He’d spent the better part of summer training with the Guild, much to the bafflement of his peers and the irritation of his uncle the Chancellor. Unlike them, I knew why. Aven was twenty years his senior and the leader of the least honored and respected of the Guilds, disinterested in art, music, or cultured discourse. Tain’s fascination was unfathomable, considering Silasta was full of interesting, talented women and men, beautiful and clever and contributing far more to civilization than someone whose main skill was the effective use of violence.
But the Guard deflated his hopes in any case. “The Warrior-Guilder’s not in the city, Honored Heir. She’s with the army out near Moncasta, fighting Doranites over the mines again. That’s why we’re low on bodies here.” She ducked her head, her discomfort obvious. “Please, allow me to deal with this. My apologies for your involvement.”
After she left, we rinsed our scraped hands and shins in the canal and Tain took my berating with good humor but no apology. “No one else was helping him,” he pointed out.
I frowned. “No, but that doesn’t mean—”
“Would you prefer the old man got stabbed?” He stood, distracted. “We should check on him. I think I offended him somehow.”
But several yellow-sashed Guild officials now moved about the area, directing the cleanup, and the preacher had long since disappeared either voluntarily or at their direction. It wasn’t illegal to preach the old religion, of course, but it was common to see earthers moved along for disturbing trade or obstructing traffic.
I checked the position of the sun. “We’d better head up. The Chancellor will probably hear about this soon enough.”
He gave me a mournful look. “Let’s walk, at least. Enjoy the last of the peace while we can.” I raised an eyebrow, unsure our morning could be described as peaceful anymore, but then he grinned. “We can have that cup of tea at least.”
We walked south and crossed the pedestrian bridge to the east side of the lake. A calm contrast to its commerce-driven sister, the east shore was all long silvery grass and white sand, dotted with groups of Silasta’s wealthier classes enjoying the morning sun. Bathers splashed in the shallows and daring gulls snatched at unattended food. As we came off the bridge we dodged a stack of squealing children playing “old wooden” on the grass; tottering on one another’s backs and shoulders as they sang the rhyme, they almost collided with us as they shouted the last line: “The great old wooden saved us all!” and came tumbling down in a heap of giggles and cheerfully squashed limbs. Behind them, a knot of men and women lounged about, casually betting on informal footraces on the grass.
This side of the lake was more homogeneous and we blended in easily among crowds of dark heads and bare brown limbs under white tunics or palumas. But our anonymity didn’t last; first we were waylaid by earnest young Credo Edric, eager to share with us his latest song for my sister (called, imaginatively, “Kalina Kalina”) then by a wily couple of jewelers who were working the crowd of young Credolen in the hopes of securing a commission. I was grateful when we finally made it to my apartments.
The tinkle of the tiny hanging bells in the doorway rang out into emptiness. No movement stirred the green necklace of plants framing the curved walls (some decorative, some medicinal, some lethal). A suggestion of Etan’s earlier baking or experimentation hung in the air by way of a faint smoky scent. No sign of him or Kalina.
I changed, grateful for clean clothes—Tain waved off my offer of the same, unfazed by his rumpled state—and had begun to prepare the tea when my sister arrived home.
She froze as she saw us, furtive. Or perhaps it was just an involuntary flinch, as she followed it with several successive sneezes. Tain laughed and sprang to his feet. “There’s a sound I’ve missed!”
“Are you all right?” I blurted out.
“Hello to you, too, Brother.” She smiled to blunt the rebuke and squeezed my hands in greeting, then Tain’s. “Welcome home, both of you.”
“It’s a relief to be back,” I said by way of apology. Up close, her hair was damp and springy, and her skin prickled faintly with cold. “Where were you? Are you well?”
“Just walking. And I’m the same as usual.” Soft voice hoarse, she didn’t meet my eyes as she slipped past us to settle on a cushion by the table.
I checked the color transition of the brew and found it a satisfying rich gold. I settled the pot among the three of us and listened to my sister’s breath over the comforting warm gur-gur-gur sound of the tea pouring into each of our cups. No telltale squeak or rasp. Nothing to be anxious about.
A few sips in, the blanket of routine wrapped around me, it was as though we had never left. Tain entertained Kalina with tales of our trip, somehow turning weeks of monotony and stress into amusing escapades. I mostly sat in peaceful silence. The tea was a new one our mother had sent in my absence; delicate in aroma, but surprisingly pungent and earthy. Mother had never been a proofer, or much of a mother, but the genius of her palate for tea was undeniable.
“Enough about these two idiots,” Tain said at last. He left the table and began rifling through our bags. “Gifts! And you tell us your news. You haven’t been working too hard, I hope?”
“Oh, much of the same,” Kalina murmured vaguely. He’d bought her a set of polished wooden beads. I’d found a Talafan book of children’s stories with gorgeous painted illustrations. “Now you didn’t choose this just so you could scrape samples of the paint colors, did you?” she asked me severely, and Tain laughed at my attempts at bluster, having heard me enthusing in the market about the shade of blue.
“Well, your heart was half in it,” she teased, but her cheeks dimpled with pleasure just the same. Tain wound the beads through her dark cloud of hair—the wood was same warm brown as her skin, and gleamed like dewdrops in her curls—while she pored over the book. Talafan looked nothing like our written language and not much like Trade; indecipherable to me, but no obstacle to my sister. Her fingers stroked the pages and she read hungrily.
“I wish you could have come,” I said quietly, and her hands quivered a moment on the page before she shrugged with artificial nonchalance. I cursed myself for saying it and hastened to change the subject. “Etan’s notes were very short. Has he been busy?”
“I’ve barely seen him,” she said. “First there was the mess with the raids on the mines, then I think there was some kind of problem getting the summer harvest deliveries. Oh, and there was an earthquake that damaged a quarry, and the rains still haven’t come to the rice fields so everyone has been worried about yields.”
“What happened with the mines?” Tain’s voice was a touch too casual. We had longstanding disputes with various Doranite mountain tribes about ownership of some of the mines near the southern border; it wasn’t unusual to see raids in summer, but these had been larger and better organized than in previous years. Tain’s interest, though, had nothing to do with the military implications.
“Some of the attacks started getting close to Moncasta,” Kalina said, and twisted ever so slightly so that Tain’s hands fell away from the beads in her hair. “One of the outskirt villages got attacked. The Council sent the whole army to force the Doranites to either retreat or move to a full confrontation.”