Necessity's Child (Liaden Universe®) by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee Page B

there was a school here, until Mike Golden told me about it. He said that some of the Bosses are . . . concerned for the safety of their heirs. If I attended, he said, then it would make your work easier, because—”
    He stopped, because his mother had risen and gone over to her desk, where she pressed what must have been a key on a comm unit.
    “Mr. Golden?” Her voice was perfectly level.
    “Yes, ma’am?”
    “I wonder if you might join me and my son in my office.”
    “Is there a problem, ma’am?”
    “Why no, Mr. Golden—why would you think there was a problem? Merely, I wish that you will explain the process of your thought.”
    There was a small sound that might, Syl Vor thought, have been a chuckle, then came Mike Golden’s voice once more.
    “I’ll be right in, ma’am.”
    * * *
    “If the gadje is in a hurry,” Vylet said, the cards twinkling between her dark fingers like stars, “then offer the one-draw. Like this.” The deck vanished into one palm and appeared again in a wide fan between both hands.
    “One card, to know what the rest of the day will bring?” she asked the pretend gadje they practiced upon. When she spoke to the gadje , her voice was husky and low, not at all like her normal voice. That was part of the fleez —the voice, the cards, the hat or scarf half over the face, like so , to make it harder to judge an age; the way to stand—shoulders round, head cocked to a side, like an old, wise bird.
    “Pull one—just one—the card that speaks to you,” Vylet continued, pushing the fan toward the pretended gadje . “Draw it, show it. I will tell you what it means.”
    The pretend gadje drew a card, as instructed. Vylet let her eyes widen, and dropped her voice, so that the gadje would need to draw close, to hear.
    “You draw the double moons!” Vylet whispered huskily, and then, in her normal voice, asked, “What do the two moons mean, Kezzi?”
    “Good dinner and a dry place to sleep,” Kezzi recited impatiently, and sighed. “Why do we care what the cards mean ,” she asked, “when it is only for the gadje ?”
    Vylet stood up straight and closed the deck with a snap .
    “It matters because it is the art ,” she said sternly. “The art must be true.”
    “Even the art we make for the gadje ?” Kezzi asked.
    “Art must always be true,” Droi said from her place by the lamp, where she was mending a torn finger on her glove. She looked up and gave Vylet the particular stare that meant she should listen, too.
    “Our smallest sister asks well. We lie to the gadje in everything else, why say the true meaning of the cards they draw? It is wasted—the memorizing, and the art. Isn’t it?”
    She looked from one to the other. Vylet made no answer, but Kezzi crossed the room and knelt a little behind Droi, so as not to block her light.
    “I know the cards don’t see,” she said, carefully, because Droi was what the Bedel call vey —not blind, as the gadje were blind; not sighted as the luthia —or even Udari. Droi—Droi saw some thing, and sometimes the things she saw made her angry. She had shared a promise with Vanzin, until she saw some thing in the shadows, which had made her draw her knife to cut him.
    “The cards don’t see,” Vylet agreed, dropping to her knees a prudent distance from Droi’s needle. “There is no power in the cards. The cards are therefore not for the Bedel, who have no need.”
    This was all True Saying, and Droi rocked as she stitched, in agreement.
    “Chief among those things that the Bedel do not need,” she said, “is to be caught . The gadje do not like to be tricked. Tell me this, little sister: Suppose you had the reading of the cards in the City Above tomorrow. One came and took the single—the twin moons, as Vylet’s gadje did just now. And you say to them, ‘Oh, the double moons! You must watch behind, and count what money you are given three times!’”
    “I suppose this,” Kezzi said. “And then?”
    “And then,