Kalira's bridle bells chimed cheerfully, echoing up and down the street, and the sound drew children out of the yards to come see what made it. Lan sat up straighter as round eyes peered at him and took in the familiar sight of a Companion, but the unfamiliar uniform. He heard murmurs of speculation, and suppressed a smile.
But then, as he drew nearer to his own house, the offspring of his own relatives piled out of the yard, and one of them finally recognized him. A cousin, a very young one, stared at him with mouth and eyes going equally round, then suddenly burst back into the house through the front door, squealing at the top of her lungs.
"Mama! Mama! It's Cousin Lan, an' he's a Captain Herald!"
That brought a veritable flood of relatives out into the cold, giving Lan exactly the hoped-for opportunity for a dramatic arrival. Kalira went into a parade gait called a pavane, a kind of slow-motion trot with feet raised as high as possible, as Lan sat very straight and still in the saddle.
As his mother and father pushed their way through the rest, Kalira came to a graceful halt. With a flourish of his cape, Lan swung out of the saddle, and tied his reins over the pommel. With a brief but very low bow of her head, Kalira whirled on her heels and returned up the street at a now-brisk canter.
Lan turned and faced his parents—and the rest of the family—who were all, from the oldest to the youngest, staring as open-mouthed as the first to recognize him.
"Lavan!" his father blurted, "Your horse—"
"Companion, Father," he said gently. "It wouldn't be proper or polite for her to stand about in the yard with no shelter and no comforts. We've no place for her here, so she'll be back for me later."
His father stared at him as if he'd spoken Hardornen; his mother looked at him as if he was a stranger. He had never seen them look at him that way before—
Or had he? Hadn't they been odd with him when they'd come to visit him at the House of Healing?
And was that fear he saw, faintly, before they forced smiles of welcome onto their faces?
They didn't give him a chance to examine them any closer. "Well, let's not all stand about in the cold any longer!" his father said, clapping him on the back. "Come along inside, everyone, and let's get back to our Festival!"
Lan was carried away on a tide of relations, in through the front door where he was relieved of his cloak, revealing the true splendor of his Formal Grays, and on to the sitting room, where his younger cousins, terribly impressed, made him sit down and plied him with plates of food they carried off from the sideboards just to present to him. He couldn't have moved if he'd wanted to; he had no idea where the rest of those his age were at the moment, though he shrewdly suspected they were at the park. The adults had commanded the parlor, and at this point they were probably bombarding his parents with questions of their own. He wondered what they were telling everyone, given that his father hadn't even thought that there was a difference between a horse and a Companion.
It was the children who saved him from further awkwardness. They were dying to hear about what being a Heraldic Trainee was like, and inundated him with questions. Was his Companion really smart enough to come get him? Did she talk like a human? How could she speak in thoughts? Where did he live? Was the Collegium really in the same place as the Palace? Had he met anyone important? He'd met the King's Own? Had he ever seen the King?
The answer to each question only gave birth to a dozen more, which prevented him from having to make conversation with the adults. That was just as well, for they kept drifting over from the parlor in little clumps to listen as he spoke to the children; he could feel their eyes on him all the time. If the children treated him as one of their own who had returned from a far country with incredible tales, the adults watched him as if he had changed into some new and strange creature utterly unlike a human.
He had become, unwittingly, the main source of entertainment for the afternoon. Although the adults didn't stoop to asking him any questions themselves, they certainly didn't hesitate to listen while he answered the children.
He tried to concentrate on them rather than anything else. They were certainly excited and happy to see him and pelt him with their questions, and after all, it certainly was the first time that any of them had gotten close enough to a Trainee (much less a Herald) to ask all the questions that they wanted to.
It was only after darkness had fallen and a servant had gone around discreetly lighting the candles that his mother appeared in the parlor, clapping her hands to get their attention. Nelda was not dressed in her absolute finest, which she reserved for important meetings, festivals, and parties involving Guild functionaries. Instead, she wore something much more casual, a simple-cut gown of soft brown wool, bound around with a hanging girdle embroidered, not by her own hands, but by Macy—it had been last year's Midwinter present. Her hair was done in a single loose braid down her back, and Lan thought she looked much better and softer than when she wore her best.
"Enough questions for now, little ones!" she called, just a shade too heartily. "It is time for the Feast!"
Since Lan would certainly be around after the Feast to continue to question, the children abandoned him for the pleasures of the table.
The children ate apart from the adults in the kitchen, the parlor, or anywhere else that small tables could be set up for them. The adults had the dining room to themselves. And Lan could tell at a glance that there had been some last-minute reshuffling of the seating arrangements. He was escorted to the seat of honor that Sam usually took, at his father's right. Two of the cousins who hadn't spoken to each other for years had somehow gotten placed side by side, and his brother Sam had been positioned between two very pretty but (matrimonially speaking) completely unsuitable country relatives. Neither of these seating accidents would ever have happened if his mother had been paying attention, so evidently his arrival had flustered her.
Or—not his arrival, but his appearance. She had probably expected that he would appear on foot, in his rather forgettable Trainee uniform. Clearly his parents had not bothered to tell anyone of his new status. As usual, the adults would have dismissed him from their minds as entirely unimportant. His theatrical arrival had completely thrown all of her expectations into the dust.
That wasn't entirely unsatisfactory, although he would much rather have been where Sam was. It would have been rather nice to have both his pretty cousins making calf eyes at him over their cups.
As it was, he was between his grandmother, who had displaced him from his own room, and his father. Well, at least he wouldn't be required to make conversation. Grandmother was as deaf as a rock, and his father clearly was reluctant to make conversation with him.
Grandmother evidently considered his new clothing to be some sort of clever invention of his mother's; she looked him up and down, then announced loudly, "I'm glad you managed to get the boy into something presentable, Nelda! He finally looks like a Chitward, and not like a ragpicker's son." Then she applied herself to her food, blissfully unaware of the nervous giggles from the foot of the table or Nelda's embarrassed blush.