"TELL US ABOUT living on your ship," Miandra said, shuffling the cards with bewildering speed between nimble fingers.
Jethri blinked, and shifted in his chair, trying for a position that would ease his back. The three of them were alone in a little parlor situated closer to the kitchen than the front door. In theory, the twins were teaching him to play piket, which unlikely pastime had the full approval of Lady Maarilex.
"Indeed, a gentleman should know his cards and be able to play a polite game." She fixed the twins in her eye, one after the other. "Mark me, token wagers only. And all may practice the art of graceful loss."
"Yes, Aunt Stafeli," said Meicha.
"Yes, Aunt Stafeli," said Miandra.
"Yes, ma'am," said Jethri, though he'd been taught not to show temper for losing by kin years his elder in the subtle art of poker.
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything," said Meicha, comprehensively, while Miandra continued to shuffle, with a thoughtful look directed downward at the dancing cards.
"I would like to know how the kin groups sustain themselves," she said slowly.
"Sustain themselves? Well, there's ship life support, for air, temp and—"
Meicha laughed. Miandra didn't, though she did stop shuffling and raise her face to frown up at him.
"That was not at all funny," she said sternly.
"I—" he began, meaning to say he was sorry, though he didn't know, quite, what he should be sorry for, except that she was mad at him. His brain refused to pitch up the proper phrase, though, and after a moment's floundering he produced, "I am sad that you are angry with me."
"She's not so angry that you must be sad for it," Meicha said, matter-of-factly. "Only answer her question sensibly and she will be appeased."
"But you see, I don't understand why my previous answer was . . . annoying. We do sustain ourselves via ship's life support. If something else was meant by the question, then I don't know how to unravel it."
There was a small silence, then Meicha spoke again.
"He is a stranger to our tongue, sister. Recall Aunt Stafeli? We are only to speak to him in Liaden, and in proper mode and melant'i, to aid and speed his learning."
Miandra sighed and put the cards face down on the table. "Well enough. Then he must learn idiom." She raised her hand and pointed a finger at Jethri's nose, sharply enough that he pulled back.
"An inquiry into how the kin group sustains itself is an inquiry into genetics," she said, still tending toward the stern. "What I wish to know is how your kin group maintains its genetic health."
Maintains its . . . Oh. Jethri cleared his throat, thinking that his Liaden, improved as it was by constant use, might not be up to this. Good enough for Lady Maarilex to set rules on the twins for the betterment of his understanding, but nobody had drawn any lines for him about what was and wasn't considered proper topics of conversations between himself and two of the house's precious youngers.
"Is he shy?" Meicha inquired of her sister.
"Hush! Let him order his thoughts."
Right. Well, nothing for it but to tell the thing straight out and hope they took it for the strange custom of folk not their own—which, come to think, it would be.
"There are . . . arrangements between ships," he said slowly. "Sometimes, those. My older brother, Cris, came from an arrangement with Perry's Promenade. Seeli—my sister—she came out of a—a shivary, we call it. That's like a big party, when a lot of ships get together and there's parties and—and—" He couldn't put his tongue to a phrase that meant the polite of "sleeping around," but it turned out he didn't have to—Miandra knew exactly what he was on course for.
"Ah. Then your sister Seeli is as we are—Festival get and children of the house entire." She smiled, as if the translation comforted her, and looked over to Meicha. "See you, sister? It is not so different from the usual way of things. One child of contract and one from Festival—the genes mix nicely, I think."
"It would seem so," her sister agreed, unusually serious. "And you, Jethri? Were you contracted—or joyous accident?"
Well, there was the question that had formed his life, now, wasn't it? He shrugged and looked down at the table—real wood, and smooth under his palm, showing stains here and there, and the marks of glasses, set down wet.
"Unhappy accident, call it," he said to the table. "My parents were married, but my mother wasn't looking for any more children. Which is how I happened to be the extra, and available to 'prentice with Master ven'Deelin."
"The third child is produced from a lifemating," Miandra summed up. "It is well. And your cousins?"
He looked up. "My cousins? Well, see, the Gobelyn's are a wide family. We've got cousins on—I don't know how many ships. A couple dozen, I'd say, some small, none bigger than the Market, though. We're the mainline. Anyhow, we share around between us to keep the ships full. The extras—they take berths on other ships, and eventually they're . . . " He frowned after the word. ". . . assimilated."
"So." Miandra smiled and put her hand over his. "We are not so brutal of our 'extras', but perhaps we have the luxury of room. Certainly, there are those who go off on the far-trade and return home once every dozen Standards—if so often. Your foster mother is one such, to hear Aunt Stafeli tell the tale. But, in all, it seems as if your customs match ours closely, and are not so strange at all." This was accompanied by a hard stare at Meicha, who moved her shoulders, to Jethri's eye, discomfited.
"But," he asked her, "what did you think?"
"Oh, she had some notion that the Terran ships used the old technology to keep their crews ever young," Miandra said. "Aunt Stafeli says she reads too many adventure stories."
"You read them, too!" Meicha cried, visibly stung.
"Well, but I'm not such a dolt as to believe them!"
Meicha pouted. "Terrans trade in old tech—Vandale said so."
"Yes, but the old tech mostly doesn't work," Jethri pointed out. "The curiosity trade gets it, and sometimes the scholars."
"Vandale said that, too," Miandra said.
"And Pan Dir said that there is still some old tech in the out-beyond that does work!" her twin snapped, with a fair sitting-down approximation of stamping her foot.
"If you want to know what I think," Jethri said, feeling like he'd better do his possible to finish the subject before the matter came to blows. "I think that Pan Dir likes to tell stories. My cousin Khat's exactly the same way."
There was a pause as Meicha and Miandra traded glances.
"There's that," Meicha said at last, and, "True," agreed Miandra.
Jethri sighed and reached for the cards, sitting forgotten by her hand.
"I thought you two were going to win my fortune from me."
That made them both laugh, and Meicha snatched the deck from him and began to shuffle with a will.
"I hear a challenge, sister!"
"As I do! Deal the cards!"