Certain Symmetry by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

matter of course on every quarter-day, nor from the
equally demented belief that his very presence held her proof
against whatever predations she imagined that Hia Cyn yo'Tonin
intended to visit upon her.
    Though, Pat Rin allowed, fixing the sapphire
in his ear, to be wary of Hia Cyn yo'Tonin proved Betea sen'Equa to
be a woman of sense, however late in her life.
    It had taken all of his powers of
persuasion, and not a little High House hauteur to wring the
information he required from Betea after he had given his word to
attend this evening's festivities.
    The tale she had told was a simple one, nor
was Fal Den the first to come away from an acquaintance with Betea
sen'Equa lighter by certain equities and certificates of stock.
    It would have seemed simple thievery, and
the lady herself the final culprit, yet there was another player in
the game, whose presence muddied the score considerably.
    As Betea told it, her first meeting with Hia
Cyn yo'Tonin was mere chance. Pat Rin, who knew the man, doubted
this, but had not thought it appropriate to interrupt the lady's
account with his private speculations.
    In any case, Hia Cyn, through design or
mischance, came into the orbit of Betea sen'Equa and very quickly
showed her how she might increase profits. Betea had ambitions, Pat
Rin learned, but not much understanding of the ways of what she
termed 'the high world'.
    Hia Cyn brought to her young people--mostly
young men--who were slightly in awe of the gaming world, and
slightly in awe of her, she who was tall and exotic, and who held
modest court within her own houses.
    The games were--initially--honest, with
small friendly wagers. But after a time, the stakes would alter. In
the private parlors, the victims would play for small sums until
some point of melant'i or other would be brought into the
conversation and slowly the net would be drawn about them.
Carefully, then, while served sympathetic portions of wine, or
perhaps one of Hia Cyn's special cigarillos, the mark would be
brought to promise against their quartershare, or against their
inheritance. Especially, Hia Cyn liked them to promise something
that would come to them only when the person immediately before
them in their Clan's line of succession came to die.
    Thus the stakes were things like quitclaims
to islands, access codes to small and private lodges, the
desperately secret formula of some proprietary process.
    This, she learned later; she had delivered
the first few keywords and certificate numbers to Hia Cyn without
ever knowing what they were, earning thereby what he was pleased to
call a "finder's fee." In cash.
    No one ever came back to her and confronted
her with their loss, which for a time fed the comforting illusion
that what she dealt in were "might-happens" of no value.
    Alas, she was not a lady who allowed herself
to repose long in ignorance. If what she gained for Hia Cyn was
worthless, she reasoned, why then was she paid to procure it?
    And so she finally learned that these items
promised at late night in the heat of play were more than a
gambler's losses. They became the very evidence of a
threat--perhaps a mortal threat!--to a person of melant'i. As such,
they were bought back with ridiculous ease, often with items or in
amounts the victims themselves suggested--things that were in one
way or another extremely liquid and little prone to tracking.
    Knowledge should have set her free, for
surely even Nameless Port-folk might report larceny to the
Proctors. However, Betea weighed the risk of being implicated along
with Hia Cyn and the all-too-probable outcome of being found the
sole offender, and did not call the Proctors. In any wise, she
said, the trade was slowing down. Indeed, for several relumma, Hia
Cyn introduced her to no one new.
    And then, at the beginning of the present
relumma, he had brought Fal Den ter'Antod to her attention.
    "And now he has died," Betea had said,
stone-faced in the office above her modest gambling house. "None of
the