"LORD PAT RIN—a moment, if you will!"
The beautifully dressed gentleman did not look up at the hail. He received the dice, shook them briefly and threw with an expert's snap of the wrist, rings flashing richly in the table lights. The dice struck the felt-covered end wall, rebounded, rolled twice and stopped; the first and second die each showed one pip, while the third displayed five. The gentleman stood quietly, dark head tipped, calmly awaiting the House's judgment.
"Seven called and seven rolled!" the croupier announced, deftly separating three coins from the bank and placing them before the winner. "House pays three gold to the gentleman with the blue earring." The dice rattled to the cloth beside the coins. "Roll again, sir?"
The gentleman took a moment to consider, as well he might, gambling at gold level, with the House's three and his own two riding the toss.
Jewels flashed as shapely fingers spread above the coins. "Hold."
"The gentleman with the blue earring holds his line," the croupier cried. "Who rolls against the House?"
The dice passed to a brassy-haired lady in an inexcusable scarlet coat, who shook them with great energy. The gentleman with the blue earring deftly palmed his five gold and left the table, moving away from the area from which the most unwelcome hail had come, and toward the table at which Cheever McFarland had last been seen.
No sooner had he cleared the crowd surrounding the dice table than his sleeve was snatched and held by a sharp-faced man of extraordinarily nondescript dress.
"Lord Pat Rin?"
He lifted an eyebrow. "Yes?" he murmured, and glanced significantly down at his mangled sleeve.
Alas, his captor was wholly intent upon his own business and failed of taking the hint.
"Sir, there is one who would speak to you. Most urgently." The man's fingers tightened. Pat Rin frowned.
"You will," he said, softly, and yet unmistakably in the mode of Command, "release me."
Startled, the stranger did just that, dropping back a step, his dead eyes leaping to Pat Rin's face.
"Your pardon, sir. I meant no disrespect. But there is one who has—"
"Urgent need to speak with me," Pat Rin finished, all of his attention seemingly upon smoothing the creases out of his abused sleeve. "Just so. I do not desire to leave my amusement. If your—employer—must speak to me as urgently as that, he will come to me."
The stranger gaped, then bowed, abruptly and muddy of mode, spun on his heel and vanished into the crowd, leaving Pat Rin to stare at the place where he had been and damn himself three times for a fool.
Careful to display neither haste nor concern, he crossed the room to the Smaller Wheel and insinuated himself into the crowd 'round the table. There, sheltered on all sides by tall Terrans, he tried to think.
That the sharp-faced man belonged to the Juntavas, he doubted, though the possibility could not be rejected out of hand. It was conceivable that the local boss sought to gain advantage over the Sector Judge who had been thrust upon him. And yet . . .
The sharp-faced man had been Liaden. Plan B specifically warned him away from Liad—and from Liadens. And, truth told, there was that about his recent captor which made the Juntavas—most especially the Juntavas in the person of Natesa—show honorable, wholesome and foursquare for clan and kin.
There was a disruption in the crowd of spectators to his left. Pat Rin half-turned and looked up into the very welcome face of Cheever McFarland.
"Well met, Pilot," he murmured, for his companion's ear alone. "I believe it is time for us to leave."
They were not—not quite—taken unaware.
They left together by a side door, at Pilot McFarland's insistence, and made rapid progress toward the distant shine of a taxi stand.
The night was busy with wind, damp with the threat of rain; and it had taken Pat Rin a few moments to be certain that the small noises and the motions of shadows were concerted action and not simply the random pattern of people on the town.
And by then, it was clear that they were both shadowed and outnumbered. Cheever flipped his pocket lightly and Pat Rin muttered under his breath, "Not yet, we have no plan."
They had continued moving in the direction of the transport kiosk, hoping against the odds for the timely appearance of a taxi or a shuttle, but the interception went smoothly.
"This way, please," the pale-haired man who drifted in beside them said in Liaden, and then in accented Terran, "There is no need for alarm."
The place to which they were taken was not far from the casino district, down a windowless alleyway and into a court where several vehicles were parked. Surprisingly, there were a smattering of trees and bushes here, as if some effort at landscaping had been made.
They were ushered past the trees, into a somewhat smaller and dimmer alley. Several of their escort peeled off to take up what Pat Rin thought must be guard points. A few more steps along the second alleyway and they came to a rough-walled building. The door stood open; the pale-haired man bowed them within. He entered after, his bodyguard sealing the door behind all.
The man led them down a thin and lowering hall, then, and into a sparsely lit, irregularly shaped room.
The room smelled of old dust and the floor was uneven, as if the building had shifted and created tectonic ridges in the tiles.
The leader motioned toward a rude table attended by two ruder chairs, set near the center of the gloom. He took for himself the chair nearest the door, his second standing behind him.
They took this as a model: Pat Rin in the chair; Cheever McFarland behind.
"We are messengers," the pale-haired man murmured, soothing the air between them with a gesture one might more reasonably expect to encounter at a High House dining board than at a rough plastic table in a badly lit, abandoned storeroom. "Merely messengers, sir. Bearing news from those who wish you, not harm, but only well."
"News," Pat Rin repeated, liking the matter no better, and fervently grateful for the formidable bulk of Cheever McFarland standing behind his chair. He took a breath, keeping his face calmly neutral—the old, the familiar, gambler's mask—and inclined his head.
"Of course," he said, matching the man's soft tone, "one welcomes news, when one has been heedless upon holiday."
The man across inclined his head gravely, his gun-sworn standing at stiff attention behind his chair.
"Of course," he agreed, and put his hands palm down against the table, meeting Pat Rin's eyes squarely.
"I bring news of your clan."
Yes? Pat Rin flicked a glance downward, looking for the Tree-and-Dragon token held discreetly between two of the man's quiet fingers. He was not . . . entirely . . . surprised to discover it invisible.
He looked again at the man's bland, mannerly face. "One is ever joyful to have news of one's kin," he said softly.
"As who is not?" the other replied according to the proper formula and leaned forward abruptly, his curiously flat eyes pinning Pat Rin's gaze.
"Your kin are dead," he said, as if it were the merest pleasantry; as if he imparted nothing more startling than an unlooked-for change in the weather.
Behind the gambler's mask of calm neutrality, Pat Rin froze, hearing again that calm, uninflected sentence, not quite making sense—His kin. His kin—dead? All his kin? Quin? Luken? Nova? Shan? His mother? Dead? Ridiculous.
"Ridiculous," he heard his own voice state, dispassionately.
The other man inclined his head. "I understand," he murmured. "So large a change in Korval's fortunes—in your own fortunes. Of course, so skilled a player as yourself would wish proof. As it happens, we have proof." He dropped his eyes deliberately to the tabletop.
Pat Rin followed his gaze, saw the sinewy golden hands lift up and away, leaving alone upon the scarred plastic a smallish thing that glittered even in light so low; a thing he had reason to know well, having seen it upon the hands of several of his kin, most lately on the hand of his cousin Nova, who held Korval in trust for Val Con.
And who would have surrendered Korval's Ring to the man who sat before him only in the extremity of her death.
He forced himself to blink, to look up from the impossibility on the table before him; forced himself to speak calmly to the man opposite, who sat watching with his flat, predator's eyes and his curiously immobile face.
"There are," he observed, as if the thing upon the table were the merest bauble, "others before me. Indeed, I believe that there are children not yet halfling and at least one Terran far-kin to whom the Ring would fall before ever it came to me."
The man smiled gently. "They no longer impede you. Nova yos'Galan, Anthora yos'Galan, Shan yos'Galan, Kareen yos'Phelium, Luken bel'Tarda, Val Con yos'Phelium, even Gordon Arbuthnot. All have been swept from the board."
Hearing the names of his kin—his dead kin—but the man had not named the children! Pat Rin grasped that thought, insisting that his mind work. The pale-haired man had not named the children, but his mother and Luken—by every iteration of Plan B he had ever memorized, Luken bel'Tarda and Kareen yos'Phelium were responsible for the safety of the children. If his mother and Luken were—dead . . .
No. It—they could not—it was not possible . . .
Blindly, he reached out, plucked the Ring from the table and stared at it, eyes tracing the familiar lines of Korval's Tree-and-Dragon, the bright enamel-work, the perfect emeralds framing the boldly scripted Flaran Cha'menthi.
"Who did this?" he asked, eyes on the dragon, on the emeralds. Two perfect emeralds . . .
"It is necessary," the pale-haired man said in his soft, mannerly voice, "from time to time to remove from play those who impede the work of the Department of the Interior. Thus it was with those who had been your kin. And, now, through the efforts of the Department of the Interior, you rise to your proper estate."
With an effort, Pat Rin lifted his eyes to stare at the man opposite, who inclined his head deeply—a seated bow of profound respect.
"Korval," he said.
Pat Rin could not quite control the shudder as he placed the ring back in the center of the table. He took a breath.
"The Department of Interior will require some . . . service, in payment of its efforts on my behalf," he suggested gently.
The pale-haired man moved a hand in that curiously soothing gesture. "You need only mind the Department's interests with the Council of Clans. Advisories and information will be delivered to you at the appropriate times." He smiled. "Small enough payment. You will find the Department is a staunch defender of its allies."
"Ah." He took a hard, sudden, breath, raised a hand as if to shield his face, and all at once recalled himself, snapping the arm down as he glanced aside. "Your pardon," he gasped, as the hideaway slid from his sleeve into his hand.
"Of course," said his enemy. "You will wish time to assimilate—"
Pat Rin brought the little gun up and shot him through the right eye. The body of the man collapsed forward, face flat on the table, his gun-sworn snatching at her sidearm as he fell. The boom of Cheever McFarland's weapon and the rain of blood from the gaping hole in her chest were simultaneous.
"You OK, sir?"
Pat Rin took a breath which failed to fill his lungs, and tried another, finding his voice at last, remarkably steady, though somewhat light.
"I am perfectly well, Mr. McFarland, thank you." Absently, he slid the hideaway back into his sleeve and stood.
"You'll have to leave your jacket," Cheever said apologetically. "The blood."
"Of course." He unfastened the seal and stripped the garment off, dropping it into the merciful shadows along the floor. For a moment, he stared uncomprehending at the square of cloth Cheever silently held out. Clean-silk. It came to him, then, that his face might not be . . . perfectly . . . clean. He plucked the cloth up and used it thoroughly, then dropped it, too, into the shadows.
"Is that Nova's ring?"
He looked up at the big pilot, then turned and plucked the thing off the table. Two perfect emeralds. Fools. And, yet . . .
"Mr. McFarland, I fear we're in a scrape." He held up the counterfeit. "This is not Korval's Ring, though those—" he swept his hand at the dead without looking at them—"claimed that it was. They also claimed that all of my kin are—are dead." His voice was not doing so well, after all. He swallowed and forced himself to go on.
"They named names, Mr. McFarland. And—we are neither of us children. Or fools. We both know that a man who tells one lie does not necessarily tell two."
Cheever's face in the dim light might have been hewn from wood.
Pat Rin inclined his head. "Just so. Balance is owing." He slid the bogus Ring onto his left hand—onto the second finger of his left hand—and held it up to catch the sullen light.
There was a brief silence before Cheever nodded his big head. "Gotcha. Now, let's get outta here before their buddies wonder what all the noise was about."
At the door to the alleyway, Cheever held up his hand. Pat Rin obediently slipped into the shadows at the edge of the doorway, gun ready, as the big Terran moved silently out into the dark.
Shivering in his thin silk shirt, Pat Rin counted to twelve, to twenty-four—to thirty-six, and the alley gave up neither sound nor light nor Cheever McFarland. Forty-eight, and Pat Rin began to consider the likelihood of alternate exits and how they might be guarded. Fifty-seven—and gravel scraped in the alleyway, as if purposefully scuffed beneath the heel of a boot.
A heartbeat later, Cheever McFarland himself materialized, showing empty palms.
"We're clear, sir. The guards are accounted for."
Soundlessly and quickly. Pat Rin slipped his gun away. "Your work?"
Cheever grinned and lowered his hand. "I ain't that good." He jerked his head to the right. "Your girlfriend did us a favor."
Girlfriend? There was the very slightest of motions in the shadows at the right. Pat Rin turned, and Natesa the Assassin allowed him to see her, bowing profoundly in her dull black leathers.
Behind her Pat Rin caught glimpse of a face, a body in the weeds—the man who had accosted him at the casino . . .
"Master. I hear there was a disagreement inside. Perhaps we may assist you."
She straightened, showing him a face expertly darkened, in which her eyes shone like ebony waters.
"I understand that you have already assisted me," he replied, and bowed in acknowledgment of the debt. "Have you taken any harm from it?"
Amusement, rich and subtle, was conveyed in the curve of one leather-clad arm. "No harm in the least. They were unwatchful and arrogant."
He moved a hand, describing the building behind him. "There are two dead persons in the room at the end of that hallway. It would be best if they were not found."
"Housekeeping will deal with it," she said calmly, and bowed once more. "Again, I offer transport and whatever you might require." She straightened, eyes gleaming. "Master, there was no need for you to be in that room at all."
"There was every need," Pat Rin corrected, and raised his hand. What light there was skidded off the bright enamel work, and Korval's ancient sigil flared like a star in the alley. The assassin drew a breath, pulled the most obvious weapon from its holster and offered it to him across her two palms.
"Service, Korval. I would stand at your back."
Pat Rin closed his eyes. Cantra's own words, from the very Diaries of Korval, burned bright against the inside of his eyelids: In an ally, considerations of house, clan, planet, race are insignificant beside two prime questions, which are: 1. Can he shoot? 2. Will he aim at your enemy?
Pat Rin opened his eyes and bowed, acknowledging his receipt of her oath.
"Service accepted," he said, and turned to his pilot. "Mr. McFarland, we are enroute."
The big man nodded and touched the butt of the gun thrust through his belt. "Yessir. I see that we are."