Chapter Three
Clan Ixin’s Tradeship Elthoria, in Jump
Born and raised on a spaceship, rarely did the feeling of being pent up fall so heavily upon Jethri as it did now. He strode to his small suite, chernubia in hand, his mind full of the promising and confusing vision offered by Gaenor, and perhaps by proxy, by Vil Tor.
It wasn’t certainly, that he was against the idea of such a personal time with them—either or both—other than the idea that they might not understand exactly what it was they were getting into. Yet he urgently wanted not to disappoint them—either or both—for aside the passing attention he’d been able to pay to Freza DeNobli back on, umm, on . . . not Vincza, but the other one in that system—must have been Chustling—he hadn’t had that much experience. There’d been some casual bundling he’d been part of back in that year or so he’d been seen to be closing in on adult size, but that had been pretty tentative all around.
And Freza, on Chustling! By then he’d been dreaming pretty often about her, because they’d been on parallel course there for a while, the Market and Balrog, and they’d been pretty comfortable with each other, comfortable enough to talk as well as touch. That’s where he was still frustrated because not only had they liked each other, but they’d agreed that it would be a good time to wander off together while the older folks were drinking and doing their shivaree setups and they’d be able to be out of the wild rudeness some of the older folks clamored for and just have their own time, figuring it was time.
Shaking his head, he remembered Dyk rounding the corner where they were standing nose to nose, holding hands, and Dyk saying, “You have to be quicker to disappear than that, Jeth! Captain said if I didn’t find you for hatch duty, why, I’d be doing it myself by shift-start. I can see it ain’t convenient, maybe, but I found you. Best meet me at the dock for turnover in seven minutes. Seeli’s already been calling for her get-out-now.”
And Freza had made sounds something very like, “Mud and stinks,” and not too quietly, either, before she said, “Six minutes!” and kissed him, hard, like they’d both been thinking about, too, while Dyk ducked his head and said, “Hi, there, Miz Freza . . . sorry!”
Seeli’d seen him come in all grunch-faced, said, “Some ports are like that!” and left him to stare at the boarding screens, Dyk not having bothered to even step aboard.
Freza . . . They hadn’t matched shifts again, and ship-to-ship wasn’t hardly the same, even when they could at least smile at each other. Not nearly the same when it could be four years before they were on the same route again. Then, of course, he’d shipped with Elthoria and it was likely Mac Gold or one of his brothers was all she’d been left with the next portside, and hollow comfort that was!
He sighed, gustily.
* * *
First things first, he enabled the mail run, and found three other things he ought to have seen earlier, too, and the first Festival message from Gaenor, plus a lilting and seductive voice reminder for him to check his mail from Gaenor, that hint from Vil Tor! He shook his head, grim-faced against the missed offer to see the pair of them in their suggested Festival rags . . .
But that had to wait, after all, because if business was on deck, there was a complicated missive and even more complex set of files from Tan Sim, being the record of a dozen or more trades, side financing, short leases, storage and shipping contracts, all executed on the fly between the opening of the jointly bought pod that had begun their partnership and the departure of the Scouts, much of it real catch-as-can of hurry. The worrying part was that a few pieces of this and that had gone missing in the hurry . . .
Literally on the fly this had all happened, as Delm Rinork had created and sold Tan Sim’s trader contract and exiled him to a long-route tradeship with little hope of success. Tan Sim parted out the pieces using a contractor and there’d been some assumptions that needed to be tested and worked out, seeing that it might be the partner contract between them wasn’t as straight as it ought to be if they were both going to be able to hold their partnership responsible—not that Tan Sim hadn’t done them proud, considering the whole of the problems they’d faced.
Then another note, this from Scout ter’Astin, very formal and very curious, and very short, especially compared to whatever it was Tan Sim was on about, admitting that ter’Astin would be happy to make an appointment to see Jethri Gobelyn soonest when Elthoria made next port, and that in fact he was applying to the Master Trader as well as Pen Rel for assistance in such a meeting and looking forward to an open discussion . . .
That bothered mightily, for ter’Astin of all people knew the change in Jethri’s circumstance from acrobatic Terran apprentice to acknowledged son of the clan. Even the digital wrapper showed the Scout had purposefully aimed it to him as a Gobelyn, which meant . . .
It meant something, and he was darned if he could figure out what. He supposed a careful question to tel’Ondor might give him a clue—a reason to visit Vil Tor!—or perhaps a deep-search of the Liaden Code of Proper Conduct might show an answer.
Was he in trouble? Was Tan Sim? Or had Miandra’s training gone wrong—a concern of his since he’d been the intermediary in defending her from the overzealous “healing” of a Healer more concerned with order than with people gone awry, with her now loose in space. With her apparent power and known affinity for trouble . . .
That thought had more interest for him than he’d expected, but surely he wouldn’t be the first refuge Miandra might seek if—but there, she’d sought him on Irikwae, after all, when friends and family were all about her.
“Clear the board of reds before you move to the first yellow,” he said, recounting out loud an ancient dictum Paitor swore was handed down from the days the Gobelyns had first risen into space from a rumored seafaring past.
So, he had to consider Gaenor and Vil Tor’s offer and confusion, as recent as it was, to be down in the yellow side of the problems. Without knowing exactly what it was about, he’d have to figure that ter’Astin’s necessity was a flashing yellow, and so not quite red. That was a problem he hadn’t thought about too hard before—he was double or triple or worse tangled in the Scout by now, between the weather machine and Miandra, and the save against the ugly Scout and the loan of his childhood “logbook” with cryptic notations from his father and, truth told, who knew what else might have been snuck under those covers? It was clear that he’d missed some kind of training his father was to give, and he wondered if the book held keys to more of that birthright that he’d considered before. A heavier tangle: ter’Astin had seen his father’s shattered body—which was more than Jethri had—and recalled him for a brave man, stoutly facing chaos with thoughts for the injured and endangered, a worthy man across any of the races of men.
For all of the tangle, ter’Astin was coming to him. The Scout hadn’t said where, but given that he’d just got the news from Thringar, and Boltston was up in a bare six-day meant that it was likely they’d be looking at Caverna or even Grammit before he saw the Scout.
So if his board had red lights on it, Tan Sim was wearing them: contract issues, missing objects which tied to money they were owed or expecting, possible conflicts with—
His protocol mentor would be proud of him, he reckoned, if he could see the resolve with which he closed the files and the most pressing thing was Tan Sim, and that was all his stuff, not things that ought to tie into his duties with the ship. The stuff with Gaenor and Vil Tor, that was personal stuff, and that could take time from the ship. And whatever ter’Astin was about, if it was for anyone named Gobelyn, that too, wasn’t properly ship stuff, but his.
Study screen up, it was time to follow some of the sidetracks he’d come across earlier, looking at definitions. He’d looked at delivery pretty close, but now he’d need to study possession, its relationship to ownership, and legal ramifications of failure to perfect rights of ownership before transfer of possession. And those writs and legal stuff . . . The Master Trader said she was planning to lean on him for better Terran trade results.
Right. Paitor had warned him that trade would look different from the big-ship side, and being a lawyer or word splitter hadn’t exactly been what he’d been thinking of. Maybe Jethri should have thought that—after all his father had been a trader and had somehow found his way with words and his understanding of what Paitor called trick angles so valuable to traders that he’d been pushed up to commissioner.
Details. He’d have to study the details.