"No! Absolutely not!"
"Shan . . ." Nova yos'Galan flung forward and caught her brother's sleeve in one slim hand. Head tipped back, she stared up into his face, seeing the ice forming in the silver eyes and the lines of Korval stubbornness tightening around the big mouth. "Shan, by the gods!"
He made the effort—he took a deeper breath, then another. "You tell me that the First Speaker wishes me to contract-wed. Why now? Why not last week or next week? Have you some sweet offer for the stupidest of the Clan? This is arbitrary beyond sense, sister!"
She recoiled from the anger in both his words and his face. "It is Val Con! I—I must consider what is proper. He has been missing all this while . . ."
"Is he truly missing? I know I haven't seen him for some time, but missing?"
Nova held up her hand, moved to the console, and touched several buttons, bringing the computer screen to life.
He moved closer as she scrolled the information there, finally settling on a spot.
" . . .the First Speaker's point is, however, valid insofar as it concerns the necessity of the Nadelm's education," she read. "I shall undertake to make myself available as soon as practicable following my thirtieth anniversary Name Day for instruction on the proper administration of a Clan from both the First Speaker and Korval's man of business. It is made extremely clear by the First Speaker, my sister, that I am expected to graduate to Delm very quickly."
Shan sensed the underlying impatience in those few words as clearly as he felt the tension singing in Nova.
"His word, from the last letter I had of him, nearly three Standards gone. His Name Day is more than a relumma past, and I have heard nothing! I must prepare, for the benefit of Korval. yos'Galan must prepare, as well!"
"Is he dead, then?"
His query was quite calm. Had she been less wrought up herself, she might have mistrusted such calmness. As it was, she gasped and stared up at him, dimly aware that somehow during the course of the interview the lines of melant'i had shifted so that it was no longer Korval's First Speaker, eldema-pernard'i, in conference with the Head of Line yos'Galan, but a younger sibling pleading with an elder.
"Dead?" she repeated, golden fingers snaking about each other in agitation. "How can I know? They answer no questions! The Scouts say he was placed on detached duty to the Department of the Interior these three years gone by. The Department of the Interior says he has been offered leave and refused it; that it is not their part to force a man to go where he would rather not. They refuse to relay the message that he come to his Clan, when next he is able . . ."
And that, Shan thought, was not as it should be. Even the Scouts, who had little patience with many things Liaden—even the Scouts, appealed to in need, had sent broadbeam across the stars that Scout Captain Val Con yos'Phelium was required immediately at home, on business of his Clan. So had Val Con come, too, in remarkably short time, shaky with too many Jumps made one after another, to stand and weep with the rest of them at his foster mother's bier.
"If he will not come to us—" Nova was saying distractedly, "If he is so angry with me, even now . . ."
And there was the nub of it, Shan knew. When last he had been home on leave, Val Con had quarreled with his sister, the First Speaker, over her insistence that he take himself a contract-bride and provide the Clan with his heir. That quarrel had been running for several years, with subtle variations as each jockeyed for position. There was very little real pressure that Nova as Korval-in-Trust could bring upon Korval Himself, whether he chose at the moment to take up the Ring and his Delmhood, or remain mere Second Speaker. However, the Second Speaker was bound to obey the First, as was any Clanmember, and the Clan demanded of each member a child, by universal Clan Law. A pretty problem of melant'i and ethics, to be sure, and one Shan was glad to contemplate from a distance. Obviously even Val Con had bowed to at least part of melant'i's necessity, as evidenced by that snappish letter. But still . . .
"That's hardly like him, denubia. Val Con's never held a grudge that long in all his life."
His attempted comfort backfired. Nova's violet eyes filled with tears, and her hands knotted convulsively.
"Then he is dead!"
"No." He bent to cup her face in his big brown hands. "Sister, listen to me: Has Anthora said he is dead?"
She blinked, gulped, and shook her head so the blond hair snared his wrists.
"Have you asked her?"
Another headshake, fine hairs clinging to his skin like grade-A silk, and he read the two terrors within her.
"Anthora is dramliza," he said patiently, beginning to pay out a Healer's line of comfort as pity overtook him. "She holds each of us in her mind like a flame, she told me once. Best to ask and know for certain."
Nova touched the tip of her tongue to her lips, hesitating.
"Ask," he urged, seeing with satisfaction that her agitation quieted under his weaving of comfort and gentle hope. "If this Department of the Interior flouts Clan tradition, then we will search ourselves. Korval has some resources, after all."
"Yes, of course," she murmured, moving her cheek against his palm in a most un-Novalike demonstration of affection. Shan cautiously lowered his level of input and pulled his hands away. She would do, he judged. Korval's First Speaker had a cool, level head. Even without his aid, she would have taken up her charge again very shortly and done all she perceived as necessary to keep the Clan in Trust for Korval's Own Self.
Shan shook his head slightly. He had briefly held the post Nova now filled and did not envy her the necessity of running a Clan composed of such diverse and strong-willed persons. Dutiful Passage was more to his taste, more in keeping with his abilities; yet the trading life had bored Nova to distraction.
He smiled down at her—the only one of the three yos'Galans who had inherited all their Terran mother's height. "Ask Anthora," he advised again. "And tell me what I can do to help us find our brother."
She returned his smile faintly, a bare upward curve of pale lips. "I will think upon it. In the meanwhile, do think upon what we discussed earlier . . ."
Anger flared, but he held it in check, unwilling to give her cause to fear the loss of another brother. "I will not contract-wed. I have done my duty, and the Clan has my daughter in its keeping. I have done more than my duty—I hear that the child Lazmeln got from me aspires to be a pilot. Leave it."
"If Val Con is dead—if he is eklykt'i—then yos'Galan must be ready to assume its position as Korval's First Line. You are Thodelm yos'Galan—head of our Line! You are A'nadelm, next to be Delm, if Val Con—"
"If Val Con!" The anger clawed loose for an instant before he enclosed it. "If Anthora claims our brother dead, I still demand to see the body: my right as kin, my right as cha'leket, my right as A'nadelm! You do not make me Korval so easily, sister. Nor do I contract-wed again, and so I do swear!"
Her face was stricken; he felt the grief roiling off her like bitter smoke and made his bow, utterly formal.
"With the First Speaker's permission," he said precisely, and left her before it was given.