Sixteen

Some gifts are so great that the only way the recipient can express his gratitude is to immediately give the gift to someone else. A dangerous business, this, among fickle humankind, who often see such generosity as indicative of a thoughtless heart. But in such a matter, do as your heart directs you. In the last reckoning, She is both giver and receiver, acting both parts to increase the joy of both—and if humankind doesn’t understand, She does.

—Charestics, 118

They leaned on the walls and looked down into the dark streets of Darthis. No light burned anywhere—not so much as a hearthfire or candle or lamp. Below them the city dreamed in a silver pallor of moonlight, though there was a shifting and stirring in the Square under the walls of the Black Palace.

A few thousand people stood down there, quiet or murmuring, waiting for the Queen to strike the first sparks of the Midsummer needfire and distribute it among them. Most of those waiting were only concerned with their part in the festival—lighting the candles and lamps they carried from the new fire and racing through the city with it, spreading luck and laughter. But a few looked up toward the palace walls and stared fascinated at something strange.

Blue Fire flickered there, dancing about a long slender shape that seemed to be too dark to be a Rod. And there was another light there, a pair of silver-blue globes that looked uncannily like eyes staring downward. The more perceptive in the crowd had even noticed that the moonlight didn’t fall on them. It was blocked away by a huge winged shape that seemed there when one looked away from it, and not there when one looked at it straight.

Whatever they saw, no one seemed particularly bothered by any of these oddnesses. This was, after all, Midsummer’s Eve, when magic was loose in the world.

Down in the square, flint struck steel, and a spark nested in tinder and began to grow into flames. The cheering began. Viols and trumpets and kettledrums struck up a jubilant music that echoed off the walls, and effectively drowned out a deeper music several stories up. “Hn’aa’se sithesss’ch mnek-kej-std untuhe au’lkhw’t’dae,” the music said, a voice like a trio of bass instruments playing a lazy, cheerful processional.

“Ae, mdaha’esss’ch,” sang a softer voice, in a raspy alto. “We may as well enjoy the rest while we can ...”

“There won’t be much of it,” Hasai said, unfolding and folding his wings in resignation. He spoke in precognitive tense, but with good humor; the melody woven about his words said plainly that he preferred action to peace and quiet. “Arlen will be astir like thunderstorm air for months. If Cillmod doesn’t already know who was responsible for what happened at Bluepeak, he will very shortly. The war with Darthen will soon open.”

“And the Queen forges her new crown tomorrow,” Segnbora groaned. A formal occasion first thing in the morning was the last thing she needed. “All I want is to sleep late.”

“You may, if you please. I will teach you how, now that you have a sdaha’s proper timesense. Will a month or so be enough, sithesss’ch?”

The steps on the battlement were no surprise. Two hours ago Segnbora had remembered hearing them, and she had been waiting for them ever since. “If he did know,” the shorter of the two approaching men said on reaching the top of the stairs, “it explains why he made the bastard Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

“To keep an eye on him?”

“Sounds like something my father might have done. This also explains how he managed to get the backing of the High Houses. But even if he can go into Lionhall, he doesn’t know the Ritual, he’s no Initiate—or if he is, he’s messing up. Arlen is ready for me now.”

Freelorn and Herewiss looked strange out of surcoats and mail They leaned on the wall, one on either side of her, in softboots and britches and shirts. Herewiss looked up at the dark shape that blocked-but-didn’t-block the Moon away. “How much are you there, Ihhw’Hasai?”

“As much as my sdaha needs me to be. Or as I need to be. Since we’re one, there’s little difference ...”

“Where were you an hour or so ago?” Herewiss said to Segnbora. “Eftgan was looking for you. Wanted your help with the needfire, or something.”

“I was flying,” Segnbora said, nodding at the sky.

Herewiss nodded soberly. She shared a gentle look with him, understanding now from her own experience how complete his underhearing must be, reaching even to others’ most private thoughts. “I have to thank you,” she said.

“You don’t have to anything. You did it yourself.”

“So I did. And you mediated some of that doing with me, saw me into the situations I’d need to get where I am. You had little reason to give me such a gift, either,” Segnbora said. “I tried to move in between you and your loved, a while back. You must have noticed.”

Herewiss nodded, looking grave. But not too much so. “These days, I don’t let old reasons interfere with what I want to do. And maybe, even when I was angriest at you, maybe I saw something ...”

“Who I was?” she said.

“Yes. A liaison. There’s a whole race sharing the Kingdoms with us that not even the human Marchwarders understand properly—they have the language, but not the body that forms it. But there was more. You were a catalyst. And will continue to be. Things will be happening that need me—things I couldn’t do without you and your Dragons. Likewise there are things you couldn’t manage without me. I’m part of a solution. And more—”

She fell silent, nodding, already having hints of what the “more” was. This was a small problem. Sometimes the ahead-memories came too fast, and she had trouble deciding what to share, what to keep to herself.

She shrugged. The future was merely another kind of present to a Dragon, malleable as the past, part of the game. What mattered was what the player intended to be.

In one word, her newfound Name, she told them.

“We’ll keep your secret,” Freelorn said just above a whisper.

Segnbora smiled at them, knowing that the One she meant to hear her Name had heard it through them, then waved good night, and headed for the stairs. Along the upper parapet, Hasai lazily put out a single forefoot—all he needed to do to keep up with her.

“No more words?” he said.

“What should I say?”

Slowly Segnbora lowered her head to gaze back down the parapet; where Freelorn took back from Herewiss the lovers cup she had left them, and drained it—and found it still full.

“That,” Hasai said. “Forever.”

Lost between laughter and tears of joy, Segnbora nodded, reached out to her mdaha, and led him off into their future, and to bed.