Cinnabar inclined her head toward them in an acknowledgment of equal status, and her formal, perfectly fitted gown left no doubt as to her rank. The meaning of the salute was not lost on them.
Amberdrake felt the appraising eyes of the two silent envoys assessing every detail of the new costumes, reckoning value, perhaps even assigning a tentative rank to each of them as the Haighlei judged such things. He thought he sensed a marginal relaxation, now that they were no longer forced to deal with what looked like a band of scruffy workmen.
The leader nodded graciously. "We see now that you are not the piratic interlopers we first took you for," he said, offering his own not-quite-apology for their first demand. "Our agents reported that they had seen something like a river's base being constructed; we see that you have built a formidable settlement here, made for the ages rather than the moment, and worthy of the name of 'city.'"
I think he's saying that they've had a good look, and Judeth's right; they can't dislodge us without a nasty fight. The envoy's next statement confirmed Amberdrake's guess. "We see that you would also make valuable allies, and we have been advised to offer you the opportunity to come to King Shalaman's Court, to negotiate."
"We see that you are civilized and responsible," said the man to the envoy's right, a gentleman who had been silent until now. "We noted the careful planning of White Gryphon, and it appears that you have endeavored to despoil the land as little as possible. We had expected brigands, and we find builders, architects." He smiled, revealing startlingly white teeth in his black face. "Such people would be valuable guards upon our northernmost border."
Amberdrake smiled back, and Skan bowed slightly. "I am of the same opinion," the gryphon said, with complete equanimity. "When would your monarch care to open negotiations?"
"Immediately, if possible," the envoy replied without a moment of hesitation. "We would be pleased to host a delegation of two with families and retainers, one human and one—other, such as yourself. There is room in our vessel to convey your initial delegation; others may follow you, if you so desire. We are authorized to wait here until you are ready to leave."
That made Amberdrake's eyebrows rise. Either these envoys had extraordinary power in making a decision here, or they had some way to communicate directly with their superiors.
Very possibly the latter. If their magic was working more reliably than magic used by the Kaled'a'in refugees, such communication would be simple enough.
Skandranon was equal to the challenge. "We would be pleased to host you in our city above for the night and show you a pale reflection of the hospitality we will be able to offer when our city is complete. In the morning Amberdrake and I and our families will be ready to leave with you. We are as anxious to conclude a treaty as you are."
"Excellent," the envoy said, as if he meant it. And for the first time, the three envoys stepped off their little strip of carpet and onto the dock.
Leaving their territory for ours? Whatever the gesture meant, it seemed they were perfectly prepared to make the trip up the cliff.
Well, none of them are very old, nor do they look out-of-shape... and how better to show them that we're fortified for defense? Each of the envoys fell in beside one of the Councilors as they all began the walk to the path leading upward; the chief speaker beside Skan, the second man who spoke beside Amberdrake, and the one who had been silent the whole time beside Judeth.
The second man was thinner and a little taller than the other two, putting him at least a head taller than Amberdrake, who was not undersized by Kaled'a'in standards. His garments of red, black, and orange, while trimmed with heavy embroidery in gold threads, were made of very light material, perhaps silk. His walk and posture were relaxed now, and he strode beside Amberdrake with an easy gait that made the kestra'chern think that he was used to walking long distances. Perhaps they had no beasts of burden in his land.
"If you don't mind my asking," Amberdrake said hesitantly, "How is it that you speak our language so fluently? Our people have heard of the Haighlei Emperors, and how powerful they are, but nothing of any detail and certainly not your tongue."
"Oh," the man said, with a flashing smile and a wave of his hand, "That is simple. We have had many northern kestra'chern in the Courts of the Kings over the years—there is one with King Shalaman now."
"There is?" Amberdrake wondered—
"Oh, yes. A most remarkable and talented woman, and a great confidant of King Shalaman. Since he has no wife, she serves as Royal Companion. He even made her his Advisor for her wisdom. They call her Ke Arigat Osorna—that is, in your tongue and hers, The Silver Veil."
Somehow, Amberdrake managed not to choke.
Three
Winterhart closed the pale-blue gauze curtains over the doorway to the balcony of the palace bedroom she shared with Amberdrake, and sighed contentedly. She left the doors open to the light breeze, a breeze that was already turning oppressively hot, and turned with all the grace of a courtier born, poised and elegant in the gown Lady Cinnabar had lent her. It was of a light cream silk, which complemented her skin. Her long hair, laced with cords of matching cream silk ornamented by bronze beads and cream-colored feathers, brushed her face as she smiled slowly at Amberdrake, and flicked her braids over her shoulder.
Then with all the abandon of a child, she flung herself between the pale-blue gauze bedcurtains into the heap of pale-blue silk pillows topping the bed. She grabbed one and hugged it to her chest, looking up at Amberdrake with a face full of mischief.
"A maid for the bath, another for the rooms—two nursemaids for Windsong—eating incredible delicacies at the royal table—and a suite of five rooms all to ourselves! And all Gesten has to do is oversee the Haighlei servants! I could get used to this very quickly," she said contentedly. "It certainly is a cut above spending my mornings weeding the vegetable garden, my afternoons tending to minor gryphonic ailments, and the rest of the time chasing a two-year-old with endless energy and a positive fascination for heights!"
Amberdrake smiled, and sat down on the bed beside her, reaching out to touch her cheek. "As far as I am concerned, the main benefit is the nursemaids, who give us the chance to be alone together! How is it that Windsong always knows the moment you and I—"
"Empathy, I suspect," Winterhart said impishly. "She certainly takes after you in every other respect, so I can't see any reason why she shouldn't have your gifts as well. And you know how little ones are, they want to be the center of attention, so when Mum and Da begin to shift that attention to each other...."
Amberdrake sighed. "It is a perfectly rational explanation," he said ruefully. "But it doesn't suggest a solution to keep her from interrupting."
"But the nursemaids will," Winterhart said gleefully and waved her legs in the air, looking for all the world like a giddy adolescent. "Which means that we can spend as much time together as you can spare from being a diplomat."
"You are as much the diplomat as I, no matter how much you bounce on the beds," he reminded her with a slight grin. Small wonder—she never had a chance to be giddy when she was an adolescent. He ruffled her hair affectionately. She is good at this business; she looked every bit as regal as the highest of the Haighlei at the court reception this afternoon.
It had taken two weeks to sail down the coast to King Shalaman's capital city of Khimbata; a second vessel with more room for passengers would be arriving at White Gryphon shortly, to bring the rest of the delegation. The initial party consisted of Amberdrake and Winterhart, Skan and Zhaneel, the twin gryphlets and Windsong, and three hertasi, Gesten, Jewel, and a little female named Corvi. Jewel and Corvi were with Skan; Gesten mostly served (and lectured) Amberdrake these days, but he often stuck his bossy little snout into Skandranon's quarters to make certain that Jewel and Corvi were "doing things right by the old bird."
The first few days had been occupied with settling into their new quarters, a pair of side-by-side suites in the Royal Palace itself. The architecture of Khimbata was
strange and fascinating, even to those who were used to the weirdly lovely buildings Urtho, the Mage of Silence, had raised over his lands. It had an oddly organic feeling to it, with pronounced woodgrains, and no exterior surface was ever left unornamented. The swirling curves were covered with mosaics and sculptured reliefs of plants, birds, and animals. There was seldom anything as simple as a straight line, either, even in the interiors of buildings. The corners and the joining of walls and ceilings were always gently rounded, forming arches; ceilings sloped slightly upward to the center of a room, where there was always a flower-shaped or globe-shaped lamp. There wasn't a right angle to be seen here, unlike the carved stone austerity of the buildings of long-lost Ka'venusho.
The private rooms all seemed to be decorated in pastels, and featured a number of ingenious ways to at least simulate coolness. There were gauze curtains to reflect away the worst of the sunlight, and huge windows and balcony doors to catch the least breeze. Fabrics were light and airy, smooth and soft to the touch. That was just as well because Khimbata lay in the heart of a jungle, and it was the most northerly of all the Haighlei Kingdoms. Amberdrake did not want to think about spending summer in one of the more southerly regions. One, at least, was a desert, with temperatures literally high enough to kill a man standing under the open sky for more than a few moments. So he had been told, at any rate, and he saw no reason to dispute the claim.
In the public chambers, however, the Haighlei love of color ran riot. The Haighlei felt as much at home in the jungle as within a building, and brought the jungle into their buildings as a pleasant reminder of the wealth of life lying outside the city. Huge, lush plants prospered inside, placed where sunlight would reach them and accompanied by cheerful fountains or pools with lazy fish of gold, white, and black. Tiny, huge-eyed furry creatures scampered tamely up the plants' trunks, and out onto their limbs, and loud, rainbow-bright birds sang, whistled, or spoke mockingly down at the humans passing beneath.
The birds made Amberdrake feel comfortable amid all the alien architecture. They were like the tiny, rainbow-hued messenger-birds that the Kaled'a'in had brought with them, cherished, carefully nurtured, all the way from Urtho's Tower. These birds were larger, but like the messengers, spoke in human voices, with sense to their speech. He had already made friends with two, a salmon-pink one with a backward-curving crest of deep red, and one seemingly painted in blue, gold, and green.
The walls were covered with mosaics that were just as colorful as the birds, and cool, dim, deep-green passages between the vast public rooms brought to mind the cool, dim trails between huge forest giants.
The Haighlei themselves were as harlequin-bright in costume as their architecture; the clothing the three envoys had worn was fairly typical. Silk, raime, the finest linen imaginable, and a gauzy stuff made from fluffy plant fiber were dyed and fashioned into elaborate, fluttering robes, billowing trousers, and draped gowns, none of which incorporated less than three colors.
Amberdrake had pulled out all his most elaborately beaded and embroidered robes in anticipation of this; Winterhart would have been in some sartorial difficulty if it hadn't been for Lady Cinnabar. The Lady, it seemed, had used all of her old court gowns as padding on the floor of her floating-barge when planning for the evacuation of Urtho's Tower. That was clever of her, and reasonable given that fabric for padding was not a high priority and that her gowns were not made of stuffs that could be used as bandages or other useful articles. The clever aspect was that she had packed her gowns in a way that allowed her to retrieve the robes and dresses unharmed. "All" of her court gowns comprised a formidable number, and most of them were utterly unsuitable for the life of a Healer in a half-finished city.
Not all of the gowns were still pristine, and the lighter the fabric, the more it had suffered from wear and the intervening decade. Winterhart, however, was smaller than the aristocratic Cinnabar, and even those articles showing signs of wear or weakness at the seams could be cut down for her and look new. Jewel and Corvi had spent most of the sea voyage frantically—but delightedly—retailoring those gowns to suit their new owner. There was nothing a hertasi enjoyed more than costume-making, and there had been little enough of that during the war with Ma'ar or the search for a new home. Even Gesten had gotten into the act, much to the amusement of Skandranon.
So now Winterhart could put on as fine a display as Amberdrake, wearing her elaborate gowns with all the aplomb of the lady of nobility she had once been. The difference was, now she was not suffering under the expectations of her high-ranking family; now it was Amberdrake who was under the careful scrutiny of countless critical eyes, and she who needed only smile and whisper a bit of advice unless she chose otherwise.
She was enjoying it; Amberdrake was quite sure of that. He thought about Winterhart with a wry smile as he looped string on his fingers, preparatory to making a cat's cradle. She was enjoying the luxury and pampering she had not had in decades. For the past ten years she had done all of her own chores, her own cleaning, her own cooking—or rather, she had done those things with the help of Gesten and Amberdrake. For years before that, she had lived the rough life of a trondi'irn in Urtho's army, a healer and tender of Urtho's gryphons, a post where there were few luxuries and no pampering. Even Urtho himself had lived a life positively austere by the standards of the Haighlei Courts.
"Is Silver Veil able to visit us this afternoon?" Winterhart asked suddenly. Amberdrake covertly searched her face for any hint of jealousy, but to his relief, there didn't seem to be any signs of it. He would not have been at all surprised to discover that Winterhart was jealous of The Silver Veil. His mentor was one of those fine-boned, ageless women who, once they achieve maturity, seem to hover at an indefinable perfection until they are very old indeed. Her hair had turned silver in her teens, and she had capitalized on what might have been a handicap for someone in her profession by growing and cultivating it until it reached the floor, making it the trademark that had become her name. She was as strikingly graceful and beautiful now as she had been when he knew her, and it would not have been unexpected for Winterhart to react with jealousy at the inevitable bond between astonishingly beautiful mentor and student.
"What do you think of her?" he asked cautiously, looping another strand. "Your own opinion, not what you think I want to hear."
"I like her," Winterhart said thoughtfully, her gaze turned inward for a moment. "If you can say you 'like' someone as self-contained as she is, that is. I want her to like me, and not just be polite to me, and that's not just because she is your old teacher and your friend. I like to listen to her talking; I think she is fascinating. I hope that I may age as gracefully."
Amberdrake nodded; it was a good observation. "To answer your question, she said she wanted to come to our suite this afternoon, if that is all right with you."
"When everyone else is taking a nap, which is a good time for northerners like us to get together and pretend we are accomplishing something even though we aren't,"
Winterhart chuckled. "I thought that was so absurd when we first arrived here, for everything to stop at the height of the day—but now, I can't imagine even trying to get anything done when it's so horribly hot. Even Windsong takes her nap without arguing now, and I thought that was nothing short of miraculous."
"But it's the perfect time of day to socialize," Amberdrake pointed out, verbally, since his fingers were weaving and unweaving intricate knots. "Especially if little 'why-mama' is chasing dream-butterflies. And if we northerners can't bear to sleep during the day when we should be getting work done, at least we can keep each other company."
Gesten appeared in the doorway, as if on cue. "Windsong is asleep, and Silver Veil is here, Drake," he said. "Would you prefer the sitting room or the garden?"
Amberdrake raised an eyebrow at Winterhart, signifying that it was her choice. After all, his hands were tied at the moment. "The garden, I think," she replied after a moment. "I hope the fountains in the pool will make it cooler th
an the sitting room."
By now, as always, even the cool stone of the floors was not helping cool the air much. It was always like this; shortly after noon, the heat began to collect, and it weighed down the very air until the sun neared the western horizon.
Gesten shrugged. "They're supposed to, so they tell me," the little hertasi said philosophically. "I'll have Jewel tell someone to send up the usual refreshments."
"I'd appreciate it if you'd serve us yourself, Gesten," Amberdrake said before Gesten could leave. "I don't think we're likely to say anything dubious, but it's hard to tell how the Haighlei would translate some of our conversations or mannerisms."
Gesten nodded and went off to attend to all of it; no need to elaborate with him. They all knew that the so-attentive servants were reporting whatever they saw and overheard to their superiors, and possibly to masters besides their superiors. That might have been the reason for Winterhart's choice of the garden as well; the sound of the fountains would cover any conversation from more than a few feet away.
Discretion, discretion. Still, this is better than facing the Haighlei warships. They were on sufferance here; how much, perhaps Silver Veil could tell them. That was what she had implied when she asked for this meeting; that she could tell him more about their position here, now that the delegation had settled in.
Winterhart smiled as Amberdrake showed off the finished cat's cradle, then she slipped off the side of the bed and smoothed down her skirt. Amberdrake unraveled the elaborate finger and string sculpture, rose to his feet and straightened wrinkles out of his robes. Together they made their way to the tiny garden in the center of every suite of rooms. The Palace sprawled out across the Royal Compound, rather than being built in the vertical as Urtho's Tower had been. It was a vast complex of suites connected by corridors, with tiny gardens everywhere, as if they had been scattered like seeds and the Palace had been built around them. Every garden had one huge tree growing in the middle, shading everything, and most had more of the same ubiquitous fountains and pools that their own garden had. The theory was that this allowed more air to flow through the rooms, and the falling water cooled the breeze further. Since there was no need to worry about heating this vast pile, there was no need to build so as to conserve heat.
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