Free Korval's Game by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee Page B

of a concert-quality instrument perfectly set in a room tuned for its unique voice, he went to the omnichora, sat on the bench and pressed the power plate.
    ***
    The wall he faced over the omnichora was mirrored.
    Val Con sighed, recalling the revulsion on several faces last night, despite the courtesy due a guest; wondering if he should have followed tel’Vosti’s hint and had the scar canceled.
    The scar was there for a reason, after all; he might have had the autodoc erase the wretched thing anytime during their voyage from Vandar. He had chosen to allow it to remain, a constant and sometimes painful reminder of the wages of foolishness.
    “No more than you traded for, young sir.” He heard Uncle Er Thom’s dry reproval in his mind’s ear, and half-smiled in agreement.
    It would be another matter entirely, he told himself, fingers adjusting stops and frequencies, had the cut failed to heal—or if one’s lifemate objected to the mar. But the wound was clean, as he had told tel’Vosti, and Miri made no objection.
    “No call,” Uncle Er Thom’s voice instructed him from memory, “to concern yourself with the comfort of non-kin. Korval acts upon its own necessities. Let others mind their melant’i.”
    “Yes, uncle,” he murmured, and touched the keyboard, softly playing the cool and logical line of his uncle’s musical signature, that the boy Val Con had composed many years ago. His ear caught a possibility in the old theme and he played on half-aware, letting his fingers find what they might.
    Let others mind their own melant’i. An old lesson, that; among the first. One kept one’s own care close, for clan, for servants, for kin . . . Val Con’s fingers faltered on the keys.
    Shan would be here—soon.
    Shan was his cha’leket, the brother of his heart. Shan might well mind the scar. Might well mind other things, truth told; things that would distress one who had helped a green-eyed fosterling grow. That would surely distress one who was a Healer and able to see what was now that fosterling’s soul.
    The Department of Interior . . . the Department of Interior had done much damage, severed memories, stolen home, love, music, mother—“. . . our mother,” Shan’s voice said from years gone. “Your mother’s gone, but you can share mine, all right?”
    Our mother . . . Anne Davis: chestnut hair, merry dark eyes, clever hands, scented with bound books and flowers; wide-hipped and full-breasted, as many Terran women; full with laughter and passion and more than enough love for the children of the house—her own three and the child of her lifemate’s cha’leket. She had taught him to play the ’chora, taught him his letters—Terran and Trade—wiped tears, comforted child-woes and halfling griefs, shared out justice and kisses, rejoiced with him when he was accepted to Scout Academy—
    And the Department of Interior had stolen her.
    “My kinswoman . . .” He recalled his own voice, telling Miri—a Miri nearly lost, gods; wary-faced and distrusting, as she had very good cause to be. “My kinswoman —” without feeling, without even such a memory as flashed now, of big, warm hands holding his, shaping tiny fingers above the keyboard.
    His right hand dandled True Scale as his left rose to adjust stops. Both hands centered above the keyboard, and at once came down, with sure authority, sweeping headlong into the Toccata .
    It allowed much, as great music does, endless opportunity for variation and lessons from one’s own fingers being among the chiefest of its joys. But their mother had loved it for its own sake, as well, and he played it that way now, as he had for Shan, while memories, suppressed and twisted and made strange—repulsive—by intent of his enemies, loosened and flowed and touched him true, until he closed his eyes and gave himself to the music and the remembering and didn’t even know if he wept.
    The music reached a natural end, as music will, and his fingers went still upon