This was a fact that she had taken great pains to conceal from her loving family, as was her growing affection for him. She wasn’t certain what she was going to do about that yet. As with many things, it would have to wait until she returned from this assignment.
But having a Silver well acquainted with another court than Shalaman’s would mean that White Gryphon could open up a second embassy in Nbubi. Ikala could prove invaluable there, as an expert in the background, able to advise the ambassador as Silver Veil had advised Amberdrake in Shalaman’s court. And that would be a fine place for Blade and Tadrith to be posted—and perhaps even Keeth.
Unless, of course, Amberdrake managed to get himself appointed as Ambassador there—or Winterhart did—
No. No, that couldn‘t possibly happen, she reassured herself hastily. Father’s needed too much here. Mother wouldn’t go without him, not after the mess that almost happened the last time. And he knows that there’s no one here that could replace him.
Of course he could always train someone as his replacement. . . .
Oh, why am I making up these stupid scenarios when I don’t even know where I’m going after this, or whether Ikala and I would ever be more than close friends, or even if Judeth would consider Tad and me for posts with the Embassy! She realized that she was making up trouble for herself out of nebulous plans that weren’t even a possibility yet!
Things must be going too well if I’m planning for opposition that doesn’t exist and problems that would take a thousand variables to come up!
Just about then, Tad spoke to her. “I can’t think of anything else,” he said. “What about you?”
“I haven’t had any great inspirations for the supply list, but then I haven’t been really thinking about it,” she confessed, and frowned at the scrawled document in her hands. “I’ll tell you what; let’s go talk to Judeth or Aubri, and see if either of them have any suggestions.”
Tad clicked his beak thoughtfully. “Is that wise?” he asked. “Will it look as if we aren’t capable of thinking for ourselves?”
“It will look as if we are not too full of ourselves to accept advice from those older and wiser than us, and if we tell them that, they’ll adore us for it,” she responded, and got to her feet, stamping a little to ease a bit of numbness. “Come on, bird. Let’s go show the old dogs that the puppies aren’t totally idiots.”
“Not totally,” Tadrith muttered, although he did get to his feet as well. “Only mostly.”
Two
“Outpost Five, heh?” Aubri stretched both his forelegs, one at a time, regarding the blunted, ebony talons on the end of each claw with a jaundiced eye. Wind rattled the wooden wind chimes harmoniously in the open window behind him, and Tad watched golden dust motes dance in the beam of clear sunlight lancing down to puddle on the floor beside the old gryphon. “Let me see if I remember anything about Outpost Five.”
Tad sighed as Aubri went through the whole of his dry, impish, “absentminded” routine, first scratching his rusty-brown headfeathers meditatively (which made more dustmotes dance into the light), then staring up at the ceiling of the dwelling he shared with Judeth. His head moved again after a long moment, and Tad hoped he was finally going to say something. But no—he looked down at the shining terrazzo floor, inlaid in a geometric pattern of cream and brown that to all outward appearances fascinated him. That is, he seemed to be staring at those places; like any raptor, a gryphon’s peripheral vision was as good as his straight-on sight, and Tad knew very well that Aubri was watching them—well— like a hawk.
“Outpost Five,” the elder gryphon muttered, shaking his head so that the fragments of feather-sheath dislodged by his earlier scratch flew in all directions. A single headfeather, striped in brown and cream and as large as a human’s palm, drifted down to lie in the pool of sunlight beside him. Its edges were outlined in light, and the white fluff at the base glowed with a nimbus of reflected sunshine. “Outpost Five . . . now why does that sound familiar?”
This could go on for some time if Tad didn’t put a stop to it. He fixed Aubri with a look that said wordlessly, I know just what you’re doing and I’m not falling for it. In tones of deepest respect, he told his superior, “You and Commander Judeth took Outpost Five three years ago, sir, when we first took responsibility for it from the Haighlei. You said the tour of duty was a vacation from trainees who couldn’t molt without explicit written instructions.”
Aubri blinked mildly, but his great golden eyes were twinkling with hidden amusement. “Did I say that? I’m cleverer than I thought. Well, yes, I think I remember Outpost Five, now that you mention it. Pretty remote; it’s hard to find volunteers to man it. Good place for a vacation if what you want is thunderstorms every evening, fog every morning, and just enough of the sun to taunt you about, its existence. There’s a reason why the Haighlei call that kind of territory a ‘rain forest.’ It is wetter than a swimming kyree.”
Well, good. That’s one thing that wasn’t in our lessons on manning outposts. And there’s nothing in the briefing Blade read me that says anything about the weather there. “Would you say the weather is difficult enough to become a hindrance to our duties, sir?” he responded politely.
“Hindrance? I suppose if you’re the kind that thinks he’s going to melt if he has to fly in the rain.” Aubri’s mild manner turned just a trifle sharp, as if giving Tad subtle warning that he’d better not be thinking any such thing. His pupils dilated and constricted rapidly, another sign of warning. “No one promised sunny beaches and half-day duty when you volunteered for the Silvers.”
“It is dangerous to fly during thunderstorms, sir,” Blade put in politely, verbally maneuvering Tad from under Aubri’s talons. “And it can be dangerous to take off during heavy fog. We won’t be doing White Gryphon any favors if we get ourselves bunged up doing something stupid and they have to send in replacements and a rescue party. If the weather can become difficult enough to be dangerous, we ought to know about it in advance and know what warning signs to watch for. We can always ground ourselves and wait out a dangerous storm.”
“Well, now, that’s true enough.” Aubri was back to being the bumbling, genial old “uncle.” “But I don’t think I said anything to give either of you the impression that the weather was going to make it impossible to fly your regular patrols. You’ll just have to be careful, the way you were taught, and be diligent in watching for developing problems, that’s all. The thunderstorms aren’t violent, just briefly torrential, and the fog is always gone an hour after dawn.”
Both of which would have made his bones ache, if he’s having the same problems as my father. Aubri might be the oldest surviving gryphon from Urtho’s forces; he was certainly older than Skandranon. He looked it, too; his feathers were not as sleek or as perfectly preened as Tad’s were; in fact, they were a bit ragged, a trifle faded from what must have been his original colors of dark, warm brown and tan. Now he was rusty-brown and cream, and even feathers just grown in looked a bit shabby. Like Skandranon, he was of the broadwing variety, hawklike rather than falconiform, but he was huskier than Skandranon. His raptoral prototype was probably the umber-tailed hawkeagle, rather than the goshawk. There were signs of age in the delicate skin around his beak and eyes, a webwork of faint wrinkles, though those wrinkles were not as pronounced as the ones that humans got with increasing age. There was no sign of age in the mind, although you could not have told that from the way he was acting now.