Shadow Man (Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction) (9 page)

"She's very good,"
Malemayn said again, and reached into his pocket. He came up with a
handful of coins and tossed half dozen onto the
shaal
with the rest.

"She is," Warreven
agreed, and looked around for a flower seller. He spotted one almost
at once--they knew enough to congregate when a
vieuvant
danced, seemed to come from nowhere--and held up a black
quarter-meg. The boy came over eagerly, basket held out in front of
him.

"I have ruby-drop,
mir, and rosas, and dragon-cor, the Lady likes those--"

Warreven nodded, not
really listening, and picked up a spray of the horn-shaped
ruby-drops. "How much?"

"A quarter-meg, mir,
any coin," the boy answered promptly. "Picked fresh this
morning."

"Fine." Warreven
handed him the stamped glass disk and turned back to the platform.
Above him, the
vieuvant
was spinning down to the end of this part of the dance, her skirts
flaring out into a perfect bell of silk. He tossed the flowers onto
the
shaal
--he
had been fond of the Heart-breaker as a child--and followed it with
a couple of long-bits and quarter-megs. Malemayn smiled.

"You always get
cheated, Raven."

Warreven returned the
smile. It was true enough; he was no hand at haggling. "Only in the
market, cousin."

Malemayn shook his
head, still smiling. "It's a good thing we can afford it. And,
speaking of affording things, I thought you wanted to get back to
work."

"I did, I do,"
Warreven answered. "I'm coming."

They threaded their way
through the crowds to Harborside where it skirted the Market's
edge. Just beyond the Market it narrowed, becoming little more than
an access road for the ware-houses that stood along the waterfront.
Warreven wrinkled his nose at the acrid smell of split power cells
that seeped from the nearest building and turned up the first side
street, into the shade of the low houses. They had been built for the
construction crews building the railroad terminus and hadn't been
meant to last much beyond its completion; thirty years later, the
poured sandstone walls were crumbling, but the neighborhood was more
crowded than ever.

It wasn't a long walk
to the base of Blind Point, where the partnership rented space for
their
mesnie
. It
wasn't a real
mesnie
,
of course--there were only three of them, and none of them was
married to any of the others, and besides, Haliday, the third
partner, lived two buildings away--but it was easier to call it one
than to explain it to the traditional indigenes among their clients.
Traditional people had enough trouble sometimes understanding the
rules of trade; it was easier to explain if the general setting was
at least a little familiar. The building was tall for Blind Point,
where the original settlers had built close and low, but relatively
narrow; its brick frontage was eroding at the corners, and the door
was set into the right-hand corner, to make the inside rooms as large
as possible. Warreven scuffed his feet on the stone of the sill and
kicked his sandals into the mud tray, no longer aware of the
narrowness of the hall. Sunlight was streaming in through the one
hand-span window at the far end of the building, throwing a wedge of
light across the painted plaster wall. The design of twined doutfire
and creeping stars had faded there; the colors were still true by the
door, where the light never reached. Warreven made another mental
note to find a painter, and pushed open the door to the main room.

It was empty, all the
lights switched off to save on power fees, and Malemayn said, from
behind him, "Where's Chattan, then?"

"I thought he'd be
waiting," Warreven answered.

"Raven?" Haliday's
voice came from the inner room. "What the hell is going on?"

Warreven frowned,
wondering what 3e was
talking about this time, and Malemayn chuckled.

"What have you done
now?"

"I don't know,"
Warreven said, quite seriously, and went into the offices.

It was bright, all the
lamps lit and the heavy curtains drawn tight against the
contrast-destroying sun. They had divided the space into three
cubicles when they formed the partnership and moved in, but the gray
foam-core walls barely reached Malemayn's shoulders, so that anyone
could see in to the clutter and the bulky computers with their
illuminated screens. Haliday stood in the center space, hands on
hips, glaring down at one of the three screens that was linked to
Bonemarche's narrowcast networks. Ȝe
was wearing off-world clothes, as usual, and as always it gave
Warreven a small shock to see the anomaly of 3er
body revealed so clearly by the close-fitting fabric. But then,
Haliday had always been stubborn that way: 3e
had insisted from childhood that 3e
was herm, not the boy 3e
had seemed to be then, and even now, after 3e
had lost 3er case, and
been declared legally a woman, 3e
refused to answer any pronoun but 3er
own.

"What's Raven done
this time?" Malemayn asked, and dropped the wallet that held the
court disks on the nearest desk.

"Since when did you
get into politics?" Haliday demanded, 3er
eyes still fixed on Warreven.

"Æ?" Warreven
said.

"Politics. You know
what that is, though you always say you won't play--except when
Temelathe calls, of course." Haliday touched the top of the
display. "Why'd you wait to put your name on the list, Raven,
were you afraid I'd talk you out of it? Or were you afraid I
wouldn't?"

"What are you talking
about?" Warreven asked, and came around the cubicle wall to get a
look at the screen.

Haliday stepped out of
his way, pressing 3er hips
against the edge of the desk platform. "I'm talking about the
election lists, that's what."

Warreven scanned the
screen without answering. It was less than a week to the two-day
Midsummer holiday, and most
mesnie
s
and clans and the five overarching Watches that governed them held
their elections then, but what that had to do with him...?

And then, in the center
of the screen, he saw his own name, set opposite the post of Stiller
seraaliste. He stared at it for a moment, feeling remarkably stupid,
and Malemayn said behind him, "I wonder who put your name in."

"You're telling me
you didn't," Haliday said to Warreven, but 3er
voice had lost some of its anger.

"Yes," Warreven
said, still staring at the screen. There was only one other
candidate, the minimum required by clan law, and the name was all too
familiar. Daithef Stiller was a perennial candidate, and more than a
little mad; he had never yet been elected to anything. "I mean,
yes, I didn't do it," he said, and wondered if he sounded as
foolish as he felt.

"Who sponsored him?"
Malemayn said.

"The nominating
officer was Waterson, who's speaker for the Haefeld
mesnie
."
Haliday made a face. "That's over on the sunset coast. Seconding
was someone called Tortisen, of Luccem. I don't know either of
them, and I can't find a directory listing, electronic or paper,
for either one."

"Well, there's a
simple solution," Warreven said, and reached for the ancient
monophone that stood beside the computer. Parts of the system had
come to Hara on the settlement ship five hundred years before--and
it had been seventy years out of date on the day of landing--but it
was still the only system that was certain to reach all the outlying
mesnie
s. Down in
the Equatoriale and along the sunset coasts, there were still small
mesnie
s, mostly
household size, that had evaded Temelathe's order to accept a
network terminal; a larger number of others had simply refused to
assign anyone to answer the system's mail. He punched code numbers
from memory, lifted the headset, and waited until the tinkle of
routing codes was finally replaced by a human voice.

"Black Watch House,"
the voice--a man's--said in
franca
,
and then repeated the words in creole.

"Who's the Stiller
electing officer?" Warreven asked. "There seems to have been an
error in the list."

There was a little
silence, and then the voice answered, "That's Brunwyf, out of the
Luccem
mesnie
--it's
a woman's post this year. She's away up north now, though. Can I
take a message?"

"Is she on the
system?" Warreven asked, without much hope. "Or the phone?"

"I'm sorry, mir. I
don't know if the line's been patched yet. Can I take a message?"

And if Luccem is as
traditional as I remember, Warreven thought, there's no point in
even trying the network. "Yes," he said aloud. "You can tell
her Warreven called, of the Ambreslight
mesnie
.
Someone's put my name on the list by mistake, and I'm not a
candidate."

"Warreven," the
voice repeated, and there was another little silence. "I'll give
her that message, mir."

"Thank you,"
Warreven said, but the connection was already broken. He set the
headset back in its place, an unpleasant suspicion forming. Brunwyf
was a nobody, just as Luccem was one of the minor
mesnie
s,
but it was matrilineal, and her father and husband were both
Maychilders, part of the string of Maychilder marriages that
Temelathe had sponsored over the last thirty years. Which meant--or
could well mean--that Brunwyf was part of the faction that was
aligned with the Most Important Man. "What do you know about
Brunwyf, of Luccem?"

Malemayn shook his
head. "Absolutely nothing."

"Isn't she married
to a Maychilder?" Haliday asked. "That's one of the
matri
mesnie
s,
anyway, and they're Traditionalists, that do know."

"And Traditionalists
in Haefeld," Warreven agreed. "So why in all hells would they
nominate me?"

"You're hardly a
Traditional candidate," Malemayn said, with a grin.

"So they must've
been doing someone a favor," Haliday said. "Your would-be
father-in-law, Raven?"

Warreven gave 3im
a sour look. "It's possible. In fact, I can't think of anyone
else who'd bother. But I can't think why."

"Nor can I,"
Haliday said.

"Well, it's hardly
important," Malemayn said. "They can't make you run if you
don't want to, Raven--not even Temelathe can manage that without
it looking really bad. So as soon as what's-her-name gets back from
Luccem, you can pull your name off the list."

"Do you really want
to bet against Temelathe?" Warreven asked, and Malemayn shook his
head.

"Not iron, no. But
this would be hard even for him."

"I can think of three
ways he could force it," Haliday said, 3er
voice gone suddenly cold. "But the simplest--well, look who the
other candidate is. If Temelathe really wants you to be seraaliste,
Raven, all he'd have to do is rule that we can't add late
candidates. He's head of the Watch Council, he can do it. And then
we get Daithef as our
seraaliste
."
Ȝe smiled, not
pleasantly. "I think you'd run, Raven, don't you?"

"I'm not going to
run for anything," Warreven said.

Malemayn said, "Still,
the idea of Daithef as
seraaliste
is enough to give me chills. I hope they're still able to nominate
someone else."

"They'd better,"
Warreven said. "Besides, why would Temelathe want to see me
Stiller's
seraaliste
?
We've been butting heads with the White Stanes since we opened the
office. He knows we don't agree with his policies."

"You've done him
favors before," Haliday said.

"Not like this,"
Warreven answered.

"It doesn't make a
lot of sense," Malemayn said.

Warreven shook his
head. "It doesn't make any sense at all."

The monophone chimed
twice, then twice again. Malemayn made a face and reached for it,
flipping the switch to accept the connection. "Malemayn Stiller."
His eyebrows rose, and he touched the mute button at the base of the
junction box. He held out the handset to Warreven. "It's for you.
The Most Important Man."

Warreven reached for it
automatically, then shook his head. "Patch it to my console, will
you? I think I need to sit down for this one."

Malemayn gave a snort
of laughter, and Warreven slipped past him into the cramped cubicle
that served him in lieu of a private office. The work surfaces were
drifted with papers and the shell-disks that their ancient computers
used; more disks had accumulated on top of the main drive box and on
the primary display as well. He moved a pile away from the monophone
and reached for the handset cautiously, as if it would bite. Malemayn
was watching over the low wall, and Warreven nodded.

"Putting you
through," Malemayn said, and the next instant, Warreven heard the
faint static of an open line.

"Warreven Stiller."

"Raven." There was
no mistaking Temelathe's voice, low and mellow as tempered
chocolate. "How are you these days?"

"Well, thank you,
mir," Warreven answered, and added, knowing it would be expected, "I
trust you're the same?"

"Well enough, my
son."

Warreven made a face at
the old endearment. It was traditional, meaningless, but it also held
echoes of Temelathe's comment at Aldess's reinstatement--and was
that what he wanted, introducing me to what's-his-name, Kolbjorn,
from Kerendach? Warreven wondered suddenly. And referring to me as
his might-have-been daughter-in-law would be just one more way of
re-minding me of old obligations. Of course, if it hadn't been me
who would become the wife, I might've been tempted, and Temelathe
won't have forgotten that, either. Temelathe never forgot anything,
to the smallest detail, and Warreven was uneasily aware of memories,
the child, the adolescent he had been, waiting to be invoked.

"But I'll get to
the point," Temelathe went on, "and I do apologize for the haste
of it. I'm told you want to withdraw your name from the election
list."