior trader, Paitor was specifically in charge of the senior apprentice trader's time and education.

"Yessir," Jethri repeated. Two quick fingertaps marked his place in the old notes file. He left at a brisk walk, his thoughts half on honor, and only slightly less than half on the image of the woman on the poster.

 

* * *

 

His uncle nodded him into a chair and eased back in his. They were coming in on Ynsolt'i and next hour Paitor Gobelyn would have time for nothing but the feed from the port trade center. Now, his screen was dark, the desk-top barren. Paitor cleared his throat.

"Got a couple things," he said, folding his hands over his belt buckle. "On-Port roster: Dyk an' me'll be escorting the payload to the central trade hall and seeing it safe with the highest bidder. Khat's data, Grig's eatables, Mel's on tech, Cris'll stay ship-side. You..."

Paitor paused and Jethri gipped his hands together tight on his lap, willing his face into a trader's expression of courteous disinterest. They had textile on board--half a dozen bolts of cellosilk that Cris had taken on two stops back, with Ynsolt'i very much in his mind. Was it possible, Jethri wondered, that Uncle Paitor was going to allow...

"Yourself--you'll be handling the silk lot. I expect to see a kais out of the lot. If I was you, I'd call on Honored Sir bin'Flora first."

Jethri remembered to breathe. "Yes, sir. Thank you." He gipped his hands together so hard they hurt. His own trade. His own, very first, solo trade with no Senior standing by, ready to take over if the thing looked like going awry.

His uncle waved a hand. "Time you were selling small stuff on your own. Now." He leaned forward abruptly, folded his arms on the desk and looked at Jethri seriously. "You know we got a lot riding on this trip."

Indeed they did--more than a quarter of the Market's speculation capital was tied up in eighteen
Terran pounds of vya, a spice most commonly sold in five gram lots. Jethri's research had revealed that vya was the active ingredient in fa'yya, a Liaden drink ship's library classified as a potent aphrodisiac. Ynsolt'i was a Liaden port and the spice should bring a substantial profit to the ship. Not, Jethri reminded himself, that profit was ever guaranteed.

"We do well with the spice here," Paitor was saying, "and the captain's going to take us across to Kinaveral, do that refit we'd been banking for now, rather than two Standards from now."

This was the news that might have had Dyk baking a cake. Jethri sat up straighter, rubbing the palms of his hands down the rough fabric of his work pants.

"Refit'll keep us world-bound 'bout a Standard, near's we can figure. Captain wants that engine upgrade bad and trade-side's gonna need two more cargo pods to balance the expense." He grinned suddenly. "Three, if I can get 'em."

Jethri smiled politely, thinking that his uncle didn't look as pleased with that as he might have and wondering what the down-side of the trade was.

"While refit's doing, we figured--the captain and me--that it'd be optimum to re-structure crew. So, we've signed you as senior 'prentice with Gold Digger."

It was said so smoothly that Jethri didn't quite catch the sense of it.

"Gold Digger?" he repeated blankly, that much having gotten through, by reason of him and Mac Gold having traded blows on last sighting--more to Jethri's discomfort than Mac's. He hadn't exactly told anyone on the Market the full details of the incident, Gold Digger's crew being cousins of his mother, and his mother making a point more'n once about how she'd nearly ended up being part of that ship instead of this.

Jethri came forward in his chair, hearing the rest of it play back inside the whorlings of his ears. "You signed me onto Gold Digger?" he demanded. "For how long?"

His voice echoed into the hall, he'd asked that loud, but he didn't apologize.

Paitor raised a hand. "Ease down, boy. One loop through the mines. Time they're back in port, you'll be twenty--full adult and able to find your own berth." He nodded. "You make yourself useful like you and me both know you can and you'll come off Digger a full trader with experience under your belt--"

"Three Standards?" Jethri's voice broke, but for once he didn't cringe in shame. He was too busy thinking about a converted ore ship smaller than the Market, its purely male crew crammed all six into a common sleeping room, and the trade nothing more than foodstuffs and ore, ore and mining tools, oxy tanks and ore...

"Ore," he said, staring at his uncle. "Not even rough gem. Industrial ore." He took a breath, knowing his dismay showed and not caring about that, either. "Uncle Paitor, I've been studying. If there's something else I--"

Paitor showed him palm again. 'Nothing to do with your studying. You been doing real good. I'll tell you--better than the captain supposed you would. Little more interested in the Liaden side of things than I thought reasonable, there at first, but you always took after Arin, anyhow. No harm in learning the lingo, and I will say the Liadens seem to take positive note of you." He shook his head. "Course, you don't have your full growth yet, which puts you nearer their level."

Liadens were a short, slight people, measured against Terran averages. Jethri wasn't as short as a Liaden, but he was, he thought bitterly, a damn sight shorter than Mac Gold.

"What it is," Paitor said slowly. "We're out of room. It's hard for us, too, Jethri. If we were a bigger ship, we'd keep you on. But you're youngest, none of the others're inclined to change berth, and, well--Ship's Option. Captain's cleared it. Ben Gold states himself willing to have you." He leaned back, looking stern. "And ore needs study, too, 'prentice. Nothing's as simple as it looks."

Thrown off, thought Jethri. I'm being thrown off of my ship. He thought that he could have borne it better, if he was simply being cast out to make his own way. But the arranged berth on Gold Digger added an edge of fury to his disbelief. He opened his mouth to protest further and was forestalled by a ping! from Paitor's terminal.

The senior trader snapped forward in his chair, flipping the switch that accepted the first of the trade feeds from Ynsolt'i Port. He glanced over at Jethri.

"You get me a kais for that silk, now. If the spice sells good for us, I'll OK that Combine key you been wanting. You'll have earned it."

That was dismissal. Jethri stood. "Yessir," he said, calm as a dry mouth would let him, and left the trade room.

 

 

Day 33
Standard Year 1118
Ynsolt'i Port
Textile Hall

 

 

"Premium grade, honored sir," Jethri murmured, keeping his eyes modestly lowered, as befit a young person in discourse with a person of lineage and honor.

Honored Sir bin'Flora moved his shoulders and flipped an edge of the fabric up, frowning at the underweave. Jethri ground his teeth against an impulse to add more in praise of the hand-loomed Gindoree cellosilk.

Don't oversell! he could hear Uncle Paitor snap from memory. The Trader is in control of the trade.

"Eight tor the six-bolt," the buyer stated, tossing the sample cloth back across the spindle. Jethri sighed gently and spread his hands.

"The honored buyer is, of course, distrustful of goods offered by one so many years his inferior in wisdom. I assure you that I am instructed by an elder of my ship, who bade me accept not a breath less than two kais."

"Two?" The Liaden's shoulders moved again--not a shrug, but expressive of some emotion. Amusement, Jethri thought. Or anger.

"Your elder mis-instructs you, young sir. Perhaps it is a testing." The buyer tipped his head slightly to one side, as if considering. "I will offer an additional pair of tor," he said at last, accent rounding the edges of the trade-tongue, "in kindness of a student's diligence."

Wrong, Jethri thought. Not to say that Honored bin'Flora wasn't the heart of kindness, which he very likely was, on his off-days. A trade was something else again.

Respectful, Jethri bowed, and, respectful, brought his eyes to the buyer's face. "Sir, I value your generosity. However, the distance between ten tor and two kais is so vast that I feel certain my elder would counsel me to forgo the trade. Perhaps you had not noticed--" he caught himself on the edge of insult and smoothly changed course--"the light is poor, just here..."

Pulling the bolt forward, he again showed the fineness of the cloth, the precious irregularities of weave, which proved it hand woven, spoke rapturously of the pure crimson dye.

The buyer moved his hand. "Enough. One kais. A last offer."

Gotcha, thought Jethri, making a serious effort to keep his face neutral. One kais, just like Uncle Paitor had wanted. In retrospect, it had been an easy sell.

Too easy? he wondered then, looking down at the Liaden's smooth face and disinterested brown eyes. Was there, just maybe, additional profit to be made here?

Trade is study, Uncle Paitor said from memory. Study the goods, and study the market. And after you prepare as much as you can, there's still nothing says that a ship didn't land yesterday with three holds full of something you're carrying as a luxury sell.

Nor was there any law, thought Jethri, against Honored Buyer bin'Flora being critically short on crimson cellosilk, this Port-day. He took a cautious breath and made his decision.

"Of course," he told the buyer, gathering the sample bolt gently into his arms, "I am desolate not to have closed trade in this instance. A kais... It is generous, respected sir, but--alas. My elder will be distressed--he had instructed me most carefully to offer the lot first to yourself and to make every accommodation... But a single kais, when his word was two? I do not.." He fancied he caught a gleam along the edge of the Liaden's bland face, a flicker in the depths of the careful eyes, and bit his lip, hoping he wasn't about to blow the whole deal.

"I don't suppose," he said, voice edging disastrously toward a squeak, "--my elder spoke of you so highly... I don't suppose you might go a kais-six?"

"Ah." Honored Sir bin'Flora's shoulders rippled and this time Jethri was sure the gesture expressed amusement. "One kais, six tor it is." He bowed and Jethri did, clumsily, because of the bolt he still cradled. "Done," he said.

"Very good," returned the buyer. "Set the bolt down, young sir. You are quite correct regarding that crimson. Remarkably pure. If your elder instructed you to hold at anything less than four kais, he was testing you in good earnest."

Jethri stared, then, with an effort, he straightened his face, trying to make it as bland and ungiving as the buyer's.

He needn't have bothered. The Liaden had pulled a pouch from his belt and was intent on counting out coins. He placed them on the trade table and stepped back, sweeping the sample bolt up as he did.

"Delivery may be made to our warehouse within the twelve-hour." He bowed, fluid and unstrained, despite the bolt.

"Be you well, young sir. Fair trading, safe lift."

Jethri gave his best bow, which was nowhere near as pretty as the buyer's. "Thank you, respected sir. Fair trading, fair profit."

"Indeed," said the buyer and was gone.

 

* * *

 

By rights, he should have walked a straight line from Textile Hall to the Market and put himself at the disposal of the captain.

Say he was disinclined just yet to talk with Captain Iza Gobelyn, coincidentally his mother, on the subject of his upcoming change of berth. Or say he was coming off his first true solo trade and wanted time to turn the thing over in his mind. Which he was doing, merebeer to hand at the Zeroground Pub, on the corner of the bar he'd staked as his own.

He fingered his fractin, a slow whiling motion-that had been his thinking pattern for most of his life. No matter the captain had told him time and time that he was too old for such fidgets and foolishness. On board ship, some habits were worse than others, and the fractin was let to pass.

As to thinking, he had a lot to do.

He palmed the smooth ivory square, took a sip of the tangy local brew.

Buyer bin'Flora, now--that wanted chewing on. Liadens were fiercely competitive, and, in his experience, tight-fisted of data. Jethri had lately formed the theory that this reluctance to offer information was not what a Terran would call spitefulness, but courtesy. It would be--an insult, if his reading of the tapes was right, to assume that another person was ignorant of any particular something.

Which theory made Honored Sir bin'Flora's extemporaneous lecture on the appropriate price of crimson cellosilk--interesting.

Jethri sipped his beer, considering whether or not he'd been insulted. This was a delicate question, since it was also OK, as far as his own observations and the crewtapes went, for an elder to instruct a junior. He had another sip of beer, frowning absently at the plain ship-board above the bar. Strictly no-key, that board, listing ship name, departure, arrival, and short on finer info. Jethri sighed. If the vya did good, he'd one day soon be able to get a direct line to the trade nets, just by slipping his key into a high-info terminal. 'Course, by then, he'd be shipping on Digger, and no use for a Combine key at all...

"'nother brew, kid?" The bartender's voice penetrated his abstraction. He set the glass down, seeing with surprise that it was nearly empty. He fingered a Terran bit out of his public pocket and put it on the bar.

"Merebeer, please."

"Coming up," she said, skating the coin from the bar to her palm. Her pale blue eyes moved to the next customer and she grinned.

"Hey, Sirge! Ain't seen you for a Port-year."

The dark-haired man in modest trading clothes leaned his elbows on the counter and smiled. "That long?" He shook his head, smile going toward a grin. "I lose track of time, when there's business to be done."

She laughed. "What'll it be?"

"Franses Ale?" he asked, wistfully.

"Coming up," she said and he grinned and put five-bit in her hand.

"The extra's for you--a reward for saving my life."

The barkeeper laughed again and moved off down-bar, collecting orders and coins as she went. Jethri finished the last of his beer. When he put the glass down, he found the barkeeper's friend--Sirge--looking at him quizzically.

"Don't mean to pry into what's none of my business, but I noticed you looking at the board, there, a bit distracted. Wouldn't be you had business with Stork?"

Jethri blinked, then smiled and shook his head. "I was thinking of--something else," he said, with cautious truth. "Didn't really see the board at all."

"Man with business on his mind," said Sirge good-naturedly. "Well, just thought I'd ask. Misery loves company, my mam used to say--Thanks, Nance." This last as the barkeeper set a tall glass filled with dark liquid before him.

"No trouble," she assured him and put Jethri's schooner down. "Merebeer, Trader."

"Thank you," he murmured, wondering if she was making fun of him or really thought him old enough to be a full trader. He raised the mug and shot a look at the ship-board. Stork was there, right enough, showing departed on an amended flight plan.

"Damnedest thing," said the man next to him, ruefully. "Can't blame them for lifting when they got rush cargo and a bonus at the far end, but I sure could wish they waited lift a quarter-hour longer."

Jethri felt a stir of morbid curiosity. "They didn't--leave you, did they, sir?"

The man laughed. "Gods, no, none of that! I've got a berth promised on Ringfelder's Halcyon, end of next Port-week. No, this was a matter of buy-in--had half the paperwork filled out, happened to look up at the board there in the Trade Bar and they're already lifting." He took a healthy swallow of his ale.

"Sent a message to my lodgings, of course, but I wasn't at the lodgings, I was out making paper, like we'd agreed." He sighed. "Well, no use crying over spilled wine, eh?" He extended a thin, calloused hand. "Sirge Milton, trader at leisure, damn the luck."

He shook the offered hand. "Jethri Gobelyn, off Gobelyn's Market."

"Pleasure. Market's a solid ship--Arin still senior trader?"

Jethri blinked. The routes being as they were, there were still some who had missed news of Arin Gobelyn's death. This man didn't seem quite old enough to have been one of his father's contemporaries, but...

"Paitor's senior," he told Sirge Milton steadily. "Arin died ten Standards back."

"Sony to hear that," the man said seriously. "I was just a 'prentice, but he impressed me real favorable." He took a drink of ale, eyes wandering back to the ship-board. "Damn," he said, not quite under his breath, then laughed a little and looked at Jethri. "Let this be a lesson to you--stay liquid. Think I'd know that by now." Another laugh.

Jethri had a sip of beer. "But," he said, though it was none of his business, "what happened?"

For a moment, he thought the other wouldn't answer. He drank ale, frowning at the board, then seemed to collect himself and flashed Jethri a quick grin.

"Couple things. First, I was approached for a closed buy-in on--futures." He shrugged. "You understand I can't be specific. But the guarantee was four-on-one and--well, the lodgings was paid 'til I shipped and I had plenty on my tab at the Trade Bar, so I sunk all my serious cash into the future."

Jethri frowned. A four-on-one return on speculation? It was possible--the crewtapes told of astonishing fortunes made Port-side, now and then--but not likely. To invest all liquid assets into such a venture--

Sirge Milton held up a hand. "Now, I know you're thinking exactly what I thought when the thing was put to me--four-on-one's 'way outta line. But the gig turns on a Liaden Master Trader's say-so, and I figured that was good enough for me." He finished his ale and put the glass down, waving at the barkeeper.

"Short of it is, I'm cash-poor til tomorrow midday, when the pay-off's guaranteed. And this morning I came across as sweet a deal as you'd care to see--and I know just who'll want it, to my profit. A kais holds the lot--and me with three ten-bits in pocket. Stork was going to front the cash, and earn half the profit, fair enough. But the rush-money and the bonus was brighter." He shook his head. "So, Jethri Gobelyn, you can learn from my mistake--and I'm hopeful I'll do the same."

"Four-on-one," Jethri said, mind a-buzz with the circumstance, so he forgot he was just a 'prentice, talking to a full trader. "Do you have a paper with the guarantee spelled out?"

"I got better than that," Sirge Milton said. "I got his card." He turned his head, smiling at the bartender. "Thanks, Nance."

"No problem," she returned. "You got a Liaden's card? Really? Can I see?"

The man looked uneasy. "It's not the kind of thing you flash around."

"Aw, c'mon, Sirge--I never seen one."

Jethri could appreciate her curiosity: he was half agog, himself. A Liaden's card was as good as his name, and a Liaden's name, according to great-grand-captain Larance, was his dearest possession.

"Well," Sirge said. He glanced around, but the other patrons seemed well-involved in their own various businesses. "OK."

He reached into his pouch, pulled out an out-of-date Combine trading key--the SY 1118 color was red, according to the chart on the back of his door; blue-and-white was last year's short-term color--along with a short handful of coins and a cargo-head socket wrench. Finally, with a satisfied grunt, he fingered out a flat, creamy rectangle.

He held it face up between the three of them, his hands cupping it like was a rare stone that he didn't want nobody else to see.

"Ooh," Nance said. "What's it say?"

Jethri frowned at the lettering. It was a more ornate form of the Liaden alphabet he had laboriously taught himself off the library files, but not at all unreadable.

"Norn ven'Deelin," he said, hoping he had the pronunciation of the name right. "Master of Trade."

"Right you are," said Sirge, nodding. "You'll go far, I'm sure, friend Jethri! And this here--" he rubbed his thumb over the graphic of a rabbit silhouetted against a full moon--"is the sign for his Clan. Ixin."

"Oh," Nance said again, then turned to answer a hail from up-bar. Sirge slipped the card away and Jethri took another sip of beer, mind racing. A four-on-one return, guaranteed by a Master Trader? It was possible. Jethri had seen the rabbit-and-moon sign on a land-barge that very day. And Sirge Milton was going to collect tomorrow mid-day. Jethri thought he was beginning to see a way to buy into a bit of profit, himself.

"I have a kais to lend," he said, setting the schooner aside.

Sirge Milton shook his head. "Nah.--I appreciate it, Jethri, but I don't take loans. Bad business." Which, Jethri acknowledged, was exactly what his uncle would say. He nodded, hoping his face didn't show how excited he felt.

"I understand. But you have collateral. How 'bout if I buy Stork's share of your Port-deal, payoff tomorrow mid-day, after you collect from Master ven'Deelin?"

"Not the way I like to do business," Sirge said slowly.

Jethri took a careful breath. "We can write an agreement," he said.

The other brightened. "We can, can't we? Make it all legal and binding. Sure, why not?" He took a swallow of ale and grinned. "Got paper?"

 

* * *

 

"No, ma'am," Jethri said, some hours later, and as respectfully as he could, while giving his mother glare-for-glare. "I'm in no way trying to captain this ship. I just want to know if the final papers are signed with Digger." His jaw muscles felt tight and he fried to relax them--to make his face trading-bland. "I think the ship owes me that information. At least that."

"Think we can do better for you," his mother the captain surmised, her mouth a straight, hard line of displeasure. "All right, boy. No, the final papers aren't signed. We'll catch up with Digger 'tween here and Kinaveral and do the legal then." She tipped her head, sarcastically civil. "That OK by you?"

Jethri held onto his temper, barely. His mother's mood was never happy, dirt-side. He wondered, briefly, how she was going to survive a whole year world-bound, while the Market was rebuilt.

"I don't want to ship on Digger," he said, keeping his voice just factual. He sighed. "Please, ma'am--there's got to be another ship willing to take me."

She stared at him until he heard his heart thudding in his ears. Then she sighed in her turn, and spun the chair so she faced the screens, showing him profile.

"You want another ship," she said, and she didn't sound mad, anymore. "You find it."

 

 

Day 34
Standard Year 1118
Ynsolt'i Port
Zeroground Pub

 

 

"No calls for Jethri Gobelyn? No message from Sirge Milton?"

The barkeeper on-shift today at the Zeroground Pub was maybe a Standard Jethi's elder. He was also twelve inches taller and out massed him by a factor of two. He shook his head, setting the six titanium rings in his left ear to chiming, and sighed, none too patient. "Kid, I told you. No calls. No message. No package. No Milton. No nothing, kid. Got it?"

Jethri swallowed, hard, the fractin hot against his palm. "Got it."

"Great," said the barkeep. "You wanna beer or you wanna clear out so a paying customer can have a stool?"

"Merebeer, please," he said, slipping a bit across the counter. The keeper swept up the coin, went up-bar, drew a glass, and slid it down the polished surface with a will. Jethri put out a hand--the mug smacked into his palm, stinging. Carefully, he eased away from the not-exactly-overcrowded counter and took his drink to the back.

He was on the approach to trouble. Dodging his senior, sliding oft-ship without the captain's aye--approaching trouble, right enough, but not quite established in orbit. Khat was inventive--he trusted her to cover him for another hour, by which time he had better be on-ship, cash in hand and looking to show Uncle Paitor the whole.

And Sirge Milton was late.

A man, Jethri reasoned, slipping into a booth and setting his beer down, might well be late for a meeting. A man might even, with good reason, be an hour late for that same meeting. But a man could call the place named and leave a message for the one who was set to meet him.

Which Sirge Milton hadn't done, nor sent a courier with a package containing Jethri's payout, neither.

So, something must've come up. Business. Sirge Milton seemed a busy man. Jethri opened his pouch and pulled out the agreement they'd written yesterday, sitting at this very back booth, with Nance the bartender as witness.

Carefully, he smoothed the paper, read over the guarantee of payment. Two kais was a higher buy-out than he had asked for, but Sirge had insisted, saying the profit would cover it, not to mention his 'expectations.' There was even a paragraph about being paid in the event that Sirge's sure buyer was out of cash, citing the debt owed Sirge Milton, Trader, by Norn ven'Deelin, Master of Trade, as security.

It had all seemed clear enough yesterday afternoon, but Jethri thought now that he should have asked Sirge to take him around to his supplier, or at least listed the name and location of the supplier on the paper.

He had a sip of beer, but it tasted flat and he pushed the glass away. The door to the bar slid open, admitting a noisy gaggle of Terrans. Jethri looked up, eagerly, but Sirge was not among them. Sighing, he frowned down at the paper, trying to figure out a next move that didn't put him on the receiving end of one of his uncle's furious scolds.

Norn ven'Deelin, Master of Trade... The name looked odd, written out in Terran, approximating spelling across two alphabets that didn't precisely match, edge-on-edge. Norn ven'Deelin, who had given his card--his name--into Sirge Milton's keeping. Jethri blinked. Norn ven'Deelin, he thought, would very likely know how to get in touch with a person he held in such high esteem. With luck, he'd be inclined to share that information with a polite-talking 'prentice.

If he wasn't inclined...Jethri folded his paper away and got out of the booth, leaving the beer behind. No use borrowing trouble, he told himself.

 

* * *

 

It was late, but still day-Port, when he found the right office. At least, he thought, pausing across the street and staring at that damned bunny silhouetted against the big yellow moon, he hoped it was the right office. He was tired from walking miles in gravity, hot, gritty--but worse than any of that, he was scared. Norn ven'Deelin's office--if this was at last his office--was well into the Liaden side of Port.

Not that there was properly a Terran side, Ynsolt'i being a Liaden world. But there were portions where Terrans were tolerated as a necessary evil attending galactic trade, and where a body caught the notion that maybe Terrans were cut some extra length of line, in regard to what might be seen as insult.

Standing across from the door, which might, after all, be the right one, Jethri did consider turning around, trudging back to the Market and taking the licks he'd traded for.

Except he'd traded for profit to the ship, and he was going to collect it. That, at least, he would show his senior and his captain, though he had long since stopped thinking that profit would buy him pardon.

Jethri sighed. There was dust all over his good trading clothes. He brushed himself off as well as he could, and looked across the street. It came to him that the rabbit on Clan Ixin's sign wasn't so much howling at that moon, as laughing its fool head off.

Thinking so, he crossed the street, wiped his boots on the mat, slid his fractin manfully out of his palm and into his public pocket, and pushed the door open.

The office behind the door was airy and bright, and Jethri was abruptly glad that he had dressed in trading clothes, dusty as they now were. This place was high-class--a body could smell profit in the subtly fragrant air, see it in the floor covering and the real wooden chairs.

The man sitting behind the carved center console was as elegant as the room: crisp-cut yellow hair, bland and beardless Liaden face, a vest embroidered with the moon-and-rabbit worn over a salt-white silken shirt. He looked up from his work screen as the door opened, eyebrows lifting in what Jethri had no trouble reading as astonishment.

"Good-day to you, young sir." The man's voice was soft, his Trade only lightly tinged with accent.

"Good-day, honored sir." Jethri moved forward slowly, taking care to keep his hands in sight.

Three steps from the console, he stopped and bowed, as low as he could manage without falling on his head. "Jethri Gobelyn, apprentice trader, Gobelyn's Market." He straightened and met the bland blue eyes squarely. "I am come to call upon the Honored Norn ven'Deelin."

"Ah." The man folded his hands neatly upon the console. "I regret it is necessary that you acquaint me more nearly with your business, Jethri Gobelyn."

Jethri bowed again, not so deep this time, and waited til he was upright to begin the telling.

"I am in search of a man--a Terran," he added, half-amazed to hear no quaver in his voice--"named Sirge Milton, who owes me a sum of money. It was in my mind that the Honored ven'Deelin might be willing to put me in touch with this man."

The Liaden frowned. "Forgive me, Jethri Gobelyn, but how came such a notion into your mind?"

Jethri took a breath. "Sirge Milton had the Honored ven'Deelin's card in pledge of--"

The Liaden held up a hand, and Jethri gulped to a stop, feeling a little gone around the knees. "Hold." A Terran would have smiled to show there was no threat. Liadens didn't smile, at least, not at Terrans, but this one exerted himself to incline his head an inch.

"If you please," he said. "I must ask if you are certain that it was the Honored ven'Deelin's own card."

"I--the name was plainly written, sir. I read it myself. And the sigil was the same, the very moon-and-rabbit you yourself wear."

"I regret." The Liaden stood, bowed and beckoned, all in one fluid movement. "This falls beyond my area of authority. If you please, young sir, follow me." The blue eyes met his, as if the Liaden had somehow heard his dismay at being thus directed deeper into alien territory. "House courtesy, Jethri Gobelyn. You receive no danger here."

Which made it plain enough, to Jethri's mind, that refusing to follow would be an insult. He swallowed, his breath going short on him, the Market suddenly seeming very far away.

The yellow haired Liaden was waiting, his smooth, pretty face uncommunicative. Jethri bowed slightly and walked forward as calmly as trembling knees allowed. The Liaden led him down a short hallway, past two closed rooms, and bowed him across the threshold of the third, open.

"Be at ease," the Liaden said from the threshold. "I will apprise the master trader of your errand." He hesitated, then extended a hand, palm up. "It is well, Jethri Gobelyn. The House is vigilant on your behalf." He was gone on that, the door sliding silently closed behind him.

This room was smaller than the antechamber, though slightly bigger than the Market's common room, the shelves set at heights he had to believe handy for Liadens. Jethri stood for a couple minutes, eyes closed, doing cube roots in his head until his heartbeat slowed down and the panic had eased back to a vague feeling of sickness in his gut.

Opening his eyes, he went over to the shelves on the right, half-trained eye running over the bric-a-brac, wondering if that was really a piece of Sofleg porcelain and, if so, what it was doing set naked out on a shelf, as if it were a common pottery bowl.

The door whispered behind him, and he spun to face a Liaden woman dressed in dark trousers and a garnet colored shirt. Her hair was short and gray, her eyebrows straight and black. She stepped energetically into the center of the room as the door slid closed behind her, and bowed with precision, right palm flat against her chest.

"Norn ven'Deelin," she stated in a clear, level voice. "Clan Ixin."

Jethri felt the blood go to ice in his veins.

Before him, Norn ven'Deelin straightened and slanted a bright black glance into his face. "You discover me a dismay," she observed, in heavily accented Terran. "Say why, do."

He managed to breathe, managed to bow. "Honored Ma'am, I--I've just learned the depth of my own folly."

"So young, yet made so wise!" She brought her hands together in a gentle clap, the amethyst ring on her right hand throwing light off its facets like purple lightning. "Speak on, young Jethri. I would drink of your wisdom."

He bit his lip. "Ma'am, the--person--I came here to find--told me Norn ven'Deelin was--was male."

"Ah. But Liaden names are difficult, I am learning, for those of Terran Code. Possible it is that your friend achieved honest error, occasioned by null-acquaintance with myself."

"I'm certain that's the case, Honored," Jethri said carefully, trying to feel his way toward a path that would win him free, with no insult to the trader, and extricate Sirge Milton from a junior's hopeless muddle.

"I--my friend--did know the person I mistakenly believed yourself to be well enough to have lent money on a portweek investment. The--error--is all my own. Likely there is another Norn ven'Deelin in Port, and I foolishly--"

A tiny hand rose, palm out, to stop him. "Be assured, Jethri Gobelyn. Of Norn ven'Deelin there is one. This one."

He had, Jethri thought, been afraid of that. Hastily, he tried to shuffle possibilities. Had Sirge Milton dealt with a go-between authorized to hand over his employer's card? Had--

"My assistant," said Norn ven'Deelin, "discloses to me a tale of wondering obfusion. I am understanding that you are in possession of one of my cards?"

Her assistant, Jethri thought, with a sudden sharpening of his wits on the matter at hand, had told her no such thing. She was trying to throw him off-balance, and startle him into revealing a weakness. She was, in fact, trading. Jethri ground his teeth and made his face smooth.

"No, ma'am," he said respectfully. "What happened was that I met a man in Port who needed loan of a kais to hold a deal. He said he had lent his liquid to--to Norn ven'Deelin, master trader. Of Clan Ixin. He said he was to collect tomorrow--today, midday, that would be--a guaranteed return of four-on-one. My--my payout contingent on his payout." He stopped and did not bite his lip, though he wanted to.

There was a short silence, then, "Four-on-one. That is a very large profit, young Jethri."

He ducked his head. "Yes, ma'am. I thought that. But he had the--the card of the--man--who had guaranteed the return. I read the name myself. And the clan sign--just like the one on your door and--other places on Port..." His voice squeaked out. He cleared his throat and continued.

"I knew he had to be on a straight course--at least on this deal--if it was backed by a Liaden's card."

"Hah." She plucked something flat and rectangular from her sleeve and held it out. "Honor me with your opinion of this."

He took the card, looked down and knew just how stupid he'd been.

"So wondrously expressive a face," commented Norn ven'Deelin. "Was this not the card you were shown, in earnest of fair dealing?"

He shook his head, remembered that the gesture had no analog among Liadens and cleared his throat again.

"No, ma'am," he said as steady as he could. "The rabbit-and-moon are exactly the same. The name--the same style, the same spacing, the same spelling. The stock was white, with black ink, not tan with brown ink. I didn't touch it, but I'd guess it was low-rag. This card is high-rag content..."

His fingers found a pattern on the obverse. He flipped the card over and sighed at the selfsame rabbit-and-moon, embossed into the card stock, then looked back to her bland, patient face.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am."

"So." She reached out and twitched the card from his fingers, sliding it absently back into her sleeve. "You do me a service, young Jethri. From my assistant I hear the name of this person who has, yet does not have, my card in so piquant a fashion. Sirge Milton. This is a correctness? I do not wish to err."

The ice was back in Jethri's veins. Well he knew that Khat's stories of blood vengeance were just that--fright tales to spice an otherwise boring hour. Still and all, it wasn't done, to put another Terran in the way of Liaden Balance. He gulped and bowed.

"Ma'am, I--please. The whole matter is--is my error. I am the most junior of traders. Likely I misunderstood a senior and have annoyed yourself and your household without cause. I--"

She held up a hand, stepped forward and laid it on his sleeve.

"Peace, child. I do nothing fatal to your galandaria--your countryman. No pellet in his ear. No nitrogen replacing good air in an emergency tank. Eh?" Almost, it seemed to Jethri that she smiled.

"Such tales. We of the clans listen in Port bars--and discover ourselves monsters." She patted his arm, lightly. "But no. Unless he adopts a mode most stupid, fear not of his life." She stepped back, her hand falling from his sleeve.

"Your own actions reside in correctness. Very much is this matter mine of solving. A junior trader could do no other, than bring such at once before me.

"Now, I ask, most humbly, that you accept Ixin's protection in conveyance to your ship. It is come night-Port while we speak, and your kin will be distressful for your safety. Myself and yourself, we speak additionally, after solving."

She bowed again, hand over heart, and Jethri did his best to copy the thing with his legs shaking fit to tip him over. When he looked up the door was closing behind her. It opened again immediately and the yellow-haired assistant stepped inside with a bow of his own.

"Jethri Gobelyn," he said in his soft Trade, "please follow me. A car will take you to your ship."

 

* * *

 

"She said she wouldn't kill him," Jethri said hoarsely. The captain, his mother, shook her head and Uncle Paitor sighed.

"There's worse things than killing, son," he said, and that made Jethri want to scrunch into his chair and bawl, like he had ten Standards fewer and stood about as tall as he felt.

What he did do, was take another swallow of coffee and meet Paitor's eyes straight. "I'm sorry, sir."

"You've got cause," his uncle acknowledged.

"Double-ups on dock," the captain said, looking at them both. "Nobody works alone. We don't want trouble. We stay close and quiet and we lift as soon as we can without making it look like a rush."

Paitor nodded. "Agreed."

Jethri stirred, fingers tight 'round the coffee mug. "Ma'am, she--Master Trader ven'Deelin said she wanted to talk to me, after she--settled--things. I wouldn't want to insult her."

"None of us wants to insult her," his mother said, with more patience than he'd expected. "However, a Master Trader is well aware that a trade ship must trade. She can't expect us to hang around while our cargo loses value. If she wants to talk to you, boy, she'll find you."

"No insult," Paitor added, "for a 'prentice to bow to the authority of his seniors. Liadens understand chain of command real well."

The captain laughed, short and sharp, then stood up.

"Go to bed, Jethri--you're out on your feet. Be on dock second shift--" she slid a glance to Paitor. "Dyk?"

His uncle nodded.

"You'll partner with Dyk. We're onloading seed, ship's basics, trade tools. Barge's due Port-noon. Stick close, understand me?"

"Yes, ma'am." Wobbling, Jethri got to his feet, nodded to his seniors, put the mug into the wash-up and turned toward the door.

"Jethri."

He turned back, thinking his uncle's face looked--sad.

"I wanted to let you know," Paitor said. "The spice did real well for us."

Jethri took a deep breath. "Good," he said and his voice didn't shake at all. "That's good."

 

 

Day 35
Standard Year 1118
Gobelyn's Market
Dockside

 

"OK," said Dyk, easing the forks on the hand-lift back. "Got it." He toggled the impeller fan and nodded over his shoulder. "Let's go, kid. Guard my back."

Jethri managed a weak grin. Dyk was inclined to treat the double-up and Paitor's even-voiced explanation of disquiet on the docks as a seam-splitting joke. He guided the hand-lift to the edge of the barge, stopped, theatrically craned both ways, flashed a thumbs-up over his shoulder to Jethri, who was lagging behind, and dashed out onto the Market's dock. Sighing, Jethri walked slowly in his wake.

"Hey, kid, hold it a sec." The voice was low and not entirely unfamiliar. Jethri spun.

Sirge Milton was leaning against a cargo crate, hand in the pocket of his jacket and nothing like a smile on his face.

"Real smart," he said, "setting a Liaden on me."

Jethri shook his head, caught somewhere between relief and dismay.

"You don't understand," he said, walking forward. "The card's a fake."

The man against the crate tipped his head. "Is it, now."

"Yeah, it is. I've seen the real one, and it's nothing like the one you've got."

"So what?"

"So," Jethri said patiently, stopping and showing empty hands in the old gesture of goodwill, "whoever gave you the card wasn't Norn ven'Deelin. He was somebody who said he was Norn ven'Deelin and he used the card and her--the honor of her name--to cheat you."

Sirge Milton leaned, silent, against the cargo bail.

Jethri sighed sharply. "Look, Sirge, this is serious stuff. The master trader has to protect her name. She's not after you--she's after whoever gave you that card and told you he was her. All you have to do--"

Sirge Milton shook his head, sorrowful, or so it seemed to Jethri. "Kid," he said, "you still don't get it, do you?" He brought his hand out of the pocket and leveled the gun, matter-of-factly, at Jethri's stomach. "I know the card's bogus, kid. I know who made it--and so does your precious master trader. She got the scrivener last night. She'd've had me this morning, but I know the back way outta the 'ground."

The gun was high-gee plastic, snub-nosed and black. Jethri stared at it and then looked back at the man's face.

Trade, he thought, curiously calm. Trade for your life.

Sirge Milton grinned. "You traded another Terran to a Liaden. That's stupid, Jethri. Stupid people don't live long."

"You're right," he said, calmly, watching Sirge's face and not the gun at all. "And it'd be real stupid for you to kill me. Norn ven'Deelin said I'd done her a service. If you kill me, she's not going to have any choice but to serve you the same. You don't want to corner her."

"Jeth?" Dyk's voice echoed in from the dock. "Hey! Jethri!"

"I'll be out in a second!" he yelled, never breaking eye contact with the gunman. "Give me the gun," he said, reasonably. "I'll go with you to the master trader and you can make it right."

"'Make it right'," Sirge sneered and there was a sharp snap as he thumbed the gun's safety off.

"I urge you most strongly to heed the young trader's excellent advice, Sirge Milton," a calm voice commented in accentless Trade. "The master trader is arrived and balance may go forth immediately."

Master ven'Deelin's yellow-haired assistant walked into the edge of Jethri's field of vision. He stood lightly on the balls of his feet, as if he expected to have to run. There was a gun, holstered, on his belt.

Sirge Milton hesitated, staring at this new adversary.

"Sirge, it's not worth killing for," Jethri said, desperately.

But Sirge had forgotten about him. He was looking at Master ven'Deelin's assistant. "Think I'm gonna be some Liaden's slave until I worked off what she claims for debt?" He demanded. "Liaden Port? You think I got any chance of a fair hearing?"

"The portmaster--" the Liaden began, but Sirge cut him off with a wave, looked down at the gun and brought it around.

"No!" Jethri jumped forward, meaning to grab the gun, but something solid slammed into his right side, knocking him to the barge's deck. There was a crack of sound, very soft, and Jethri rolled to his feet--

Sirge Milton was crumbled face down on the cold decking, the gun in his hand. The back of his head was gone. Jethri took a step forward, found his arm grabbed and turned around to look down into the grave blue eyes of Master ven'Deelin's assistant.

"Come," the Liaden said, and his voice was not-quite-steady. "The master trader must be informed."

 

* * *

 

The yellow-haired assistant came to an end of his spate of Liaden and inclined his head.

"So it is done," Norn ven'Deelin said in Trade. "Advise the portmaster and hold yourself at her word."

"Master Trader." The man swept a bow so low his forehead touched his knees, straightened effortlessly and left the Market's common room with nothing like a backward look. Norm ven'Deelin turned to Jethri, sitting shaken between his mother and Uncle Paitor.

"I am regretful," she said in her bad Terran, "that solving achieved this form. My intention, as I said to you, was not thus. Terrans--" She glanced around, at Paitor and the captain, at Dyk and Khat and Mel. "Forgive me. I mean to say that Terrans are of a mode most surprising. It was my error, to be think this solving would end not in dyings." She showed her palms. "The counterfeit-maker and the, ahh--distributor--are of a mind, both, to achieve more seemly Balance."

"Counterfeiter?" asked Paitor and Non ven'Deelin inclined her head.

"Indeed. Certain cards were copied--not well, as I find--and distributed to traders of dishonor. These would then use the--the--melant'i--you would say, the worth of the card to run just such a shadow-deal as young Jethri fell against." She sat back, mouth straight. "The game is closed, this Port, and information of pertinence has been sent to the Guild of Traders Liaden." She inclined her head, black eyes very bright. "Do me the honor, Trader Gobelyn, of informing likewise the association of Traders Terran. If there is doubt of credentials at a Liaden port, there is no shame for any trader to inquire of the Guild."

Paitor blinked, then nodded, serious-like. "Master Trader, I will so inform Terratrade."

"It is well, then," she said, moving a hand in a graceful gesture of sweeping away--or, maybe, of clearing the deck. "We come now to young Jethri and how best I might Balance his service to myself."

The captain shot a glance at Paitor, who climbed to his feet and bowed, low and careful. "We are grateful for your condescension, Master Trader. Please allow us to put paid, in mutual respect and harmony, to any matter that may lie between us--"

"Yes, yes," she waved a hand. "In circumstance far otherwise, this would be the path of wisdom, all honor to you, Trader Gobelyn. But you and I, we are disallowed the comfort of old wisdom. We are honored, reverse-ward, to build new wisdom." She looked up at him, black eyes shining.

"See you, this young trader illuminates error of staggering immensity. To my hand he delivers one priceless gem of data: Terrans are using Liaden honor to cheat other Terrans." She leaned forward, catching their eyes one by one. "Liaden honor," she repeated; "to cheat other Terrans."

She lay her hand on her chest. "I am a master trader. My--my duty is to the increase of the trade. Trade cannot increase, where honor is commodity."

"But what does this," Dyk demanded, irrepressible, "have to do with Jethri?"

The black eyes pinned him. "A question of piercing excellence. Jethri has shown me this--that the actions of Liadens no longer influence the lives only of Liadens. Reverse-ward by logic follows for the actions of Terrans. So, for the trade to increase, wherein lies the proper interest of trader and master trader, information cross-cultural must increase." She inclined her head.

"Trader, I suggest we write contract between us, with the future of Jethri Gobelyn in our minds."

Uncle Paitor blinked. "You want to--forgive me. I think you're trying to say that you want to take Jethri as an apprentice."

Another slight bow of the head. "Precisely so. Allow me, please, to praise him to you as a promising young trader, strongly enmeshed in honor."

"But I did everything wrong!" Jethri burst out, seeing Sirge Milton laying there, dead of his own choice, and the stupid waste of it...

"Regrettably, I must disagree," Master ven'Deelin said softly. "It is true that death untimely transpired. This was not your error. Pen Rel informs to me your eloquence in beseeching Trader Milton to the path of Balance. This was not error. To solicit solving from she who is most able to solve--that is only correctness." She showed both of her hands, palms up. "I honor you for your actions, Jethri Gobelyn, and wonder if you will bind yourself as my apprentice."

He wanted it. In that one, searing moment, he knew he had never wanted anything in his life so much. He looked to his mother.

"I found my ship, Captain," he said.

 

 

Day 42
Standard Year 1118
Gobelyn's Market
Departing

 

 

When it was all counted and compressed, his personal possessions fit inside two crew-bags. He slung the larger across his back, secured by a strap across his chest, snapped at shoulder and hip. Hefting the smaller, he took one more look around the room--a plain metal closet it was, now, with the cot slid away and the desk folded into the wall. He'd tried to give the com chart back, but Dyk insisted that it would fit inside the bag with a little pushing, and so it had.

There was nothing left to show the place had been his particular private quarters for more than half his lifetime. Looking at it, the space could be anything, really: a supply closet; a specialty cargo can...

Jethri shook his head, frying to recapture the burning joy he'd felt, signing his line on the 'prentice contract, finding himself instead, and appallingly, on the near side of bawling his eyes out.

It's not like you're wanted here, he told himself, savagely. You were on the good-riddance roster, no matter what.

Still, it hurt, staring around at what had once been his space, feeling his personals no considerable weight across his back.

He swallowed, forcing the tears back down into his chest. Damned if he would cry. Damned if he would.

Which was well. And also well to remember that value wasn't necessarily heavy. In fact, it might be that the most valuable thing he carried away from the ship weighed no more than an ounce--Uncle Paitor had come through with the Combine key, springing for the ten-year without a blink--a measure of how good the vya had done. Khat had donated a true-silver long-chain, and now it hung round his neck, with key in place.

He'd been afraid, nearly, that Khat would kiss him right then, when she put the key on the chain and dropped it round his neck, then stood close and reached out to tuck the key sudden-like down his day-shirt.

"Promise me you'll wear this and remember us!" she said, and hugged him, as unexpected as the potential kiss, and missed as greatly as soon as she released him.

And so he had promised, and could feel the key becoming familiar and comfortable as he got himself together.

Then there was his ship-share, which had come to a tidy sum, with a tithe atop that, that he hadn't expected, and which Seeli'd claimed was his piece of the divvy-up from his father's shares.

"Payable in cash," Seeli had said, further, not exactly looking at him. "On departure from the ship. Since you're going off to trade for another ship, this counts. Those of us who stay, the ship carries our shares in General Fund."

He'd also taken receipt of one long, assaying, straight-eyed glance from the captain with the words said, in front of Dyk before they signed those papers.

"You chose your ship, you got your inheritance, you think you know what you want. So I witness you, Jethri son of Arin, a free hand." She'd shook his hand, then, like he was somebody, and turned away like he was forgot.

So, now, here he stood, on the edge of an adventure, kit and cash in hand. A goodly sum of cash, for a Terran juniormost; an adequate kit, for the same. 'mong Liadens, who knew where he stood?-though soon enough he'd find out.

He felt his private pocket, making sure he had coin and notes and his fractin, then patted his public pocket, making sure of the short-change stowed there.

The ship clock chimed, echoing off the metal walls. Jethri took one more look around the bare cubby. Right. Time to get on with it.

 

***

 

As soon as the door slid closed behind him he remembered the last thing Paitor had said, leaning over to tap his finger against the nameplate set in the door.

"You pull that on the way out, y'hear? Rule is, when crew moves on, they take their nameplate so there ain't any confusion 'case of a crash." He nodded, maybe a little wise with the Smooth, and clapped Jethri on the shoulder. "That's yours as much as anything on this ship ever was."

Right.

Jethri slid the duffle off his shoulder, opened the door, and pulled the wrench-set off his belt. The nameplate showed through a blast resistant window set into the body of the door, with the access hatch on the inside. One-handed, he quickly undid the eight inset-togs probably last touched by his father, second hand held ready to catch the hatch when it fell.

Except, even with the togs loose the cover didn't fall right out, so he sighed and reached for his side-blade, and unsnapped it from the holster.

Who'd have thought this would be so tough?

He could see that asking for help getting his nameplate out of the door wouldn't play too well with his cousins--and wasn't it just like Mister Murphy to be sure and make an easy task hard, when he was needing to be on time... If Paitor and Grig hadn't kept him up clear through mid-Opposite

The captain had made it plain that she'd look dimly on any celebration of Jethri's new status--which was bad form when any crew left a ship but 'specially bad when a child of the ship went for a new berth. Strictly speaking, they should've called 'round to the other ships on port, and had a party, if not a full-blown shivary. In time, the news would spread through the free-ships--and news it was, too. But, no; it was like the captain was embarrassed that her son was 'prenticed to a Liaden master trader; which, as far as Jethri could find, was a first-time-ever event.

So, everyone was nice to him, 'cept the captain, and there wasn't any party, so he'd taken his time going through his belongings and packing up, finding so much of what he had was left over from being a kid; so much was stuff he didn't need, or even want. And, o'course, there was the stuff that he did want that he hadn't had since his father died. The fractin collection, of which his lucky tile was the last link; the pictures of Arin; the trade journal they'd been working on together--Seeli'd let on, without exactly coming out and saying so, that the captain had spaced it all years ago, so it wasn't no sense feeling like he'd just been stripped of what was his.

But, still, he wished he had those things to pack.

All that being so, he was in something of a mood when the tap came on his door, just after Opposite shift rang in. And he'd been surprised right out of that mood to find Grig and Paitor on the other side; asking permission to enter.

Lanky Grig--back-up navigator, back-up pilot, back-up cook, back-up trader, and in-system engineer-folded himself up on the edge of the bunk/acceleration couch while Jethri and Paitor took the mama-tracked swivel stools.

Once they were situated, Paitor pulled a green cloth bag from his pocket, and Grig brought three stainless drinking cups from his pouch. Jethri sat, his fractin snug in his hand, and wondered what was up.

"Jethri," Paitor began, then stopped as if he'd forgot what he was going to say for a second. He took a look at the bag on his knee, then untied the silver cord with its pendant tag from around the top, and handed the cord off to Jethri, who slid it into his public pocket, along with the fractin.

Paitor slipped the bag down, revealing a blue bottle, sealed with gold foil.

"The time has come, ol' son," Grig said quietly. "You're a free hand now--time for you to have a drink with your peers."

Paitor smiled like he only half wanted to, and lifted the bottle in two hands, like it was treasure. "If I may do the honors here," he said, holding the bottle out so Jethri could read the label. "This here's Genuine Smooth Blusharie. Been with us since the day you was born. Arin picked it up, see? Since the captain drinks a meaner line than this, bottle was just gathering dust in the locker, and we figured we'd better make use of it before someone who don't really 'preciate it drinks it by mistake."

He smiled again, more like he meant it this time, and twisted the seal. There was a crackle as it gave way, and sharp pop a moment later, as the cork come out. Grig held the cups out, carefully, one after the other, and Paitor filled each with gem-colored liquid.

When they were each holding a cup and the bottle was recorked and stowed next to Grig on the bunk, Paitor cleared his throat.

"Now, Jethri," he said, talking slow, "I know you heard a lot of advice from me over your years and you probably got right tired of it--" Grig snorted a laugh and Jethri nodded in rueful agreement, holding his cup carefully--"but there's just a little bit more you got to hear. First is this: Don't never gulp Blusharie, whether it's smooth or whether it's not. If it ain't smooth, gulping it will knock you off your pins so hard you'll think you had a code red collision. If it is smooth, you'll be wasting one of the rare joys of this life and didn't deserve to have it."

Paitor lifted his cup and Grig, his. Jethri lifted his, looking from one lifelong familiar face to another, seeing nothing but a concentration on the moment.

"To Jethri Gobelyn, free hand!"

"Long may he trade!" Grig added, and he and Paitor clinked their cups together, Jethri joining them a second late. He looked into the amber depths of the liquid, and sipped himself a tiny sip.

It all but took his breath, that sip, leaving a smooth tartness on his tongue and a tingling at the back of his throat. Fiery and mellow at once--

He noticed that he was being watched, and had a second sip, smiling.

"It's not like ale or beer at all!"

Grig laughed, low and comfortable. "No, not at all."

"So there, Jethri, that's some advice for you, and a secret, of a kind," said Paitor, sipping at his own cup. "There's traders all over the Combine who got no idea where to get this or why they'd want to. But you find yourself someone who fancies himself a knowing drinker, and you can get yourself a customer for life.

Jethri nodded, remembering the silver cord on his pocket, with the name of the vintage and the cellar stamped on the seal.

"'Course, there's more to life than Smooth Blusharie, too," Paitor said after another gentle sip. "So, what we got to tell you, is--there's things you gotta know."

His latest sip of Smooth Blusharie heavy on his tongue, Jethri looked up into Paitor's face, noting that it had changed again, from sadly serious to trading-bland, and sat up straight on his stool.

"All families have their secrets," Paitor said slowly. "This ship and this family're no different'n most. Thing is, sometimes not all secrets get shared around so good, and some things that should've been kept so secret they're forgot get talked about too much." He took a short sip from his cup. "One of the things that might've been kept secret but wasn't, was how you wasn't expected."

Jethri looked down into his cup, biting his lip, and figured this was a good time to have another sip.

"Now," Paitor went on, still talking slow and deliberate. "What likely was kept secret was what Arin and Iza were doing together in the first place, seein' as some would call--and did call--them a mismatch from ignition to flare out."

What was this? Seeli, his source of all information about his parents, had never hinted that there'd been any trouble between Iza and Arin. All the trouble had come later, with Jethri.

"What it was, see, Jethri," his uncle was saying, "is that the Gobelyn side goes back a long way in the Combine. Gobelyns was founding members of the Combine--and part of the trade teams before that. An' even before the trade teams, Gobelyns was ship folk."

Jethri frowned. "That's no secret, Uncle. The tapes..."

Grig snorted, and had a sip of the Smooth. His face was hooded; closed, like he was misdirecting a buyer around a defect. Paitor looked across to him.

"Your turn now?" he asked, real quiet.

Grig shook his head. "No, sir--and I'm damned if that ain't another secret been kept! But, no. Go on."

After a minute, Paitor nodded, and sipped and leaned over to gently shake the bottle. "That's fine, then," he murmured. "A glass to talk on and a glass to clear it."

"We'll do it," Grig said, nodding, too, with his face still a study in grim. "Really."

"Right. We will." Paitor took a hard breath. "So, Jethri, the way it was--Arin come along about the time the Gobelyns was set to call precedence at a shipowner meeting. Timing was bad, you might say, it being right near the time when the internal power-shift went from ship-base to world-base. The Combine had got so big, it owned pieces of planets, big and small, not to mention controlling shares in a good many grounder corps, and its interest shifted from securing the trade-lanes to protecting its investments. Which meant that the ships and shipowners who'd founded the Combine and built it strong wasn't in charge no more.

"So, anyway, they'd called an owners' meeting there on Caratunk, and the Gobelyns had the backin' they needed. That's when Arin showed up with the word that the owners' meeting had been downgraded from rule-making to advisory, by a twenty-seven to three commissioner vote. Now understand, Arin come from trade background too, but he'd started real young gettin' formal educated. Spent years on-planet--went to college planet-side, went to University, took history courses, took pilot courses, took trading and economics--and so when that vote came up, he was one of the three commissioners on the losing end."

Jethri blinked, cup half-way to his lips, Smooth Blusharie forgotten in blank astonishment. "My father was a commissioner?"

Grig laughed, short and sharp.

"Not once he got out to Caratunk he wasn't," Paitor answered, sparing a quick glare for the lanky man on the bunk. "Left his vote card right there on the table, grabbed up his money, his collections, and his co-pilot, and quit on the spot. Figured the best way to help the owners an' preserve the routes was to be out with us. And so he did that."

"Finish your sip, boy," Grig instructed, taking one of his own. Jethri followed suit. He'd met a commissioner once, when he was young--

 

***

 

"Right," Said Paitor, "you might remember the ship was busy once. Lots of folks comin' by when we was in port, lots of talk, presents for the youngers... Even though Arin wasn't a commissioner no more, him knowing how the systems worked, Combine and planet-side--the owners, they come to him for advice, for planning out how to maybe not rely so heavy on Combine contacts and Combine contracts."

"But it stopped. After ... the accident." Jethri could vaguely remember a day when they were in port and Arin got called away--as he so often did--and then the ship was locked down, and his mother screamed and--

"It was a bad time. Thought we'd lose your mother too. Blamed herself for lettin' him go, like there was some way she could have stopped him."

"But see, your dad, he was from old stock, too. Not ship-folk; not 'til later. They was kinda roamers--archaeologists, philosophers, librarians... Had strange ideas, some of 'em. Figured us Terrans had been around a longer time than we got the history for, that Terra--what they call the homeworld--is maybe the third or fourth Terra we've called home in sequence. Some other--"

"Paitor..." Grig's voice was low and warning. Jethri froze on his stool; he'd never heard long, easy-going Grig so much as sharp, never mind out-'n-out menacing.

"Your turn then," Paitor said, after a pause. He lifted his cup.

"My turn," Grig said, and sighed. He leaned forward on the bunk, looking hard into Jethri's face.

 

***

 

"You know I was your father's co-pilot. We were cousins, yeah, but more than that in someways, 'cause we had the same mentor when we was growing up, and we both got involved in what Paitor calls useless politicking and we thought was more than that. A lot more than that. Now thing is, your mam, and her-side of the cousins, like the Golds--they're Loopers. Know what that is?"

Jethri nodded. "I know what it is. But I don't like to hear the captain--"

Grig held up a hand, fingers wagging in the hand-talk equivalent of "pipe down."

"Tell me what it is before you get riled."

My last night on ship and I draw a history quiz, Jethri thought, irritated. He had a sip of Smooth to take the edge of his temper, and looked back to Grig.

"Loopers is backwards. Don't want to come out to the bigger ports, only want to deal with smaller planets, and places where they don't have to deal with regs or with..."

Grig flicked a couple fingers--"stop," that was.

"Part right and part wrong. See, Loopers comes from an article in the Combine charter which was writ awhile back and got pretty popular--probably have five copies of in the records on-board here if you know where to look. The idea came from the fact that most ship-folk believe in following a loop of travel--pretty often it's a closed loop. And some Looper families, they've been on ship for a hundred Standards, maybe, and everybody onboard knows that month seventeen of the trip means they're putting into so-and-so port to pick up fresh 'runion concentrate.

"Fact is, 'way back when this was all first worked out, the idea was that every route would be a Loop, with some Loops intersecting others, for transshipping and such.

"Now, I think you know, and I think I know, and I think Paitor knows, that's nonsense. This closed system stuff only works so long--and as long--as the economy of most of the ports in the Loop're expanding. Everybody does their bit, nobody introduces no major changes--then your Loop's stable and everybody profits. Now, though, just speaking of changes, we got Liadens, who got no interest in our expanding system--they got their own systems and routes to care about. Then you got some of the planets putting their own ships into the mix without knowing history, nor caring. So now you got instability and running a Loop ain't such a good notion no more. You got the trading families losing out to the planets, and the Combine--well, buying up all them shares and corporations cost money, which means we pay more taxes and fees, not less. 'Cause the Combine, see, it can't let the ships go altogether, though we're getting troublesome; it needs to keep a certain control, exercise a certain authority, and bleed us 'til we--"

Next to Jethri, Paitor coughed. Grig jerked to halt and rubbed a hand over his head.

"Right," he said. "Sorry." He sipped, and sighed lightly.

"So, where was I? Trade theory, eh? Say f'rinstance that you, Jethri Ship-Owner, want to live off the smaller ports and set yourself up a pretty good Loop. Sooner or later the good business is going to shift, and your Loop'll be worth less to the ship. You end up like Gold Digger, runnin' stones from place to place and maybe something odd on the side to make weight.

"What Arin saw was that the contract runs was the money runs. You go hub-to-hub, you don't ship empty; if conditions change--you can adapt; you ain't tied to the Loop.

"Arin had a good eye for basic contracts, and the ones he fixed up for the Market are just now needing adjustment. That's why this is a great time for the overhaul--your mam's on course, there. And you--you're in a spot to be big news. 'prentice trader on a Liaden ship? Studying under a master trader? You not only got a shot to own a ship, boy. Unless I read her wrong, that master trader is seeing you as--kind of like a commissioner 'tween Liaden interests and Terran."

Jethri blinked. "I don't--"

Grig glanced at Paitor, then back to Jethri.

"Let it go then," he said. "Learn your lessons, do good--for yourself and for your name." He moved a hand, apologetic-like. "There's one more thing, and then we can finish up this nice stuff and let you get some sleep." He took a breath, nodded to himself.

"There are secrets in all families. That's a phrase. You meet someone else who believes, who knows, they'll get that phrase to you. You don't know nothing but there's a secret, and that's all you have to know, now. But put that in your backbrain--there are secrets in all families. It might serve you; it might not. Course you're charting, who knows?"

Jethri was frowning in earnest now, his cup empty and his thought process just a little slow with the Smooth.

"But--what does it mean? What happens if somebody--"

Grig held up his hand. "You'll know what'll happen if it ever does. What it means... It means that there's some stuff, here and there around the galaxy left over from the time of the Old War--the big war, like Khat tells about in stories. It means that your lucky fractin, there, that's not a game piece, no matter how many rules for playing with 'em we all seen--it's a Fractional Mosaic Memory Module--and nobody exactly knows what they're for." He looked at Paitor. "Though Arin thought he had an idea."

Paitor grunted. "Arin had ideas. Nothin' truer said."

Grig ran his hand over his head and produced a grin. "Paitor ain't a believer," he said to Jethri, and sat back, looking thoughtful.

"Listen," he said, "'cause I'll tell you this once, and it might sound like of Grig, he's gone a little space-wise. But just listen, and remember--be aware, that's all. Paitor don't want to hear this again--didn't want to hear it the first time, I'm bettin'--but him and me--we agreed you need a place to work from; information that Iza don't want you to have." He paused.

"These fractins, now--they're Old Tech. Really old tech. Way we figured it, they was old tech when the big war started. And the thing is--we can't duplicate them."

Jethri stared, and it did occur to him that maybe Grig had started his drinking before the Blusharie. The big war--the Old War--well, there'd been one, that much was sure; most of the Befores you'd come up with, they was pieces from the war--or from what folks called the war, but could've been some other event. Jethri'd read arguments for and against had there been or had there not been a war, as part of history studies. And the idea of a tech that old that couldn't be duplicated today...

"What kind of tech?" he asked Grig. "And why can't we copy it?"

"Good questions, both, and I'd be a happier man if I had an answer for either. What I can tell you is--if that fractin of yours is one of the real ones--one of the old ones--it's got a tiny bit of timonium in there. You can find that from the outside because of the neutrinos--and all the real ones ever scanned had its own bit of timonium. Something else you find is that there's structure inside--they ain't just poured plastic or something. Try to do a close scan, though, maybe get a looksee at the shape of that structure, and what happens? Zap! Fried fractin. The timonium picks up the energy and gives off a couple million neutrinos and some beta and gamma rays--and there's nothing left but slagged clay. Try to peel it? You can't; same deal."

Jethri took of sip of his dwindling drink, trying to get his mind around the idea that there was tech hundreds of Standards old that couldn't be cracked and duplicated.

"As I say," Grig said, soft-like, "Paitor ain't a believer. What him, and Iza and a whole lot of other folks who're perfectly sane, like maybe I'm not on the subject, nor Arin neither--what they think is that the Old War wasn't nearly as big as others of us believe. They don't believe that war was fought with fractins, and about fractins. Arin thought that; and he had studies--records of archeological digs, old docs--to back him. He could map out where fractins was found, where the big caches were, show how they related to other Before caches--and when the finds started to favor the counterfeits over the real thing." He sighed.

"So, see, this just ain't our family secret. Some of the earlier studies--they went missing. Stolen. Arin said some people got worried about what would happen if Loopers and ship owners got interested in Befores as more than a sometime high-profit oddity. If they started looking for Old Tech, and figured out how to make 'em work.

"Arin didn't necessarily think we should make these fractins work--but he thought we should know what they did--and how. In case of need. Then, he got an analysis--"

Grig sipped, and sat for a long couple heartbeats, staring down into his cup.

"You know what half-life is, right?" He asked, looking up.

Jethri rolled his eyes, and Paitor laughed. Grig sighed.

"Right. Given the half-life of that timonium, Arin figured them for about eighteen hundred Standards old. Won't be long--say ten Standards, for some of the earlier ones; maybe a hundred for the latest ones--before the timonium's too weak to power--whatever it powers. Might be they'll just go inert, and anybody's who's interested can just take one, or five, or five hundred apart and take a peek inside.

"Arin, now. Arin figured fractins was maybe memory--warship, library, and computer, all rolled into one, including guidance and plans. That's what Arin thought. And it's what he wanted you to know. Iza and the Golds and all them other sane folks, they think they don't need to know. They say, only a fool borrows trouble, when there's so much around that's free. Me? I think you ought to know what your father thought, and I think you ought to keep your eyes and your mind open. I don't know that you particularly need to talk to any Liadens about it--but you'll make that call, if and when you have to."

He looked deep into his cup, lifted it and drained what was left.

"That it?" Paitor asked, quietly.

Grig nodded. "It'll do."

"Right you are, then." He held out a hand; Grig passed him the bottle, and he refilled the cups, one by one.

He stood, and Grig did, and after a moment, Jethri did. All three raised their cups high.

"To your success, your honor, and your duty, Free Hand!" His kin said, loud enough to set the walls to thrumming. And Jethri squared his shoulders, and blinked back the sudden tears--and they talked of easier things until the cups were empty again.

 

***

 

"Mud," Jethri muttered, as his blade scraped across the hatch. Lower lip caught between his teeth, he had another go with the wrench-set, and was at last rewarded with an odd fluttering hiss, that sent him skipping back a startled half-step.

Pressure differential, he thought, laughing at himself.

The sound of squeezing air faded and the cover plate popped away when he probed it with the blade point.

Stuffed into the cavity was some paper, likely to stop the plate from rattling the way Khat's did whenever they were accelerating, and he pulled it out, ready to crumple and toss it--and checked, frowning down at the paper itself.

Yellow and gritty--it was printout from the comm-printer the captain didn't use any more. She'd always called it Arin's printer, like she didn't want anything to do with it, anyway, 'cause she didn't like to deal with nothing ciphered. Curiously, he separated the edges and opened the paper. There was his birth date, a series of random letters and numbers that likely weren't random at all if you knew what you was looking at and--

... WILDETOAD WILDETOAD WILDETOAD like an emergency beacon might send out.

WildeToad? Jethri knew his ship histories, but he would've known this one, anyway, being as Khat told a perfect hair-raiser about Toad's last ride. WildeToad had gone missing years ago, and none of the mainline Wildes had been seen since. Story was, they'd gone to ground, which didn't make no sense, them having been spacers since before there was space, as the sayin' went.

Jethri squinted at the paper.

Mismatch, there's a mismatch, going down

WILDETOAD WILDETOAD WILDETOAD

We're breaking clay. Check frequency

WILDETOAD WILDETOAD WILDETOAD

Thirty hours. Warn away Euphoria

WILDETOAD WILDETOAD WILDETOAD

Racks bare, breaking clay

WILDETOAD WILDETOAD WILDETOAD

Lake bed ahead. We're arming. Stay out.

L. O. S. TRANSMISSION ENDS

Lake bed, he thought. And, gone to ground. Spacer humor, maybe; it had that feel. And it got him in the stomach, that he held in his hand the last record of a dying ship. Why had his father used such a thing to shim the plate in his door? Bad luck... He swallowed, read the page again, frowning after nonsense phrases.

Breaking clay? Racks bare? This was no common ship-send, he thought, the grainy yellow paper crackling against his fingers. Arin's printer. The message had come into Arin's printer. Coded, then--but--

A chime sounded, the four notes of "visitor aboard." Jethri jumped, cussed, and jammed the paper and the nameplate into his duffle, resealed the hatch as quick as he could, and took off down the hall at a run.

 

***

 

It was a small group at the main lock: Khat, Iza, and Uncle Paitor to witness his farewell. Master ven'Deelin's assistant, Pen Rel, stood more at his ease than seemed likely for a man alone on a stranger ship, his smooth, pretty face empty of anything like joy, irritation, or boredom. His eyes showed alert, though, and it was him who caught Jethri first, and bowed, very slightly.

"Apprentice. The master trader assigns me your escort."

Jethri paused and bowed, also slightly--that being the best he could manage with the bag slung across his back.

"Sir. The master trader does me too much honor," he said.

The blue eyes flickered--very likely Pen Rel agreed--but give the man his due, neither smirk nor smile crossed his face, either of which he had every right to display, according to Jethri's counting. Instead, he turned his attention to Iza Gobelyn and bowed again--deep, this time, displaying all proper respect to the captain-owner.

"The master trader sends felicitations, Captain. She bids me say that she has herself placed a child of her body into the care of others, for training, knowing the necessity at the core of her trader's heart. A mother's heart, however, is both more foolish and more wise. She therefore offers, mother to mother, route-list and codes. Messages sent by this method will reach Jethri Gobelyn immediately. Its frequent use is encouraged."

Another bow--this one no more than a heavy tip of the head--a flourish, and there was a data card between the first and second fingers of his extended hand.

Iza Gobelyn's mouth pursed up, as if she'd tasted something sour. She didn't quite place her hands behind her back--not quite that. But she did shake her head, side-to-side, once, decisive-like.

Jethri felt himself draw breath, hard. Not that he had expected his mother would have wanted to keep in touch with him when he was gone, like she'd never bothered to do when he was a member of her crew. It was just--the rudeness, when Master ven'Deelin... He blinked, and sent a short glance straight to Khat, who caught it, read it, and stepped forward, smooth and soft-footed.

Gently, she slipped the card from between Pen Rel's fingers, and bowed, deeper than he had done, thereby showing respect for the master trader's emissary.

"Please convey to the master trader our appreciation of her kindness and her forethought," she said, which deepened the frown on Iza's face, and put some color back into Paitor's.

For his part, Jethri felt his chest ease a little--catastrophe averted, he thought, which should have been the truth of it, except that Master ven'Deelin's aide stood there for a heartbeat too long, his head cocked a mite to one side, waiting...

...and then waiting no longer, but bowing in general farewell, while his eyes pegged Jethri and one hand moved in an unmistakable sweep: Let's go, kid.

Swallowing, Jethri went, following the Liaden down the ramp.

"'bye Jethri," he heard Khat whisper as he went past her. "We'll miss you."

Her hand touched his shoulder fleetingly, and under his shirt the key clung a bit, then Gobelyn's Market clanged as the portals closed behind him.

 

***

 

At the end of the Market's dock, Pen Rel turned left, walking light, despite the gravity. Jethri plodded along half a step behind, and pretty soon worked up a sweat, to which the Port dust clung with a will.

Traffic increased as they went on, and he stretched his legs to keep his short guide in sight. Finally, the man paused, and waited while Jethri came up beside him.

"Jethri Gobelyn." If he noticed Jethri's advanced state of dishevelment, he betrayed it by not the flicker of an eyelash. Instead, he blandly inclined his bright head.

"Shortly, we will be rising to Elthoria. Is there aught on port that you require? Now is the time to acquire any such items, for we are scheduled to break orbit within the quarter-spin."

Breathless, Jethri shook his head, caught himself, and cleared his throat.

"I am grateful, but there is no need." He lifted the smaller bag somewhat. "Everything that I require is in these bags."

Golden eyebrows rose, but he merely moved a languid hand, directing Jethri's attention down the busy thoroughfare.

"Alas, I am not so fortunate and must fulfill several errands before we board. Do you continue along this way until you find Ixin's sign. Present yourself to the barge crew, and hold yourself at the pilot's word. I will join you ere it is time to lift."

So saying, he stepped off the curb into the thronging traffic, vanishing, to Jethri's eye, into the fast-moving crowd.

Mud!  he thought, his heart picking up its rhythm, then, "Mud!" aloud as a hard elbow landed on his ribs with more force than was strictly necessary to make the point, while a sharp voice let out with a liquid string of Liaden, the tone of which unmistakably conveyed that this was no place for ox-brained Terrans to be napping.

Getting a tighter grip on his carry-bag, Jethri shrugged the backpack into an easier position and set off, slow, his head swiveling from one side to the next, like a clean 'bot on the lookout for lint, craning at the signs and sigils posted along both sides of the way.

It didn't do much to calm the crazy rhythm of his heart to note that all the signs hereabouts were in Liaden, with never a Terran letter to be found; or that everyone he passed was short, golden-skinned, quick--Liaden.

Now that it was too late, he wondered if Master ven'Deelin's aide was having a joke on him. Or, worse, if this was some sort of Liaden test, the which of, failing, lost him his berth and grounded him. There was the horror, right there. Grounded. He was a spacer. All ports were strange; all crews other than his own, strangers. Teeth drilling into his bottom lip, Jethri lengthened his stride, heedless now of both elbows and rude shouts, eyes scanning the profusion of signage for the one that promised him clean space; refuge from weight, dirt, and smelly air.

At last, he caught it--half-a-block distant and across the wide street. Jethri pulled up a spurt of speed, forced his dust-covered, leaden body into a run and lumbered off the curb.

Horns, hoots and hollers marked his course across that street. He heeded none of it. The Moon-and-Rabbit was his goal and everything he had eye or thought for. By the time the autodoor gave way before him, he was mud-slicked, gasping and none-too-steady on his feet.

What he also was, was safe.

Half-sobbing, he brought his eyes up and had a second to revise that opinion. The three roustabouts facing him might be short, but they stood tall, hands on the utility knives thrust through wide leather belts, shirts and faces showing dust and the stains of working on the docks.

Jethri gulped and ducked his head. "Your pardon, gentles," he gasped in what he hoped they'd recognize for Liaden. "I am here for Master ven'Deelin."

The lead roustabout raised her eyebrows. "ven'Deelin?" she repeated, doubt palpable in her tone.

"If you please," Jethri said, trying to breathe deeply and make his words more than half-understandable gasps. "I am Jethri Gobelyn, the--the new apprentice trader."

She blinked, her face crumpling for an instant before she got herself in hand. The emotion she didn't show might have been anything, but Jethri had the strong impression that she would have laughed out loud, if politeness had allowed it.

The man at her right shoulder, who showed more gray than brown in his hair, turned his head and called out something light and fluid, while the man at her left shoulder stood forward, pulling his blade from its nestle in the belt and thoughtfully working the catch. Jethri swallowed and bent, very carefully, to put his carry-bag down.

Twice as careful, he straightened, showing empty palms to the three of them. This time, the woman did smile, pale as starlight, and put out a hand to shove her mate in the arm.

"It belongs to the master trader," she said in pidgin. "Will you be the one to rob her of sport?"

"Not I," said the man. But he didn't put the knife away, nor even turn his head at the clatter of boot heels or the sudden advent of a second Liaden woman, this one wearing the tough leather jacket of a pilot. She came level with the boss roustabout and stopped, a crease between her eyebrows.

"Are we now a home for the indigent?" she snapped, and apparently to the room at large. Jethri exerted himself, bowing as low as his shaking legs would allow.

"Pilot. If you please. I am Jethri Gobelyn, apprenticed to Master Trader Norn ven'Deelin. I arrive at the word of her aide, Pen Rel, who bade me hold myself at your word."

"Ah. Pen Rel." The pilot's face altered, and Jethri again had the distinct feeling that, had she been Terran, she would have been enjoying a fine laugh at his expense. "That would be Arms Master sig'Kethra, an individual to whom it would be wise to show the utmost respect." She moved a graceful hand, showing him the apparently blank wall to his left.

"You may place your luggage in the bay; it will be well cared for. After that, you may make yourself seemly, so that you do not shame Master sig'Kethra before the ven'Deelin." She looked over her shoulder at the third roustabout. "Show him."

"Pilot." He jerked his head at Jethri. "Attend, boy."

Seen close, the blank wall was indented with a series of unmarked squares. The roustabout held up an index finger, and lightly touched three in sequence. The wall parted along an all-but invisible seam, showing a holding space beyond, piled high with parcels and pallets. Jethri took a step forward, found his sleeve caught and froze, watching the wall slide shut again a bare inch beyond his nose.

When there was nothing left to indicate that the wall was anything other than a wall, the roustabout loosed Jethri's sleeve and jerked his chin at the indentations.

"You, now."

He had a good head for patterns--always had. It was the work of a moment to touch his index finger to the proper three indentations in order. The wall slid aside and this time he was not prevented from going forward into the holding bay and stacking his bags with the rest.

The door stayed open until he stepped back to the side of the roustabout, who jerked his head to the left and guided him to the 'fresher, where he was left to clean himself up as best he might, so Master ven'Deelin wouldn't take any second thoughts about the contract she'd made.

 

***

 

Some while later Jethri sat alone in the hallway next to the pilot's office, face washed, clothes brushed, and nursing a disposable cupful of a hot, strong, and vilely sweet beverage his guide had insisted was "tea."

At least it was cool in the hallway, and it was a bennie just to be done with walking about in grav, and carrying all his mortal possessions, too. Sighing, he sipped gingerly at the nasty stuff in the cup and tried to order himself.

It was clear that his spoken Liaden wasn't as close to tolerable as he had thought. He didn't fool himself that dock-pidgin and Trade was going to go far at the trading tables Norn ven'Deelin sat down to. Language lessons were needful, then; and a brush-up on the protocols of cargo. His math was solid--Seeli and Cris had seen to that. He could do OK here. Better than he'd have done on an ore ship running a dying Loop...

That thought brought him back to now and here. Damn straight Norn ven'Deelin didn't run no Loop.

He leaned back in the chair, considering what sorts of cargo might come to a ship bearing a master trader. Gems, he figured, and rare spice; textile like Cris would weep over; artworks... He considered that, frowning.

Art was a chancy venture, given differing planetary taboos and ground-hugger religions. Even a master trader might chart a careful course, there. Khat told a story--a true one, he thought--regarding the tradeship Sweet Louise, which had taken aboard an illustrated paper book of great age. The pictures had been pretty, the pages hand-sewn into a real leather cover set with flawed, gaudy stones. The words were in no language that any of Louise's crew could read, but the price had been right; and the trader had a line on a collector of uniquities two planets down on the trade-hop. Everything should have been top-drawer, excepting that the powers of religion on the planet between the collector and the book declared that item "blasphemous," meaning the port police had it off ship in seconds and burned it right there on the dock. Louise lost the investment, the price, the fine--and the right to trade on that port, which was no loss, as far as Jethri could see...

A light step at the top of the hall pulled him out of his thoughts; a glance and he was on his feet, bowing as low as he could without endangering the tea.

"Arms Master sig'Kethra."

The man checked, neither surprise on his face, nor parcels in his hands, and inclined his head. "Apprentice Trader. Well met. A moment, if you please, while I consult with the pilot."

He moved past, walking into the pilot's office with nary a ring, like he had every right to the place, which, Jethri thought, he very well might. The door slid shut behind him and Jethri resumed his seat, reconciled to another longish wait while business was discussed between pilot and arms master.

Say that Pen Rel was a man of few words. Or that the pilot was eager for flight. In either case, they were both coming out the door before Jethri had time to start another line of thought.

"We lift, Jethri Gobelyn," Pen Rel said. "Soon we will be home."

And that, at least, Jethri thought, rising with alacrity, was a proper spacer's sentiment. Enough of this slogging about in the dust--it was time and past time to return to the light, clean corridors of a ship.

 

 

Day 42
Standard Year 1118
Elthoria
Arriving

 

 

"Is the whole ship heavy, then?" he asked Pen Rel's back.

The Liaden glanced over his shoulder, then stopped and turned right around in the center of the ridiculously wide hallway, something that might actually have been puzzlement shadowing the edges of his face.

"Is the gravity worrisome, Jethri Gobelyn? I did note that you disliked the port, but I had assumed an aversion to ...the noise, perhaps--or the dirt. I regret that it had not occurred to me that the ship of your kin might have run weightless."

Jethri shook his head. "Not weightless," he panted. "Just--light. The core--admin, you know--was near enough to heavy, but the rest of the ship ran light, and the rim was lightest of all." He drew a deep breath, caught by the sudden and awful realization that no one knew what the normal grav of the Liaden homeworld was. It could be that Ynsolt'i normal was light to them, and if the ship got heavier, the further in they--

Pen Rel moved his hand like he was smoothing wrinkles out of the air. "Peace, Jethri Gobelyn. Most of Elthoria runs at constant gravity. The areas that do not are unlikely to be of concern to one of your station. You will suffer no more than you do at this moment."

Jethri gaped at him. "Runs constant," he repeated, and shook his head. "How big is this ship?"

The Liaden moved his shoulders. "It is large enough. Doubt not that the master trader will provide a map--and require you to memorize it, as well."

Where he came from, holding the map of the ship and the location of bolt holes, grabs and emergency suits in your head was only commonsense. He shrugged, no where near as fluid as his companion. "Well sure she will. No problem with that."

"I am pleased to hear you say so," Pen Rel said, and turned about-face, moving briskly out down the hall. "Let us not keep the master trader waiting."

In fact, she kept them waiting, which Jethri could only see as a boon, for he used the time to catch his breath and surreptitiously stretch his sore muscles, so he wasn't blowing like a grampus when they were finally let in to see her.

Her office wasn't as big as admin entire--not quite. Nor was her workspace quite as wide as his private quarters on the Market. Screens were set above the desk, which was itself a confusion of lading slips, catalogs and the ephemera of trade--that much was familiar, so much so that he felt the tears rising to his eyes.

The master trader, she was familiar, too, with her gay hair and her snapping black eyes.

"So," she said, rising from her chair and coming forward. "It is well." She inclined her head and spoke to Pen Rel--a rapid burst of Liaden, smooth and musical. The arms master made brief reply, swept a bow to her honor, treated Jethri to a heavy tip of the head, and was gone, the door snapping behind him like a hungry mouth.

Black eyes surveyed him blandly. Belatedly, Jethri remembered his manners and bowed, low. "Master ven'Deelin. I report for duty, with joy."

"Hah." She tipped her head slightly to the right. "Well said, if briefly. Tell me, Jethri Gobelyn, how much will it distress you to find that your first duty is dry study?"

He shrugged, meeting her gaze for gaze. "Uncle Pai--Trader Gobelyn taught me that trade was study, ma'am. I wouldn't expect it otherwise."

"A man of excellent sense, Trader Gobelyn. My admiration of him knows no limit. Tell me, then, oh wise apprentice, what will you expect to study firstly? Say what is in your heart--I would know whether I must set you to gemstones, or precious metals, or fine vintage."

Had she been Terran, Jethri would have considered that she was teasing him. Liadens--none of his studies had led him to believe that Liadens held humor high. Honor was the thing, with Liadens. Honor and the exact balancing of any wrong.

"Well, ma'am," he said, careful as he was able. "I'm thinking that the first thing I'll be needing is language. I can read Liaden, but I'm slow--and my speaking is, I discover, nothing much better than poor."

"An honest scholar," Master ven'Deelin said after a moment, "and of something disheartened."

She reached out and patted his sleeve. "Repine not, Jethri Gobelyn. That you read our language at all is to be noted. That you have made some attempt to capture the tongue as it is spoken must be shown for heroic." She paused.

"Understand me, it is not that we of the clans seek to hide our customs from those traders of variant ilk. Rather, we have not overindulged in future thinking, whereby it would have been immediately understood that steps of education must be taken." She moved her shoulders in that weird not-shrug, conveying something beyond Jethri's ken.

"Very nearly, the masters of trade have walked aside from their duty. Very nearly. You and I--we will repair this oversight of the masters and rescue honor for all. Eh?" She brought her palms together sharply.

"But, yes, firstly you must speak to be understood. You will be given tapes, and a tutor. You will be given the opportunity to Balance these gifts the ship bestows. There is one a-ship who wishes to possess the Terran tongue. Understand that her case is much as yours--she reads, but there is a lack of proficiency in the spoken form. She, you will tutor, as you are tutored. You understand me?"

So, he had something of worth that he could trade for his lessons and his keep. It was little enough, and no question the ship bore the heavier burden, but it cheered him to find that he would be put to use.

Smiling, he nodded; caught himself with a sharp sigh and bowed. "I understand you, ma'am. Yes."

"Hah." Her eyes gleamed. "It will be difficult, but the need is plain. Therefore, the difficult will be accomplished." She clapped her hands once more. "You will be a trader to behold, Jethri Gobelyn!" He felt his ears warm, and bowed again. "Thank you, ma'am."

She tipped her head. "The tutor will attend likewise to the matter of bows. Continue in your present mode and you will be called to answer honor before ever we arrive at gemstones."

Jethri blinked. He had just assumed that, the deeper the bow the better, and that, as juniormost everywhere he walked, he could hardly go wrong bowing as low as he could without doing structural damage.

"I ...hope that I haven't given offense, ma'am," he stammered, in Terran.

She waved a tiny hand, the big purple ring glittering. "Worry not," she answered, in her version of the same tongue. "You are fortunate in your happenstances. We of Elthoria are of a mode most kind-hearted. To children and to Terrans, we forgive all. Others," she folded her hands together solemnly; "are less kindly than we."

Oh. He swallowed, thinking of Honored Buyer bin'Flora, and others of his uncle's contacts, on the Liaden side of the trade.

"There are those," Master ven'Deelin said softly, switching to Trade, "for whom the trade is all. There are others for whom ...the worth of themselves is all. Are these things not likewise true of Terrans?" Another flash of memory, then, of certain other traders known to him, and he nodded, though reluctantly. "Yes, ma'am. I'm afraid they are."

"No fear, Jethri Gobelyn. A man armored and proficient with his weapons need have no fear." A small hesitation, then--"But perhaps it is that you are wise in this. A man without weapons--it is best that he walk wary."

"Yes, ma'am," he said again, his voice sounding breathless in his own ears.

If Master ven'Deelin noted anything amiss, she didn't say so. Instead, she waved him over to her desk, where she pressed the promised ship's map upon him, pointing out the location of his quarters and of the ship's library, where he would find his study tapes and his tutor awaiting him at some hour that slid past his ear in an arpeggio of Liaden.

"I--" he began, but Master ven'Deelin had thought of that, too. From the riot of papers atop her desk, she produced a timepiece, and a schedule, printed out in Liaden characters.

"So, enough." She clapped her hands and made shooing motions toward the door. "This shift is your own. Next shift, you are wanted at your station. Myself, yourself, we will speak again together before the trade goes forward on Tilene. In the meanwhile, it is your duty to learn, quickly and well. The ship accepts only excellence."

Dismissed, clutching the papers and the watch untidily to his chest, he bowed, not without a certain feeling of danger, but Master ven'Deelin had turned back to her desk, her attention already on the minutiae of trade.

In the hall outside her office, he went down on a knee and took a few moments to order his paperwork, slap the watch 'round his wrist, and glance through the schedule. Running his finger down the table, being careful with the Liaden words, and checking his timepiece frequently, he established that the shift which was "his own" had just commenced. More searching in the schedule produced the information that "nuncheon" was on buffet in the galley.

Squinting at the map, he found that the galley was on the short route to his quarters, at which point his stomach commented rather pointedly that his breakfast of 'mite and crackers was used up and more. One last squint at the map, and he was on his way.

 

* * *

 

There were maybe a dozen people in the galley when he swung in. They all stopped talking and turned to look at him, smooth Liaden faces blank of anything like a smile or any honest curiosity. Just ... silence. And stares. Jethri swallowed, thinking that even a titter, or a "Look at the Terran!" might be welcome.

Nothing like it forthcoming, he walked over to the cool-table where various foods were laid out, and spent some while looking over the offerings, hoping for something familiar, while all the time he felt the eyes boring bland, silent holes into his back.

It got to him, finally, all that quiet, and the sense of them staring at him, so that he snatched up a plate holding something that looked enticingly like a pan-paste handwich and bolted for the door, map and schedule clutched under one arm.

His dash was two steps old when a dark-haired woman swung into his path, one hand held, palm out, and aiming for his chest.

He skidded to a halt, all but losing the papers, the handwich dancing dangerously on its plate, and stood there staring like a stupid grounder, wondering what piece of politeness he had, all unknowing, shattered, and whether word had gotten out to the crew that they were more forgiving than most.

The woman before him said something, the sounds sliding past his ear, almost sounding like... He blinked and leaned slightly forward.

"Say again," he murmured. "Slowly."

She inclined her head, and said again, slowly, in Terran so thickly accented he could barely make out the words, though he was craning with all his ears: "Tea will be wanting you."

"Tea," he repeated, and smiled, from unadorned relief. "Thank you. Where is the tea?"

"Bottle," she said, waving a quick hand toward a second table, set at right angles to the first, lined with what looked to be single serving vacuum bottles. "Cold. Be for to drinking with works."

"I see. Thank you..." He frowned at the badge stitched onto her shirt... "First Officer Gaenor tel'Dorbit."

Eyebrows rose above velvet brown eyes, and she tipped her head, face noncommittal. "Apprentice Terran, you?" She asked, and put her hand against her chest. "Terran student, I."

He nodded and smiled again. "I'm Master ven'Deelin's apprentice. I'll be helping you with your Terran. Here..." He fumbled the schedule out from beneath his arm and held it out, gripped precariously between two fingers, while the handwich jigged on its plate. "What's your shift? I've got--"

She slipped the paper from between his fingers, gave it a quick, all-encompassing glance, and ran a slim fingertip under a certain hour, showing him.

"Hour, this," she said, and waved briefly around the galley. "Here we meet."

"Right." He nodded again.

Gaenor tel'Dorbit inclined her head and left him, angling off to the left, where a table for three showed one empty chair and a half-eaten meal; the other two occupants considering him with silent blandness.

Jethri gabbed a tea bottle from the table and all but ran from the room.

Using the map, he found his assigned quarters handily, and stood for a long couple minutes, staring at his name, painted in Liaden letters on the door, before sliding his finger into the scanner.

The scan tingled, the door opened and he was through, staring at a cabin maybe three times the size of his quarters on the Market. The floor was covered in springy blue carpet, in the center of which sat his bags. The bed and desk were folded away, and he couldn't have said if it was the strangeness of it, or the sameness of it, but all at once he was crying in good earnest, the tears running fast and dripping off his chin.

Carefully, he put the handwich and the bottle on the floor next to his bags, then sat himself down next to them, taking care to put schedule and map well out of harm's way. That done, he folded up, head on knees, and bawled.

 

 

Day 60
Standard Year 1118
Gobelyn's Market
Approaching Kinaveral

 

 

Kinaveral hung middling big in the central screen. Khat had filed her approach with Central, done her system checks and finally leaned back in the pilot's chair, exhaling with a will.

Cris looked up from the mate's board with a half-gin and a nod. "Two to six, Central will argue the path."

Khat laughed. "I look a fool, do I, coz? Of course Central will argue the path. I once had a fast-look at a Lane Controller's manual. First page, Lesson One, writ out in letters as high as my hand was, 'Always Dispute the Filed Approach."'

Cris' smile widened to a grin. "First lesson, you say? There was pages after that?"

"Some few," Khat allowed, straight-faced; "some few. Mind, the next six after was blank, so the student could practice writing out the rule."

"Well, it being so large and important a rule..." Cris began, before the intercom bell cut him short. He spun back to his board and slapped the toggle. "Mate."

"First Mate," Iza Gobelyn's voice came out of the speaker, gritty with more than 'com buzz. "I'm looking for the approach stats."

"Captain," Cris said, even-voiced. "We're on the wait for Central's aye."

There was a short, sizzling pause.

"As soon as we're cleared, I'll have those stats," Iza snapped.

"Yes, Captain, "Cris murmured, but he might just as easily said nothing; Iza had already signed off. Cris sighed, sharp and exasperated. Khat echoed him, softer.

"I thought she'd lighten, once Jeth was gone," she said.

Cris shook his head, staring down at his board.

"It ain't Jethri being gone so much as Arin," he muttered. "She's gotten harder, every Standard since he died."

Khat thought about that, staring at Kinaveral, hanging in the center screen. "There's a lot more years ahead, and Arin in none of them," she said, eventually.

Cris didn't answer that--or, say, he answered by not answering, which was Cris' way.

Instead, he said, "I got a reply on that franchise job. They want me to stop by their office, dirtside, take the test. If that's a go, it'll mean a temp berth for the next ten months, Standard."

Khat nodded, her eyes still on Kinaveral. "Paitor figures to pick up some training or consulting at Terratrade," she said. "Me, I'll file with Central as a freewing."

"Sensible. The rest sticking to dirt?"

She laughed. "Now, how likely is that? Might take a few port cycles til they get tired of breathing dust, but you know they'll be looking for space work, too."

"Huh," Cris said, fiddling with a setting on his board. "Iza?"

Khat shrugged. "Way I heard it, she was staying dirtside, with the Market." She held up a hand. "Paitor did try to talk her out of it. Pointed out that Seeli's able. Iza wasn't having any. She's the captain, the job's hers, and by all the ghosts of space, she'll do it."

"Huh," Cris said again--and seemed on the edge of saying something more when the comm screen came live with Central's request that Gobelyn's Market amend her filed approach.

 

 

Day 63
Standard Year 1118
Elthoria

 

 

Elthoria kept a twenty-eight hour "day," divided into four shifts, two on, two off, which made for a slightly longer work day than the Market's twenty-four hour, two-shift cycle. Jethri, who had been used to reading and studying well into his off-shift, scarcely noticed the additional hours.

His work now--that was different. No more Stinks. If Elthoria had Stinks, which Jethri took leave to doubt, it was nothing mentioned to him by his new acquaintances, though they were careful to show him as much of the ship as an apprentice trader might need to know. His new status meant no more assisting in the galley, a duty he might've missed, if there'd been any time for it, which there wasn't, his time being entirely and systematically crammed full with lessons, study and more lessons.

Some things were routine, and it eased him somehow to find that Elthoria kept emergency protocols--in which he was relentlessly trained by no lesser person than Arms Master sig'Kethra. Over the course of three shifts, he was drilled in the location and operation of the lifeboats, shown the various boltholes, emergency hatches and hand-grabs. He was also measured for a suit, it being discovered to the chagrin of the supply master that none of those on draw would fit.

Other things, they weren't so routine--more of that, which is what he'd figured to find. For instance, he had a trade locker all to himself, which was scrupulously the same size as his stateroom, it being the policy on Elthoria that traders should have as much room to work in as they had to sleep in. He wished he'd thought to convert some of his cash to something useful out of the Market--but he hadn't had much time to cry about that missed opportunity, either.

First thing on shift, right after breakfast, he sat with the tutor-tapes in the ship's library, brushing up on his written and spoken Liaden. Then, he met with Protocol Officer Ray Jon tel'Ondor, which was more language lessons, putting dry learning into practical use. Master tel'Ondor was also of an ambition to teach Jethri his bows, though he made no secret of the fact that Jethri was the least apt pupil he had encountered in long years of tutoring arrogant young traders in protocol.

After Master tel'Ondor, there was exercise--a mandated ship's hour every day at the weights and the treadmills, then a shower, a meal, and more reading, this on the subjects of trade guild rules and custom regs. After that, there was the Terran-tutoring with Gaenor tel'Dorbit. The first mate being of a restless habit, that meant more exercise, as they walked the long hallways of Elthoria. Despite the extra walking, Jethri quickly came to look forward to this part of his duty-day. Gaenor was younger than Master ven'Deelin and Pen Rel, and she smiled nicely from time to time in her lessons, which Jethri particularly liked.

Gaenor's idea of being tutored was to just start talking--about the events of the previous shift, her family's home in a dirt-based city called Chonselta, the latest book she was reading, or the ship's itinerary. Jethri's responsibility was to stop her when she misspoke, and say the words over in the right order and pronunciation. So it was that he became informed of ship's policy, gossip and ports o'call, as well as the names of certain flowers which Gaenor particularly missed from home.

The first mate having access to just about every portion of the ship, Jethri also found himself informed of various lockers and pod connections, and was introduced to each of the ship's company as they were encountered during the ramble. Some of the crew seemed not so pleased to see him, some seemed ... puzzled. Most seemed not to care much, one way or the other. All were grave and polite, like they oughta be, Jethri thought, with the first mate looking on. Still, he thought that these catch-as-can introductions at the mate's side... helped. Helped him put names and faces and responsibilities together. Helped them to see he really was part of the crew, pulling his weight, just like they were.

One person who seemed outright happy to welcome him was Vil Tor, ship's librarian. As it happened that Vil Tor also had an ambition to add Terran to his speakables, Gaenor and Jethri had taken to including the library as a regular stop. This time out, though, they'd found the door locked, lights out. Gaenor sighed, slim shoulders dropping for a moment, then turned and started back down the hall, swinging out with a will.

"This our ship, Elthoria," Gaenor said, as they hit the end of the hall and swept left, toward Hydroponics; "will be inputting to Spacestation Kailipso..."

"Putting in," Jethri panted. "Elthoria will be putting in to Kailipso Station."

"Hah." Gaenor flicked a glance his way; she wasn't even breathing hard. "Elthoria," she repeated, slowing her pace by a fraction, "will be putting in to Spacestation Kailipso--bah!--Kailipso Station--putting in to Kailipso Station within three ship days. There is a--a ..." She stopped entirely and turned to face Jethri, holding two hands up, palm out, signifying she had not the necessary Terran words to hand.

"It is to have a meeting of the masters, on subjects interested in the masters..."

The immediate phrase that came to mind was 'jaw-fest," which Jethri thought might not be the sort of Terran Master ven'Deelin wanted Gaenor to be learning. He frowned after the polite and after a moment was able to offer, "a symposium."

"Sim-po-zium," Gaenor said, her mouth pinching up like the word tasted bad. "So, there is a sim-po-zium upon Kailipso. The ven'Deelin attends--the ven'Deelin will attend. The crew will be at leave." She moved her shoulders, not quite a Terran shrug, but not quite admiring of Kailipso Station, all the same.

"Don't like Kailipso much?" he ventured, and Gaenor's mouth pinched again before she turned and recommenced marching down the hall.

"It is cold," she said to the empty corridor, and then began to tell him of the latest developments in the novel she was reading. He had to catch up, hoping that she put his delay down to his being somewhat less fit, and not his taking a moment to admire her walk.

 

 

Day 65
Standard Year 1118
Kinaveral

 

 

Before they cleared a freewing to fly, Kinaveral Central wanted to be assured that candidate could find her way through a form or six. That done, there were the sims to fly, then a chat with the stable boss, at the end of which a time was named on the morrow when the candidate was to return and actually lift one of Central's precious ships--and an observer--for the final and most telling part of the test.

In between now and then, Khat knew, they'd be checking her number and her ship, and verifying her personals. She'd hoped to have the test lift today, but, there, the stable boss needed to know if the applicant free-wing tended toward sober in the morning.

No problem for the applicant on that approach, Khat thought, walking down the dusty, noisy main street. Not to say that a brew would be unwelcome at the moment. Make that a brew and a handwich, she amended, as her stomach filed notice that the 'mite and crackers she'd fed it for breakfast were long past gone.

Up ahead, she spied the flashing green triangle which was the sign of an eat-and-drinkery, and stretched her legs, grimacing at the protest of overworked muscles. That'll teach you to stint your weight exercise, she scolded herself, and turned into the cool, comfortably dim doorway.

A lightscape over the counter showed a old style fin-ship down on a flat plain, mountains marking the horizon. Beneath, a tag box spelled out the name of the joint: Ship 'n Shore.

There was a scattering of folk at the tables--spacers, mostly--and plenty of room at the counter. It being only herself, Khat swung up onto a stool 'neath the tag box and waved at the barkeep. "Dark brew and a handwich for a woman in need!"

The keeper ginned, drew the beer and sat it on the counter by her hand. "There's the easy part," he said. "What's your fondness for food? We got local cheese and vegs on fresh bake bread; potmeat on the same; 'mite paste and pickles; side o' fish--"

Khat leveled a finger. "Local cheese without the vegs?"

"We can do it," he promised.

"That's a deal, then. Bring her on."

"Be a sec. Let me know how you find the beer." He moved down counter, still ginning, and Khat picked up the mug.

The beer was cold, which was how she liked it. Bitter, too, and thick. She'd brought the mug down to half-full by the time her handwich arrived, two generous halves sharing a plastic plate with a fistful of saltpretzel.

"Brew's good," Khat said. "I'll want another just like it in not too long."

The keeper smiled, pleased, and put a couple disposable napkins next to the plate. "Just give a yell when you're ready," he said.

She nodded and picked up one of the halves. The unmistakable smell of fresh bake bread hit her nose and her stomach started clamoring. For the next while, she concentrated on settling that issue. The bread was whole grain, brown and nutty; the cheese butter smooth and unexpectedly spicy. Khat finished the first half and the brew, waved the empty mug at the barkeep and started in on the second round.

Couple times, folk from the tables came up to the counter for refills. A crew of three came in from the street and staked out stools at the end of the row. Khat paid none of them particular notice, except to register that they were spacers, and nobody she knew.

At last, the final saltpretzel was gone. Khat pushed the plate away with a regretful sigh and reached for her mug. A couple more sips, settle her bill and then back to the lodgings, she thought, with a sinking in her well-full stomach. Wasn't nothing wrong with the lodgings, mind, except that they was full-grav lodgings, and dirtside, and subject to the rules of the lodge-owner. But still, Market's crew had a section to themselves, inside which each had their own cubby, with cot and desk and entertainment bar. No complaints.

Excepting that Captain Iza was nothing but complaints--well, she hated dirt, always had; and didn't have much of a fondness for worldsiders. Without the routine of her ship, she stood at sevens and eights and spent 'way too much of her time down to the yards, doubtless making life a hell for the crew boss assigned to Market's refit.

Zam had suggested the captain might file as freewing with Central, for which insubordination he had his head handed to him. Seeli'd come by no gentler treatment when she spoke to her mother, and Dyk declined even to try. Paitor had his own quarters at Terratrade, and when the temp slot went solid on Cris their second day a-ground, he all but ran to the space field.

Which left them a mixed bag--and bad tempered, too, held uneasy by Iza's moods.

And the year was barely begun.

Khat sighed again, and finished off her brew. She put the mug down and waved at the keeper for the bill. He, up-counter with the crew of three, held up two fingers--be there in a few. She nodded, shifted on the stool...

"Hey, Khati," an unwelcome voice came from too near at hand.

"Shit," Khat muttered beneath her breath and spun the stool around to face Mac Gold.

He hadn't changed much since the last time she'd seen him--some taller, maybe, and a little broader in the shoulders. Khat nodded, curt.

"Mac."

He grinned, and ran a hand over his head. His hair was pale yellow; buzzed, it was nearly invisible, which his eyelashes were. Behind those invisible lashes, his eyes were a deep and unlikely blue, the rest of his face square and bony. A well enough looking boy, taken all together. If he hadn't also happened to've been Mac Gold.

"Good to see you," he said, now, deliberately aiming those unlikely eyes at her chest. "Buy you a brew?"

She shook her head, teeth gritting. "Just on my way. Next time, maybe."

"Right," he said, but he didn't move, other than to cock his head. "Listen, while we're face to face--square with me?"

She shrugged. "Maybe."

"I'm just wondering--what happened to Jethri? I mean, what really happened to Jethri?"

"He's 'prenticed to the trader of a big ship," she said. "Cap'n Iza must've told your dad so."

"She did," Mac agreed, "and I'm sharing no secrets when I tell you my dad was some pissed about the whole business. I mean, here's Iza asking us to make room for your extra, and m'dad willing to accommodate, and what happens but then she says, no, the boy ain't coming after all. He's gone someplace else." Mac shook his head and held up a hand, thumb and forefinger a whisper apart.

"Dad was this close to calling breach."

Khat sighed. "Breach of what? The legal wasn't writ."

"Still, there'd be the verbal--"

"Deals fall through every day," Khat interrupted and caught sight of the barkeep out of the corner of her eye. She turned on the stool and smiled at him.

Behind her, Mac, raised his voice conspicuously--

"Rumor is, Khat, that Paitor sold the boy to Liadens!"

That drew starts and stares from those close enough to hear; some turned carefully away but others lifted eyebrows and raised their heads to watch.

Deliberately, Khat turned, away from the barkeep and back to Mac Gold. Deliberately, she drew a deep breath, and glared straight into those blue eyes.

"The boy holds a Combine key. He's as legal as you or me. He's a 'prentice trader--signed his own papers. Jethri ain't no boy."

"Well, rumor is that Liadens paid for this upgrade the Market's gettin'."

Khat laughed and rolled her eyes.

"Least now Mr. Rumor's got it right. Jethri sold a load of cellosilk back at Ynsolt'i, and on top of that, Paitor bought some special risk merchandise Jethri'd pointed out--an' didn't that turn into high-count coin in the private hall--just like Jethri said it would! So, sure, Liadens bought this upgrade all right--cans, nodes, and engines."

"But someone got shot, they say, and next thing--"

Khat sighed, loud and exasperated.

"Look, Jethri was ready to trade, Mac, and captain told him if he wanted something more than pushing gravel from here to there, he'd have to find his own ship. Can't fault him for that call. So he found himself a better berth, 'prenticed to nothing less than a master trader, and for a good-bye, he buys us new drives and a full upgrade."

She paused, hearing a slight thump of glass behind her and raised her hand, fingers wriggling "just sec."

"Jethri's got him a berth, Mac. Papers're signed proper and legal. His business--not mine, not yours. That other stuff Mr. Rumor been tellin' you--nobody got shot but some fool who decided it was easier to die than clear an honest debt. Not your problem." She tipped her head, like she was considering that, and asked, sweetly, "Or is it?"

Mac's eyes tightened and his face reddened.

"It sure is my problem if the word gets out Jethri'd rather crew with a bunch of Liadens than come with an honest ship like--"

"You better watch your mouth, Mac Gold," Khat snapped. "Lest somebody here figures you was gonna say something about how Gold Digger's honest and Jethri's ship ain't. Not the kind of thing you'd be wanting to discuss with a Liaden, now, is it?"

Mac blinked, and swallowed hard. Point won, Khat turned back to the bartender, raised her eyes briefly and expressively at the ceiling, and smiled.

"What's the damage?"

He smiled back. "Two bit."

"Done." She slid four across the counter and dropped to her feet, leg muscles sending up a shout for their team leader. She ignored them. The walk back to the lodgings would work the kinks out. Or cripple her for life.

"So, Khat--" Mac said from beside her.

"So, Mac," she overrode, and turned sharp, feeling a dangerous tingle along the brawlin' nerves when he went back a step. She kept going, and he kept backin', until she got the throttle on it and stopped. Mac's pretty blue eyes was showing some red, and his face was damp. Khat gave one more hard glare, before she nodded, kinda half-civil.

"See you 'round port," she said, and forced her aching legs to swing out, carrying her down the room and out in the dusty day.

 

 

Day 66

Standard Year 1118

Kailipso Station

At Leave

 

"Come, come, young Jethri, tarry not!" Pen Rel's voice was brisk, as he waved Jethri ahead of him into the entry tube. "All the wonders of Kailipso Station await your discovery! Surely, your enthusiasm and spirit of adventure are aroused!"

Had it been Dyk behind him in the chute, Jethri would have counted both his legs yanked proper, and been alert for second stage mischief. He thought Pen Rel too dignified for Dyk's sort of rough-'n-tumble; he was less sure of his tendencies on the leg-pulling side of things.

Jethri felt the odd twitter of the grav field where it intersected the station's own grav-well; though flat and level to the eyes the deck felt as if it fell away into the chute. Maybe Pen Rel was watching for a bobble, but such boundaries were learned by shipcrew at the knees of their mates and family.

The airflow, that was a surprise--definitely a positive, cool flow toward the ship--No, Jethri discovered, after a moment's study; the tube itself had a circulation system, and he could see the filters set flush to the walls. He gave a quiet sigh of relief for this homey precaution--all long-spacers did their most to keep station, port, or planet air out in favor of proper controlled and cleaned ship air.

Curiosity satisfied, Jethri stepped forward--and then stepped back, his hand going up, fingers shaping the hand-talk for "hold".

Two Liadens were coming up the slanted ramp at a pace that made Jethri's chest ache in sympathy. One--by far the pudgiest Liaden Jethri had seen so far--was carrying a full duffle; his slimmer companion clutched what looked to be a general business comp to his chest. They were in earnest conversation, heads turned aside and eyes only for each other.

"What is--" Pen Rel began, but by then the duo was on the flat and heading full throttle out, never realizing that they was anything but alone.

"'ware the deck!" Jethri snapped.

It had the desired effect, whether either of them had understood the Terran words. Both slammed to a graceless halt. The man with the comp raised it a fraction, as if to ward Jethri away.

Pen Rel stepped forward, claiming attention with a flicker of a hand, and a slight inclination of the head.

"Ah, Storemaster," he murmured, and Jethri thought he heard a bare thread of ... disapproval in the bland, dry voice. "You are somewhat before time, I believe."

The man with the comp bowed. "Arms Master. I am instructed to supply crew with specialty baking experience, and I have here such a one. It remains to be found that he can operate Elthoria's ovens and bread vats. So we arrive, for a testing."

Pen Rel looked to the second man.

"Have you shipboard experience?"

The pudgy guy bowed lower than Jethri would have thought possible with the duffle over his shoulder, and straightened to show a wide eyed, slightly damp face. "Three voyages, Honored. The Storemaster has my files..."

"Very good." Pen Rel was back with the Storemaster. "Next time, you will come at the mate's appointed hour, eh? This time, you have interfered in ship's business."

The applicant cook's round eyes got rounder; the Storemaster pursed his mouth up. Both bowed themselves out of the way, even sparing brief nods for the unexpected Terran in their midst.

"So," Pen Rel said, catching Jethri's eye. He moved a hand toward the ramp. "After you, young sir."

 

* * *

 

At the bottom of the chute was the inevitable uniformed station ape, card-reader to hand.

Jethri handed over his shiny new shipcard. The inspector took it, glanced at it--and paused, eyes lifting to his face.

"Elthoria signs Terran crew," she stated--or maybe she was asking. Jethri ducked his head, wondering if she expected an answer and what, exactly, would be seen as discourteous behavior in a Terran, here on an all-Liaden station. That he was an anomaly was clear from the pair they'd surprised coming on-ship. But, then, he said to himself, you expected you were going to be an oddity. Best get used to it.

"Must the ship clear its roster with the station?" Pen Rel asked from behind him, in Trade. "Do you find the card questionable?"

The inspector's mouth tightened. She swiped the card sharply through the reader, displaying a bit of temper, or so Jethri thought, and stood holding it in her hand until the unit beeped and the tiny screen flashed blue.

"Verified and valid," she said, and held the card out, still something pettish.

Jethri gabbed it and slid it away into his belt. "Thank you, Inspector," he said politely. She ignored him, holding out a hand to Pen Rel.

Bland-faced, he put his card in her palm, and watched as she swiped it and handed it back. The unit beeped and the screen flashed.

"Verified and valid," she said, and stepped back, obviously expecting them to go on about their business.

Pen Rel stayed where he was, waiting, bland and patient, until she looked up.

"A point of information," he said, still sticking with Trade. "Elthoria does not hold her crew lightly."

It was said mild enough, but the inspector froze, her face losing a little of that rich golden color. Jethri counted to five before she bent in a bow and murmured, "Of course, Arms Master. No disrespect to Elthoria or to her crew was intended."

"That is well, then," Pen Rel said, mildness itself. He moved a hand in a easy forward motion. "Young sir, the delights of the station are before you."

As hints went, it wasn't near subtle, but apparently Pen Rel was still making his point, because the inspector looked up into his face and inclined her head.

"Young trader, may you enjoy a profitable and pleasurable stay on Kailipso Station." Right. He inclined his head in turn, murmured his very best, all-Liaden, "My thanks," and quick-stepped down the dock toward the bay door.

On the other side of the door, he pulled up. Pen Rel stepped through, and Jethri fell in beside him. The Liaden checked.

"Forgive me, Jethri," he said. "What do you do?"

Jethri blinked. "I thought I was partnered with you."

"Ah." Pen Rel tipped his head to a side. "Understand that I find your companionship all that is delightful. However, I have errands on the day which are...of no concern to one of your station. The master trader's word was that you be put at liberty to enjoy those things which Kailipso offers." He moved a hand in the all-too-familiar shooing gesture.

"So, enjoy. You are wanted back on board at seventh hour. I need not remind you to comport yourself so as to bring honor to your ship. And now," he swept a slight, loose-limbed half-bow; "I leave you to your pleasure, while I pursue my duties."

And he turned and walked off, just like that, leaving the juniornost and most idiot of his crew standing staring after, jaw hanging at half-mast.

Pen Rel had gone half the length of the corridor and turned right down a side way before Jethri shook himself into order and started walking, trying to accommodate himself to the fact that he was alone and at liberty on a Liaden owned and operated spacestation, where the official staff had already demonstrated a tendency to consider him a general issue nuisance. He shook his head, not liking the notion near so well as he should have done.

He did get to thinking, as he walked, that Master ven'Deelin surely knew what Kailipso was--just as surely as Pen Rel did. And certainly neither of those canny old hands was likely to turn him loose in halls where he might find active danger.

He hoped.

An overhead sign at the junction of halls where Pen Rel had vanished offered him routes, straight on to Main Concourse, right hall to Station Administration, and left hall to Mercantile Station. Working on the theory that there would be information booths in the Main Concourse, Jethri went straight on.

 

* * *

 

Infobooths were the least of the wonders offered by the Main Concourse and its affiliated sections. He explored Market Square first, finding it not a trading center, as he had expected, but a retail shop zone offering goods at exorbitant mark-ups.

Nonetheless, he browsed, comparing prices shop to shop, and against his best guess of trade-side cost. Some of the items offered for sale were, by his admittedly unscientific calculation, marked up as much as six hundred percent over trade. He took a bit of a shock, for he saw in one window a timepiece identical to the one Norn ven'Deelin had casually given him--and found its price at three kais. 'Course, a master trader wasn't going to ever pay shop-price, but--He glanced down and took a second to make sure the slap strap was secure around his wrist.

Kailipso being a station, there were special considerations. Stations were dependent on outside supply; if one needed what was here it was very much a seller's market.

That got him to wondering just how much this particular station was dependent on outside supply, so he hunted up another booth and got directions to Education Square. Of course, it was opposite the Market, which meant a long walk back the way he'd come and through the Concourse, but he didn't grudge it. Station lived a thought lighter than Elthoria, so he fairly skipped along.

Education was almost useless. The tapes offered for rent were every one narrated in Liaden. He was about to give up when his eye snagged on a half-sized shop, sort of crammed in sideways to the hall, in a space between a utility bay and a recycling chamber.

The small opening spilled yellow light out into the hallway, and a table was sitting almost into the common area, holding the fabulous luxury of six bound books. Behind them was a hand-written sign, stating that all sales were final, cash only.

Jethri moved forward, picked up the topmost book with reverence, and carefully thumbed the pages.

Paper rustled, and a subtle smell wafted up. He allowed the book to fall open in his hands and found the Liaden words almost absurdly easy to read as he was at once captivated by an account of one Shan el'Thrassin, who was engaged in a matter of honor with a set of folk who seemed something less than honorable.

"May I assist you, young sir?" The voice was soft, male, slightly hesitant in Trade. Jethri started, ears warming, closing the book with a snap.

"I apologize," he said. "I was looking for information about the history, economics and structure of the station. I am looking to fill some hours while visiting.... This..." Carefully, he bent and placed the volume he had been reading back in its place on the table. He experienced a genuine pang as the book left his hand.

"...I cannot possibly afford this. If I have offended by using it without pay..."

The man moved a hand, slowly, formally. "Books are meant to be read, young sir. You honor them--and me--with your interest. However, you intrigue me, for is not the entire square full with sight and sound recordings of the awesome past and glorious present of our station?"

Jethri ducked his head. "Sir, it is. However--while I read the written form, my tongue and ear run far behind my eyes."

"Hah." The man's eyes gleamed. "You are, in fact, a scholar. It is nothing less than my duty to assist you. Come. I believe I have just what you are wanting."

As it happened, he did: A thin paper book simply entitled Guide To Kailipso Station.

"It is slight, but well enough to satisfy the first level of questions and engage the mind upon the second level," the shopkeeper said easily. "It will, I think, serve you well. Though used, it is new enough that the information is reasonably dependable. "

"I thank you," Jethri said. "However, again, I fear that my coins may be too few." And of the wrong sort, he thought suddenly, with a sinking feeling in his stomach. He was wearing his trading coat, but what he had in his public pocket was Terran bits and his fractin. He'd clean forgotten to stop at ship's bank to pull money out of his account in proper tor and kais...

The man looked up at him. "Do you know, young sir, I believe we are in Balance. It is seldom enough that one sees a Terran. It is rarer to see a Terran unaccompanied and unhurried. To meet and have converse with a Terran who reads Liaden--even the gods must own themselves privileged in such an encounter." He smiled, slight and gentle.

"Have the book, child. Your need is greater than mine."

Jethri bit his lip. "Sir, I thank you, but--I request an elder's advice. How should a young and inexperienced person such as myself Balance so generous a gift from a stranger?"

For a moment, he thought he'd gone well beyond bounds, though by all he knew there ought to be no offense given in asking for a clue to proper behavior. But the man before him was so still--

The shopkeeper bowed, lightly, right hand over belt-buckle. "There is," he said, straightening to his full, diminutive height, "a ...protocol for such things. The proper Balance for the receipt of a gift freely given is to use it wisely and with honor, so that the giver is neither shamed nor regretful of his generosity."

Oh. Feeling an idiot, Jethri bowed, low enough to convey his thanks. He hoped. "I am grateful for the information, sir. My thanks."

The man waved a dismissive hand. "Surely, it is the duty of elder to instruct the young." Once again, he smiled his slight smile. "Enjoy your holiday, child."

"Thank you, sir," Jethri murmured, and bowed again, figuring that it was better to err on the side of too many than not enough, and moved out of the shop, trying not to let his eyes wander to those shelves full of treasure.

 

* * *

 

He found a vacant bench in the main square and quickly became absorbed in the guidebook. From it, he learned that Kailipso Station had come into being as a way station for cargo and for galactic travelers. Unfortunately, it very shortly became a refugee camp for those who managed to escape the catastrophic climatic upsets of a colony world called Daethiria. While many of the homeless colonists returned to the established Liaden worlds from which they had emigrated, a not inconsiderable number chose to remain on Kailipso Station rather than return to the conditions which had forced them away in the first place.

Kailipso Admin, realizing that it would need to expand quarters to support increased population, got clever--or desperate--or both--and went wooing the big Liaden Guilds, like the Traders and the Pilots, and got them to go in for sector offices on Kailipso.

Where most ports and stations would automate scut-work, Kailipso used people wherever possible, since they had people--and they not only got by, but they thrived.

So, Kailipso expanded, and soon enough became a destination all its own. Like any other station, it was vulnerable to attack, and dependent on imports for luxury items and planet-bred food. If it had to be, though, it was self-sufficient. On-station yeast vats produced enough boring, wholesome nutrition to feed Kailipso's denizens. Off-station, there were farm pods--fish, fruits and vegetables--which made for tastier eating in sufficient quantities to keep those same denizens in luxury if they could so afford.

Kailipso also offered recreation. There was a power-sled track, swimming facilities, climbing walls to challenge a number of skill levels, and more than two dozen arenas for sports Jethri had never heard of.

The guide book also provided a list of unsafe zones, accompanied by a cutaway station map with each danger outlined in bright green. Most were construction sites, and a few out-ring halls that dead-ended into what looked to be emergency chutes, marked out as Danger: Low Gravity Zones.

He likewise learned from the guide book that the Kailipso Trade Bar was in the Mercantile Zone, and that it was open to all with a valid license of trade or a tradeship crew card. There, at least, he could directly debit his account on ship, and get himself some walking-around money. A brew and a looksee at the ship-board wouldn't be amiss, either.

So thinking, he came to his feet and slipped the book away in to a leg-pocket. He took a second to stretch, luxuriating in the lower gray, then headed off at a mild lope, bound for the Mercantile Zone.

 

* * *

 

He ran his card through the reader; the screen flashed blue, and the door to the Trade Bar swung open before him.

Valid and verified, he thought, grinning, and then remembered to put on his trading face--polite, non-committal, and supposedly unreadable; it wasn't much, set against your usual Liaden's ungiving mask. Still, grinning out loud in a place crammed with folks who just didn't couldn't be polite. And polite was all he had.

What hit him first were the similarities to the Terran Trade Bars he'd been in with Uncle Paitor or Cris or Dyk. The high-info screens were set well up on one wall, showing list after list: ships in dock; traders on duty; goods at offer, stationside; goods at offer, dockside; goods sought. The exchange rates were missing, which made him blink until he realized that everybody on this station was buying in cantra and kais.

The milling of bodies seemingly at random around the various stations--that was familiar too--and even the sound--lots of voices, talking at once, maybe a little louder than needful.

But then the differences--damn near everybody was shorter than him, dressed in bright colors, and soft leather boots. Jewelry gleamed on ears, hands, throats. Not a few wore a weapon, holstered, on their belts. For the most, they walked flat, like born mud-grubbers, and not like honest spacers at all. And the slightly too loud voices were saying things in a quick, liquid language which his ear couldn't begin to sort.

He found himself a corner where two booths abutted, and settled back out of the general press to study the screens. Stationside goods at offer tended toward art stuffs and information--reasonable. The longest list by far, though, was for indenture--folks looking to buy their way off-station, maybe all the way back to Liad, by selling out years of their lives. By Jethri's count, there were forty-eight contracts offered, from sixteen years to thirty-four, from general labor to fine craftsperson.

"Well, what do we find ourselves here?" a woman's voice asked, too close and too loud, her Trade almost unintelligible. "I do believe it's a Terran, Vil Jon."

Jethri moved, but she was blocking his exit, and the man moving up at her hail was going to box him in proper.

"A Terran?" the man--Vil Jon-repeated. "Now what would a Terran be doing in the Trade Bar?"

He looked up into Jethri's face, eyes hard and blue. "Well, Terran? Who let you in here?"

Jethri met his eyes, trying with everything in him to keep his face smooth, polite and non-committal. "The door let me in, sir. My ship card was accepted by the reader."

"It has a card," the woman said, as if the man hadn't heard. "Now, what ship in dock keeps tame Terrans."

The man glanced over his shoulder at the boards. "There's Intovish, from Vanthachal. They keep some odd customs, local." He looked back at Jethri. "What ship, Terran?"

He considered it. After all, his ship was no secret. On Terran ground, asking for someone's ship was a common courtesy. From these two, though, it seemed a threat--or a challenge in a game he had no hope of understanding.

"Elthoria," he said, soft and polite as he knew how. "Sir."

"Elthoria?" The woman exchanged a long glance with her mate, who moved his shoulders, pensive-like.

"Could be it's bound for Solcintra Zoo," he said.

"Could be it's gotten hold of a card it shouldn't have," the woman returned, sharply. She held out her hand. "Come, Terran. Let us see your ship card."

And that, Jethri thought, was that. He was threatened, cornered and outnumbered, but he was damned if he was going to meekly hand his card over to this pair of port hustlers.

"No, ma'am," he said, and jumped forward.

The gray was light--he jumped a fair distance, knocking the woman aside as gentle as he could, out of reach before the man thought to try and gab him.

Having once jumped, Jethri stayed in motion, moving quick through the crowded room. He met a few startled glances, but took care not to jostle anybody, and very soon gained the door. It was, he thought, time to get back to his ship.

 

* * *

 

They knew the station better than him--of course they did. They turned him back, hall by hall, crowding him toward the Concourse, cutting him off from the docks and his ship.

In desperation, he went down three floors, hit the hall beyond the lift doors running and had broken for the outer ring before he heard them behind him, calling "Terran, Terran! You cannot elude us, Terran!"

That might be so, Jethri thought, laboring hard now, light grav or not. He had a plan in his mind, though, and if this was the hall as he remembered it from the guide book's map of danger zones...

He flashed past a blue sign, the Liaden letters going by too fast for his eye to catch, but he recognized the symbol from the map, and began to think that this might work.

The hall took a hard left, like he remembered it from the map, and there was the emergency tunnel at end of it, gaping black and cold.

"Terran!" The woman's voice was suddenly shrill. "Wait! We will not hurt you!"

Right, Jethri thought, the tunnel one long stride away. He hit it running, felt the twist inside his ear that meant he had gone from one gravitational state to another--

He jumped.

Somewhere behind him, a woman screamed. Jethri fell, slow-motion, saw a safety pole, slapped it and changed trajectory, shooting under the lip of the floor above, anchoring himself with a foot hooked 'neath a beam.

The woman was talking in Liaden now, still shrill and way too loud. The man answered sharply, and then shouted out, in pidgin, "Terran! Where are you?"

Like he was going to answer. Jethri concentrated on breathing slow and quiet.

They didn't wait all that long; he heard the sound of their footsteps, walking fast, then the sound of the lift doors working.

After that, he didn't hear anything else.

He made himself sit there for a full twenty-eighth by the Liaden timepiece on his wrist, then eased out of hiding. A quick kick against the side of the chute sent him angling upward. He caught the edge of the floor as he shot past and did a back flip into the tunnel. He snatched a ring, righted himself, and skated for the hall.

A Liaden man in a black leather jacket was leaning against the wall opposite the tunnel. Jethri froze.

The Liaden nodded easily, almost Terran-like.

"Well done," he said, and it was ground-based Terran he was talking, but Terran all the same. "I commend you upon a well-thought-out and competently executed maneuver."

"Thanks." Jethri said, thinking he could scramble, go over the edge again, make for the next level up, or down...

The Liaden held up a hand, palm out. "Acquit me of any intent to harm you. Indeed, it is concern for your welfare which finds me here, in a cold hallway at the far edge of nowhere, when I am promised to dinner with friends."

Jethri sighed. "You see I'm fine. Go to dinner."

The Liaden outright laughed, and straightened away from the wall.

"Oh, excellent! To the point, I agree." He waved down the hall vaguely, as if he could see through walls, and so could Jethri "Come, be a little gracious. I hear you are from Elthoria, over on Dock Six, is that so?"

Jethri nodded, warily. "Yes."

"Delightful. As it happens, I treasure an acquaintance with Norn ven'Deelin which has too long languished unrenewed. Allow me to escort you to your ship."

Jethri stood, feeling the glare building and not even trying to stop it. The man in the jacket tsk'd.

"Come now. Even a lad of your obvious resource will find it difficult to outrun a Scout on this station. At least allow me to know that Elthoria is on Dock Six. Also--forgive me for introducing a painful subject--I must point out that your late companions will no doubt have called in an anonymous accident report. If you wish to avoid awkward questions from the Watch, you would be well-advised to put yourself in my hands."

Maybe it was the Terran. Maybe it was the laugh, or the man's easy and factual way. Whatever, Jethri allowed that he trusted this one as much as he hadn't trusted the pair who had been chasing him. Further down the hall, a lift chimed--and that decided it.

"OK," he agreed, and the man smiled.

'Not a moment too soon," He said, and stepped around the edge of the wall he'd been leaning against.

"This way, young sir. Quickly."

 

* * *

 

His guide set a brisk pace through the service corridors, his footsteps no more than whispers.

Jethri, walking considerably more noisy behind him, had time to appreciate that he was at this man's mercy; and the likelihood that his murdered body could lie in one of the numerous, dark repair bays they passed for days before anyone thought to look...

"Do not sell your master trader short, young sir," the man ahead of him said. "I can understand that you might be having second thoughts about myself--a stranger and a Scout, together! Who knows what such a fellow might do? But never doubt Norn ven'Deelin."

Apparently it wasn't just his face that was found too readable, Jethri thought sourly, but his footsteps, too. Still, he forced himself to chew over what the man had said, and produced a question. "What's a Scout?"

Two steps ahead, the Liaden turned to face him, continuing to walk backward, which he seemed to find just as simple as going face-first, and put his hand, palm flat, against his chest.

"I am a Scout, child. In particular: Scout Captain Jan Rek ter'Astin, presently assigned to the outpost contained in this space station."

Jethri considered him. "You're a soldier, then?"

Scout Captain ter'Astin laughed again, and turned face forward without breaking stride.

"No, innocent, I am not a soldier. The Scouts are ... are--an exploratory corps. And to hear some, we are more trouble than we are worth, constant meddlers that we are--Ah, here is our lift! After you, young sir."

It looked an ordinary enough lift, Jethri thought, as the door slid away. And what choice did he have, anyway? He was certainly lost, and had no guide but this man who laughed like a Terran and walked as loose and light as a spacer.

He stepped into the lift, the Scout came after, punched a quick series of buttons, and relaxed bonelessly against the wall.

"I don't wish to be forward," he said, slipping his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "But I wonder if you have a name."

"Jethri Gobelyn."

"Ah, is it so? Are you kin to Arin Gobelyn?"

Jethri turned and stared, shock no doubt plain on his face, for the Scout brought his right hand out of his pocket and raised it in his small gesture of peace.

"Forgive me if I have offended. I am not expert in the matter of Terran naming customs, I fear."

Jethri shook his head. "I'm Arin Gobelyn's son," he said, trying to shake away the shock, as he stared into the Scout's easy, unreadable face. "My mother never told me he had any Liaden ...connections."

"Nor should she have done so. My acquaintance with Arin Gobelyn was unfortunately curtailed by his death."

Jethri blinked. "You were at the explosion?"

"Alas, no. Or at least, not immediately. I was one of the Port rescue team sent to clean up after the explosion. We arrived to find that an impromptu rescue effort was already underway. The Terran ship crews, they reacted well and with purpose. Your father--he was as a giant. He went back into that building twice, and brought out injured persons. Was it three or five that he carried or guided out? The years blur the memory, I fear. The third time, however..." He moved his shoulders. "The third time, he handed his rescue off to the medics, and paused, perhaps to recruit his strength. Behind him, the building collapsed as the inner roof beams gave way sequentially--throwing out debris and smoke with enormous energy.

"When the dust cleared, I was down, your father was down--everyone in a two-square radius was down. After I had recovered my wits, I crawled over to your father. The wreckage was afire, of course, and I believe I had some foolish notion of trying to drag him further from the flames. As it happens, there was no need. A blade of wood as long as I am had pierced him. We had nothing to repair such a wound, and in any case it was too late. I doubt he knew that he had been killed." Another ripple of black-clad shoulders.

"So, I only knew him as a man of courage and good heart, who spent his life so that others might live." The Scout inclined his head, suddenly and entirely Liaden.

"You are fortunate in your kin, Jethri Gobelyn."

Jethri swallowed around the hard spot in his throat. He'd only known that his father had died when the warehouse had collapsed. The rest of this...

"Thank you," he said, huskily. "I hadn't known the--the story of my father's death."

"Ah. Then I am pleased to be of service."

The lift chimed, and the Scout straightened, hands coming out of his pockets. He waved Jethri forward.

"Come, this will be our stop."

"Our stop" looked like nothing more than a plain metal square with a door at one end. Jethri stepped out of the lift, and to one side.

The Scout strolled past, very much at his leisure, put his palm against the door and walked through. Jethri followed--and found himself on Dock Six, practically at the foot of Elthoria's ramp. Despite it all, he grinned, then remembered and bowed to the Scout.

"Thank you. I think I can make it from here."

"Doubtless you can," the Scout said agreeably. "But recall my ambition to renew my acquaintance with Non ven'Deelin." He moved forward with his loose, easy stride that was much quicker than it looked. Jethri stretched his legs and caught up with him just as he turned toward the ramp...startling the young replacement doc-checker into a flabbergasted, "Wait, you!"

The Scout barely turned his head. "Official Scout business," he said briskly and went up the ramp at a spanking pace, Jethri panting at his heels.

At the top, a shadow shifted. Jethri looked up and saw Pen Rel coming quickly down toward them--and just as suddenly braking, eyebrows raised high.

"Scout. To what do we owe the honor?"

"Merely a desire to share a glass and a few moments with the master trader," the Scout said, slowing slightly, but still moving steadily up the ramp. "Surely an old friend may ask so much?"

Jethri sent a glance up into Pen Rel's face, which showed watchful, and somewhat, maybe, even--annoyed.

"The master trader has just returned from the trade meeting--" he began.

"Then she will need a glass and a few moments of inconsequential chat even more," the Scout interrupted. "Besides, I wish to speak with her about her apprentice."

Pen Rel's glance found Jethri's face. "Her tardy apprentice."

"Just so," said the Scout. "You anticipate my topic."

He reached Pen Rel and paused at what Jethri knew to be comfortable talking distance for Liadens. It was a space that felt a little too wide to him, but, then, he'd come up on a ship half the size and less of Elthoria.

"Come, arms master, be gracious."

"Gracious," Pen Rel repeated, but he turned and led the way into the ship.

 

* * *

 

If Master ven'Deelin felt any dismay in welcoming Scout Captain Jan Rek ter'Astin onto her ship, she kept it to herself. She saw him comfortably seated, and poured three glasses of wine with her own hands--one for the guest, one for herself, and one for Jethri.

She sat in the chair opposite the Scout; perforce, Jethri sank into the remaining, least comfortable, chair, which sat to the master trader's right.

The Scout sipped his wine. Master ven'Deelin did the same, Jethri following suit. The red was sharp on the tongue, then melted into sweetness.

"I commend you," the Scout said to the master trader, and in Terran, which Jethri thought had to be an insult, "on your choice of apprentice."

Master ven'Deelin inclined her head. "Happy I am that you find him worthy," she replied, in her accented Terran.

The Scout smiled. "Of course you are," he murmured. "I wonder, though, do you value the child?" He raised his hand. "Understand me, I find him a likely fellow, and quick of thought and action. But those are attributes which Scouts are taught to admire. Perhaps for a trader--?"

"I value Jethri high," Master ven'Deelin said composedly.

"Ah. Then I wonder why you put him in harm's way?"

Master ven'Deelin's face didn't change, but Jethri was abruptly in receipt of the clear notion that she was paying attention on all channels.

"Explain," she said, briefly.

"Certainly," the Scout returned, and without even taking a hard breath launched the story of Jethri's foray into the Trade Bar, and all the events which followed from it. Master ven'Deelin sat silent until the end, then looked to Jethri.

"Jethri Gobelyn."

He sat up straighter, prepared to take his licks, for the whole mess had been his own fault, start to finish, and--

"Your lessons expand. Next on-shift, you will embrace menfri'at. Pen Rel will instruct you as to time."

What in cold space was menfri'at, Jethri wondered, even as he inclined his head. "Yes, Master Trader."

"Self-defense," the Scout said, as if Jethri has asked his question out loud, "including how to make calm judgments in ...difficult situations." Jethri looked at him, and the Scout smiled. "For truly, child, if you had not run--or run only so far as one of the tables--there would have been no need to leap off into a gravity-free zone which is sometimes not quite so gravity free as one might wish."

Jethri looked at him, mouth dry. "The book said--"

"No doubt. However, the facts are that the station does sometimes provide gravity to those portions marked 'free fall'."

Jethri felt sick, the wine sitting uneasily on his stomach.

"Also," the Scout continued, "a book is--of necessity--somewhat behind the times in other matters; and I doubt that yours attempted more than a modest discussion of station culture. Certainly, a book could tell you little of which ships might be in from the outer dependencies, with crews likely to be looking for hijinks."

And that, Jethri admitted, stomach still unsettled, was true. Just like he'd know better than to head down Gamblers Row on any Terran port he could name after a rock-buster crew came in, he ought to know

But the ship names meant nothing to him, here, and though some--perhaps twenty percent--had showed Combine trade codes along with Liaden, he didn't yet have those Liaden codes memorized. Jethri swallowed. He shouldn't have been let loose on station without a partner, he thought. That was fact. He was a danger to himself and his ship until he learned not to be stupid.

The Scout was talking with Master ven'Deelin. "I see, too, that Ixin, or at least Elthoria, may need to be brought to fuller awareness of the, let us call them ...climate changes... recently wrought here. Indeed, these changes are closely related to my own sudden stationing."

Norn ven'Deelin's face changed subtly, and the Scout made a small, nearly familiar motion with his hand. Jethri leaned forward, the roiling in his gut forgotten--hand-talk! It wouldn't be the same as he knew, o'course, but maybe he could catch--

"So," the master trader murmured, "it is not a mere accident of happiness that you are on-station just as my apprentice becomes beset by--persons of loutishness?"

"It is not," the Scout replied. "The politics of this sector have altered of late. The flow of commerce, and even the flow of science and information has been shifting. You may wish--forgive me for meddling where I have no right!--but perhaps you may wish to issue ship's armbands to those who walk abroad unaccompanied."

The Scout's fingers moved, casually, augmenting his spoken words. Jethri tried to block his voice out and concentrate on the patterns that were almost the patterns he knew. He thought for a second that he'd caught the gist of it--and the Scout turned up the speed.

Defeated for the moment, Jethri sat back, and tried another sip of his wine.

"For I am certain," the Scout was saying out loud, "that there were enough of those present with Ixin's interest at heart that they would not have permitted a bullying. As it is, you may wish to ask your most excellent arms master to--"

Master ven'Deelin's hand flashed a quick series of signs as she murmured, "Ah. I have been so much enjoying your visit that I of my duty am neglectful. This is what you wish to say?"

The Scout laughed. The master trader--perhaps she smiled, a little, before turning her attention to Jethri and using her chin to point at the door.

"Of your goodness, young Jethri. Scout ter'Astin and I have another topic of discourse between us, which absolutely I refuse to undertake in Terran."

"Yes, ma'am." He stood and bowed, made clumsy by reason of the still-full wine glass. "Good shift, ma'am. Scout--I thank you."

"No, child," the Scout said, sipping his wine. "It is I who thank you, for enlivening what has otherwise been a perfectly tedious duty cycle." He moved a hand, echoing Master ven'Deelin. "Go, have your meal, rest. Learn well and bring honor to your ship."

"Yessir," Jethri gasped, and made his escape.

 

 

Day 67
Standard Year 1118
Elthoria
Protocol Lessons

 

 

"Yes!" Ray Jon tel'Ondor cried, bouncing 'round Jethri like a powerball on overload.

"Precisely would a shambling, overgrown barbarian from the cold edge of space bow in acknowledgment of a debt truly owed!" Bouncing, he came briefly to rest a few inches from Jethri's face.

Frozen in the bow, Jethri could see the little man's boots as he jigged from foot to foot, in time to a manic rhythm only he could hear. Jethri forced himself to breathe quietly, to ignore both the crick in his back and the itch of his scalp, where the hair was growing out untidily.

"Well played, young Jethi! A skillful portrayal, indeed! Allow me to predict for you a brilliant career in the theater!" The boot heels clicked together, and Master tel'Ondor was momentarily, and entirely, still.

"Now," he said, in the mode of teacher to student, "do it correctly."

Having no ambition to hear Master tel'Ondor on the foolishness of allowing one's emotions rule--a subject upon which he was eloquent--Jethri neither sighed, nor cussed, nor wrinkled his nose. Instead, he straightened, slowly and with, he hoped, grace, and stood for a moment, arms down at his sides, composing himself.

It was not, as he had hoped, the new boots which had been waiting for him in his quarters--five pairs to choose from!--that were the problem with his bows this shift, nor was it that the silky blue shirt bound him, or that the equally new and surprising trader's jacket limited his range of motion. Though he was very much aware all of his new finery, he was in no way hampered. The problem had been and was, as he understood Master tel'Ondor on the matter, that Jethri Gobelyn had ore for brains.

Don't doubt that his lessons with Master tel'Ondor had taught him a lot. For instance, learning how to speak Liaden wasn't anywhere like learning how to speak a new dialect of Ground Terran, or dock-pidgin or Trade. Spoken Liaden was divided into two kinds--High and Low--and then divided again, into modes, all of which meant something near and dear and different to Liaden hearts. Improper use of mode was asking for a share in a fistfight, if nothing worse. That was if Master tel'Ondor let him live, which by this time in the proceedings, Jethri wasn't so sure he would.

Truth told, and thanking the tapes, not to mention Vil Tor and Gaenor, he did have a yeoman's grip on the more work-a-day modes in the High Tongue--enough, Master tel'Ondor allowed, that educated people would understand him to be literate, though tragically afflicted with an impediment to the tongue.

No, it was the bows that were making him into a danger to himself and his teacher. Dozens of bows, of varying depths, each delivered at its own particular speed, with its own particular gesture of hand--or lack--held for its own particular count...

"Forgive me, young Jethri," Master tel'Ondor said, delicately. "Have I time to drink a cup of tea before your next performance?"

His one triumph was his ability to remain trader-faced, no matter the provocation. Carefully, he inclined his head, bending his neck so far, but no further, straightening without haste and only then making his reply.

"Your pardon, Master. I was absorbed by thought."

"At this moment, thought is extraneous," Master tel'Ondor told him. "The honorable to whom you find yourself in debt stands before you. Show proper respect, else they become bored--or discover that they are in receipt of an insult. Perhaps you do intend an insult; if so, you must chart your own course. The ven'Deelin did not bid me instruct you in matters of the duel."

"Yes, Master." Jethri took a deep breath, began the count in his head, moved the right arm--so--on the same beat extending the left leg--so--and bent from the waist, forehead on an interception course with the left knee.

At the count of fourteen, he stopped moving, holding the pose for six beats, then reversed the count, coming slowly to his full height, right hand and left leg withdrawing to their more usual positions-and he was at rest.

"So." Before him, Master tel'Ondor stood solemn and still, his head canted to one side. "An improvement." He held up a hand, as if to forestall the grin Jethri kept prisoned behind straight lips. "Understand me--an improvement only. Those who had not had the felicity of observing your former attempts might yet consider that they had been made the object of mockery."

Jethri allowed himself an extremely soft and heartfelt sigh. It wasn't that he doubted the tutor's evaluation of his performance--he felt like he was hinged with rusty metal when he bowed. According to Gaenor, they were due to raise Tilene within the ship-week, where, according to nobody less than Nom ven'Deelin, he would be expected to assist at the trade booth.

"Forgive me, Master, for my ineptitude," he said now to Master tel'Ondor. "I wish to succeed in my studies."

"So you do," the master replied. "And so I do--and so, too, does the ven'Deelin. It is, however, possible to wish so ardently for success that the wish cripples the performance. It is my belief, Jethri Gobelyn, that your very desire to do well limits you to mediocrity." He began to move around Jethri, not his usual manic bounce, but a sedate stroll, as if he were a trader and Jethri a particularly interesting odd lot.

For his part, Jethri stood with patience, his stomach recovered from yesterday's adventures and the off-hour meal he'd wolfed in the cafeteria under the view of an entire shift he was barely known to.

Master tel'Ondor had completed his tour.

"You are large," he murmured, hands folded before him, "but not so large as to hamper ease of movement. Indeed, you possess a certain unaffected grace which is pleasing in a young person. Understand me, I do not counsel you to be easy, but I do ask that you allow your natural attributes to aid you. Respect, duty, honor--all arise effortlessly from one's melant'i. You know yourself to be a man who does not give inadvertent insult--ideally, your bow--and all your dealings--will convey this. I would say to you that the strength of your melant'i is more important in any bow than whether you have counted precisely to fourteen, or only to thirteen."

He tipped his head. "Do you understand me, Jethri Gobelyn?"

He considered it. Melant'i he had down for a philosophy of hierarchy--a sort of constant tally of where you stood in the chain of command in every and any given situation. It was close enough to a plain spacer's "ship state" to be workable, and that was how he worked it. Given the current situation, where he was a student, trying hard to do--to do honor to his teacher...

Think, he snarled at himself.

OK, so. He was junior in rank to his teacher, and respectful of his learning, while being more than a little shy of his tongue. At the same time, though, a student ought to be respectful of himself, and of his ability to learn. He wasn't an idiot, though that was hard to bear in mind. Hadn't Master ven'Deelin herself signed him on as 'prentice trader, knowing--which she had to--the work it would mean, and trusting him to be the equal of it?

So thinking, he nodded, felt the nod become a bow--a light bow, all but buoyant; with the easy move of the left hand that signaled understanding.

Still buoyant, he straightened, and surprised a look of sheer astonishment in his tutor's face. "Yes, precisely so," Master tel'Ondor said, softly, and himself bowed, acknowledging a student's triumph.

Jethri bit his lip to keep the grin inside and forced his face into the increasingly familiar bland look of a trader on active business.

"Jethri Gobelyn, I propose that we break for tea. When we meet here again, I believe we should concern ourselves with those modes and bows most likely to be met on the trade floor at Tilene."

It was too much; the grin peeped out; he covered with another soft, buoyant bow, slightly deeper and augmented by the hand-sign for gratitude. "Yes, Master. Thank you."

"Bah. Return here in one twenty-eight, and we shall see what you may do then." The master turned his back as he was wont to do in dismissal.

Grinning, Jethri all but skipped out of the classroom. Still buoyant, he made the turn into the main hallway--and walked into a mob scene.

He might have thought himself on some port street, just previous to a rumble, but there were faces in the crowd he recognized, and it was Elthoria's increasingly familiar walls giving back echoes of excited voices and, yes--laughter.

At the forefront, then, there was Pen Rel, and Gaenor, and Vil Tor--all talking at once and all sporting a state of small or extra-large dishevelment. There was a bruise high up on Gaenor's fragile, pointy face, and her lips looked swollen, like maybe she'd caught a smack. More than one of the crew members at her back were bloody, but of good cheer, and when Gaenor spotted Jethri she cried out, "Company halt!"

It took a bit, but they mostly sealed down and got quiet. When there was more or less silence,

Gaenor bowed--Jethri read it as the special bow made between comrades--and spoke through an unabashed grin.

"The First Mate reports to Jethri Gobelyn, crewman formerly at risk, that the Trade Bar of Kailipso will be pleased to cordially entertain him whenever he is in port. I also report that a house speciality has been named in your honor--which is to say, it is called Trader's Leap, and is mixed of 'retto and kynak and klah. On behalf of the ship, I have tasted of this confection and have found it to be ... an amazement. There are other matters, too, of which you should be advised, so, please, come with us, and we will tell you of our visitation and correction."

Visitation and correction? Jethri stared at the bunch of them--even Vil Tor rumpled and his shirt torn and dirty.

"You didn't bust up the bar?"

Gaenor laughed, and Pen Rel, too. Then Gaenor stepped forward to catch his hand in hers, and pull him with her down the hall.

"Come, honored crewmate, we will tell you what truly transpired before it all becomes rumor and myth. In trade, you will then tell us of your training and skill, for already there are a dozen on station who have attempted to duplicate your leap and have earned for their efforts broken arms and legs."

She tugged his hand, and he let her pull him along, as the mob moved as one creature down the hall toward the cafeteria.

"But," Jethri said, finding Vil Tor at his side, "I thought Balance required craft and cunning and care--"

The librarian laughed, and caught his free hand. "Ah, my friend, we need to teach you more of melant'i What you describe would be seemly, were we dealing with persons of worth. However, when one deals with louts--"

At that there was great laughter, and the mob swept on.

 

 

Day 80
Standard Year 1118
Kinaveral

 

It was midday on the port by the time Khat cleared the paperwork and took receipt of her pay. By her own reckoning, it was nearer to sleep-shift, which activity she intended to indulge in, soon as she raised the lodgings.