Trade Secret (eARC) Read Online Free PDF Page A

his father's death had, in a roundabout way, been ceded to him.
    Oh, the other thing that might be his birthright as Jethri Gobelyn? His father's relatives. They were still relatives as Terrans saw relations, and when thought on properly, they were something strange. What that meant for him, well, that was something Jethri, trader and changeling, would have to decide.
    He waved his hands at the keyboard, bringing his research screens to life, and lighting the reminders pad.
    He grimaced, then worked to erase that unfortunate expression from his face.
    Liadens rarely showed what they thought in their faces if they could avoid it, and he thought it one of the reasons that adult Terrans looked older than adult Liadens. Frown lines, and smile lines, too, were far less obvious on a Liaden face. To Liadens, most expressions were unfortunate, unless shared with a family member or a special, rare intimate.
    His manners tutor worked with him diligently on such points, and with a deep breath he relaxed both his face and his shoulders, lifting his elbow from the resting place that would, he knew, have a lasting impression from his time on the ship. He'd seen armrests on the Market marked with sweat and wear of decades, and had more than once as a child been accused of shirking his duties because of that Terran habit.
    Still, the reason for the grimace was not as easy to disappear from in front of his eyes as his face was to set bland: overdue correspondence, necessary action.
    He reviewed the list, knowing he was being hard on himself. Not all of the list was overdue, for many of items were voluntary. It was just that in the flow of his days, he'd not had time to focus on letters to Meicha and Miandra, nor to decide why he felt guilty about having more to say to one than the other, twin empaths that they were. Twins he'd known about before meeting the girls, but empath had been something new. Then there'd been the discovery that, twins or not, the girls were hardly interchangeable. Even with them knowing what he was thinking and knowing what each other was doing, they weren't the same person and had different goals . . .
    Letters would be hard--he sometimes wished there was some way he could just hold hands with both of them and let them know that way what he felt.
    Nor had he managed to work out what he wanted to say to Khat in a letter to her that might be as well said in a broadcast letter to the whole of the Market , but he felt that he had some slight reticence to share some things with the crew entire, as he had some things more personal, more intimate for Khat than the whole of the crew. For all that she'd taken on full adult status and certainly had cares of her own, she'd often been the easiest for him to talk to.
    More pressing was the correspondence he owed to his single business partner, and that had been more getting difficult as the distance between them and the time between infoshares had grown. In hopeful theory--if the minute details could be worked out, if the language could be made dense enough and stealthy enough and, face it, Liaden-tricky enough--Tan Sim might soon be employed as an associate trader on Elthoria.
    It was a bold idea, given the enmity between Ixin and Rinork, and it had been Jethri's innocent question about the propriety of him, an apprentice trader, hiring Tan Sim, a full trader, as an assistant that had begun the entire project. His mother had smiled at the idea at first, seeing it both an amusing and a confounding idea since it would of course be a Balance game of sorts, a winning of melant'i for both Jethri and Ixin, if Rinork's best young trader could be willfully brought to serve with Jethri at Jethri's behest.
    Ixin's needs were not simple in the situation, though, since a straight buyout from Rinork was unlikely, given the spite that had placed Tan Sim under the contract carrying him away from Wynhael, Rinork, and Rinork-to-be.
    The point of that contract had been to punish Tan Sim for his