“No luck?” Folhare asked, and set a bottle and a handful of cheap pottery glasses on the table in front of him. Warreven frowned—there were four glasses, not two—and then realized that the men behind her were coming to join them. “You know my clan-cousin Bonnard, I think.”
Warreven nodded. He knew Bonand Stane, all right, and, de-spite their both being of the same Watch, had never been fully sure that he could trust the man. There was no denying that Bonand was a Modernist and wry-abed, but they hadn’t had much else in common.
“This is Alex,” Bonand said, and nodded to the man behind him.
Warreven nodded again, studying the stranger. He was an off-worlder, unmistakably, and as unmistakably new to the planet, fair skin not yet marred by the sun. Classic trade, he thought, and held out his hand in the off-world greeting. “I’m Warreven.”
There was no need to give clan or Watch, not yet—and not ever, given that the man was from another world, no possible kin—but he saw Bonand’s quick, malicious smile and wished he’d given his full name. Alex accepted the handshake with a nod and a quick, flickering glance, interest visibly flaring and then vanishing before Warreven could be quite sure what had gone wrong.
“I need to talk to you, Raven,” Bonand said, and pulled one of the chairs away from the table.
“Sit down, why don’t you,” Warreven answered flatly, and Bonand smiled again.
“I will. I hear I should congratulate you—Stiller seraaliste is nothing to sneeze at.”
He had spoken in franca, and Warreven answered in creole, earning a quick look of thanks from Alex. “Nothing’s been decided yet. I may not remain on the ballot.”
“Temelathe’ll have something to say about that,” Bonand said, switching to creole. His accent was less clear, Warreven noticed, and was meanly pleased. Alex—any trade—was fair game, and he was good-looking. Bonand grimaced, and switched back to franca. “You do know what’s going on, don’t you, Raven? He wants to keep you off his back, and he doesn’t want anyone pushing trade this season. Plus he doesn’t want any clan changing brokers this season. So who better to promote for seraaliste than a man who doesn’t know how to make a bargain?”
Warreven swallowed his first, furious response. “And where’d you hear this bit of gossip?”
“I’m in the White Watch House now, for my sins,” Bonand answered. “In the secretarial pool. It’s not common talk, but it’s what the Important Men are saying. And Temelathe is very pleased with himself for the idea.”
Folhare leaned forward, planting both elbows on the table, all thought of trade, her own business, forgotten for the moment. “That’s pretty baroque, Bonand.”
“So’s Temelathe,” Bonand answered, and laughed nervously, looking over his shoulder. “Well, it explains it, doesn’t it? Why else would he nominate Warreven, they’re not exactly best friends anymore. But if he gets Warreven out of dealing with trade, then that just leaves Malemayn and Haliday to make trouble. And at the same time, with Warreven as seraaliste, he can pretty much count on Stiller staying with—who is it, Raven, Kerendach?”
Warreven nodded.
“As long as you stay with Kerendach, Temelathe gets his cut, Kerendach makes a nice profit, and nothing changes.” Folhare reached for the wine bottle. “And in the meantime, you’re having to play catch-up just to figure out who’s who among the druggists.” She glanced at Alex, made a face. “Sorry. Pharmaceutical companies. But you know what I mean.”
Warreven reached for the wine himself. The Stiller contract with Kerendach had been a matter of debate for nearly seven local years. Previous seraalistes had proposed changing both it and the brokers, but had never been able to come up with an acceptable alternative, though the margin of the Traditionalists’ victories had been getting smaller and smaller. The more radical Modernists—and the conservative Traditionalists, like the Red Watch Feranes—swore that the largest pharmaceuticals were in collusion, had banded together to make sure that each of them got its share of the twice-yearly harvests at a bargain price. Warreven himself doubted that: the way the Big Six, and the Lesser Twenty, for that matter, bickered over labor and the special individual contracts for the harvest surpluses, made him fairly confident that they wouldn’t be able to work together on anything bigger. It was more likely—if Bonand was right—that Temelathe had quietly passed the word, through the Stanes in the Licensing Office and in Trade Service and Export Control, that the Most Important Man would frown on a new contract with Stiller. “Are you with a pharmaceutical?” he said, to Alex, meaning, or are you just trade?
The off-worlders blinked. “Well, yeah. Not Kerendach, though.”
“Good,” Folhare said, with a smile, and poured him a glass of wine.
“He’s with DTS,” Bonand said impatiently, and Alex flicked a glance at him.
“That’s right.”
Warreven nodded. DTS was one of the thirty-odd midsize companies that did business on Hara, specializing in the sea-harvest from Casnot and Newcomen—not a big company at all, not even one of the Lesser Twenty—but large enough to afford to pay Stiller’s prices. And small enough, specialized enough, he thought, to be less dependent on the Stane and Maychilder harvests than the larger companies. Always assuming, of course, that he ended up with the job. “Do you find yourself dealing much with Temelathe and Stane?” he asked, and Alex gave him a wary look.
“Not much, really.”
“Some,” Bonand said in the same moment, and the off-worlder sighed.
“DTS pays its—fees—like everybody does. What do you want me to say, that I think it sucks? I’m not in marketing, I’m a tech. I’m just passing through.”
Bonand lifted his eyebrows, caught between annoyance and not wanting to alienate his date, and Warreven said, “Sorry, I wasn’t being clear—or meaning to insult you. It’s more … I was curious, really. I know the Big Six have to be careful of Stane—they get most of their goods from them, right?—but I didn’t know if that was true for companies your size.”
Alex looked away. Even in the dim light, Warreven could see that he was blushing. “I’m—just a technician,” he said again, and Warreven felt himself blushing in turn. Alex was trade, a player, though maybe not by the off-worlder’s own definition. If he was a technician, of course he wouldn’t know DTS’s real policies.
“Would you like to dance?”
Alex blinked again and glanced toward the dance floor. “Sorry. I’ve no idea how to dance to this.”
“It’s not that hard,” Warreven began, and Bonand pushed back his chair.
“I’ll dance with you, Warreven. Keep you honest.”
There was no graceful way to refuse. Warreven followed him onto the worn floor, took their place in the nearer of the lines, linking arms with Bonand and a thin woman who took the place to his left. The drums were already well into the entrait, the twisting rhythm signaling a cross-step dance, and Warreven sighed. He was not a terribly good dancer, for all that he enjoyed it; he would have preferred not to screw up the complicated patterns in front of Bonand, or Alex. The lead drum sounded, and the line moved forward into the first figure in ragged unison, the stuttering, high-pitched contre calling the changes. Warreven kept his head down, concentrating on the steps, until he was sure he had settled into the pattern of the movements. The woman at his left dropped his arm and began adding the dipping spins of an expert; he spared her an admiring glance, but knew better than to try to imitate her.