Kinsmen 01 - Silver Shark

dangerous word. "I considered screaming in blind panic, but I didn't want to break your concentration."
    "Was that a joke?"
    "Possibly."
    He raised his glass. "Congratulations."
    "Thank you." She grinned and drank her wine.
    Ven frowned. "I don't know what Castilla has on Sangori, but I called a friend of mine in the Provinces, Celino Carvanna. The man is a financial shark, so if something is going on with Sangori, I will soon know about it."
    Ven took a plate from the trolley, used a fork to slide the meat and vegetables off the skewer onto it, and passed it to her. Claire took a bite. The meat tasted smoky and tender and completely delicious.
    "This is great."
    "There is something about food cooked over the open flame," he said. "I don't know if it's a racial memory from the time we huddled around the fire in animal skins, but there are few things as flavorful."
    He raised his glass. She raised hers and he clinked it against hers. "Do you like the wine?"
    "I love it. This is my first taste."
    "No wine on Uley?" he asked.
    "No. Occasionally we would be issued grain alcohol, but no wine." She bit the meat and chewed, savoring the taste. "Do you and Castilla have some sort of prior history?"
    Ven sighed. "Yes. Yes, we do. My father was an off-worlder. He came to Rada with nothing except the clothes on his back, but he was a very powerful psycher and my mother's family took him in. He became a client It's the next step up from the retainer. When you're a client, you are almost family. My father fell in love with my mother and she fell in love with him. They married. He took the Escana name, because our family had status and name recognition, while his surname meant nothing. They were both older at the time, so it was a surprise when I came along."
    "Were they happy you were born?"
    He nodded. "Yes. I had a happy childhood. The money was tight, but tight by kinsmen standards. We had a nice house. During summers, we'd go to the coast to swim in the ocean. It was beautiful. Endless water, brilliant blue, as far as you can see and under the surface fish in every color. The mountains thrust right out of the water, and I'd sit on the rocks and watch the shark dolphins play..."
    She almost said, "You see the bionet as the ocean, don't you, Ven?" but caught herself. Claire Shannon, the secretary, wouldn't know that.
    "My parents loved it so much, they live there now. I always wanted to live on the coast." Ven smiled.
    "So why don't you?"
    "There are very few businesses on the coast. The ocean storms six months out of the year, so little shipping is done by water. The ports are mostly for tourists. Besides, most of the family is here. Our business interests are here. My father and mother have little concern for Guardian. Neither one of them is really the business type. They have the ability, but not the ambition required to grow a business."
    Ven shrugged, leaning back. His face seemed almost melancholic, and then he shook it off.
    "Anyway, back to Castilla. As I grew up, the family realized that I was their most valuable asset. I'm a stronger psycher than my father, but we had very few resources to make use of my talents. De Solis is an old family. A lot of money, a lot of connections, and decades in the bionet business. So, my parents approached the de Solis with a marriage proposal. De Solis would get a powerful psycher and Escana's financial issues would be resolved through the alliance."
    He seemed unperturbed by the idea of his family selling him. "How did you feel about it?"
    Ven drank his wine. "Imagine that you're eighteen years old. On this world eighteen means you are a man, expected to support yourself and your family. You're the golden child; your family expects you to lift them out of misery and solve all their financial problems, and you have no idea how to do that. You have a lot of anxiety about it. Then your father comes to you and says, 'You don't have to go to college and you don't have to worry about finding a job. All you have to do is marry this beautiful girl, make her happy, and work for her family business. They'll train you, they'll teach you to develop your talents, and one day you'll inherit the whole enterprise. You'll never have to worry about a thing.'"
    "Sounds great," she said.
    "I was all about it," Ven said. "Ask any eighteen-year-old boy and he will tell you he'd jump on the chance. And Castilla was gorgeous. She had breasts the size of grapefruits."
    Claire blinked.
    "I'm trying to give you