Chapter Four
Clan Ixin’s Tradeship Elthoria, in Jump
The breeze blew in his face, shifting angles from time to time, and the sound of surf crunching into hissing waves and foam near his feet. The hills of the early part of this path gave way to the spot he always chose for the runout—the beach. He’d been looking forward to this since before he sought his bed the night before, this exact concentrated effort, this relief in movement.
He accelerated slowly, his muscles stretching for this familiar challenge automatically, eyes taking in the birds, the people, the boats, his mind dropping away from the recent and problematical protocol lesson he’d had the shift before, a lesson showing him again that casual agreements between partners were among the most dangerous.
His shirt was the last he still wore from the Market, all the others having been replaced in the face of grimaces, hints, and outright cajolery. Once outsized, now the shirt pleased him with the way it fit, though it did make him stand out, the large alternate bright red and yellow diagonal stripes proclaiming, in a fancy Terran-style script, Trundee’s Tool and Tow on the red and Satisfaction Guaranteed on the yellow of the black shirt, front and back.
Most of his shipmates wore what they called gym-sets; a kind of tabardly wick-shirt over shorts, with wick-socks and light exercise slippers. He’d been advised, early on, to run and work out in a heavier grade of shoe, to promote getting into basic shape for planetary sojourns; he’d also worn weighted wristbands and sometimes a belt. The belt he’d long since put aside as unwieldy for him, but the other items he’d kept with, and the shirt’s schedule rotated, after all, sometimes giving way to a shirt he’d gotten on Irikwae, handed down from a cache of vine-working clothes when he’d had that duty.
His investment in the shirt he wore now had been from returning a defective circulating microsteamer for Dyk—Dyk got a refund and a new pot, while Jethri’d been able to keep the shirt since neither Dyk’s careful off-ship wardrobe or his calm on-ship duds had room for something quite so commercially assertive.
He could run the water scene for hours: it reminded him of the calendar he’d been gifted not all that long ago, where lightly clad and even unclad people walked at ease. This was better than the calendar, for if the scene looped, which it must eventually, he’d never consciously caught the repeat, and he’d looked for it.
And, he admitted to himself, it wasn’t simply the view of the tanned bodies in the world-sim, though that was good, but the whole experience of moving into the wind and of feeling his new strength.
Iza hadn’t been so firm about exercise as perhaps she should have been: maybe he’d not have been so afraid of the open when first he’d met the twins if he’d only been used to moving, or at least used to thinking about moving, in open spaces. And it wasn’t only the twins he’d embarrassed himself in front of—there’d been the times he’d flinched at something as ominous as open spaceport roofs and random breezes.
Funny thing was that once he’d survived a wind-twist, many of his fears had been put aside. And it was the cat, of all things, he’d been most concerned about.
The quiet swirl of the breeze changed tune as he picked up pace, and now the ceiling mounts moved to give him a more chaotic mixture as the surf he watched also picked up. The illusion was all the more compelling because of his lack of experience at a real seaside.
He marched on, knowing that much of his new confidence had come from the moment he’d grabbed the cat and made a dash for safety, ignoring the slashing claws for the necessity of shelter for a friend. He’d been out of breath getting to the safe-cellar, but he’d never doubted that he could. And that was because his mother the trader, unlike his mother the captain, had a vision of his success.
Success. Yes, always the goal. Success as a trader was a goal and his own Master Trader’s ring the ultimate expression of it. To help him pursue that goal he’d become fit—both as a project that took no obvious study time and to be a hedge against mere local weather as he’d experienced when faced with rain and heat and twisted wind. Grig might have faced such, but he doubted that Iza had, for surely she’d have complained . . . and been more exacting in the regime she expected of her shipmates.
Now, between Gaenor’s long language lessons, shared striding about Elthoria’s public and private passages, and his time working out here, he was probably the fittest member of the Gobelyn family in the last twenty years.
Well . . . he nudged the control up, planning on “catching” the couple running ahead of him on the screen when he heard a cough. Pen Rel’s cough. It took a moment, and came again. Or was the second cough actually the third?
He glanced aside, where the arms master’s face came into the view field.
“Your workout is impressive, I grant, but I’m asked to accompany you, Jethri, immediately, to the Master Trader’s office for a meeting.”
Stomach tightening, Jethri reflexively flashed his fingers over the controls to bring his lope to quick halt. Surely if ven’Deelin said immediate, it meant now . . . but—
But this, this was exercise wear, seen only by himself and those of his shipmates by happenstance on the same schedule as he; if there was a place the public dress code was most relaxed, this was it, surely. He doubted it was respectful to be seen above crew quarters in it—
“Immediately I shower and—”
Pen Rel bowed an intricate rebuttal. “Your time is not currently your own, Jethri, for it is both your Master Trader and your mother who have called. I walk with you that you not be delayed, and also that we may continue on to other destinations after, if required.”
* * *
“Sit, sit, sit, son of my name.”
He started an explanation, a concern that he might stain . . .
“If the fabric of this place is not up to honest sweat, I long ago failed at my mission as a trader. And you, too! Sit, my friend! We’ll have enough fidgets from Jethri not to deal with yours as well.”
Named first by ven’Deelin, Jethri took the seat he preferred, a soft scroll-leather arm seat with firm support; it was the higher of the available seats, and gave him a superior angle to Pen Rel in the conversational triangle established by Norn. If he could find a twin of it he’d have one for his own rooms.
Pen Rel took no time at all getting settled, but it was Norn ven’Deelin who fidgeted at her desk momentarily, answering a half-motion by Pen Rel with a semi-bow and a half-exasperated sigh as well as a wave of her hand that flashed her Master Trader’s ring.
“I have called for a nuncheon; let us allow it to be brought before we dive headlong into the unknown. You’ll both forgive the press of necessity, I’m sure.”
Indeed, the trader calling “necessity” was sufficient to move the ship and crew at her whim, that she knew.
“In the meanwhile, I shall tell you both that we are none of us going to be doing exactly what we expected, come Boltston. To begin, none of us was expecting a Scout to meet us there, but my discussion with the chief navigator tells me that a Scout ship in a hurry—as my missive from ter’Astin indicates his will be—should make the envisioned trip without difficulty within the time frame of our own visit. We must assume he will be there.
“Thus, Jethri, you will wish to shift schedules one shift, starting this evening shift; it will be a double. I have sent already the notes to your files; please read them as you may. I believe you will see some items delivered to you as well; you will pick them up at your service locker on your way back to your rooms.”
“I don’t understand, ma’am. Must I be on ter’Astin’s schedule?”
“No, you must be on Boltston’s, for ter’Astin will be, I have no doubt.”
She turned with a flutter of hands, which could be read as saying next topic, giving her attention fully to the arms master.
“You, Pen Rel, will take the time while we wait to discuss in a more than general way where we stand in Jethri’s general preparations. You may include anything you’ve learned of tel’Ondor in the last days.”
Jethri’s ears perked up—he wondered if there’d be a change of his direct oversight after all; or if it was simply that trading preparation for Boltston occupied her.
Pen Rel settled, glancing at Jethri speculatively. “I would not send Jethri off to Solcintra proper on a solo mission at this moment, if I may be so bold; yet if it fell to him he would—with the application of common sense—possibly survive it, as long as he was not brought to discuss the matter of main line Balance nor the fitness of Terrans to be on the homeworld.
“For generalities, he is now far more aware of posture, threats, hidden arms, and counters than he was when he first boarded. Perhaps against tel’Ondor’s original expectations, he has also continued with reading his bows and is able to read far more than he may perform accurately. He is also picking up more of the hand-talk than I would have expected given how little we on Elthoria use it: I gather he has an interest.”
A glance at him: Jethri bowed little more than a nod, admitting that last. His heart was racing, which he worked to calm with some of the exercises he’d learned from tel’Ondor for fitting himself to relax for social moments.
A pause them, with ven’Deelin’s hands giving permission to continue.
“As much progress as we have, I would not send Jethri to Liad on his own, I would not send him on a mission of assassination, nor set him to rear guard, nor assign him to set security perimeters for this ship, nor in fact to take over my position.”
Jethri glanced suspiciously at him—where was the cause for humor, he wondered . . .
The Master Trader laughed lightly and added a bow that even his current level of understanding could not fully unwind—perhaps appreciation, acknowledgment of a hit, an acceptance of the word of an expert . . .
“Yes, yes, no one may replace you properly, this I well know. But if it fell to him to replace me? If the situation dictates bold moves, if we discover at our next port that I must be flitting about to elsewhere while Elthoria travels its course . . .”
Jethri was so taken aback by this question that he sat, traderlike, without reaction, almost as if he’d been expecting the tack, which he’d of course not been. His hands gave away no tension, nor his expression.
Pen Rel’s face briefly showed something like surprise, or even dismay, to Jethri’s eye; the man shifted in the seat, leaning forward and then going to a neutral while his shoulders grew guarded, and his tone, when he finally did speak, was more guarded than even his shoulders.
His glance toward Jethri was quick and measuring, as if gauging Jethri’s reaction—but then, the pause became pronounced, and finally the arms master sat back, a slight, wry smile on his face. Jethri sat silently, his mind racing, an eerie blandness filling him with a vision of Trader Jethri ordering the ship about.
“Of all the concerns I had anticipated,” Pen Rel allowed, “ this was not one. Can you not see the levels of difficulty? Has ever—”
“And I have not,” she said quickly, “asked you if this might be easy. I have asked you if you thought it might be done, if I feel necessity exists.”
“Mother,” Jethri managed, “but how could I, with ports that deny my license?”
She lifted a hand in his direction, silencing him, as Pen Rel gathered his countenance once more and spoke, this time with more surety.
“If you are of that measure, then yes, it might be done. The pilots know their business as does the ship; so often does the ship run a route that your interventions are no more than having a preference for an evening departure, or a request for a careful inbound or outbound route to permit the planet counters their games. The trade side, that issue is one I cannot answer. If you have no question that Jethri can handle the trade, how might I?”
“How might you indeed,”said ven’Deelin, “if I were to say this we would do.”
She raised a hand slowly to face, touching her chin as if in worry, then using the same hand, she tapped the ring she wore and turned to Jethri.
“Had we your trade partner to hand, with his license, then I might craft a letter of trust permitting you to direct the ship’s trades with his signature holding them on worlds too backward to admit a Terran as a trader. We are not yet so fortunate, I think. But,” she said, turning to Pen Rel, “we might at Boltston conjure a trader out of a clan we trade with, one needing the time on point . . .”
She moved her hands, as if lightly throwing something, to Pen Rel. “The question is, will ship and crew take to such a thing, if need be?”
Pen Rel’s hands made a motion as if weighing things in each palm, or perhaps of throwing something unseen back and forth between them. Then he closed his hands and dropped the invisible ball or bag, and smiled more fully.
“Yes, Master Trader, it is in my mind that the ship stands well with Jethri. He is seen as young, and perhaps distant, and perhaps odd—but surely he is accepted and there’d be no challenge to his right to direct the trade should it come to that. He is resourceful and asks for assistance; in the case of your absence he need not fear for mutiny nor resistance, unless he becomes arrogant, which I do not expect. It could be better if he were a bit more of the crew—but time is what that takes, and social experience.”
For his part Jethri took in the discussion with some amazement—to consider that ven’Deelin would entrust him with the whole of a port’s work scared him; that she might entrust much of a trade route’s work to him was overwhelming—
“But why, why should you need to leave? Does the scout bring bad news? Does—”
Jethri’s questions were cut short when the door chimed low and melodic then and the Master Trader smiled and stood.
“By your leave, I will let the nuncheon arrive, and after, we may continue this.”
Perforce Jethri bowed polite agreement with his host, and began setting questions aside for later as the door opened and an elegant cart was rolled in by a smiling crewman, preceded by a very tempting waft of aromatic breeze.
* * *
The small foods and two cups of tea finally being disposed of, Jethri dared to cast glances at both of his companions, who’d managed very ably to spin small-talk of amazing variety into a web of interesting but off-topic conversation, much of it informative and with no feel of the artificial or the preplanned about it.
They covered, on account of the tea, which was something called Hightide Stone on Stone, near as it would translate to Terran, times they’d had to refrain from pointing out that the tea they were served was not the tea they were told—in this case not because they had the wrong tea, but because there’d been quite a scandal a few years back where a trader without melant’i, and apparently without taste buds, had mixed up a blend of tea and tried to sell it as a singleton rarity, offloading it to an incoming trader as part of a mixed lot. That trader had proudly served it at an open house only to have the first person to have some stop at a sniff and repudiate it as a lie, loudly. There’d been several Balances due, and through the intricacies of that dance of melant’i and Balance arrived at a discussion of mislabeled items and thence to ports where such tricks were more frequent and then to worlds where social customs had frozen after a plague, and the common distance for speaking with strangers—even in Trade—might be measured in shouting distance.
“Yes, yes. Jethri, I know,” said Master Trader ven’Deelin, surprising him as much with the force of placing her teacup on table as with her words, “elders are slow in moving from one point to the next, and so we are. In this case, it is because we are comfortable and comrades, and can see the possibility of being without each other for some while. And yes, you have a question before us, which, I think, now we can answer.”
Now, though, the cups were empty. It took but a motion of her hand and Pen Rel rose in his smooth and silent way, and ushered the cart out of their middle and into the hall before sliding back into his seat.
“The Scout has offered me to understand that he arrives for a discussion which may well require personal attention in support of melant’i, and not only personal attention, but personal attendance. I feel he brings a problem of magnitude. He mentions issues of clan and kin, he offers that Balance may well be owed and that he is not the one to measure it.
“What may be the issue he does not tell me, only that he has requested most urgently a meeting at the first opportunity. Miandra and Meicha come to my mind, my son, for they have managed to involve him in their little intrigues, and if that is the case, then surely I should not be taking the ship entire off course again so soon.”
She then looked closely at him, and Jethri felt a chill—
“Else, of course, the matter may lie in a different sphere, for you, also, have been taken into the Scout’s necessities. Given the connection between the pair of ragamuffins and you—and the Scout—the complexities are many and I dare not be unwilling to deal, for the Scout is a man of extremely meticulous understanding.”
This was said as much to Pen Rel as to him, Jethri saw, and in fact the hand motion was emphatically aimed at Pen Rel, who let his face relax slightly, and sighed, outwardly.
“It is so, my friend,” Pen Rel said. “I have found it so for several dozen Standards, you know.”
There was a silence but for the flick of fingers and the settling of breath, and then the Master Trader sat up and favored both her auditors with a decisive smile.
“And thus, we are all informed that I shall be part of this decision-making, for surely the Scout is spending valuable time in a matter of Balance; and in this case my duty is clear: if I need to part from Elthoria’s routine I shall do so, and you, my son, shall be prepared to be seen as trader in fact if not trader-by-signature.”
Her hands moved in a motion Jethri thought meant finished, but as he shifted she waved him to stay put.
“There are other matters, Pen Rel, which you may be in charge of while clan issues are dealt with here. If Jethri must be thrust forward, he will be, and thus I wish you also to choose for him out of Elthoria’s armory a knife, unless he already has one he favors and you condone, and also a small sidearm or pistol.”
A pistol? He leaned forward to deny it, yet her hand was already pointing to him, and she was saying, “I insist upon it—it is a matter for Elthoria’s crew to consider and know, that Ixin is present in trader, and prepared as Ixin is always prepared!
“Thus, you will have such ready to dress Jethri with come his next full shift. I thank you for your time and for escorting my son to me. We shall be in touch shortly, you and I.”
Pen Rel took his dismissal with a bow, and bowed as well to Jethri. This was a new bow; something added there made Jethri’s stomach tighten. In review, there was a deeper head tuck, and the hands curving to the intimation of a reach for weapons in support. Yes, the hint of supporting Jethri in need, of acknowledging a leader to be followed.
Jethri stared after the departing minion, knowing that he’d read that right, and that in fact Pen Rel had just placed himself on a different rung. No, he’d placed Jethri on a different rung, higher than he had been by far, with reservations.
* * *
“It strikes me, my son, that I hear no rumors among the crew of you, else that you work very hard at aught you do, and that among them you are respectful and quiet.”
She was leaning back in her seat, and shifted to face him fully; he shifted also to take that proper position without a third present, respectful and alert.
“Rumors, ma’am?” He wondered if he’d done something worth a rumor, but he was always careful—he’d grown up being last and careful onboard a small ship and such habits were hard to break, indeed.
She smiled very gently, her hand playing a motion he couldn’t yet read, other than it was soothing, meant perhaps for her as well as to him.
“Yes, rumors.”
She paused, as if choosing words very carefully, and repeated that word. “Rumors.”
Now she fluttered her hands and laughed an honest laugh.
“In the course of a route, my son, one often hears rumors, or sees evidence, or understands through the way people stand, or how they schedule themselves, or where they eat, or with whom they eat, or in which activities they take part—one sees or becomes aware of attachments, shall we say, of friendships growing and changing. We—that is you and I as Ixin incarnate—must of course be circumspect, as most of the crew is reasonably circumspect, but one does not carry a ship full of adults from planet to planet for years on end and expect them to be without intimacy, to be celibate as a crew.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, being as he so often reminded himself, not silver-tongued. What else was there to say?
His mother sighed, glanced at her hands which seemed to have said something to her if not to him, leaned toward him lightly.
“The rumors I do hear, my son, are that you amaze those who watch you work at the gym, and interest some of those, but that you work so hard and concentrate so greatly that none dares to disturb your workouts, for all that they admire you. Understand that there is interest . . .”
She fiddled idly with her ring a moment.
“I am Ixin for all purposes here, my son, and it is my duty to see you prepared properly for your life as a trader and as a son of Ixin, served by all that Ixin can bring to bear. Thus, it is important to me that you be a whole person, that you offer more to the ship than an excellent eye for textiles and a facility with a language that is silly, wrongheaded, lack-toned, and—”
His head came up and he leaned forward.
“Ah, you see? Indeed, I must imagine that Terran offers wonders to you as Liaden does to me; surely Terran begins to offer wonders to the first mate, who takes lessons from you.”
Jethri was silent, watchful, trying to gather the sense of what he’d not done right, of a reason for rumors . . .
“It is what I can offer the ship when we are in Jump, ma’am. And I learn much from Gaenor, and now from others since I can speak so much better and needn’t fall to Trade for simple things and even more . . .”
The Master Trader bowed acknowledgment.
“And so, we come to what the ship can do for you and what a mother can do for you and what needs to be done.”
She paused, sighed, laughed to herself.
“Our introduction of you to traders was quite effective as I recall, and in fact, you had the interest there of Parvet sig’Flava.”
He remembered—the trader, the astoundingly interesting trader who’d perhaps had a drink too many and a need unmet who’d offered to take him away to her bed. He blushed, nodded.
“I remember her, ma’am,” he said.
“I’d be amazed if you did not, my son, indeed I would. I gathered that but for my intervention you would have returned to Elthoria in the morning with a stack of first memories of amazing kind and dimension.”
His blush grew and she laughed lightly again, her hands making the same soothing motion.
“Jethri, her wiles and her attractions are such that if she offered me a Festival night, I, at my advanced age, might be tempted. I beg you to understand that I am not laughing at anything but irony and situation. You were honored by the offer, and no doubt would have learned much.”
He put aside her comment about her age and her own potential interest in the woman, but in her face saw only serious interest in their current conversation, not jokes made at his expense.
“I didn’t even know how I could say yes, ma’am,” he admitted, “and didn’t know how to say no, either. I’m not sure I would have done well either way!”
“Yes, that, that is precisely my point, my son. Should I need to be off on adventure with ter’Astin, or if you do, I must know that I turn loose an Ixin able to deal properly with people in situations of intimacy, so that mistakes are not made. Your partner who we hope to install as a trader here, is an excellent person, and he is the son of a mistake or a treachery or a love match not well carried. Had he been a Festival child and acknowledged as that, all would have been well. Instead we have chel’Gaibin’s revenge still at odds with the norms . . .”
She sighed, raised hands, and with open palms, bowed.
“What needs to be done is a matter of care and of comfort, of seeing you confident and aware, of knowing that should you come upon Parvet sig’Flava again in similar spirits you might acquit yourself well whatever your answer.”
He must have looked startled, though he felt the blush was gone . . .
“And why not? You will not repeat that I tell you that she is reputed a night’s prize of the first water. You are of Ixin, you are of ven’Deelin! Why should you stay your suit if you are interested in such a challenge? Yet you needs must know the rules, and tel’Ondor has been instructed to turn you to the sections of the Code most needed. Yet bookwork and dry study is not enough.”
That was said firmly, and her hands were strong with emphasis.
“So, my son, your student of the long walks, she enjoys your company very much. She has brought this to my attention this day, having no one else to turn to on the matter but yourself and finding yourself full of busy eyes and silence.”
Now he blushed well and truly—but what else was he to do?
“I had thought,” he admitted, “that she might be interested, in maybe bundling or something. I just wasn’t sure, and she’s an officer and I don’t know that I should be bothering officers since it could confuse melant’i and, besides, without experience, I’d be a bother!”
Jethri was fiddling with his hand now, seeing that he needed to do something about the hair on the back of it, which was darkening and . . .
There was a genuine laugh then.
“Jethri, a bother? At the risk of breaking confidences, let me tell you that you would be such a bother that Gaenor admits to asking Vil Tor of your inclinations—of your intentions—since he also enjoys your company and hers and he often finds you to hand at the library. I gather, she discovering that you also had no liaison with him, they had hatched a plot to make you theirs for the ship’s Festival!”
Despite his best efforts to suppress it, Jethri sighed, a hearty exasperated sigh accompanied by head-shaking and after a moment, a wry grin that he also could not suppress.
“But, well, I like both of them,” he admitted. “But I didn’t know how to ask for that kind of company, and I’m not experienced and . . .”
It sounded like the trader snarfed.
“Jethri, you have you. People are interested in you. They, some of them, admire your physical self as well as your personality, and the melant’i grows because you are, what is the phrase, low key? And what does a trader ever do? Eh, what does a trader do in moments of doubt?”
He looked at her with wide eyes, feeling dumb.
“You do exactly as Parvet sig’Flava did. You ask for the sale!”
At this there was nothing to do but laugh—indeed, Paitor had told him the same thing how many times in his life?
The trader again looked at her ring, and then slowly stood.
“I have told Gaenor, on being very quietly inquired of, magnificently respectful of melant’i that as far as I know there is no physical impediment to your attraction; and also that as far as I know there is neither a spiritual block, nor a love match languishing. If I am wrong—well, you are of Elthoria now and will treat crew kindly and demur gently if that is your aim and necessity. You are your own person and I do not now order you to anyone’s bed, as this is not a marriage we discuss.”
Jethri felt another thrill go through him, for indeed, he’d never considered that line of event. If he was a son of the clan as all agreed these days, then Ixin might order him to marry, if he’d read that part right in the rules! What a spot that would be, put down on a planet and left to dangle after a—
“However, it is my thought you have an offer of lesser complexity on the way, my son, and I, at least, wish to be sure of your social graces before ter’Astin leaves my deck.”
“But that’ll be before the ship Festival!”
“Ah, so you too are counting days?”
She smiled, not unkindly then, and rose with a bow indicating that he should consider himself dismissed.
“Be bold, my son. This should not be difficult for you, as you are so often bold, when necessity is right upon you. Be bold for joy, and we shall all be better for it! You will wish to stop at your mailbox, I am sure.”