Somehow, that old, lesser pain was enough to muffle the moment. Medair had tried to consider Telsen a youthful folly, but had never been able to genuinely dismiss love and loss and treat him as a friend. The never quite forgiven hurt of seeing that he was bored with her, the anger this realisation had roused, served now to straighten her back and ease the constriction in her throat.
They passed through a series of small courtyards to the stables, and Medair overcame her tendency to dwell on every change by noting instead the interest the Keridahl Avec’s return provoked in all who saw him. She began to dredge up her lessons on Ibisian court custom and attempted to apply them to what she now faced. It no longer seemed to be considered poor manners to stare at a person one was not conversing with, unless everyone here was deliberately being rude. The White Snake habit of "not looking" at the Imperial Heralds had been difficult to take in Medair’s time, but it was disconcerting to see the custom so altered. Since the focus of attention was shared between her and Cor-Ibis, Medair could only assume that her actions in Kyledra had not been kept entirely secret.
The stables of the White Palace had grown. They extended into what had been an exercise yard and a wall had been taken down to allow access into former gardens, now converted into open space for working the animals. It was all continually disorienting for Medair, whose memory latched onto anything familiar while her eyes found strangeness around every second corner. She wanted so much not to be here.
"You will be tired after the journey, Kel ar Corleaux," Cor-Ibis said, though it was only mid-afternoon and they had not set a difficult pace. "Avahn will show you to your room." Then he was gone and she had only Avahn to deal with.
After disposing of an errant retainer with a soft word, Avahn indicated a direction. "Would you prefer we pretend not to have noticed how the palace effected you?" he asked, voice muted as he escorted her through the maze of corridors, annexes, halls, courtyards, galleries, winding stairs, dead-ends and other sundry features which made up the White Palace.
She raised a shoulder, struggling for calm. "It makes little difference, Avahn. I made no secret of not wanting to come to Athere."
"You said Athere was out of your way, Medair. Not that it would pain you to be here." He paused, weighing his words. "You have been here before."
She wished he would leave it be. "I told you that as well. Why question me, Avahn? You know I don’t want to speak of my past."
"Or your future. Or anything, in fact. You’ve grown even more close-mouthed, these past days. Because of Athere, because of the palace." He reached out to touch her arm, swiftly and briefly. "I think I want to apologise. I’ve been treating you as a game, your secrets as a challenge. My cousin was right again – I had mistaken you. You have been rational and resigned and I didn’t realise that we dealt with something which could make you look so…lost." He offered her a smile, young and genuine. "If you are to leave soon, then I would have you remember me as a friend, not one who made what is apparently an ordeal even more difficult for you."
Medair was touched. "Your questions haven’t hurt me, Avahn," she said, truthfully. "I won’t remember you harshly."
He smiled, then was mercifully silent as he led her to the section of the palace which Medair recalled as being haunted by the ambassadors and Dukes of the Western lands. The apartments of the Keridahl Avec, Medair judged, stretched over at least half of the fourth level of the massive Lothra Tower. Only the Fasthold, the main donjon of the palace, was larger than Lothra. It was a most desirable section of the palace.
The rooms given over to the Cor-Ibis family were decorated in a markedly Ibisian manner, with iridescent screens, ornaments of opaque crystal, and furniture of spare and elegant line. In the blunt solidity of Lothra Tower the kind of furnishings which had so perfectly suited The Avenue in Finrathlar looked out of place. As Avahn opened the door to her room, she reflected that she had fallen in with perhaps the most traditional of the Ibisians in this time. The Cor-Ibis family had succeeded in retaining purity of blood and obviously revered the customs and trappings of their lost homeland. She could not decide if this made it easier or more difficult for her to deal with them.
"I’m not certain if we will eat here or in the Vestan Hall," Avahn informed her. "Whatever the case, we dine at sun-down." He gestured with one hand, down the hallway to where the sky shone blue through an archway leading onto a balcony. "My cousin has gone, you understand, to report on the events in Kyledra. The Kier may wish to speak with you and…" He shrugged. "I am not one to guess at the Kier’s wishes."
"So cautious Avahn? That’s unlike you."
"Not really," he replied, bowed with graceful formality, and left her alone.
After she’d washed, and drunk a little of the water left for her, Medair found herself worrying about clothes of all things. She drew the blue and black dress from her satchel. Although the cut and cloth were unadorned, simplistic by Court standards, it did give her the air of having dressed up. At least her appearance could not be deemed an insult, lacking the proper respect for the Kier. The ward against traces was a touch of decoration above the bodice.
Rejecting a second enquiry after her needs from the Keridahl’s too-efficient servants, Medair retreated to the balcony at the southern end of the hall outside her room. She enjoyed the cool breeze as she gazed out over this city which could no longer be thought of as home.
"How different you look from when I first saw you," Avahn said, appearing almost a decem after he had left. Medair turned away from her contemplation of the view to consider him instead.
"You, however, have merely exchanged finery for finery," she said. "Perhaps a little more costly than before."
Avahn shrugged minutely, causing the muted greens and blues of his demi-robe to shimmer. Dragonflies danced. "The Kier summons you to her presence," he said. "I make a fitting escort." He paused a beat, then added: "The Kier has expressed a wish to examine both yourself and your satchel."
"Has she?" Medair turned again towards the shadows and reflections of a late afternoon sun. "I am no longer geased," she observed, voice as distant as the jagged horizon. "Would you stop me, if I tried to leave?"
"I believe I owe you my life, Medair," Avahn replied, after a significant pause. "But there are a great many in the White Palace who have no such debt."
"And they are between me and the door." She sighed. "I don’t want to meet your Kier, Avahn, but then, I did not wish to do any of this. We had best go and get it over with."
He accepted this with an ambiguous nod, and led her on a path which he could not know was very familiar to her. Down the central stairs of Lothra Tower, through the Rumbling Tunnel to the second floor of Fasthold. Then along the Great Hall, with its ten sets of huge oaken doors, to detour at the last moment, in the very face of the silver-embossed ebony slabs which led to the Throne Room.
The private audience chamber had changed so greatly that Medair, after so much familiarity, was again disoriented. Ibisian ritual did not bend to allowing lesser beings to be seated in the presence of the Kier during any official audience, and the oak table of Corminevar times had been swept away, leaving a room which was larger for its lack of furniture. A single dark throne had replaced the Emperor’s table, and Medair felt a pang for the comfortable chairs which had once made speaking to the most powerful person in all Farakkan a little easier.
Eight pairs of eyes watched her arrival. Medair, the extreme emotions of her entry into the White Palace well suppressed, breathed deeply as she walked towards the shimmering cluster of nobility. All so very Ibisian, only a hint of Farakkian blood detectable among these tall men and women in their robes of silk, polished stones glinting through the fine, white veils of their hair. Cor-Ibis was there, and las Theomain. Medair’s eyes flicked over their formally expressionless faces, past the other three women and two men to the descendent of Kier Ieskar and a child of the Corminevar line.