“Yes,” he said. “We do have to keep the matter below ground.” His gaze clanged on Rochefort’s. “I understand you’ve been studying Planha. How far along are you?”
The Terran’s smile was oddly shy for an offplanet enemy who had bedazzled a girl sometimes named Hrill. “Not very,” he admitted. “I’d try a few words except you’d find my accent too atrocious.”
“He’s doing damn well,” Tabitha said, and snuggled.
His arm about her waist, Rochefort declared: “I’ve no chance of passing your plans on to my side, if that’s what’s worrying you, Citizen — uh, I mean Christopher Holm. But I’d better make my position clear. The Empire is my side. When I accepted my commission, I took an oath, and right now I’ve no way to resign that commission.”
“Well said,” Eyath told him. “So would my betrothed avow.”
“What’s honor to a Terran?” Draun snorted. Tabitha gave him a furious look. Before she could reply, Rochefort, who had evidently not followed the Planha, was proceeding:
“As you can see, I… expect I’ll settle on Avalon after the war. Whichever way the war goes. But I do believe it can only go one way. Christopher Holm, besides falling in love with this lady, I have with her planet. Could I possibly make you consider accepting the inevitable before the horror comes down on Tabby and Avalon?”
“No,” Arinnian answered.
“I thought not” Rochefort sighed. “Okay, I’ll take a walk. Will an hour be long enough?”
“Oh, yes,” Eyath said in Anglic.
Rochefort smiled. “I love your whole people.”
Eyath nudged Arinniaiu “Do you need me?” she asked. “You’re going to explain the general idea. I’ve heard that.” She made a whistling noise found solely in the Avalonian dialect of Planha — a giggle. “You know how wives flee from their husbands’ jokes.”
“Hm?” he said. “What’ll you do?”
“Wander about with Ph… Phee-leep Hroash For. He has been where Vodan is.”
You too? Arinnian thought.
“And he is the mate of Hrill, our friend,” Eyath added.
“Go if you wish,” Arinnian said.
“An hour, then.” Claws ticked, feathers rustled as Eyath crossed the floor to the Terran. She reached up and took his arm. “Come; we have much to trade,” she said in her lilting Anglic.
He smiled again, brushed his lips across Tabitha’s, and escorted the Ythrian away. Silence lingered behind them, save for a soughing in the trees outside. Arinnian stood where he was. Draun fleered. Tabitha sought her pipes, chose one and began stuffing it. Her eyes held very closely on that task.
“Blame not me,” Draun said. “I’d have halved him like his bald-skin fellow, if Hrill hadn’t objected. Do you know she wouldn’t let me make a goblet from the skull?”
Tabitha stiffened.
“Well, tell me when you tire of his bouncing you,” Draun continued. “I’ll open his belly on Dlarian’s altar.”
She swung to confront him. The scar on her cheek stood bonelike over the skin. “Are you asking me to end our partnership?” tore from her. “Or to challenge you?”
“Tabitha Falkayn may regulate her own life, Draun,” Arinnian said.
“Ar-r-rkh, could be I uttered what I shouldn’t,” the other male growled. His plumage ruffled, his teeth flashed forth. “Yet how long must we sit in this cage of Terran ships?”
“As long as need be,” Tabitha snapped, still pale and shivering. “Do you want to charge out and die for naught witless as any saga hero? Or invite the warheads that kindle firestorms across a whole continent?”
“Why not? All dies at last,” Draun grinned. “What glorious pyrotechnics to go out in! Better to throw Terra onto hell-wind, alight; but since we can’t do that, unfortunately—”
“I’d sooner lose the war than kill a planet, any planet,” Tabitha said. “As many times sooner as it has living creatures. And I’d sooner lose this planet than see it killed.” She leveled her voice and looked straight at the Ythrian. “Your trouble is, the Old Faith reinforces every wish to kill that war has roused in you — and you’ve no way to do it.”
Draun’s expression said, Maybe. At least I don’t rut with the enemy. He kept mute, though, and Tabitha chose not to watch him. Instead she turned to Arinnian. “Can you change that situation?” she asked. Her smile was almost timid.
He did not return it “Yes,” he answered. “Let me explain what we have in mind.”
Since the ornithoids did not care to walk any considerable distance, and extended conversation was impossible in flight, Eyath first led Rochefort to the stables. After repeated visits in recent weeks she knew her way about. A few zirraukhs were kept there, and a horee for Tabitha. The former were smaller than the latter and resembled it only in being warm-blooded quadrupeds — they weren’t mammals, strictly speaking — but served an identical purpose. “Can you outfit your beast?” she inquired.
“Yes, now I’ve lived here awhile. Before, I don’t remember ever even seeing a horse outside of a zoo.” His chuckle was perfunctory. “Uh, shouldn’t we have asked permission?”
“Why? Chothfolk are supposed to observe the customs of their guests, and in Stormgate you don’t ask to borrow when you’re among friends.”
“How I wish we really were.”
She braced a hand against a stall in order to reach out a wing and gently stroke the pinions down his cheek.
They saddled up and rode side by side along a trail through the groves… Leaves rustled to the sea breeze, silvery-hued in that clear shadowless light. Hoofs plopped, but the damp air kept dust from rising.
“You’re kind, Eyath,” Rochefort said at last, awkwardly. “Most of the people have been. More, I’m afraid, than a nonhuman prisoner of war would meet on a human planet”
Eyath sought words. She was using Anglic, for the practice as much as the courtesy. But her problem here was to find concepts. The single phrase which came to her seemed a mere tautology: “One need not hate to fight.”
“It helps. If you’re human, anyway,” he said wryly. “And that Draun—”
“Oh, he doesn’t hate you. He’s always thus. I feel… pity?… for his wife. No, not pity. That would mean I think her inferior, would it not? And she endures.”
“Why does she stay with him?”
“The children, of course. And perhaps she is not unhappy. Draun must have his good points, since he keeps Hrill in partnership. Still, I will be much luckier in my marriage.”
“Hrill—” Rochefort shook his head. “I fear I’ve earned the hate of your, uh, brother Christopher Holm.”
Eyath trilled. “Clear to see, you’re where he especially wanted to go. He bleeds so you can hear the splashes.”
“You don’t mind? Considering how close you two are.”
“Well, I do not watch his pain gladly. But he will master it. Besides, I wondered if she might not bind him too closely.” Sheer off from there, lass. Eyath regarded the man. “We gabble of what does not concern us. I would ask you about the stars you have been at, the spaces you have crossed, and what it is like to be a warrior yonder.”
“I don’t know,” Tabitha said. “Sounds damned iffy.”
“Show me the stratagem that never was,” Arinnian replied. “Thing is, whether or not it succeeds, we’ll have changed the terms of the fight. The Imperials will have no reason to bombard, good reason not to, and Avalon is spared.” He glanced at Draun.
The fisher laughed. “Whether I wish that or not, akh?” he said. “Well, I think any scheme’s a fine one which lets us kill Terrans personally.”
“Are you sure they’ll land where they’re supposed to?” Tabitha wondered.
“No, of course we’re not sure,” Arinnian barked. “We’ll do whatever we can to make that area their logical choice. Among other moves, we’re arranging a few defections. The Terrans oughtn’t to suspect they’re due to us, because in fact it is not hard to get off this planet. Its defenses aren’t set against objects traveling outward.”