With Stars Underfoot (Adventures in the Liaden Universe®) Read Online Free Page A

again. "I have perhaps done you no favor, child, in unmaking the choice you had made, if safety is what you need above all."
      "Perhaps," she said, and straightened out of his embrace, showing him a wet face, and eyes as calm as dawn. "Perhaps not." She inclined her head. "All honor, Healer. With your permission, I will retire, and tend my garden of choices while I dream."
      He showed her to the tiny guest room, with its thin bed and single window, giving out to the moonlit garden, then returned to the great room.
      For a few heartbeats, he stood, staring down into the cold hearth. It came to him, as from a distance, that it wanted sweeping, and he knelt down on the stones and reached for the brush.
    * * *
    "Mil Ton." A woman's voice, near at hand. He stirred, irritable, muscles aching, as if he had slept on cold stone.
      "Mil Ton," she said again, and he opened his eyes to Endele per'Timbral's pale and composed face. She extended a hand, and helped him to rise, and they walked in companionable silence to the kitchen for tea.
      "Have you decided," he asked her, as they stood by the open door, inhaling the promise of the garden, "what you shall do?"
      "Yes," she said softly. "Have you?"
      "Yes," he answered—and it was so, though he had not until that moment understood that a decision had been necessary. He smiled, feeling his heart absurdly light in his breast.
       "I will return to Solcintra. Tereza writes that there is work for me, at the Hall."
      "I am glad," she said. "Perhaps you will come to us, when you are settled. He would like it, I think—and I would."
      He looked over to her and met her smile.
      "Thank you," he said softly. "I would like it, too."

    —END—
    In Stars from DAW books, August 2003
----
     

Lord of the Dance
     
    IT WAS SNOWING, of course.
      The gentleman looked out the window as the groundcar moved quietly through the dark streets. His streets.
       And really , he said to himself irritably, you ought to be able to hit upon some affordable way of lighting them .
      "What are you thinking, Pat Rin?" His lady's voice was soft as the snow, her hand light on his knee. And he was a boor, to ignore her most welcome presence in worries over street lamps.
      He leaned back in the seat, placed his hand over hers, and looked into her dark eyes.
      "I was thinking how pretty the snow is," he murmured.
      She laughed and he smiled as the car turned the corner—and abruptly there was light, spilling rich and yellow from all of the doors and windows of Audrey's whorehouse, warming the dark sidewalks and spinning the snowflakes into gold.
    * * *
    "Boss. Ms. Natesa." Villy bowed with grace, if without nuance, and pulled the door wide. "You honor our house."
      Great gods. Pat Rin carefully did not look at his lady as he inclined his head.
      "We are of course pleased to accept Ms. Audrey's invitation," he murmured. "It has been an age since I have danced."
      The boy smiled brilliantly. "We hoped you'd be pleased, sir." He pointed to the left, blessedly returning to a more Terran mode. "You can leave your coats in the room, there, then join everybody in the big parlor."
      "Thank you," Pat Rin said, and moved off as the bell chimed again, Natesa on his arm.
      "Who," he murmured, for her ear alone, "do you suppose has been tutoring Villy in the Liaden mode?"
      "Why shouldn't he be teaching himself?" she countered, slanting a quick, subtle look into his face. "He admires you greatly, master."
      "Most assuredly he does," Pat Rin replied, with irony, and paused before the small room which served as a public closet for the clients of Ms. Audrey's house. Natesa removed her hand from his arm and turned, allowing him to slip the long fleece coat from her shoulders. The remains of snowflakes