Shadows and Shades (Adventures in the Liaden Universe®) Read Online Free PDF

squarely within his duty—and determining who might be a pilot, as well. He doesn't send you to the testing chamber only to plague you, child. If you were feeling more the thing, you'd see that."
      It was gently said, but Pat Rin felt the rebuke keenly. Yet Luken, as nearly all the rest of his kin, was a pilot. Granted, a mere third-class, and there had lately been a time when he would have given all of his most valued possessions, had he only been given in exchange a license admitting that Pat Rin yos'Phelium was a pilot, third class.
      He told himself he didn't care; that five failures would teach him the lesson Cousin Er Thom refused to learn.
      He told himself that.
      "Child?" murmured Luken.
      Pat Rin looked up and smiled, as best as he was able around the headache.
      "I hope I didn't disturb your rest when I came in last night," he said softly.
      Luken moved his shoulders. "In fact, I had been late in the showroom, and was just coming up myself when you were dispatched from your cab."
       Blast . He didn't remember that. Not at all.
      "I'm afraid that I was a trifle disguised, last night," he said, around a jolt of self-revulsion.
      "A trifle," Luken allowed. "I guided you to your room, we said our sleepwells and I retired."
       None of it. Pat Rin bit his lip.
      "I made rather a fool of myself last night," he said. "Not only did I fall into my cups, but then I was idiot enough to play cards—and lost most wonderfully, as you might expect."
      "Ah." Luken finished off his tea and put the glass aside. "You also told me last night, as we were negotiating the stairway, that you had come away early because a certain—pin'Weltir, I believe?—had become boorish in his insistence that you shoot against him, then and there. Which is not, perhaps, entirely idiot."
      He had already determined that for himself, but a part of him was eased, that Luken thought so, too.
      "Some things," he admitted, "I did correctly." He tipped his head, then, and shot a quick glance into Luken's face, where he found the gray eyes attentive
      "Do you care, father? The trade I have set myself to learn, that is."
      Luken spread his hands. "Why should I care? From all I understand, it's a difficult study you undertake in order to ascend the heights of a profession which is exhilarating and not without its moments of risk." He smiled. "I would expect, of course, that you will rise to become a master, if masters of the game there be."
      "Not—by that name," Pat Rin said, thinking of those who had undertaken his education. "But, yes. There are masters."
      "And you aspire to stand among them?"
      Well of course he did. Who of Korval, present or past, had not sought to stand among the masters of whatever profession or avocation they embraced? Certainly not Luken.
      "Yes," he said. "I do."
      "It is well, then," his foster father judged. "That you will mind your melant'i and keep the honor of your House pure, I have no need to ask."
      He paused for a moment, reaching absently to his empty glass, and letting his hand fall with a slight sigh. Pat Rin got up, bore the glass to the sideboard, refilled it and brought it back.
      "Gently done," Luken murmured, his thoughts clearly somewhere else. "My thanks."
      "It is my pleasure to serve you, father."
      "Sweet lad." He had a sip from the refilled glass and looked up.
      "I wonder if you've given thought to setting up your own establishment," he said. "It occurs to me that bin'Flora has a townhouse for lease in a location near the High Port."
      Most of Solcintra's gambling houses were located at the High Port. There were several residential streets just beyond the gate, none of them unsavory, though one or two not as ...fashionable... as they