“Well?” he asked, as he finished the exercise and stood, arms hanging at his sides, completely relaxed, yet energized, tingling with the song of the body rather than of magic, on the uppermost deck of their ekele.
“You’ll do,” Silverfox replied, smiling slightly. “You might even be in better shape than you were before the Storms. I told you this would loosen you up, and you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I didn’t have you to keep me active, before the Storms,” Firesong pointed out, slipping on a robe of scarlet silk, embroidered with white-and-gold firebirds, over his form-fitting sleeveless tunic and trews.
“In other words, you were a lazy sluggard,” the kestra’chern replied, and ducked as Firesong mimed a blow at him. The Healing Adept’s firebird, Aya, who had been watching all of this activity with keen interest, let out a derisive squawk. The bird opened his snowy wings and dropped down onto Firesong’s shoulder, fixing his talons carefully into the padded fabric. The long white tail trailed gracefully down Firesong’s back, curling around the thick, silver braid of Firesong’s hair.
“Whose part are you taking, mine or his?” Firesong asked, looking into his bird’s diamond-dust eyes. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
“And Aya is too smart to answer, anyway,” the kestra’chern laughed. “Not when he knows he can get treats from both of us this way.”
It was Firesong’s turn to make a noise of derision; Aya stretched his head and neck under Firesong’s chin, and the Adept answered the silent request by scratching the firebird’s chin. Aya crooned with pleasure. “Don’t listen to him, little one,” he said into Aya’s ear. “He thinks everyone is as self-centered as he is - or more.”
“Of course I do - since I’m not at all self-centered,” Silverfox replied matter-of-factly. He took Firesong’s elbow, and steered him in the direction of the staircase that curved around the trunk of their tree. “And don’t look now, but your pet is trying to coax me into tickling him, too.”
Aya opened one eye and gave Silverfox a withering look at the word “pet,” but did not pull his head away from Silverfox’s fingers.
Firesong felt a smile stretching the stiff, pitted and scarred skin of his face. Although life was nothing like he’d anticipated when he left his home Vale, it was very good. What’s more, I’m not sure if I’d be willing to do any of it over, since the end result is so - comfortable. It’s amazing now that I can wear so many faces here without any of them being a mask - and wear a mask without hiding my feelings.
Silverfox followed him down past the bedroom to the main public room of the ekele. The tree wasn’t large enough to support an ekele very high off the ground, or for more than one room to be on a single level, but now that the Veil was in place, he’d had the hertasi construct an external stair linking all the rooms, so that the area that had been used for the internal staircase could be converted into usable space. Wide decks circled each level of the ekele, and the staircase threaded its way around and through them. All the windows were open to the balmy air, and flowering vines grown from k’Vala cuttings had been trained around each of the windows to scent the breezes.
There were plenty of masks hanging on the walls, but Firesong didn’t trouble to reach for any of them as he and Silverfox entered the room. Here in his own home, no one would trouble him who had not been invited - and no one who had been invited would be shocked or disturbed by his burn-scarred appearance.
Some of Silverfox’s handiwork hung on the walls as well - gryphon feathers, shed by some of the residents of k’Valdemar when they molted. These were all primaries, secondaries, or tail-feathers, and the smallest was as long as Firesong’s forearm. Silverfox decorated the quills with beadwork, and painted the broad expanses with sinuous designs echoing the colors of the beads. Dyed leather and ribbons of strong textures complemented the interlace and lilt of the line-work. Feather artworks hung between each mask, and Firesong never tired of resting his eyes on them.
He lifted Aya off his shoulder and set the firebird down on a perch mounted in the wall, one indulgently made of silver in the form of a vine-wrapped branch with a hammered brass reflector behind it as tall as a hertasi. Aya roused all his feathers and shook himself vigorously; bits of fluff flew off of him and rode the air currents of the room like wayward insects, and sparks of false fire crackled around him.
“Wasn’t the Joint Council meeting this morning?” he asked Silverfox, as he sank into his favorite chair and reached for a book. Before he could even make up his mind that he wanted something, one of his hertasi appeared at his elbow and left a tall glass of cooled juice on the table where his book had been.
“Yes, and Keisha was going back to Errold’s Grove with the village representatives, so Darian will probably be a little late.” Silverfox sighed, but didn’t say anything more; Firesong assumed that the sigh was for Darian’s situation with the girl. And it was too bad; but it was also Darian’s and Keisha’s choice to keep things hanging this way. Darian didn’t allow it to affect his mage-studies; only if it had, would Firesong have had any right to stick his own nose into the affair.
It was later than Firesong would have expected, though, when Kuari came in to land on the railing of the porch, signaling that Darian could not be far behind. Lunch was long over, and Firesong was well into his book by then; Silverfox had already gone below to his workrooms at the foot of the tree to administer to some of his massage clients.
The Healing-Adept laid his book aside after reading a passage that made him smile, since it echoed his own teaching philosophy so well. Teach what you know, regardless of when you have learned it - teach what you learned yesterday sagely, as if you have known it all your life, and teach what you have known for decades with enthusiasm, as if you learned it only yesterday. He marked that page with a scarlet-jay feather and waited for Darian’s step on the stair, and saw by the young man’s face that there was unexpected news.
“Lord Breon said we’re going to get a permanent, resident Herald,” were the first words out of the young man’s mouth.
“Really?” Firesong was a little surprised at the “we.” “I take it he is expected to reside here? In k’Valdemar?”
Darian picked a seat and settled into it. “So Lord Breon says - unless the Herald decides it would be more politic to actually live outside the Vale. He’s supposed to be a Herald-Mage, too. Keisha’s sister Shandi just got her Whites, and she’s coming too, as his protege. I don’t know if that’s for the long term, but she’ll certainly be here for a year.”
“Hmm. We’re having a welcome, obviously.” Firesong knew there was something more, but Darian would get to it quickly enough; it was his nature not to hold anything back, for good or ill.
“Yes, and I - well, I suppose you could say that I’m going to be the chief entertainment,” Darian replied ruefully, his expression a comical mixture of chagrin, embarrassment, and pride. “Lord Breon got this idea - ”
He related exactly what had happened at the Council Meeting with remarkable facility - but then, the young man hadn’t been out of the circles of power since he was about fourteen or fifteen. Starfall is probably only waiting for him to reach the status of a full Mage before resigning from the Council, having Snowfire take his place, and graduating Darian into Snowfire’s slot.