“I agree,” Daav said. “Perhaps we can pool information?”
“That's all right by me. I'll send what I have tomorrow by public courier—acceptable?”
“Perfectly acceptable,” Daav said. “Clarence—”
“It's late, you know,” the other man interrupted. “Shouldn't you be going home to your wife?”
“I haven't a wife,” Daav said, his voice much cooler than he had intended.
Clarence shot him a hard glance. “No, now, that's not the way to go about it! Get yourself home, man, and make it up.”
In spite of himself, Daav laughed. “It sounds as if you've been married.”
“Happens I was,” Clarence said, soberly. “We were too young for it, o'course. I had my second class, doing in- system work, but still, a lot of lonely nights for him and me not there. We worked at it, but then—it was a hard world, and money wasn't easy, even with both of us working like we did. The fees on a pilot's labor—” He glanced down at his glass.
Daav lifted the bottle and poured, adding some more to his own glass.
“Thank you. In any case, I'd flown my hours and was burning for first class, but we'd never afford the buy-in. Come a woman to port offering to pay it all, and hire me when I had my ticket, if I agreed to do her a favor, if you understand me.” He shook his head. “He wouldn't stand with that, not at all. It was terrible, that fight, but in the end I chose the ticket, and the doin' of that favor.” He drank, deeply.
“And that's how I come to work for Herself as a courier pilot, before she come here to be Boss before she got transferred and I did . . . ” His voice faded out and he looked down at his hand where it rested on his knee.
“And your spouse?” Daav asked, though surely it was no business of his, if Clarence kept a harem.
“Eh?” The other man looked up, eyes distant with memory. “Oh, he left me, and right he was to do it. The doin' of favors, well. Look where it's got me.” He shook his head and offered Daav a half-feral grin. “The choices we make, those're what shapes us. You go on home, now, and make it up with her.”
“In time,” Daav said softly. “Do you have someone here to escort you?”
“Several someones,” Clarence assured him. “They're outside.”
“Then the first thing I will do is see you safely into their care. After, I will indeed go home.”
“If you're of a mind to coddle, then I'm not the one to stop you,” Clarence said. He put his glass on the table and rose, gingerly, most of his weight on his uninjured leg.
Daav offered his arm. “Off we go now, two comrades, deep in our cups.”
Clarence laughed as they turned toward the door.
“Y'know, I'd rather that was the reason. Gods, I hate being stupid.”
“Stupid would have seen you dead,” Daav said, opening the door and guiding him into the hall.
“They're watching the shadow door?” he asked, meaning Ongit's discreet—and well-guarded—back exit.
“Yeah. That stupid, I'm not.”
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Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon
Chapter Thirty
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
—Terran Proverb
It was early evening when she returned to the Hall, the meeting at Scout Academy having gone longer than she had supposed it would. As had become her custom, she passed through the front parlor of the house itself, in order to collect her mail. The fact that she received mail—invitations, almost exclusively—had at first bemused her. But, after all, she had met a great many people at Lady yo'Lanna's picnic, and it was, as she had learned from Jen, the season to be giving parties.
Today, there were no invitations, but a letter.
Aelliana froze, staring down at the word “dea'Gauss” and her direction, written out with dainty precision:
Aelliana Caylon, in care of the Healers, Chonselta City
Mouth dry, heartbeat pounding in her ears, she stared down at the envelope. It was impossible to deduce whether it held good news or bad. Her hand moved, as if she would break the seal, but she clenched her fingers tight, and forced her arm to her side.
Not here. Not where her elation or her despair would discommode the work of two dozen or more.
Slipping the envelope into her sleeve, she went down the hall, meeting no one, which was perhaps a blessing, and stepped out into the garden.
She hesitated again, once she was out-of-house, but forced herself to walk on until she came to the cottage and let herself in.
There, her back against the door, she had the letter out, snapped the seal and let the envelope fall as she unfolded the single sheet.
