phrasing, her laughter; forget the color that mounted her cheeks when she was angry. He would be—reft and alone, the joy they had shared something that need no longer trouble him.
He took a breath and brought his attention forcefully back to the problem at hand. Daav yos'Phelium had a price on his head—he was in fact a hunted man who endangered those remaining of his loved ones by his very existence. Did Daav yos'Phelium vanish, then the hunt would cease.
It would, naturally, need to be a widely publicized disappearance, but he thought he might manage that. There was also the matter of Aelliana's Balance. Certainly, the woman he loved would never have agreed to the slaughter of innocents, even if he found himself willing to pursue such a course.
No, he thought, recalling the interview with the two women. The enemy here was not Terra—it was ignorance.
He might, after all, be able to deal with ignorance.
Sighing, he settled himself more comfortably on the bench, his head resting against the trunk of a silver ash.
Perhaps he fell asleep. Perhaps it was another sort of seizure, which ceded comfortable oblivion, rather than pain and terror.
The stab of a headache brought him to himself again, but he was not drowsing on the bench by the river path.
He was sitting on the family patio at Trealla Fantrol, Val Con tucked onto his lap, the two of them bent over a book. By the count of pages, they had been reading together for some time.
Of the time between his stopping on the bench and this moment, he had no memory . . . at all.
“Father,” Val Con scolded, leaning forward, to tap the page. “Here. The nighttime garden was full . . . ”
Daav caught his breath.
“Your pardon, my son; I am . . . a little sleepy. So—” He focused on the page.
“The night-time garden was full with moonlight, and the brown cat had no lack of partners for her dance . . . ”
It was not a perfect solving—far from it. And yet, they could not find a better, he and his brother and Mr. dea'Gauss between them.
True, it removed a source of danger from within the heart of the clan, and undertook a Balance in Aelliana's behalf that moved Mr. dea'Gauss to a murmured “Excellent . . . ”
Unhappily, it separated Daav yos'Phelium from every source of comfort and rare joy left in his life. That Daav yos'Phelium was sliding daily into a benevolent madness was something he did not choose to mention. There had been two more episodes of waking into a situation he did not recall; and the instances of hearing her voice were, he was certain, increasing. Sometimes, in the drifting grey mists between sleeping and wakefulness, he would feel her lying beside him, her head on his shoulder, her leg over his. He would scarcely breathe, striving to draw out the moment, which always ended too soon.
“Timing will be everything, Mr. dea'Gauss,” he had said at their last meeting, where Er Thom and Daav signed the papers that made Er Thom Korval-pernard'i—holding the Ring and the Clan in trust for Val Con.
“I understand, your lordship. It shall be done appropriately.”
“Of course it will, sir. You have never failed us.”
Mr. dea'Gauss had inclined his head, and said nothing.
The last meeting had also established that Kareen had been offered the Ring in trust, and had refused it. The Ring should pass entirely, she argued; since there was an adult in the Line Direct to take it up.
There was, of course, precedent for this claim, Kareen being expert in such close readings of the Code.
It was all done now, though, and at last, saving one more thing.
Val Con held his hand tightly as they walked down Jelaza Kazone's public hall to the Delm's Hall.
The lights came up as they crossed the threshold, each portrait illuminated individually.
He and Val Con walked slowly, down the long line of Korval's delms. Most frames were inhabited by one face, often stern, rarely by two.
Like the one at the very end.
Daav yos'Phelium and Aelliana Caylon, the Eighty-Fifth Delm of Korval, the inscription ran, and there they were—a good likeness, as the phrase went. He, piratical and sardonic; she, open-faced and intelligent. They were holding hands, Korval's Ring and the Jump pilots cluster side by side.
Val Con sniffled, and Daav dropped to one knee beside him.
“I miss her,” the boy said.
“I miss her, too,” he answered—and caught the child close as Val Con threw himself 'round his neck.
“And I'll miss you. Father—don't go!”
“I must, child. I endanger all if I stay.”
“But if you go, the clan can't protect you!” Val Con cried, which was closely reasoned, for one so young.
“Sometimes, it is the clan that requires protection,” Daav said slowly. He closed his eyes, holding his son tight. “The clan is people, denubia; never forget that. We can only protect each other. Sometimes, in order to protect those others who are the clan, a person must do something that is very hard. The clan asks much because it gives much.”
His mother had used to say that. He had often been of the opinion that the clan took more than it gave—and
