She followed my explanation with the attentiveness of an intelligent woman who does not know the subject at all, but is willing to give it the necessary thought. When I was done, she said, “Presuming that some of them are healthy… what will you do with all these honeyseekers?”
That was an excellent question. Their bones could be preserved, but they had limited use, on account of their minute size; even a full-grown honeyseeker is rarely more than fourteen centimeters long. “Distribute them as pets, I suppose,” I said with a laugh. “You may certainly have a pair for your own keeping, if you decide you like them. We might make diplomatic gifts of some others.”
“Eucalyptus trees are not so common,” she said. “But we might grow more, and give those along with the animals themselves.”
Mahira departed soon after, on the understanding that I would bring the honeyseekers by the next morning for them to be settled in their new home. I exited the office to find that our closeted state had excited a great deal of speculation around the compound, which I had to quell with actual answers. “The sheikh’s sister?” Tom said when I told him. I could hear his unspoken question behind those words.
“Yes,” I said, and smiled. What need climbing the walls, when I had a reason to walk through the front door?
I arrived the next morning to find Mahira in the garden, veiled, issuing instructions to servants who were fixing the last nets in place. They had shifted a trellis arch to serve as a doorway into the eucalyptus grove, and the whole effect was far more elegant than I had envisioned.
My honeyseekers were chattering in their cage, clinging to the bars and poking their delicate snouts out through the gaps. Once Mahira had dismissed the servants, she lowered her veil and bent to study them. “They are smaller than I expected.”
“If they were not,” I said, “they would be a good deal harder to keep.” I opened the cage door and stepped back, beckoning for Mahira to do the same. Honeyseekers are inquisitive and relatively calm, but they would be more adventurous if we were not standing over them.
They crept out of the cage after a minute or two, and quickly found their way to the nearest eucalyptus blossoms. Hicara buried her face in one straight off, as if I had been starving them for a month. “Little glutton,” I said, smiling fondly.
We discussed their care for a time, and were nearly finished when I caught a glimpse, through the nets and eucalyptus leaves, of someone approaching. “Are we expecting company?” I asked Mahira.
She did not reach for her veil, nor did she look surprised. “I was beginning to think he would not come.”
The newcomer ducked under the nets of the arch and straightened up: Suhail.
My heart thumped in my chest. I had hoped this arrangement might give me an opportunity to speak with him, but I had not expected it to occur so promptly. “Oh dear,” I said involuntarily, looking about like a guilty thing. “Are we going to get in trouble for this?”
He laughed, though I noted a strained edge to it. Mahira said, “Why should there be trouble, when you are so well chaperoned?”
I supposed if she did not suffice—a woman, related to Suhail, and studying to be a prayer-leader—then no one would. “Thank you,” I said, and tried not to give away how heartfelt it was.
She shrugged. “Husam is being excessively cautious. That will excite far more rumour than allowing you two to behave like rational adults. If anyone needs me, I will be studying over here.” She took a book from the pocket of her cloak and went to sit on a small bench in the corner of the grove, near to where Amamis and Hicara were exploring.
Which left Suhail and myself standing near the entrance, awkwardly not looking at one another. He spoke first, in his lightly accented Scirling. “I am sorry I did not write.”
“Oh, it’s quite all right,” I assured him. The words came out too loudly. Moderating my tone, I said, “I am glad to know you are well.”
He nodded; I saw it out of the corner of my eye. His hands were locked behind his back. “My family—my tribe as a whole—we have been having some difficulties of late. For a while now, I should say. Years. I’ve been rather occupied dealing with that.”
I searched for something to say that would not sound inane, and failed. “Your family seems to be doing well now.”
“Well enough.” He reached out and touched one of the eucalyptus leaves, tugged it free and inhaled its clean scent. “Husam has kept me busy seeing to business matters, mostly here in Qurrat, while he goes to the caliph’s court. Until he sent me to the desert, that is.”
I could not repress the urge to ask, “How many months ago was this?”
His smile was ironic. “Not long before your predecessor left.”
Meaning the sheikh had probably learned of Lord Tavenor’s impending departure, and the likelihood of me coming in his place—or if not me, then at least Tom, who was thoroughly tainted by association. But I could not say that, and so I turned to what I thought would be a lighter topic. “What have you been doing in the desert? Seeking out Draconean ruins?”
It was the wrong thing to ask. Suhail’s expression became shuttered. “No. Fighting the Banu Safr. One of the rebellious tribes.”
The phrase meant nothing to me at the time, and I did not pursue it; Akhian politics were not what interested me just then. “I am sorry. I hope there has not been much bloodshed.”
“Not until recently.”
I thought of the bad news that Suhail had brought with him on his first arrival, and felt sick at heart.
“What of you, though?” Suhail asked, with the air of a man making an effort to be less grim. “It seems you have done well.”
I gave him an abbreviated version of the events that had brought Tom and myself to Akhia, and spent a pleasant moment in tales of Jake’s exploits at Suntley. Suhail seemed more like himself as I went on, and even laughed at an incident involving the school fish-pond. He was the one, after all, who had taught my son to improve his swimming—though I doubted he had intended it to be put to such ends.
But I recognized the look in Suhail’s eyes. I had seen it in the mirror for two long years when I was growing up: the period I referred to as the “grey years” in the first volume of my memoirs. For the sake of my family, I had sworn off my interest in dragons, and the lack of it had leached all colour from my life. As it happened, my good behaviour was ultimately rewarded, and I did not regret the path I had taken to my present point. Suhail, on the other hand…
I could not say this to him. I knew too little of his situation; it would be the height of arrogance for me to barge in, thinking I knew what was best for him simply because I had once experienced a similar thing. Perhaps a marriage was being arranged for him, with a wife of good family who would not mind her husband gallivanting off to study ancient ruins. Or perhaps Suhail did not begrudge his brother the aid their tribe required. His circumstances might be of limited duration, a thing for him to endure for a little while before returning to the life he loved. All of these might be possible—and none of them were my business.
One thing was my business, though, and it had been tucked into my sleeve since that first encounter in the courtyard, waiting for the moment when I might deliver it. And if it brought a spot of colour into Suhail’s own grey years, that would ease my mind a great deal.