A Liaden Universe® Constellation: Volume Two Read online

  Thirty-three shorter tales of the Liaden Universe® brought together for the first time in two mega-volumes. Fifteen tales complete Volume Two!

  The nationally best-selling Liaden Universe® novels are treasured by space opera aficionados for their wit, world-building, strong characterizations, tender romance, and edge-of-the-chair action.

  Since 1995, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller also created shorter tales, illuminating additional facets of the Liaden experience. Here is a vast tapestry of tales of the scouts, artists, traders, priestesses, sleight of hand magicians, and pilots who fill the Liaden Universe® with the excitement, action, and romance that readers of the hit series have come to adore.

  A LIADEN UNIVERSE ® CONSTELLATION: VOLUME 2

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  “Veil of the Dancer” originally appeared in Absolute Magnitude #19, Summer/Fall 2002.

  “Quiet Knives” originally appeared in Quiet Knives, SRM Publisher, Ltd., November 2003. “This House” originally appeared in Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian, edited by Janis Ian and Mike Resnick, DAW, August 2003. “This House” lyrics used with permission of the author. “Lord of the Dance” originally appeared in With Stars Underfoot, SRM Publisher, Ltd., November 2004. “Necessary Evils” originally appeared in Necessary Evils, SRM Publisher, Ltd., November 2005. “The Beggar King” originally appeared in Necessary Evils, SRM Publisher, Ltd., November 2005. “Fighting Chance” originally appeared in Women of War, edited by Tanya Huff and Alexander Potter, DAW, July 2005. “Prodigal Son” originally appeared in Allies, SRM Publisher, Ltd., November 2006. “Daughter of Dragons” originally appeared in Dragon Tide, SRM Publisher, Ltd., December 2007. “Dragon Tide” originally appeared in Dragon Tide, SRM Publisher, Ltd., December 2007. “Shadow Partner” originally appeared in Eidolon, SRM Publisher, Ltd., November 2008. “Persistence” originally appeared in Eidolon, SRM Publisher, Ltd., November 2008. “Misfits” originally appeared in Jim Baen’s Universe, December 2007. “Hidden Resources” originally appeared in Halfling Moon, SRM Publisher, Ltd., December 2009. “Moon on the Hills” originally appeared in Halfling Moon, SRM Publisher, Ltd., December 2009. “Skyblaze” originally appeared in Skyblaze, SRM Publisher, Ltd., February 2011.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. Liaden Universe® is a registered trademark.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4516-3944-5

  Cover art by Stephen Hickman

  First Baen printing, January 2014

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Foreword

  Writers make money, naturally enough, by selling what they write.

  Mostly, if the writers in question are wild and crazy freelance fiction writers, like ourselves, we write the story that’s begging to be written . . . and then we submit it to various venues, hoping that one will send us a check and print the story.

  Sadly, most of the stories writers produce in this way are never purchased and published. This is not, necessarily, because the stories are bad stories, but because there are too many stories, and not enough venues to offer them homes.

  Now, we . . .

  But wait. “We” are Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, and together we’ve written (as of Right Now, which is the end of April 2012) twenty novels, most of them set in a fictional place called the Liaden Universe®, a space-opera geography of our own devising.

  We’ve also written dozens of short stories in that same universe. You’re holding the second volume of those stories in your hand right now. The total number of stories collected in both volumes is . . . thirty-three.

  Most of those stories—in fact, all but ten—first appeared in chapbooks published by SRM Publisher, Ltd., a micropublisher that we owned. From 1995 to 2011, we annually published at least one chapbook containing a novella, or two (rarely three) short stories. Twenty-three of the stories first saw print in one of SRM’s Adventures in the Liaden Universe® chapbook.

  That means that all of our Liaden shorts made it into print. All of them.

  For this, we thank our fans. Without their encouragement and support, we might not have created the first chapbook. We certainly wouldn’t have created seventeen chapbooks.

  It’s worth saying here that this isn’t a solution that everyone can—or ought—to embrace. Saying more then would require an article—or a discussion panel.

  We do want to take a moment to talk about those ten stories—those ten lucky stories—that were placed with paying markets.

  Actually, we want to take a moment to talk about the markets.

  Between Summer of 1999 and Fall of 2002, Absolute Magnitude magazine published four Liaden Universe® stories: “Balance of Trade,” “A Choice of Weapons,” “Changeling,” and “Veil of the Dancer.”

  Absolute Magnitude was a market for space opera in the grand ol’ SF style. One of the stories we placed there—“Balance of Trade”—grew up to be a novel. Another—“Changeling”—showed up on the preliminary Nebula ballot.

  Absolute Magnitude is no longer a market.

  That means, it’s out of business.

  “A Matter of Dreams” appeared as a text story in the graphic serial publication, A Distant Soil #27. While Colleen Doran is still writing, drawing, and publishing this long-running and awesome comic, it’s no longer a market for text stories.

  In spring 2002, 3SF, a British magazine, purchased “Sweet Waters” for its premier issue. 3SF aimed to present quality stories from all over the science fiction and fantasy spectrum, at a variety of word lengths.

  3SF is no longer a market.

  Three of the remaining four stories were by invitation. An “invitation story” is a story that an editor has specifically asked to be written to fit the theme of an upcoming anthology or magazine issue.

  So, that’s “Naratha’s Shadow,” in Lee Martindale’s Such a Pretty Face; “This House,” in Janis Ian’s Stars anthology; “Fighting Chance” in Tanya Huff and Alex Potter’s Women of War.

  Theme anthologies are pretty often one-offs, and so it was with these. We had fun, we got paid; the anthologies, every one of them, are, excellent, but—not a repeat market.

  The last of the ten, “Misfits,” was also an invitation story, though we were allowed to pick our subject and write as long as the story needed. “Misfits” appeared in Jim Baen’s Universe . . .

  . . . which is no longer a market.

  You might be asking yourselves at this point just why we’re going on about this market thing at such length. Are we trying to tell you that publishing is a hard business, from almost any side you’d like stand on?

  Well . . . no.

  Everybody knows that while there are many benefits attached to writing as a career, riches beyond the wildest dreams of avarice is rarely one of them.

  And as for publishing, who hasn’t heard the old joke: “Hey! Know how to make a million bucks in publishing?

  “. . . Start with two million!”

  So, yes, publishing is hard; writing is hard, and yet . . . people—quite clever people who don’t really lack for common sense—continue to write, and continue to publish what others write.

  And you might ask yourself, with such a rate of failure and so many odds stacked against the entire crazy enterprise, why anyone would even make the attempt to become a writer or invest time, money and sweat to set up as a publisher.

  And the answer to that?

  Is love.

  Writers love to write. They love to tell stories. They love to tell you stories.

  Yeah, you.

  And publishers, most of them, most notably the small and indie publishers who haven’t been swallowed up by megacorps, they love to put stories into the hands of people who are going to enjoy them. They believe in stories; in the power of word and imagination.

  So that’s that. That’s why you have a compilation of sixteen short stories in your hand, twelve of them originally self-published—a tangible and visible collaboration of human love, and belief.

  For you.

  Enjoy.

  —Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

  Waterville, Maine

  April 2012

  Veil of the Dancer

  IN THE CITY OF Iravati on the world of Skardu, there lived a scholar who had three daughters, and they were the light and comfort of his elder years.

  Greatly did the scholar rejoice in his two elder daughters—golden-haired Humaria; Shereen with her tresses of flame—both of these born of the wives his father had picked out for him when he was still a young man. Surely, they were beautiful and possessed of every womanly grace, the elder daughters of Scholar Reyman Bhar. Surely, he valued them, as a pious father should.

  The third—ah, the third daughter. Small and dark and wise as a mouse was the daughter of his third, and last, wife. The girl was clever, and it had amused him to teach her to read, and to do sums, and to speak the various tongues of the unpious. Surely, these were
not the natural studies of a daughter, even the daughter of so renowned a scholar as Reyman Bhar.

  It began as duty; for a father must demonstrate to his daughters that, however much they are beloved, they are deficient in that acuity of thought by which the gods mark out males as the natural leaders of household, and world. But little Inas, bold mouse, did not fail to learn her letters, as her sisters had. Problems mathematic she relished as much as flame-haired Shereen did candied sventi leaves. Walks along the river way brought forth the proper names of birds and their kin; in the long-neglected glade of Istat, with its ancient sundial and moon-marks she proved herself astute in the motions of the planets.

  Higher languages rose as readily to her lips as the dialect of women; she read not only for knowledge, but for joy, treasuring especially the myths of her mother’s now-empty homeland.

  Seeing the joy of learning in her, the teaching became experiment more than duty, as the scholar sought to discover the limits of his little one’s mind.

  On the eve of her fourteenth birthday, he had not yet found them.

  * * *

  WELL THOUGH THE SCHOLAR loved his daughters, yet it is a father’s duty to see them profitably married. The man he had decided upon for his golden Humaria was one Safarez, eldest son of Merchant Gabir Majidi. It was a balanced match, as both the scholar and the merchant agreed. The Majidi son was a pious man of sober, studious nature, who bore his thirty years with dignity. Over the course of several interviews with the father and the son, Scholar Bhar had become certain that Safarez would value nineteen-year-old Humaria, gay and heedless as a flitterbee; more, that he would protect her and discipline her and be not behind in those duties which are a husband’s joy and especial burden.

  So, the price was set, and met; the priests consulted regarding the proper day and hour; the marriage garden rented; and, finally, Humaria informed of the upcoming blessed alteration in her circumstances.

  Naturally enough, she wept, for she was a good girl and valued her father as she ought. Naturally enough, Shereen ran to cuddle her and murmur sweet, soothing nonsense into her pretty ears. The scholar left them to it, and sought his study, where he found his youngest, dark Inas, bent over a book in the lamplight.

  She turned when he entered, and knelt, as befit both a daughter and a student, and bowed ’til her forehead touched the carpet. Scholar Bhar paused, admiring the graceful arc of her slim body within the silken pool of her robes. His mouse was growing, he thought. Soon, he would be about choosing a husband for her.

  But not yet. Now, it was Humaria, and, at the change of season he would situate Shereen, who would surely pine for her sister’s companionship. He had a likely match in mind, there, and the husband’s property not so far distant from the Majidi. Then, next year, perhaps—or, more comfortably, the year after that—he would look about for a suitable husband for his precious, precocious mouse.

  “Arise, Daughter,” he said now, and marked how she did so, swaying to her feet in a single, boneless move, the robes rustling, then falling silent, sheathing her poised and silent slenderness.

  “So,” he said, and met her dark eyes through the veil. “A momentous change approaches your life, my child. Your sister, Humaria, is to wed.”

  Inas bowed, dainty hands folded demurely before her.

  “What?” he chided gently. “Do you not share your sister’s joy?”

  There was a small pause, not unusual; his mouse weighed her words like a miser weighed his gold.

  “Certainly, if my sister is joyous, then it would be unworthy of me to weep,” she said in her soft, soothing voice. “If it is permitted that I know—who has come forward as her husband?”

  Reyman Bhar nodded, well-pleased to find proper womanly feeling, as well as a scholar’s thirst for knowledge.

  “You are allowed to know that Safarez, eldest son of Majidi the Merchant, has claimed the right to husband Humaria.”

  Inas the subtle, stood silent, then bowed once more, as if an afterthought, which was not, the scholar thought, like her. He moved to his desk, giving her time to consider, for, surely, even his clever mouse was female, if not yet full woman, and might perhaps know a moment’s envy for a sister’s good fortune.

  “They are very grand, the Majidi,” she said softly. “Humaria will be pleased.”

  “Eventually, she will be so,” he allowed, seating himself and pulling a notetaker forward. “Today, she weeps for the home she will lose. Tomorrow, she will sing for the home she is to gain.”

  “Yes,” said Inas, and the scholar smiled into his beard.

  “Your sisters will require your assistance with the wedding preparations,” he said, opening the notetaker and beginning a list. “I will be going to Lahore-Gadani tomorrow, to purchase what is needful. Tell me what I shall bring you.”

  Mouse silence.

  “I? I am not to be wed, Father.”

  “True. However, it has not escaped one’s attention that tomorrow is the anniversary of your natal day. It amuses me to bring you a gift from the city, in celebration. What shall you have?”

  “Why, only yourself, returned to us timely and in good health,” Inas said, which was proper, and womanly, and dutiful.

  The scholar smiled more widely into his beard, and said nothing else.

  * * *

  HUMARIA WEPT WELL INTO the night, rocking inside the circle of Shereen’s arms. At last, her sobs quieted somewhat, and Shereen looked to Inas, who sat on a pillow across the room, as she had all evening, playing Humaria’s favorite songs, softly, upon the lap-harp.

  Obedient to the message in her sister’s eyes, Inas put the harp aside, arose and moved silently to the cooking alcove. Deftly, she put the kettle on the heat-ring, rinsed the pot with warm water and measured peace tea into an infuser.

  The kettle boiled. While the tea steeped, she placed Humaria’s own blue cup on a tray, with a few sweet biscuits and some leaves of candied sventi. At the last, she added a pink candle, sacred to Amineh, the little god of women, and breathed a prayer for heart’s ease. Then, she lifted the tray and carried it to her sister’s couch.

  Humaria lay against Shereen’s breast, veils and hair disordered. Inas knelt by the end table, placed the tray, and poured tea.

  “Here, sweet love,” Shereen cooed, easing Humaria away from her shoulder. “Our dear sister Inas offers tea in your own pretty cup. Drink, and be at peace.”

  Shivering, Humaria accepted the cup. She bent her face and breathed of the sweet, narcotic steam, then sipped, eyes closed.

  Shereen sat up, and put her head scarf to rights, though she left the ubaie—the facial veils—unhooked and dangling along her right jaw.

  “Our young Inas is fortunate, is she not, Sister?” Humaria murmured, her soft voice blurry with the combined effects of weeping and the tea.

  “How so?” asked Shereen, watching her closely, in case she should suddenly droop into sleep.

  “Why,” said Humaria, sipping tea. “Because she will remain here in our home with our father, and need never marry. Indeed, I would wonder if a husband could be found for a woman who reads as well as a man.”

  Shereen blinked, and bent her head, fussing with the fall of the hijab across her breast. Inas watched her, abruptly chilly, though the night was warm and no breeze came though the windows that stood open onto the garden.

  “Certainly,” Shereen said, after too long a pause. “Certainly, our father might wish to keep his youngest with him as long as may be, since he shows no disposition to take another wife, and she knows the ways of his books and his studies.”

  “And certainly,” Humaria said, her eyes open now, and staring at Inas, where she knelt, feeling much like a mouse, and not so bold, so bold at all.

  “Certainly, on that blessed day when the gods call our father to sit with them as a saint in Heaven, my husband will inherit all his worldly stuffs, including this, our clever sister Inas, to dispose of as he will.”

  At her father’s direction, Inas had read many things, including the Holy Books and domestic law. She knew, with a scholar’s detachment, that women were the lesser vessel and men the god-chosen administrators of the universe the gods had created, toyed with and tired of.

  She knew that, in point of law, women were disbarred from holding property. Indeed, in point of law, women were themselves property, much the same as an ox or other working cattle, subject to a man’s masterful oversight. A man might dispose of subject women, as he might dispose of an extra brood cow, or of an old and toothless dog.