Trade Secret (eARC) Read Online Free Page A

been needing to be "world-worthy" as Pen Rel put it--a level of planetary physical readiness many spacers lost over time. He was to be dealing with traders and social necessities and ought not appear--or be!--as weak as an elder if it could be avoided.
    Being on rush-learning, there were some ordinary things he did not do on his social days yet--like join in ship committee event planning--which had taken his hoped-for lunch with Gaenor off the schedule since she was, of course, much involved in such. They still copracticed their Liaden and Terran together, but walking the ship at odd moments, throwing words and ideas at each other as they talked was even more a part of that duty than it had been; certainly it would be good to have some quiet time together once in a while.
    Yesterday was day three of his five-day regime, and the fact that Elthoria had "stopped" at a star they'd barely seen mattered little. Khat would have called what they did a skate-by--the primary was so distant from the pickup point that its light took several Standard Hours to get there--and what they did was all piloting: drop off two pods of supplies and equipment and pick up two pods of compressed and freeze-dried seaweed. None of this had impinged on his duties or schedule other than to inform his current search for the rules of delivery with a little more poignancy since there'd been threat of a glitch that might have delayed them for days.
    Some few of Elthoria 's crew had taken advantage of the two, brief, late-night orbits around Thringar Six to claim a world by going to the observation deck and eyeballing it through the ports . . . but he never claimed a world he hadn't at least landed on, else he'd have as many as anyone on the ship--captain included--but yes, starting a tour when he was just starting to breathe gave him leverage over folks who'd grown up planet side in good Liaden homes!
    Near as he could understand, Thringar Six was a biggish mush of a semihabitable planet with a few thousand workers and a bunch of sea grass and not much else, all around a biggish star that was going to go nova sometime in the next few million years. He hadn't been needed at the trade desk for that, nor in the control room, and he'd slept through the Jump out two hours before his rising time.
    So today was a physical rest day, but as busy or busier, on the whole, for today he was his own boss, and a tough one, having waked before the subtle morning shift chime, and been in the breakfast lounge before the tea changed from night-strong to ordinary.
    Study and thought, that was the day's job today. The topic was contracts, and he'd been in the same line of study for some while now, since he wouldn't always be able to access the sharp memory of Norn ven'Deelin while he was away from the ship, and he'd be liable for what mistakes he brought back with his name signed in agreement--and both she and the clan--would have to back him up.
    Contracts were pretty important. After all it had been a fraudulent contract--in the form of a fake Liaden Master Trader's card vouchsafed as firm commitment on a short-term deal--that had brought Jethri to this Liaden tradeship in the first place.
    Contract terminology, now, that was difficult stuff, with the caveat that most of it he was dealing with was Liaden to begin with, and defined over the generations by both force of custom and the sharp eyes and minds of the qe'andra .
    Words were not to be played idly in the game of trade, and since he was studying to be a specialist like none before him, intensive lessons in Liaden were backed up by heavy reading and study in Terran as well. Who knew there were so many business-essential words that shipfolk never used, never spoke, never even thought?
    Birthright .
    Jethri'd come across the term most recently in a contract from a Terran world, one allowing heirs and assigns certain rights and duties . . . and now he'd set the search going in the Liaden-centered computer, trying to see what