Colemenoport
Offices of the
Tree-and-Dragon Trade Mission
“Trader, may I speak with you?”
Padi looked up from her screen. She had scarcely been needed over the last couple of days, and as a result had been able to make good progress with her reading for the route audit certification. In fact, she had just been about to take the half-course self-test when Jes had arrived at her desk.
She marked her place and smiled.
“I am at your disposal. Please sit. Will you like tea? Cake?”
Jes smiled, looking . . . somewhat less energetic than was her wont, and sat in the chair next to Padi’s desk.
“No tea, I thank you, and I believe I have had a sufficiency of cake.”
“I am familiar with the feeling,” Padi assured her. She leaned back in her chair and spun slightly so that Jes had her whole face.
“Service?” she murmured.
Jes sighed.
“We,” she said, “have a problem.”
“Ah.” Padi tipped her head. “It is, you know, running very close to schedule.”
Jes laughed lightly.
“I suppose it is. And really, what savor is there in unchallenged success?”
“Exactly. What is our problem?”
“You will recall that we had good interest from a number of city-based accounting firms, and I had made appointments to speak with several.”
Jes paused. Padi waited.
“The case is that none of those appointments have been kept. No one contacted me to cancel or to reschedule, mind you; they simply did not arrive. While one overwhelmed or rude person might exist in any particular set of persons, to have chosen all the unmannered accountants in the city at one go . . . ” She took a breath. “I called those who had not kept their appointments, to find if we had perhaps sinned against custom . . . ” She faltered.
“And no one will speak with you,” Padi said. “I have seen this.”
“Yes, of course, and so have I, only I had not hoped to see it now.”
“The question is, why are we seeing it?” Padi said. “In the past, the reason had been undue influence from those who wished us ill. Have we made an enemy among the city firms? Someone perhaps who—”
She stopped.
“Trader?” Jes murmured.
“Yes, your pardon. I was only reminded that I had taken a meeting with one Zandir kezlBlythe, who had been quite put out that she was not to speak with the master trader, and who was quite clear that the trade mission will need contacts in the city, which she was uniquely positioned to provide.”
She took a breath, and met Jes’s eyes.
“She felt it necessary to relieve her feelings by—I will say, throwing something—at my shields.”
Jes frowned.
“Were you injured, Trader?”
“A headache only. I am assured that my shields are prodigious. Had it been otherwise, I might, indeed, have been injured. As it was, her effort left a mark—and now I am doubting the wisdom of having repaired it.”
“This, I apprehend, is why the master trader desired me to ask after kezlBlythe at the business associations,” Jes said. “They have a syndicate in the city, and a friend in the chair of the business association, who assured me that they were our best option, and would make my work light.”
Padi sighed.
“So we have sinned against custom,” she said. “Is it a leap to think that the kezlBlythe Syndicate has put pressure on the independents with whom you made contact?”
“It seems a reasonable assumption. The question that remains is, what shall we do? The master trader’s instructions were clear.” Jes paused. “Do you think Dyoli might be able to See the repair you made to your shields—understand, I am speaking from an excess of ignorance!—and judge from that how much force was brought against you?”
“I will ask her,” Padi said. “In the meanwhile, let me call our liaison and lay the kezlBlythe before him.”
“Excellent.” Jes stood. “I’ll send Dyoli down to see you, shall I?”
“Yes, thank you, Jes.”
* * *
Majel ziaGorn was not immediately available to answer the comm. Padi left a message, asking that he call the trade mission at his earliest convenience, and turned to find Dyoli leaning against the table.
“Jes said you had taken a strike on your shields. When was this?”
“The morning of the day after Jes and Dil Nem joined us,” Padi said. “I had taken the master trader’s meetings—”
“And came back to us worn and full of information about how the environment on Colemeno operates on Gifted individuals. I remember.”
“I found, somewhat later, that my shields had been hit—it Looked rather like someone had thrown a stone with an appreciable amount of force.”
Dyoli’s eyebrows rose.
“You were able to See that?”
“Yes. I made a mirror—though I hope you will not ask me to show you how it was done, because I swear to you that I don’t know!”
Dyoli laughed. “No, I won’t do anything so cruel. Though I will, if you like, show you how I do it.”
“That might be illuminating, thank you. You should be aware that there is a large scar on my shields, from a previous strike. My thought was that it would serve as a warn-away, and yet—”
“Some people simply will not take a hint,” said Dyoli. “I’m to understand that you repaired this second strike?”
“One does not,” Padi said modestly, “like to boast.”
“That would be bad form, I agree,” Dyoli said, standing up out of her lean. “If you please, sit down, close your eyes, and visualize a white wall, by which I mean, try not to think about anything.”
“A challenge!” Padi murmured. Still, she did as Dyoli asked, bringing a blank wall before her mind’s eye, and focused her attention on her breath.
“Just the thing,” Dyoli said, and then did not say anything for a heartbeat or two.
“I See the previous strike, and I tell you frankly that it would warn me away. Otherwise, I—no. There is a newly polished area just to the left.”
“That’s it,” Padi said.
“Allow me a moment . . . ” Dyoli said.
Padi raised the white wall again, and brought her attention back to her breath.
Colored ribbons had begun to paint the surface of the wall before Dyoli spoke again.
“Open your eyes, please, Padi.”
She did. Dyoli was sitting on the edge of the table, pale brows pulled, and a definite air of weariness about her.
Padi rose immediately.
“I will get cake,” she said, “and tea.”
Dyoli looked up at her.
“Thank you,” she said. “Cake and tea would be most welcome.”
* * *
“You did an excellent job of repair,” Dyoli said, after she had dispatched a slice of cake and washed it down with tea.
Padi considered her.
“Why do I think that means you were not able to identify the original damage?”
“Possibly because that is what I had meant to say.” Dyoli reached for the pot and refreshed her cup, and Padi’s, too.
“What I may offer at this point is an opinion based on experience. Your shields are, indeed, formidable. The scar you have chosen not to erase is from a blow so powerful, it must have been intended to kill or unmind you on the spot. Does this understanding reflect what you know of your attacker?”
Padi drew a hard breath, remembering.
“She had other prey in her eye,” she said slowly. “And I was interfering.”
“So.” Dyoli sipped tea. “Extrapolating from that, I judge that the smaller strike may have been an attempt to influence you to perform some action that you might not otherwise attempt—or possibly to ensure that you would without fail act upon a suggestion that had been made.”
Padi put her teacup down with a sharp click.
“Have I hit near the mark?”
“You have struck the very center. A moment—”
She closed her eyes, and sent herself back to that moment in memory, the woman sitting at the table, the thoughtful glance, the question of her own melant’i—
“She said, ‘You will tell the master trader that it will be very much to his advantage to come to my office in the city, so that we may reach an agreement regarding a mutually beneficial business arrangement.’”
She opened her eyes, and met Dyoli’s pale gaze.
“At that moment, I heard—something—a ping, as of a stone thrown at a wall and bouncing away . . . And my head hurt until—until I did tell the master trader, precisely that, as part of my report.”
She frowned.
“Which I would have done in any case.”
Dyoli said nothing.
“Well, it’s perfectly nonsensical!” Padi said, hotly. “There was not the least need to compel me to do my duty to the master trader.”
“I have observed,” Dyoli said, “that those without honor tend to assume that it means as little to others as it does to them.”
Padi blew out a breath, and glared for a moment, over Dyoli’s shoulder, at the blameless buffet.
When she had her temper in hand, she picked up her teacup and met Dyoli’s eyes.
“It’s all of a piece. Even had the master trader’s policy allowed, we would not at all wish to do business with the kezlBlythe interests. That much is plain.”
She drank off what was left of her tea, and put the cup down, more gently this time.
“One does wonder after local custom. The kezlBlythe have been allowed to flourish. Why have they not been brought to book? Are threats and compulsion the usual way of business being done in Haven City?” She sighed sharply. “We need advice.”
“We do. Also—you ask excellent questions that bear on the trade mission and the master trader’s long-term plans,” Dyoli said. “However, I feel that I should point out that—we have no proof that threats and compulsion are in play.”
Padi stared at her.
“Because I repaired my shields?”
“That is one factor. The other is that Jes does not have proof that intimidation is at work, or, if it is, that it is the kezlBlythe Syndicate which has brought pressure to bear. It seems to her—and to me, and, I gather, to you!—that the reason for these sudden cancellations and refusals to take calls is intimidation. What we are seeing matches a pattern familiar to you and to Jes. There is no doubt that something has put itself against the mission’s best interest.
“Suspicion is not enough. We need to know.”
“Which means that we need to meet with the kezlBlythe,” Padi said, and suddenly smiled. “Well, it is what she had wanted, after all! Why should we not give it to her?”