it might be read that way. Well.”
He was silent for a moment of study.
“ Arin’s Toss , out of Waymart, as all good ships must be out of Waymart. Owned by . . .” He paused, then looked to Daav, his face exquisitely bland. “Crystal Energy Consultants?”
“Thus my reluctance to probe further.”
“I understand. Perhaps the pilot will be forthcoming.”
“If a father may say it, she is rarely elsewise. Speaking of whom—has she broken the furniture from boredom yet?”
“When I stopped in the morning parlor just now, she was asleep on the window seat, with Merlin’s assistance.”
“Excellent,” Daav said, feeling not only his relief, but Aelliana’s.
“Indeed. Now.” Val Con straightened, and gave Daav a stern look from vivid green eyes. “What odds that the pilot’s sole reason for arriving here is yourself?”
“Low,” Daav returned promptly. “She had said whatever trouble she carries is complicated—and she is a truthful child. Her father vanishing from the arrangement she has known all her life is fairly straightforward, however distressing.”
“As I have cause to know.” Val Con sighed. “What part, if any, does the delm play in those matters that might lie between Theo Waitley and her father?”
“None at all. Theo and I shall deal between us, as we have always done.”
“Ah. And Theo’s mother?”
Daav glanced slightly aside.
“Your mother and I had just been discussing that.”
“That’s fortunate. I don’t suppose you’ve achieved a solving?”
“Alas,” Daav answered, and met Val Con’s eyes. “We were not, you know, a very good delm.”
“Yes, so I read in the Diaries, and so did Uncle Er Thom instruct me,” his son returned, with a certain amount of acid.
Seated, Daav bowed, allowing irony to be seen.
“If Theo should petition the delm for her father’s return?” Val Con asked after a moment.
“Korval does not command Kiladi,” Daav answered.
Val Con shook his head.
“No, that will not do! Should she ask, it will be in terms of her father , which leaves no room for melant’i games—and is precisely what I would ask, myself, were our positions reversed.”
Daav sighed. “If the delm will humor us—remand all questions and demands that Theo may put forth regarding her father to me. It is true that we have left some untidiness behind and would make what amends we might—but those difficulties are outside of the clan.”
There was a pause—a very long pause, as Daav reckoned it—before Val Con inclined his head.
“Unless and until the matter is brought specifically to the delm’s attention, you and Mother may pursue your own Balance,” he said. “But, mark me, Father; if it comes to Korval, it will be solved—and fully.”
“Of course,” Daav said, and smiled.
THREE
Jelaza Kazone
Liad
Tranza had the music playing on the open band again, Theo thought groggily. Not bad music, actually; something she almost recognized, cheerful and uncomplicated. She listened, drifting nearer to awake as she tried to place the—
“Pilot Waitley?” inquired a plummy male voice. Not Tranza , was her first thought. Her second was that there was an intruder on Primadonna and if that were so, Rig Tranza was either incapacitated or dead. She kept her eyes closed, though her heartbeat was suddenly loud in her ears.
“Pilot Waitley,” the voice said again. “The delm will see you now.”
She took a breath, remembered that she was on Liad at the house named Jelaza Kazone, waiting for the Delm of Korval to find time to solve her problems.
Which, according to the voice, they had.
Theo opened her eyes.
The room was just as she had seen it last, minus the grey cat, and the addition of a man-tall metal cylinder surmounted by an orange globe, with three articulated arms spaced eccentrically around the central cylinder.
“Good day, Pilot,” it said, the orange globe flickering. “I am Jeeves. Master Val Con asked me to escort you to