Accepting the lance, p.42
Accepting the Lance, page 42
part #22 of Liaden Universe Series
• • • ✴ • • •
“No, no, no. Val Con…”
He concentrated, bringing them closer, sharing his warmth, reaching, reaching into the pain, taking it, taking what he could, to himself.
“Val Con you don’t follow me.”
So cold. Around him there were bright fragments, splinters, each one a note or two, clamoring, fading…
“I will not follow,” he told her, wrapping them more closely together, “if you do not go.”
He extended himself, reaching to the bright fragments, but they melted at his touch, and he dared not—dared not—touch more, because he knew what they were: her song. Her life. Melting into the pain-filled cold.
She sobbed. He felt her try to push him away, but she was weak with her injuries, the pain gnawing away her will.
“Hush, hush. We will survive. We will. Remember Lytaxin. Miri. We will not die here.”
She said nothing and, in the silence, he felt the pain attack him, MemStim burning at the back of his throat.
The Department used MemStim. It induced perfect recall in the agent being debriefed; it was not a painless process, even when the dose was small and properly administered. This…he recalled the big-barreled gun the assassin had been holding. MemStim in a mega-dose…who knew what damage might be done?
“Captain!” a big voice shouted, and there were other voices, too, and a siren, closing.
“Captain!”
“Nelirikk,” Miri whispered in his ear, and he felt her trembling against him, cold, cold, and colder.
He forced himself beyond the pain, though this time he did not open their eyes. This time, he only shouted, with all the force of a merc captain across a battlefield.
Once, he shouted, and then he, too, collapsed, wrapped in her and around her, and knew no other thing.
Mercantile Building
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
It was early, but the square in front of the Mercantile was crowded already. A half-anxious group, many checking the time on the big clock on the front of the building, loudly wondered what was going to happen next. There hadn’t been a crowd like this in anyone’s memory, at least not one that wasn’t a riot, and even with the paper clearly in evidence in many hands, the procedure—what was going to happen next, and how—wasn’t at all obvious.
The Committee of the Vote had arranged for stands to be built in front of the building using borrowed scaffolding from the work zone, so that everyone could see the announcement themselves if they wanted to, and hear it, too, from big speakers. On the stand, a nervous pair of young people looked out at the crowd and tested the audio about every three minutes, now and then calling down to one friend or another, but mostly being half important and three-quarters scared.
In front of the stand, there was a space about two people wide and fifty people long that was clear to give the Hooper space to play, walking back and forth the way he did at weddings and funerals. Just being there was what he did a lot of times and people expected it. If the Hooper was here, playing quiet on his pipes, then that made this whole voting thing…normal, a plain part of life.
Like weddings and funerals.
The Watch was visible, patrolling the crowd, and some folks hawking food and snacks. Mostly, though, people were watching and talking, catching up with neighbors they might not’ve seen for months—or years.
The time for the big announcement was getting closer according to the clock on the wall, and there! The front door of the Mercantile swung open, and here come three Bosses, followed by their ’hands.
Some few in the crowd recognized all three, and those who didn’t whispered loud, “Which ones?” and the names were said over and over again.
There was Melina Sherton, looking steely, and Ira Gabriel, looking harried, and Boss Vine, looking like he always did—just a little bit mad at something and if you weren’t careful, it would be you.
A few more people wandered out the door, standing ready for something, and the clock came closer by minutes and then by seconds to the time published in the paper…
Ira Gabriel climbed to the stage, as did Melina, and after a pause, like he was thinking better of it, Vine.
The ones standing by the big door suddenly moved to open it, and here come the rest of the Bosses, fanning out along the stairs, and last out was Boss Conrad, with McFarland at his back, Penn Kalhoon and Valish keeping right with ’em. They went straight to the stage and climbed up, settling in to stand behind Melina, and Ira, and Vine.
The girl who’d been testing the audio did one last click on the microphone, then the boy did the same, saying “Level, level, level level, check?” and that musta done the trick, ’cause he handed the mic to Ira Gabriel and faded over to crouch by the equipment.
Ira stepped to the front of the stage, popped the mic, and started to talk.
“Wanna thank everybody for coming, and for voting. Those who don’t know me, I’m Ira Gabriel. I been holding my turf since before Conrad come ’mong us.”
He turned and waved—
“This is Melina Sherton, ’nother of the Old Bosses; an’ Zalan Vine, ’nother Old Boss. We’re the members of the Committee of the Vote. It’s our job to make sure that the vote was done all right and proper and that nobody was bullied into—or out of—voting; and that the results stayed secret, right up ’til we open the envelope in a couple minutes here.”
He paused ’cause there the talk from the crowd was getting loud, and into that space, The Hooper injected an amazingly loud blast from one of his harmonicas, which he turned into a fanfare, alerting the folks who couldn’t quite hear all of what Boss Gabriel was saying to move closer and stand quieter. He did that at weddings and funerals, too, so people knew zackly what to do.
“Yes,” Ira said, agreeing with the fanfare, and raised his voice.
“Let’s get on with this thing. What I’m gonna do is call out the names of the rest of the Bosses standing there on the step. When I say the name, they’ll stand forward, so you can get a good look at ’em, and fix ’em in your memory. After that, I’ll call out the people who handled the actual street-level votin’. Then we’ll all find out together who won the vote between Boss Surebleak and Boss Conrad…”
Some of the people were antsy, some trying to peer up at Ira Gabriel, who was almost a hair taller than Melina Sherton, but not so tall that everyone could see him from the back of the crowd and…
The Hooper blew another behave yourselves! blast, and that did quiet things down, and Boss Gabriel got on with his bidness. First come a description of the process of voting, read right out of the special edition, cheers for the Bosses standing on the stairs, and then a real tense moment when Ira Gabriel turned back ’round to face the crowd and walked to the very edge of the platform.
“I hope to introduce Boss Surebleak, without who we wouldn’t’ve had the chance to think about voting, and making a procedure, and figurin’ what comes after. So…Boss Surebleak! You wanna stand forward so we can all see you? The buncha you pay attention and let the Boss through!”
They didn’t need the Hooper’s reminder this time. Everybody stood quiet, though there was a fair amount of head-swiveling.
After they’d all counted to twenty, Ira Gabriel tried again.
“Boss Surebleak! C’mon and join us! You’re as much a part o’this as we are. We promise safe passage!”
Count of thirty this time, and more people looking around.
“Boss Surebleak? Final call to join us all in this new thing you brought us!”
Count of forty, and people were practically spinning in circles, trying to be the first to spot Boss Surebleak and their ’hand, coming down from in back o’the crowd.
Ira Gabriel sighed and stepped back from the very edge of the platform.
The Hooper made a sad harmonica noise, and a few people in the crowd laughed, still craning their necks, trying to find the Boss standing ’mong them.
Ira Gabriel shook his head.
“I’m sorry about that, I am, but—not my decision to make.”
He took a breath, started to say something, then changed direction.
“I wanna say this, before we get into the excitin’ part and it gets forgot.
“You maybe notice that the Road Boss, Miri Robertson and Val Con yos’Phelium, they ain’t here neither today. Some of you maybe read it in the paper, ’bout the portmaster and the TerraTrade leader getting snatched and Boss Miri being shot up bad. That all happened at the port. Boss Val Con, he sends that Boss Miri’ll make a full recover, but it’s gonna take some time, she was hurt that bad. Boss Miri, she sends a note, which I’ll just read to you…”
He moved his hand and froze, looking out over the crowd.
“It’s in my left-hand outside pocket,” he said solemnly, and some few in the crowd tittered, while he pulled a piece of paper right outta that pocket, like he’d said.
“So, this is Boss Miri saying—‘I thank everybody who’s been worrying after me. I did take the bad end of the stick, black eyes and bruises, and a couple ribs stove in. I’ll get through it, just like all of us do. We’re tough and we’re strong because that’s what Surebleak needs from us. The office will be closed the next couple days while I heal up, but I expect to be back on the job, so long as our contract’s still good. I believe in contracts, and I believe in Surebleak, and I’m pleased that I had sense enough to come back home when I could.’”
There was quiet, then cheers, which ran awhile ’til Ira Gabriel stood up to the front of the platform again and held a big red envelope high up over his head.
The cheering faded, and there wasn’t anybody who wasn’t looking right at the stage.
“All right,” said Ira Gabriel, “this is why we’re here. Once all the votes was counted, re-counted and certified, the result was written down on a card, which was sealed into this envelope. I ain’t seen it. Ain’t nobody seen it ’cept the one tabulated the final totals and wrote out the winner on the card.”
He waved the envelope over his head once more, brought it down and—
Bang!
A single shot rang out. Somebody shouted; somebody else pushed—and was quick-caught by the people standing next to them.
“Watch here, Watch here, Watch here! Attention, let us through!”
There were ripples in the crowd; Watch uniforms were visible. The crowd parted where it was needed, and here they came, four Watchmen surrounding half a dozen unhappy people, and another Watchman bringing up the rear, carrying four long-arms.
They got to the space at the front of the crowd, and the Hooper stepped back to give them all the room they needed, slipping his pipes into his pocket.
“What about ’em, Boss?” asked a Watchman.
“If you can hold ’em there, do it. They’ll wanna hear this, too,” said Ira, and turned slightly as the Mercantile’s big front door swung open, and Portmaster Liu and the leader of the TerraTrade survey team came to stand a little ahead of the assembled Bosses.
“Ma’am?” said Ira. “Ma’am?”
“Just here to learn the outcome of the vote,” said the portmaster. “Are we too late?”
“No’m, your timing’s good as it gets.”
He held up the red envelope again and turned to face the crowd.
He tore the top edge off that envelope and pulled out a big beige card.
“The results of the Boss Vote are…”
He paused, his eyes on the card, and the crowd tensed.
“Boss Surebleak—one hundred seventy-two votes!”
Silence, nobody really sure what that meant.
On the stage Ira drew a deep breath and finished.
“Boss Conrad—seven thousand, nine hundred, and ten!”
Melina Sherton stepped up next to him, hands raised over her head.
“Boss Conrad by a blizzard!”
Cheers came then, loud and lusty, and the speakers boomed a little while the portmaster and a tall woman in the uniform of Port Security climbed up to the stage, and received the mic from Ira.
“I’m Claren Liu, Surebleak Portmaster,” said the first of the women. “This is Liz Lizardi, Port Security Chief. She’s got something to say to you, and I’d appreciate it if you gave it a listen.”
She handed the mic to Chief Lizardi.
“Some of you know me; I grew up here. Went off-world. After a while, I got bored, so I come home.”
There was a ripple of laughter through the crowd. Liz nodded.
“I just want to let you know a little about Boss Surebleak.”
She raised a hand and pointed at the Watch surrounding their prisoners.
“To the best of what we can know, these right here, every single one of ’em together—they’re what’s left of Boss Surebleak. The rest of the Boss—they’re gone off-planet, or they’re dead, or like two we picked up yesterday, they’re in the Whosegow. That’s it, that’s them. Off-worlders, come to make trouble, to try and take Surebleak—to take us!—over.
“That part of it’s finished now. For the rest of the cleaning up—if you been threatened by these people or their ’hands, if you been mugged, if they owe you money, if they broke a contract or an agreement with you, I wanna know about it. You can come on down to see me personal in the port, or you can talk to your local Watch. They’ll get the news to me.”
She paused, looking down at the prisoners.
“Take ’em to the Whosegow,” she said.
The crowd cheered.
Chief Lizardi turned and handed the mic to Portmaster Liu, who moved to take her place at the front of the stage.
“I just wanna let you know that the Boss here—the Bosses”—she waved shapelessly at the stage and the steps—“and I include the Road Bosses in there, too. All of ’em, Old Bosses and New Bosses, they’re working hard to make a Surebleak we can all work with, that we can all be proud of. Bosses can’t do it by themselves, o’course—you gotta help ’em. You started helping ’em when you voted down Boss—the idea of Boss Surebleak. Now you keep on working, and we’ll all of us do better.”
The crowd was quizzical, and Portmaster Liu smiled, bringing the mic up again.
“You voted Boss Conrad to stay; you voted for better, not worse. That’s a good day’s work by anybody’s reckoning. So—go on off and celebrate!”
The Hooper played a fanfare then. The Bosses on the steps turned and marched back into the Mercantile…
…and the crowd went off to celebrate.
Jelaza Kazone
Tree Court
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Miri dozed undertree in a nest of blankets, which had pretty much been her assignment for the last…well…truth told, she’d kinda lost track of days. Didn’t matter. She was attended by cats, deployed in a rotation of their own devising, Val Con, too, sometimes, and Emissary Twelve. And the Tree, naturally. She was in the Tree Court. Hadn’t been so out of attention as to miss that.
The Tree had been downright solicitous, keeping the temps moderate and the breezes warm. There had been pods—an amazing variety of pods, some no bigger than her thumbnail—and she’d eaten every one.
The tiniest were the best. They were the ones that clouded the relentless pounding of memory, the pain of old wounds and new; gave back her ability to think, and sleep, and just…rest.
Other pods had directly targeted her wounds: the ribs were mending at a record rate; the burns where the dart had hit her were gone without a scar; the buckshot that had delivered the drug into her system had mostly worked out, the multiple small wounds covered with shiny new skin. Her chest still ached some, where the shotgun blast had taken her. Good thing she’d had that vest on…
Normal way o’things, they’d just’ve popped her into an autodoc for those hurts, but with so much MemStim in her system…well. It had been the firm opinion of the merc medic who’d gotten to her first, and the two succeeding doctors, that her bloodstream was so thick with the drug, any attempt the ’doc might make to filter and clean, as it would do as part of its base routine…carried about an eighty percent chance of her dying of the cure.
As it was, the merc medic couldn’t quite make out how she hadn’t died of overdose. The doctors hadn’t been any better informed on the topic, but the consensus of all three was that the longer she kept living, the better chance she had of staying alive.
So, here she was in the Tree Court, nested in blankets because she couldn’t ever quite get all the way warm, two cats curled against her belly, one tucked close to her back, all three purring—and she was starting to wake up a little more, which meant it must be time again for Emissary Twelve.
Miri sighed and opened her eyes to find the Clutch Turtle already seated next to the nest. She was holding a tangle of yellow, red, and orange weeds in her hand—which wasn’t unusual, actually. Emissary Twelve had developed an interest in plants and often brought her foragings with her to their sessions.
“Hi, there,” Miri said huskily. “Didn’t mean to be rude.”
“You are not rude, and you must have rest, as much as you may take.”
She bent forward and placed the weeds next to Miri’s head.
“Breathe,” she said, and Miri did. The weeds were sharp-scented, a little bitter, tasting of pepper. She felt the scent move into her lungs, hit her chest, and…expand.
“What are those?” she asked.
“A gift from Yulie Shaper’s farm. These herbs are efficacious for cleaning the blood, as I am told. They will assist our work here.”
“I’m for anything that helps,” Miri said and took another deep breath.
“We have made good progress,” Emissary Twelve said. “Now, we will make more. Unwrap yourself and come sit with me.”
This was Miri’s least favorite part of the therapy, but there was a good reason for getting out of the blankets and away from the cats. She managed it fairly gracefully, shed her robe, and sat on the silky grass across from Emissary Twelve, her back against the Tree’s welcoming warm trunk. Emissary Twelve extended her three-fingered hands, palms up. Miri extended her hands and they sat, palm to palm, looking into each other’s eyes.
