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poured his tea down the sink, washed out the mug and put it to drain.
"Until tomorrow, Master Jon."
"Until tomorrow, child. Be well."
CHAPTER SEVEN
The number of High Houses is precisely fifty. And then there is Korval.
 From the Annual Census of Clans
"What long-standing debt?" Alliane demanded of a grinning Var Mon as they left the card room.
"Why, only the honor of being allowed to sit at the feet of Aelliana Caylon for an entire semester and
catch the jewels as they fell from her lips!" He stopped to bow, coincidentally disrupting the flow of traffic
between the card room and the music lounge.
Aelliana frowned. "You are absurd."
"Not to say impertinent," Rema put in, adding a rider to her comrade in a flutter of finger-talk. To
Aelliana's eyes, it seemed a list: Twelve variations on the sign for idiot. Var Mon laughed.
"You will be very well served if Scholar Caylon pockets your three cantra and says no more," Rema
scolded audibly. "How will you come about then?"
"Indeed, no," Aelliana said hastily; "I do not wish to keep Var Mon's money. But it is ill-done to say you
are repaying a debt when it is no such thing!"
There was a moment of complete silence, her companions staring at her from rounded eyes.
"Chastised," Var Mon murmured.
"Justly," returned his partner. "Local custom."
"Exactly so." He bowed once more, taking care not to discommode others nearby. "I ask your
forgiveness, Scholar," he said in the Mode of Lesser-to-Greater, which was the High Tongue and not a
quiver of merriment to be heard. "You are gracious to illuminate my error."
Aelliana considered him, suspecting a joke. The boy's face showed nothing but serious courtesy, and
perhaps a touch of anxiety. His three cantra were safe in her right hand, mingling with the jeweled chain
and the keys to the keys to her ship.
"You knew that lordship," she said abruptly.
Surprise showed at the corners of his face. "I know his name," he allowed, still in Lesser-to-Greater,
"and his reputation."
"Vin Sin chel'Mara," Rema murmured, "Clan Aragon."
Aelliana sighed. She had learned, as any child, the rhymes for Clans and Sigils, Houses and Tasks. But
childhood was many years gone and her general grasp of such matters fell far short of the knowledge
held by one who moved in the world.
"High House?" was the best she could hazard now, looking at Rema.
The Scout blinked. "Not so high as Korval," she said slowly.
But this was merely a quibble. Who in all the world outranked the Dragon? Even Aelliana knew the
answer was, none.
"I see," she said, the keys hot in her hand.
"The play was clean." That was Var Mon. "We were surrounded by those who know their cards, and the
house camera, beside." He grinned, irrepressible boy bursting free of the solemn gentleman he had been a
moment before.
"Scholar Caylon, you don't say the game was false?"
"The game was entirely true," she said tartly. "Nor was it at all necessary for you to offer your cantra. His
Lordship's line was irretrievably flawed." She held out the coins in question. "I thank you for your aid,
though it was in no way required."
"Ouch," said Var Mon mildly, and took his money with a bow.
Aelliana shifted in the pulldown tucked between the pilots' stations and inner hatch, and considered her
circumstances.
It would appear that she was, in unlikely truth, the owner of a spaceship, which she was even now on her
way to inspect.
She closed her eyes, feeling how quick her heart beat. She owned a spaceship; possibilities proliferated.
If it was, as she suspected, a rich man's toy, she would contrive, discreetly, to sell, thus ensuring
outpassage and a stake upon which to build her new life.
If, against all expectation, Ride the Luck was a working class ship, she would
She would keep it.
A pilot-owner might find work anywhere, she was tied to no single world. A pilot-owner need owe none,
was owned by no one.
A pilot-owner was free. Alone, independent, autonomous, sovereign& Aelliana leaned back in the
pulldown chair, stomach cramped with longing.
If Ride the Luck was a working ship&
Of course, pilot-owners held piloting licenses, which Aelliana Caylon did not. The life she so avidly
envisioned required she be nothing less than a Jump pilot.
"Asleep, Scholar?" Var Mon's voice broke in upon these rather lowering considerations. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]