01
A round later, we left the encampment publicly proclaimed adopted Temtres, with a fond farewell from the Clan-king and the tokens marking us his agents in our pouches, as well a written pardon for any crimes we may have committed and forgiveness of all damages we may have inflicted against the Temtres prior to our adoption. This, at my insistence. I'd taken his words about sticking to the letter of the agreement to heart. Trust will come with time. DeKan laughed at this, saying that I'd all the makings of a true Temtre. I told him I was a tramp ship captain by trade, and so I understood the importance of words in a contract.
DeKan was cheerful and friendly, the other Clan-chiefs and captains, more guarded, but also less involved in the affair, so we got along well, especially after Cin once more demonstrated the power of the darters we wore on a distant downed tree in a brilliant flash of blue flame that sent a shower of smoking splinters flying in all directions. The clan-chiefs decided we'd be best on their side.
Yet even with all this new trust, we took our usual winding way home, trailing a chest of tay in a small net, a gift from DeKan for the bump on the head. Neither Kin DeKan's easy charm, nor the tokens marking us agents of the Clan-king, nor our formal adoption into the clan, nor the signed pardon, nor formal grasping of wrists to seal our membership in the clan deck of his ship, the Talon Hawk, had inspired complete confidence in me. I've traded in the drifts too long, I guess. But then, I've always been a cautious fellow. I also sent Siss back to make certain we weren't followed again, but she'd returned in good spirits, and indicated that everything was as it should be.
Cin was also in bright spirits, walking arm in arm with me as we wound our way up and down the ravines towards the Phoenix while Siss dodged about ahead of us, looking for things to eat.
'I didn't have a chance to say it before, Wil, but I was delighted when you showed up to rescue me.'
'I would've been very much surprised if I found you in any need of rescuing, my dear. I simply didn't want you to feel the need to rescue me. Siss did it.'
Siss barked a loud laugh from the foliage ahead.
'You're quite a pair,' said Cin. 'Still, once freed you marched through the ship remorselessly darting everyone you came across. I would've thought you'd have taken a more cautious approach. But then, just as I think I know you, you put a dart in me...' she laughed. 'How could I help but love you?'
I pulled her close and kissed her and said, after a while, 'You can't.'
'See! Another dart,' she said, after she had reluctantly, it seemed, pushed me slightly away.
'It wasn't a dart.'
'It was, in its own way. Its target my heart.'
'Aye.' And I pulled her close and kissed her again.
'You're getting bold,' she whispered in my ear, after a while.
'And I can be bolder still,' I said, and looking about, I found a deep hollow in a thick bramble of vines close at hand, I pulled her along with me into it. She did not resist.
We held each other close. I had lived for the better part of three decades in the small world of an interplanetary ship. During those decades, I was hardly ever alone, but now I realized how alone I'd been. I drew back to look at her. She was happy, her cool grey eyes soft and inviting, her smile less sarcastic, or perhaps even not sarcastic at all. We seemed to be in love.
'I am in love with you, you know,' I said.
She sighed, and with some reluctance said, 'And I have been in love with you since Lontria. Even before our night together...'
'Was it wonderful? Our night together?'
She smiled, lazily. 'There's one way to find out.'
I looked into her eyes. There did, indeed, seem to be love in them. I'd seen shadows of that before, but now it wasn't half hidden. And there was more in her gaze as well. There was passion. I'd seen that look before, as well. And it dredged up some rather painful memories. Had I been my old cautions self, I might have hesitated, but I was beyond thought, beyond caution. I was in love.
'Get lost Siss,' I said. 'Go hunt some mice or something.'
She barked her laugh and wagged the tip of her tail, but she went.
Cin was watching me with her cool smile, but eager eyes. One last chance to come to my senses. But no. "Rockets away!" I thought, and kissed her again, determined to make this our Temtre wedding, certain her present mood wouldn't have lasted until we reached the gig. And, well I wasn't prepared to wait that long, even if it did.
Later, in a clothes-lined nest of vines, we floated, still entangled with each other.
'I wouldn't have forgotten,' I whispered softly. 'I'm forced to believe you.'
'I'm glad,' she whispered, and then rearing back a bit, ran her finger along the few scars I kept from my duel. 'It is nice that you kept them...'
'They always reminded me of you,' I said with what I hoped was a wicked grin.
She could smile a wicked smile effortlessly, and did so too. 'It is nice that you like scars.'
It was imperative that I put an end to that chain of thought, so I pulled her slim, nearly naked body close and kissed her passionately. It had been awhile. For both of us.
Later, as we reluctantly collected items of clothing entangled in the surrounding vines to wiggle into them again, she said, 'Yes, you can be bold, Captain Litang, when you care to be.'
'When I'm motivated.'
She smiled.
'You mustn't forget my grandmother from the drifts. And a grandfather too, for that matter, though I've never met him. And I do come from a long line of spaceers, so it's not beyond explanation. I am, by default, Unity Standard, but a little danger, occasionally, in moderation, is neither dust nor gas.'
'A little danger?'
'Hopefully, at least now...'
'You seem capable of handling more than a little danger.'
I smiled at her, 'It seems I am - with caution.'
She laughed, 'We'll see about that.'
'I fear we will, Still, I have my 500 generations...' I began and paused.
'500 generations?' she asked. 'Of what?'
Was the time right? I glanced at her. Best not start out with a lie.
'Of ancestors. The fact is, I believe you've likely met one of them, my grandmother.'
She gave me a puzzled look. 'I have? How? Where?'
'As far as I knew, my mother's mother ran a spaceer dive on Constina, called the Wandering Star. Zilantha V'Ran is her name. I'd only met her once, when I was a teenager. Now it happened that some years after we had escaped from Despar, we were in Constina orbit refitting the Starry Shore for several weeks. I would have like to pay her a visit, but we had all agreed to keep our survival secret so I didn't think it was proper for me to do so. However, I did receive a message from the managing director of Jardinn Export Services, a shipping agency we had done a lot of business with, one M'Risha Drea. She said she had a business proposal she wanted to talk to me about in person. At the time I was determined to get out of the drift world trade, and Jardinn was almost exclusively in the drift world trade, so I wasn't very likely to fall in with her plans, but I always try to please my customers, so I agreed to meet her.
Our meeting came as a great shock to both of us, since we were both sailing under false names, she, my ship, and I?'
'You recognized her as your grandmother, the spaceers' dive owner,' said Cin, now watching me closely, her grey no longer soft.
'Yes, even though we'd only met that once, and that thirty years before. She's a hard boiled version of my mother, so I had little doubt as to her identity. However, since I much older, had my whiskers, and was sailing under the name of Wilcrofter, she may've had a few. To establish my identity, she mentioned that she had a grandson, the captain of the Lost Star, who was lost in the Despar Drifts.' I gave Naylea a significant look.
'And?'
'The Lost Star was never listed as lost. To explain the lack of communication from the Lost Star we had told everyone we were trading in the deep drift. Only the Despar Navy and St Bleyth knew that
the Lost Star was likely destroyed in the Despar Reef and Grandmama was not likely an agent of Despar. An agent of St Bleyth, well that was another matter. So it was that I discovered that my grandmother was the Abbess of St Bleyth's Amdia Monastery. Rather a shock, as you can imagine.'
'And she betrayed you,' she said, harshly.
'No. I don't think so anyway, though I suppose it's possible. I'm sure I don't have to tell you, families matter in St Bleyth. If my connections to the Order - I gather that my grandfather is even higher up in the order than Grandmama - had been known, you would never have been given the order to kill me. Grandmama had hoped to get that order rescinded. However, with the Lost Star considered wrecked in the Despar Reef, there was no immediate need to do so as long as we remained undiscovered. She also hoped to recruit my grandfather to press my case, and he needed to be approached carefully. All in all, she felt it was safe for her to turn a blind eye to me and my ship. Until Min turned up. And then she couldn't. And as you know, she had her story of a tethered goat set to go under those circumstances.'
'And you believe her? That you weren't a tethered goat all along.'
'Yes. Though, of course, having had some dealings with St Bleyth, I realize that either interpretation could be valid, or both together - the most likely one. Still, Grandmama and I got along quite well. It seems I have a strange affinity for the dangerous women of St Bleyth,' I added with a smile, pulling her close again.
She started dressing again, giving me a cold look, she asked, 'Why didn't you mention this to me before now?'
Ah, a tricky orbit. Still, we were in love. Better now than later.
'For one thing, I can't prove it. Beyond knowing that Zilantha V'Ran or M'Risha Drea is the Abbess of Amdia, which I may've found out in some other way, I can tell you nothing more about St Bleyth. There was a very definite limit to what Grandmama would share about the Order, which was next to nothing. She never even told me who my grandfather is or what position he holds in the Order, save that it was of some importance. So if you care to, you could, or can easily dismiss my claim to be half St Bleyth. And well, bringing it up in most circumstances, would've come across as, I don't know... begging? Boasting? Being an oily snake? And well, my 500 generations of St Bleyth ancestors wouldn't allow me to beg, boast or be an oily snake. And besides, I'm Wil Litang, Unity Standard. My ancestors are neither dust nor gas when it comes to lift. Perhaps they add a certain access to ruthlessness that I wouldn't possess if I had only a Unity Standard ancestry, but who's to say?'
She finished dressing in silence, as did I. This wasn't going as I had hoped. Already I regretted mentioning it. 'Is something wrong?'
She shook her head and tried to smile. 'No, I'm just taking it all in...' Her glance too fleeting to get a good read on her thoughts. Still I felt she was telling me less than the truth.
'Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it at all. It doesn't really matter. We've put that life behind us. I just didn't want to start our life together with a secret between us. And, well, we're really two sides of the same coin. We both share a mixed Unity Standard and St Bleyth heritage. The difference is that I was raised Unity Standard and you were raised in the St Bleyth tradition. All the easier to find common ground. How can we fail? In many ways it explains everything, including, perhaps, our attraction to each other.'
'Yes, it does,' she said, flashing me a rather sad smile as she left the briar arbor. I followed her back into the sunlight. She was very quiet during the rest of our journey back to the gig.