Necessity's Child (Liaden Universe®) Read Online Free PDF

deeds as if she had observed some other person perform them.
    “As the questions continued, however, the woman—Elid yos’Casin, she admitted no clan in either state. As the questions continued, she began to understand that she had performed the deeds she was describing, and she grew more and more disordered.
    “Anthora sensed a crisis, and withdrew her influence, thinking that the previous personality balance would readjust itself—”
    He stopped and swallowed.
    “She killed herself?” Nova asked softly.
    “She died, let us say,” Pat Rin answered. “Natesa . . .” Another swallow. “Natesa allows me to know that it was a bad death. As bad as any she has witnessed.”
    Now, there was a statement that must give pause, coming as it did from one who had earned her gun-name.
    “So now there are seven,” Nova said softly, “and Otts Clark.”
    “Who must be confined for his own protection. The delm was not pleased—the less so, when Natesa provided coordinates, and a name, which Elid yos’Casin had offered. At the moment, all eight are remanded to the care of the Scouts, and there are Healers on watch at all hours, in the event that any of those remaining should seek to embrace their geas.”
    “These are Korval’s enemy,” Nova said. “They will not stop until we—or they—are no more.”
    “It would seem so. Though the Healers may eventually perfect a therapy . . .”
    Surebleak would be the garden spot of the Daiellen Sector before the Healers could perfect such a therapy, Nova thought, and she shivered, there in the warm room.
    “How do we dare this?” she asked suddenly. “Any of this? How do we dare to come out from Jelaza Kazone and walk the streets. How do we dare to bring our children into danger?”
    “Was our enemy more reticent, on the homeworld?” Pat Rin asked—and she started, having not realized that she had spoken aloud. “And now we are on guard, are we not? Our children are informed of their danger, and they are neither incompetent nor fools. Nor are we, I hope, fools. And as much as I may not guess its ultimate intent, I do not believe that the Tree is a fool. As for the rest—why, Cousin, do you forget yourself?”
    She looked up at the smile in his voice, saw the outstretched hand and placed hers into his.
    “We dare because we must,” Pat Rin said.
    “And who else,” Nova added, capping the line, “will dare for us?”
    * * *
    Directly after breakfast, before the first lessons of the day, that was when Syl Vor chose to dance. It wasn’t as much fun, without the others practicing, too, but there was the shadow-spar, after all, which was much the same as the unit at the Rock.
    Syl Vor did his warm-ups, and took his stance, allowing the shadow-spar to pick one of the stored routines at random. Grandfather had said that they had to take care not to do the dances always in the same order, or to only dance preferred routines, lest they grow stale and slow and less able to protect themselves and others.
    This morning the shadow-spar offered one of the speed dances. Syl Vor smiled and flowed into the pattern, quick-stepping, leaping, jabbing. At the end, he was breathing fast, his clothes sticky with sweat. The shadow-spar prompted him to cool down, and he turned from the unit to begin a series of stretches . . .
    . . . and blinked at the elder gentleman leaning against the wall, his sharp-featured face bearing an expression of distant interest.
    Syl Vor folded into a bow—honor to elder kin. “Granduncle Daav.”
    “Nephew,” the gentleman said, in his deep voice. “Pray continue.”
    Continue. Syl Vor took a breath, centered himself and began his cool-down set.
    Granduncle Daav was Grandaunt Kareen’s brother, Uncle Val Con’s father, who had been absent from clan and kin and Tree for all of Syl Vor’s lifetime—and more. He had been, until only recently, the stuff of stories.
    However so, he had been in-House when Syl Vor and Padi and Quin arrived from the Rock,