The Sardonyx Net Part 13

When he heard Zed's name, his shoulders hunched.

Rhani chose her next sentence carefully. "I enjoyed walking through Abanat with you today."

That brought no reaction. d.a.m.n it, she _hated_ it when he looked like that. One of the things she valued in him was his free spirit. With him, she had broken her careful rule, never to ask a slave about the past. Even with Tuli she had kept that rule. But it didn't seem to bother Dana to talk about Pellin, or his family. Maybe the ease with which he talked about his past meant he had reconciled himself to his future.

"Are you tired?" she said. "Does your head hurt?"

"No, Rhani-ka."

Rhani abandoned subtlety. "What's the matter?" she asked.

Dana said, "Does Zed really want me to sleep outside your door?"

"Oh, Zed." Rhani made a throw-away sweep of her hands. "He's getting on my nerves. Probably he does. But I don't want you to sleep outside my door. That would be uncomfortable."

Dana bowed his head. His hands knotted together. He said softly, "I will, though."

Rhani's temper flared. "Not if I tell you not to."

"If your brother tells me to, yes, Rhani-ka, I must."

"You forget," Rhani said icily. "_I own you_."

His yellow-ivory face grew automatonlike. Distantly, he answered, "Yes, Rhani-ka."

Oh no, Rhani thought, suddenly ashamed, I didn't want this. Her ill temper vanished. She laid a hand on Dana's forearm. "I'm sorry. That was ill- mannered of me. I know what an intolerable position you are in. You will not have to sleep outside my door. Don't worry about it. I'll speak to Zed." The rigidity of his muscles lessened. She was inordinately pleased that he did not flinch from her touch. He needed to be distracted. She beckoned him to the tall bedroom windows, holding the curtain aside. "Look."

The windows looked west, at the turquoise ocean and at the s.h.i.+ning bulk of the Abanat icebergs. They gleamed like crystal mountains in the sun.

Rhani felt Dana's tension leave him, as perceptibly as if the room temperature suddenly dropped. His hands lifted; his lips parted. He swayed toward the window in a graceful, unconscious gesture of flight.

He was not looking at the city, or at the sea, or at the ice.

He stared up, into the untrammeled depths of Chabad's sky.

Dana Ikoro slept badly that night.

He dreamed of Pellin, and then, a nightmare from which he woke crying, he dreamed about the Net. He had been on Chabad long enough to attune himself to its cycles, and his sense of temporal orientation told him that it was just after midnight. He turned the light on to drive the shadows from his mind. He felt restless, and also desperately tired. His body, less easy to discipline, was rebelling against the stern control he had put on his conscious mind: to wait, to watch, and above all not to fight. The luck would turn his way. A chance would come.

A hundred desperate schemes ran through his mind: to steal a bubble, to hide away on a shuttles.h.i.+p, to somehow get to _Zipper_. He told himself that every slave on Chabad had such thoughts. He turned off the light.

At breakfast, Amri, happily chattering, mentioned that Zed was not in the house. "He went back to the landingport to find that bag the porters lost."

Good, Dana thought. I hope it takes them hours to find it. It seemed to him that whole household breathed more easily when Zed was out of the house. He did. He could deal with Rhani; saving her life had earned him her trust. But Zed -- he s.h.i.+vered inwardly. He knew d.a.m.n well that Zed did not trust him.

He knew that Zed was right.

Amri stared at him, troubled by his sudden silence. He grinned and crossed his eyes. Amri laughed. He took another piece of fruit from the bowl.

Suddenly, he had an appet.i.te. Corrios came into the kitchen from the hall, his big hands filled with paper. "Mail," he said. He gestured upwards with a jerk of his thumb.

"I'll take it," Dana said.

Approaching her room, he heard Rhani talking to Binkie. She sounded out of sorts. He knocked and stepped into the bedroom. Rhani was pacing the length of the s.p.a.ce. She turned to glare at him. "Mail, Rhani-ka."

She riffled through it. "More party invitations," she said with contempt.

"All they do in Abanat is go to parties. Do something with this junk."

Binkie took the pile out of her hands. In a noncommittal voice, he said, "There's a letter here from Dur house."

"Let me see it." She read it swiftly. "Ferris Dur requests permission to call upon me this afternoon. Thank you very much. I suppose I must say yes. Am I supposed to do something else this afternoon?"

"The manager of the Yago Bank respectfully asks to see you at your convenience."

"So he can waste time telling me he's making a profit? That's what I employ him for, to make a profit." Binkie said nothing. Rhani sighed. "Ah, well.

I will send him a personal note fixing a time." She went to her desk. "And I should write to Ferris. There is paper here but no pen. Binkie, give me something with which I can write!"

Binkie handed her a pen. She scribbled two letters, and sealed them with a blue stamp bearing the Yago "Y." Suddenly she glanced at Dana, and smiled a rueful, deprecating smile. "I have the disposition of a kerit today. Binkie has been listening to me all morning. It's Abanat. I hate Abanat. I miss my garden."

The printer whirred: the same soft sound as in her bedroom at the estate: a soothing noise. "I hope you slept better than I did. Have you been outside the house?"

"Not since yesterday, Rhani-ka."

"How are you going to escort me around a city you don't know anything about?"

This seemed to have no answer.

"What have you been doing this morning?"

"I ate breakfast, Rhani-ka."

She gazed at him, her head c.o.c.ked a fraction to one side. "And now what will you do? Make beds?" She rubbed her chin. In a softer voice she said, "Binkie, let me have copies of the last four bank reports."

"Yes, Rhani-ka."

"And when you have done that, go outside. Take Dana with you. Show him how to use the city maps, and then you may separate to deliver these notes. Take your time. You work very hard, and you don't get holidays, or time to be alone, very much."

Binkie said, "Thank you, Rhani-ka." His tone was even, but his face blazed with joy. As he leaned over the computer keyboard, his hands shook.

Dana pictured Zed returning to find Rhani alone, her bodyguard out.

"Rhani-ka, perhaps I should -- "

"Perhaps you should both do as you are told," she said. Binkie handed her a stack of records. "Thank you, Bink. I have work to do, if you don't mind." It was clearly a dismissal. Dana shrugged, and walked out. He waited for Binkie to join him in the hall.

Downstairs, he remembered to pluck his sunshades from their hook. Corrios let them out. Heat rose from the pavement as he followed Binkie around the fenced-in park. The air was clean, dry, motionless, and very hot. Abanat streets were closed to all but foot traffic and the occasional emergency truck; travelers in a hurry rode the movalongs, which glided at the standard pace of ten kilometers per hour. The movalongs were jammed with gossamer-robed tourists.

Morning was market time in Abanat.

A block away from Founders' Green, Binkie stopped. The black sunshades against his pale skin made him appear to be wearing a mask. He handed Dana one of the letters. "That one's for the bank," he said. "It's about six blocks from here, the other side of the Boulevard." He pointed to what looked like a bas- relief sculpture set into a piece of wall. A stylus swung beside it from a chain. "I'll show you how to get there." He picked up the stylus. Dana recognized a pressure-sensitive map. "We're here. That's the Yago house on the other side of the park. The city is divided into quadrants by its two main streets: the north-south street, the Promenade, and this east-west street, the Boulevard. The ocean's west. Auction Place is in the center of the city, where the avenues cross."

"The bank is -- "

"There."

"What's that square in the northwest quadrant?" Dana asked.

"Main Landingport."

"I've got it. Thanks." Binkie disappeared without a backward look into a gaggle of tourists. Dana looked in the other direction. Where Binkie went was his own business. He was not going to pry into anyone else's privacy, even in thought.

He went to the bank. The building was cool and filled with machines.

People shuffled through it; it echoed, like a vault. The pressure-sensitive maps were all over the city; there seemed to be one on every wall. It would be hard for a child to get lost in Abanat. He delivered the note. Taskless, he went out into the crowded street.

Perhaps the luck had turned; fickle fortune smiling at him, radiant and deadly as Chabad's sun, mocking him with this sudden and revocable gift of freedom. He glanced around the street. No one was looking at him. _"Take your time,"_ Rhani had said. He straightened his spine and lifted his head. He was a slave on an errand.

Mindful of the heat, he walked slowly north, toward Main Landingport.

Rhani listened as Dana and Binkie left the house. Like a cat waking, she shook herself. She was ashamed of her ill temper. She made herself pick up the topmost bank report. She worked through the first page. The second page blurred.

She could not seem to keep her attention on it.

Amri knocked. "Shall I straighten the room for you, Rhani-ka?"

"Yes, go ahead." She lifted the report. But the rustle of the sheets annoyed her. "Leave it. Go away," she snapped. Frightened, the girl scuttled off. Exasperated with herself, Rhani almost threw the paper to the floor. She laid it gently on the desk. She had not slept; she could not concentrate; none of this was Amri's fault.

It's Abanat, she thought. It distracts. She stood up. She could not be comfortable inside the grim old house. The park was close, a step. She would take a walk. Founders' Green was private and safe: the iron fence and the gates kept it cut off from idle traffic. Leaving her room, she went downstairs.

Corrios was in the hall. He grunted at her: it meant, "_All right?_"

"I'm fine," she said. Her sunshades hung from the hook. "I'm going for a walk."

Corrios stood in her path as she turned toward the door.

She had snapped at Amri; she would not snap at him. Gently, she said, "What is it?"

His face was distressed. "Don't."

"Don't what?" she said with heavy patience.

He jerked a thumb at the door.

Her pulse thudded. She said, "Did Zed tell you to lock me in?"

He shook his head.

"Then this is your own idea. It's a bad one."

He folded his arms. In the dim hallway, he was immeasurably bigger than she, a mountain. Rhani glared at him. Her fists clenched. "Corrios Rull, this is stupid. You are not going to keep me in if I want to leave." Her raised voice echoed down the hall.

He said nothing.

Tense with fury, Rhani said, "Very well. You've worked for Family Yago for fifty years. You'll lose that place in three seconds if you don't move from that door. One. Two." She opened her mouth to say, "Three." Corrios stepped aside. Rhani slid the door open and slammed it behind her.

She ran down the steps to the street, ears ringing with rage. She couldn't remember the last time she'd slammed a door. Sunlight fell like a hand upon her shoulders. She slowed. She unclenched her fingers, knuckle by knuckle.

Anger was a waste of time. She dusted her palms together. There. She was no longer angry. She crossed the street to the Green and walked along it, tapping the fence. Shaded by thick tree trunks, the iron spikes were cool. She heard the voices of children quarreling in the park. She changed her mind. She walked south, to the broad, crowded Boulevard.

The entertainers were out: jugglers, dancers, musicians all competing vigorously for the attention of the tourists. At one street corner, an ebony- skinned acrobat performed a graceful backbend, muscles rippling. Rhani stood and watched her for a while. At last she went on. Her head began to feel hot. She touched her hair; it was dry as Chabadese gra.s.s. She had forgotten how the light in Abanat ricocheted off walkways and walls and clothing, and she thought: Stupid, you should have brought a parasol.

Oh, well. If she wanted one, she could buy one. She sauntered down the Boulevard. Suddenly, across the street, she saw Dana. She lifted a hand to wave him to her. But the person -- who, she realized, was in fact _not_ him -- did not see the gesture, and walked quickly by. The apparition was disquieting. She walked another block, and seeing where her feet had carried her, started to smile. She faced a gray house, much like her own. But someone had carved an axe, posed to strike, on the facade, in place of her own Yago "Y."

She went to it, knocked, and was admitted.

The Dur house smelled of wax, the wax of beeswax candles, imported from Belle. Domna Sam had burned them profligately, preferring them even to sunlight.

Over the years the smell had soaked into the walls and curtains and rugs of the house and even into the stone sh.e.l.l itself. A slave ran within to announce her; a second slave ushered her through the front hall to the parlor. Ferris Dur rose to greet her. He was taller than she, and bulky -- loose-fleshed, she thought.

He had the pale complexion of someone who has spent little time in the sun.

In that, Rhani thought, if in nothing else, he resembles his mother. He had brown eyes, too, like Domna Sam. She had not thought very much of him, Rhani knew. "He plays with toys!" she had said once. "Toys, from a Dur!" Rhani had no idea what she had meant. Ferris was reaching to grasp her hand. She pressed his briefly, and drew her fingers back. He seemed to want to hold on to them.

"Rhani Yago," he said. "I just received your message. This is a pleasant surprise. Please be seated."

"Thank you," Rhani said. She glanced around the parlor. It was not a room she knew; Domna Sam had always invited visitors upstairs to her bedroom. Ferris had turned the room into his office, with desk and com-unit. It was filled with dark, heavy furniture and portraits of long-dead Durs. It had to be the only room in the house that didn't smell of candles. She sat in a chair. A slave came in with a platter of food and a decanter of chilled wine.

Rhani said, "I hope I haven't upset the workings of your household." The slave poured the wine. She wore a broad dorazine smile.

"My household would be in poor straits if it could not accommodate itself to a visit from Rhani Yago." Ferris snapped his fingers; the slave withdrew.

"Are you comfortable?"

"Yes, thank you," Rhani said. She sipped the wine. "This is delicious."

Ferris flushed with pleasure. He was wearing a red robe, trimmed with kerit fur. He stroked the fur lightly. "I hope all is well with Family Yago."

Sweet mother, Rhani thought, is he always this stilted and formal? No wonder his mother couldn't bear to have him around! Let's see: I'm facing a dorazine shortage, the kerits are dying at Sovka, and people are trying to kill me. Matching Ferris' formal tone, she said, "Quite well, thank you. I hope all is well with Family Dur."

"Nothing's wrong that I can't handle," he said sharply. He smoothed the robe again. The unconscious gesture seemed to calm him.

Rhani said, "I admire your self-confidence."

He peered at her, and she realized that he thought, or feared, that she was making fun of him. What a silly, awkward man! She said, "Ferris, were you coming to see me this afternoon on a social visit?"

He shook his head. "No. I rarely make social calls."