There was no way for Skandranon to know whether someone wanted his friendship because of what he was or because of who he was—and the difference was critical.
No, thank you. I am very fond of obscurity, all things considered.
It would be no bad thing to be an obscure Silver, always assigned to the Outposts, hopefully collecting enough extra from his discoveries to finance a comfortable style of living. Let Keeth collect all the notoriety of being the first gryphon trondi’irn; Tad would be happy to donate whatever measure of “fame” fate had in store for him to his brother! Just as he had finished that thought, he noticed that the others were looking at him. Evidently Keeth had run out of things to say, and it was his turn again.
Oh, bother.
Skandranon cleared his throat. As always, the sound, an affectation acquired from living so much with humans, sounded very odd coming from a gryphon.
It sounds as if he’s trying to cough up a hairball, actually.
“Well!” Skandranon said heartily. “Your mother and I are very interested in hearing about this outpost you’re being sent to. What do you know about it?”
Tad sighed with resignation, and submitted himself to the unrelenting pressure of parental love.
Blade couldn’t bring herself to sit, although she managed to keep from pacing along the edge of the cliff. The stone here was a bit precarious for pacing—how ignoble if she should slip and fall, breaking something, and force Judeth and Aubri to send someone else to the outpost after all! Tad would never, ever forgive me. Or else—he’d take a new partner and go, and I would be left behind to endure parental commiserations.
Ikala sat on a rock and watched the sunset rather than her. He’d asked her to meet him here for a private farewell; her emotions were so mixed now that she honestly didn’t know what to say to him. So far, he hadn’t said anything to her, and she waited for him to begin.
He cleared his throat, still without looking at her. “So, you leave tomorrow. For several months, I’m told?” Of course, he knew her assignment, everyone in the Silvers did; he was just using the question as a way to start the conversation.
The sun ventured near to the ocean; soon it would plunge down below the line of the horizon. Her throat and tongue felt as if they belonged to someone else. “Yes,” she finally replied. Now she knew why , people spoke of being “tongue-tied.” It had been incredibly difficult just to get that single word out.
She wanted to say more; to ask if he would miss her, if he was angry that she was leaving just as their friendship looked to become something more. She wanted to know if he was hurt that she hadn’t consulted him, or chosen him as her partner instead of Tad. Above all, she wanted to know what he was thinking.
Instead, she couldn’t say anything.
“Come and sit,” he said, gesturing at the rocks beside him. “You do not look comfortable.”
I’m not, she said silently. I’m as twitchy as a nervous cat.
But she sat down anyway, warily, gingerly. The sun-warmed rock felt smooth beneath her hand, worn to satin-softness by hundreds of years of wind and water. She concentrated on the rock, mentally holding to its solidity and letting it anchor her heart.
“I am both happy for you and sad, Blade,” Ikala said, as if he was carefully weighing and choosing each word. “I am happy for you, because you are finally being granted—what you have earned. It is a good thing. But I am sad because you will be gone for months.”
He sighed, although he did not stir. Blade held herself tensely, waiting for him to continue, but he said nothing more. She finally turned toward him. “I wanted an assignment like this one very much,” she agreed. “I’m not certain I can explain why, though—”
But unexpectedly, as he half-turned to meet her eyes, he smiled. “Let me try,” he suggested, and there was even a suggestion of self-deprecating humor. “You feel smothered by your honored parents and, perversely, wish for their approval of a life so different from theirs. Additionally, you fear that their influence will either purchase you an easier assignment than you warrant, or will insure that you are never placed in any sort of danger. You wish to see what you can do with only the powers of your own mind and your own skills, and if you are not far away from them, you are certain you will never learn the answer to that question.”
“Yes!” she exclaimed, startled by his insight. “But how did you—•” Then she read the message behind that rueful smile, the shrug of the dark-skinned shoulders. “You came here for the same reason, didn’t you?”
He nodded once, and his deep brown eyes showed that same self-deprecating humor that had first attracted her. “The same. And that is why, although I wish that you were not going so far or for so long— or that we were going to the same place—I wanted you to know that I am content to wait upon your return. We will see what you have learned, and what that learning has made of you.”
“And you think I will be different?” She licked her lips with a dry tongue.
“At least in part,” he offered. “You may return a much different person than the one you are now; not that I believe that I will no longer care much for that different person! But that person and I may prove to be no more than the best of friends and comrades-in-arms. And that will not be a bad thing, though it is not the outcome I would prefer.”
She let out her breath and relaxed. He was being so reasonable about this that she could hardly believe her ears! “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I think I’ve spent so much time proving who I’m not that I don’t know who I am.”
“So go and find out,” he told her, and laughed, now reaching out to touch her hand briefly. The touch sent a shivery chill up her arm. “You see, I had to come here to do the same thing. So I have some understanding of the process.”
“Are you glad that you came here?” she asked, wondering if the question was too personal, and wishing he would do more than just touch her hand.
Now it was his turn to look away, into the sunset, for a moment. “On the whole—yes,” he told her. “Although in doing so, it became impossible to follow the alternate path I might have taken. There was a maiden, back in my father’s court—but she was impatient, and did not like it that I chose to go somewhere other than to the court of another emperor. She saw my choice as a lessening of my status, and my leaving as a desertion of her. I have heard that she wedded elsewhere, one of my more traditional half-brothers.”
“Oh—I’m sorry—” she said quickly, awkwardly.
But he turned back to her, and did not seem particularly unhappy as he ran his hand across his stiff black curls. “There is not a great deal to be sorry about,” he pointed out. “If she saw it as desertion, she did not know me; if I could not predict that she would, I did not know her. So. . . .” He shrugged. “Since it was not long before my sorrow was gone, I suspect my own feelings were not as deep as she would have liked, nor as I had assumed.”
“It’s not as if you were lacking in people willing to console you here!” she pointed out recklessly, with a feeling of breathlessness that she couldn’t explain. She laughed to cover it.