“I suppose I don’t really know,” she said slowly, as Tad’s dark eyes watched her with that intensity that only a raptor could display. “He is very handsome, he’s very charming, he’s quite intelligent . . . but I just don’t know. Part of the time I think I like him for himself, part of the time I think I’m attracted to him just because he’s so exotic, and part of the time I think it’s because he’s the only person in White Gryphon that my father doesn’t know everything about!”
Tad chuckled heartlessly. “There is that. I’ve noticed that Ikala has never once had the occasion to patronize a kestra ‘chern. Amberdrake should find him more of an enigma than you do.”
“That would certainly be an improvement,” she said acidly. “It would be very nice for once to have a conversation with someone without the person wondering if Father was going to tell me all the things he’d really rather I didn’t know.”
“And it would be very nice for you,” Tad commented, “to talk to your father without wondering if he was going to tell you things you’d rather not know.” Blade nodded, and Tad shrewdly added, “I don’t go to kestra’chern, so you are doubly safe talking to me about how you feel; word will not reach your father. May I give up all my hedonism if I lie.”
Blade smiled despite herself. Depend upon a gryphon male to count that as the ultimate oath.
“He’s under control,” she added. “He’s a very controlled person. I like that.”
I like it a great deal more than unbridled passion, truth to tell
Tad coughed. “Still,” he prompted helpfully. “Some might say that argues for a certain coldness of spirit?”
She snorted. “You know better than that, you’ve worked with him. He loses his temper about as often as anyone else, he just doesn’t let it get away from him. And—so far as not visiting a kestra‘chern—”
“And?” Tad’s eyes sparkled with humor.
She blushed again. “And he hasn’t exactly been— well—chaste. He’s had female friends while he’s been here. They just weren’t kestra’chern. Even if they were casual. Recreational.”
And I could almost envy Karelee. I wish she hadn‘t been so enthusiastic about his bed abilities.
“Oh?” Tad said archly. “He hasn’t been chaste? I suppose you were interested enough to find out about this.”
She coughed and tried to adopt a casual tone.
“Well, one does, you know. People talk. I didn’t have to be interested, people gossip about that sort of thing all the time. I only had to be nearby and listen.” She favored him with a raised eyebrow, grateful to feel her hot face cooling. “Winds know that you do enough talking, so you ought to know!”
“Me? Gossip?” His beak parted in silent laughter and he squinted his eyes. “I prefer to call it the ‘gathering of interpersonal information,’ for ‘management of sources and receivers of pleasure.’ “
“Well, I call it gossip, and you’re as bad as any old woman,” she retorted. “You are just as bad when it comes to matchmaking. And as for Ikala—he is attractive, and I don’t deny it, but I think you’re getting way ahead of yourself to tie the two of us together in any way. I don’t even know how I feel, so how could I even speculate about how he feels? And anyway, you and I have our missions to run, and when we get out of here, we have a long tour of duty at a remote outpost to take care of. If we don’t die of embarrassment at having to be rescued.”
If we are rescued, if we do get out of here. . . . The unspoken thought put a chill in the air of the tent that the fire could not drive away. All frivolous thoughts faded; this was the change in subject she had tried to make, but not the new subject she would have preferred. Reflexively she glanced out through the screening branches. It was getting darker out there, and it looked as if—once again—the rain was going to continue past nightfall.
That might not be so bad, if it keeps our unseen “friends“ away.
“Well,” she said, as lightly as possible, which was not very, “now you’ve got my brain going, and I’m never going to be able to get to sleep. I’ll just lie awake thinking.”
He yawned hugely. “And I am warm and sleepy. I always get worn out listening to people’s reasons why they won’t be happy. Shall we switch watches?”
He didn’t wait for her to answer, settling his head back down on his foreclaws. She shrugged. “We might as well,” she replied, and edged over until she was in a position where she could see through a gap between two of the branches hiding the front of their shelter. She memorized the positions of everything in sight while the light was still good enough to identify what was visible through the curtain of rain. The flashes of lightning helped; if she concentrated on a single spot, she could wait until the next lightning bolt hit to give her a quick, brightly-lit glimpse of what was there, and study the afterimage burned into her eyes.
Tad hadn’t been lying about his fatigue; within a few moments, she heard his breathing deepen and slow, and when she turned to look behind her, she saw that his eyes were closed. She turned back to her vigil, trying to mentally review what she had done when she constructed the shelter.
She had tried not to take too many branches away from any one place. She had tried to pile the ones she brought to the shelter in such a way that they looked as if they were all from a single smaller tree brought down by the larger. With all this rain, every trace of our being here should have been washed away. No scent, no debris. . . .
Smoke, though—the smoke Tad had used to drive out insects had been very dense and odoriferous, and she wondered if the rain had washed all of it out of the air. If not—how common would smoke be in a forest that experienced thunderstorms every day? Common enough, she would think. Surely lightning started small fires all the time, and surely they burned long enough to put a fair amount of smoke into the air before the rain extinguished them.
Well, there wasn’t anything she could do about the smoke—or the shelter itself—now. If there was anything looking for them, she could only hope that she had done everything she needed to in order to cover their presence. Last night it would have been difficult for their possible followers to find them; she hoped tonight it would be impossible.
The rain turned from a torrent to a shower, and slowed from a shower to a mere patter. Then it wasn’t rain at all, but simply the melodic drip of water from the canopy above, and the sounds of the night resumed.
She breathed a sigh of relief, and checked the fire. No point in letting it burn too high now; the inside of the shelter was at a good temperature, and with two walls being the trunks of trees, it should sustain that level without too much work. She rebuilt the fire, listening to the hoots and calls from above, tenting the flames with sticks of green fuel and banking the coals to help conceal the glow. This should let the fire burn through the night without needing too much more fuel or tending. It would burn slowly now, producing a bed of deep red, smokeless coals instead of flame. That was precisely the way she wanted it.