Sparks hesitated. He pulled the flute out of his belt pouch and put it to his lips. The workers looked at him, as she did, nonplussed. But as the odd run of notes he began to play registered on her ears, she realized that he was mimicking mer speech. The mers swiveled their heads to listen, obviously realizing the same thing. The workers murmured in surprise. The mers looked at each other once more as he finished, and trilling runs of sound passed between them.
After a moment, something landed with a sodden thump near Sparks’s feet. It had come so quickly that Moon had not been able to track its course; but it had come from among the mers.
Sparks picked it up, frowning in concentration, as Moon waded ashore. It was La wad of monofilament netting, the kind of Winters had taken to using to trawl for |fish. He shook it out, tossing it to the workers.
“Did this come off the Selen?” Moon asked; suddenly, presciently sure that it had not.
The Winters passed the piece of net among themselves, fingering it, tugging on it. “No, Lady,” a man said. “Borah Clearwater wouldn’t let a piece of this stuff on his property.” He shook his head, with a rueful grimace. “The old man was stuck in his ways, gods rest him. He always says—said, he’d hang himself with monofilament before he’d use it on fish.”
Moon felt her own mouth twitch with wry acknowledgment. “Yes,” she murmured, “that sounds like what he would always say.…” Her smile fell away. “Then it means there was another boat—probably crewed by other Winters.”
Sparks shrugged, coming back to her side. He put his hand on her arm. “Maybe. Maybe it’s only something the mers found drifting. I asked them where the people in the boat are… but only the Sea knows if that’s what they heard.”
“It could mean that someone used nets to drown them, too,” she said, her voice thickening. “You know that Kirard Set Wayaways has been after the Clearwater holdings since before Gran came to the city. Borah Clearwater would never sell them to him while he was alive—”
“Moon,” he said gently. “You have no proof. I know what you think of Kirard Set. It’s no better than what I think. But murder—?”
She looked toward the boat. “I never had a chance to say goodbye. I never even told Gran how much I…” Her voice broke. She shrugged his hand away, feeling her helpless grief hardening into anger, feeling its focus crystallize, as the memory of her grandmother’s face was overlain by the image of Kirard Set Wayaways. “No, I can’t prove that he bears the blame for anything, except the ill will to wish it would happen. But simply for that, I’ll keep my promise to Borah Clearwater, to protect his lands for as long as I live.” She turned away, starting back along the beach to the place where their own craft waited to carry them north to the city.
KHAREMOUGH: Gundhalinu Estates
“Pandhara!” Gundhalinu called, striding into the front hall, hearing his voice echo through the house. He draped his uniform jacket over the servo that had come to meet him at the door, settled his helmet onto its faceless head, grinning as it informed him lugubriously that it was not a hatrack. “Well, find one!” he said, laughing. He went on into the room, shouting his wife’s name again.
“Gundhalinu-bhai is in the cutting garden, sir—” the servo droned behind him.
He turned right at the dining room, went down through the study and the sun room and out onto the south wall patio. Pandhara climbed the steps from the cutting garden with an armload of flowers and stopped, her face filling with astonished delight. “BZ! Are thou here already? I wasn’t expecting thee until tomorrow.”
He stopped too as he saw her expression, surprised and bemused by its bright eagerness. He was secretly relieved that the look on her face was not dismay; and that he had not interrupted her with a lover. “I wasn’t expecting to make the shuttle, but I did—by the skin of my teeth.” He started forward again, smiling. “The thought of two peaceful nights of uninterrupted sleep instead of one was enough to make me push it.”
She lifted a hand to meet his upraised one, dropping flowers as they touched. He leaned down, picking them up and piling them carefully back onto her armload.
“I picked them because thou were coming home,” she said, breathing in their fragrance. “I know how thou love them.”
His smile widened; he held the doors for her as she carried them inside. She handed them over to a servo, sent it away with a “You know what to do—” She stood before him in baggy coveralls, smoothing back the dark strands of hair that had escaped from under her scarf with color-stained hands. “Oh, damn it all, BZ, nothing is ready! I have it all planned; everything was to be the way thou like it when thou arrived… . But I’ve been setting biosculpture all day. I haven’t even cleaned myself up.”
He caught one of her gesturing hands, turned it over, studying the rough palms and the pattern of stains. “I like real hands…” he said, and looked up at her, to see if she still remembered their first meeting.
Her look of blank surprise blossomed into sudden comprehension, and she grinned back at him, tilting her head.
“It doesn’t matter. There’s always tomorrow. All I want tonight is normal conversation, and maybe a game of chama.” He let go of her hand, turned away to survey the room as he felt himself beginning to look at her for too long. “What’s new? Thou’ve done something to this room; it’s brighter.”
“The walls are yellow, instead of gray, over there, and there… I bought some new settees and restored that reclining couch. I hung some of my statics.…”
“I like it.”
She searched his face as he looked back at her. “Truly? I’ve been very carefuclass="underline" I haven’t touched the things that are timeless.” She gestured at the ornately carved mantel, which had been a part of the original house. He knew it was at least a millennium old. “I would never do that—”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve seen everything else thou’ve done here. I trust thy judgment implicitly.”
“But it is thy home—”
“It’s thy home.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Thou live in it; I’m only a visitor. The gods know, my father kept it like a museum; he never allowed a damn thing to change in this entire place, for as long as I could remember. And HK and SB ran it into the ground. …” His mouth twitched. “Make it thine, Dhara. It is thine.”
She shook her head, putting her hands on her hips; her smile struggled with something that looked like exasperation. “Gods! Must thou always be so insufferably good-natured and kind?”
He laughed. “Thou think so? Ask my programmers and crew chiefs, when they glitch on me or fall behind…. Ask Vhanu, when his staff double-schedules me with the High Command and half the Coordinating Committee—”
“Well, all I know is, thou make me want to—”
His remote began to beep. He looked down and swore, clapping his hand over the noise. He crossed the room in half a dozen strides, ordering the side-table terminal below his wife’s newly hung painting to take the call.
Vhanu’s face materialized, looking urgent. “Goddammit, Vhanu,” Gundhalinu snapped. “It can wait—I said I’m off-line. No exceptions!”
Vhanu’s imagine said evenly, “We’ve got the departure date, Commander. It’s been approved.”