Blade wore as sympathetic an expression as Tadrith.
“There is this, Keeth,” the gryphon said to his twin. “You can just go on doing what you are doing and you will have earned every right to be considered unique and special. You’re writing your own definition of a trondi’irn. You don’t have to stand there, blushing at the nares with embarrassment when someone comes in acting as if running the obstacle course was the equivalent of stealing one of Ma’ar’s magical weapons.”
But Keenath ruffled his neck-feathers and clicked his beak. “That’s true up to a point, but there is another problem. Father literally does not understand me. We have absolutely nothing in common. When I talk about what I’m doing, he gets this strange look on his face, as if I were speaking a foreign tongue.” He laughed weakly. “I suppose I am, really. Well, I’ll get my chance eventually.”
“You will,” Blade promised, but she made no move to rise to her feet. “I’m going to have to break the news to my parents, assuming that they don’t already know, which is more than likely. Tad, you’d better figure out how to tell yours.”
“They’ll know,” Tadrith replied with resignation. “Father is probably already telling everyone he thinks will listen how there’s never been anyone as young as I am posted so far away on his first assignment.”
Blade laughed ruefully. “You’re probably right. And mine is probably doing the same—except—”
She didn’t complete the sentence, but Tadrith knew her well enough not to pressure her. They each had their own set of problems, and talking about them wasn’t going to solve them.
Only time would do that.
Or so he hoped.
Silverblade sat back on her heels when the twins began to argue over what Tadrith should pack. She was in no real hurry to get back home; since she was still living with her parents, she did not even have the illusion of privacy that her own aerie would have provided. The moment she walked in the door, the questions and congratulations—bracketed by thinly-veiled worry—would begin, and at the moment she did not feel up to fielding them.
She breathed in the scent of salt air and sunbaked rock, half closing her eyes. I love this place. The only neighbors are other gryphons, quiet enough that the sound of the surf covers any noise they might make. And I love the fact that there are no other humans nearby, only tervardi, gryphons, and a few kyree.
How she envied Tad his freedom! He really had no notion just how easy a parent Skandranon was to deal with. The Black Gryphon had a. sound, if instinctive and not entirely reliable, knowledge of just when to shut his beak and let Tad go his own way. He also attempted to restrain his enthusiasm for the accomplishments of his twins, although it was difficult for him. But at least he showed that he approved; Amberdrake had never been happy with the path-choice his daughter had made, and although he tried not to let his disapproval color their relationship, it leaked through anyway. How could it not?
Perhaps “disapproval” was too strong a word. Amberdrake understood warriors; he had worked with them for most of his life. He respected them most profoundly. He liked them, and he even understood all of the drives that fueled their actions.
He simply did not understand why his child and Winterhart’s would want to be a warrior. He can’t fathom how he and Mother produced someone like me. By all rights, with everything that they taught me, I should never have been attracted to this life.
That was a gap of understanding that probably would never be bridged, and Blade had yet to come up with a way of explaining herself that would explain the riddle to him. “Blade, would you play secretary and write the list for me?” Tadrith pleaded, interrupting her reverie. “Otherwise I know I’m going to forget something important.”
“If you do, you can always have it Gated to us,” she pointed out, and laughed when he lowered his eartufts.
“That would be so humiliating I would rather do without!” he exclaimed. “I’d never hear the last of it! Please, just go get a silver-stick and paper from the box and help me, would you?”
“What else are gryphon-partners for, except doing paperwork?” she responded, as she rose and sauntered across the room to the small chest that held a variety of oddments the twins found occasionally useful, each in its appointed place. The chest, carved of a fragrant wood that the Haighlei called sadar, held a series of compartmentalized trays holding all manner of helpful things. Among them were a box of soft, silver sticks and a block of tough reed-paper, both manufactured by the Haighlei. She extracted both, and returned to her seat beside Tad. She leaned up against him, bracing herself against his warm bulk, using her knees as an impromptu writing desk.
As the twins argued over each item before agreeing to add it to the list or leave it out, she waited patiently. Only once did she speak up during the course of the argument, as Keenath insisted that Tad include a particular type of healer’s kit and Tad argued against it on the grounds of weight.
She slapped his shoulder to get him to be quiet. “Who is the trondi’irn here?” she demanded. “You, or Keeth?” Tad turned his head abruptly, as if he had forgotten that she was there. “You mean, since he’s the expert, I ought to listen to him.”
“Precisely,” she said crisply. “What’s the point of asking his opinion on this if you won’t take it when you know he’s the authority?”
“But the likelihood that we’d need a bonesetting kit is so small it’s infinitesimal!” he protested. “And the weight! I’m the one who’s going to be carrying all this, you know!”
“But if we need it, we’ll need exactly those supplies, and nothing else will substitute,” she pointed out. “We don’t know for certain that there’s a bone-setting kit at the Outpost, and I prefer not to take the chance that the last few teams have been as certain of their invulnerability as you.” Keenath looked smug as she added it to the list, unbidden. “I’m going to insist on it. And if it isn’t in that basket when we leave, I’ll send for one. We may be in a position of needing one and being unable to ask for one to be Gated to us.”
Tad flattened his ears in defeat as he looked from one implacable face to the other. “You win. I can’t argue against both of you.”
Gryphons could not smirk like humans could, but there was enough muscular control of the beak edges at the join of the lower mandible that one could be approximated. More than a touch of such an expression showed on Keeth as they continued on to the next item. Part of the reason why Blade felt so comfortable in the Silvers and with the gryphons in particular was that their motives and thoughts were relatively simple and easy to understand. In particular, they made poor liars; gryphons were just too expressive to hold a bluff effectively once you knew how to read their physical cues, such as the lay of their facial feathers and the angle of their ears. Although they were complex creatures and often stubborn, gryphons were also exactly what they appeared to be. The kestra’chern, her father in particular, were anything but.
Their job was to manipulate, when it came right down to it. The whole point of what they did was to manipulate a client into feeling better, to give him a little more insight into himself. But she wasn’t at all comfortable with the idea of manipulating anyone for any reason, no matter how pure the motive and how praiseworthy the outcome.