He came to me on winter nights.
Oh, your mind leaps to naughty things, but we were innocents then. Not that we did not know all the words and actions that put passion into deeds, but the need had not fully awakened in either of us. Yes, at sixty, many are already tumbling into the sheets, driven by maturing bodies. What we wanted from each other was to be mind to mind, and heart to heart, not body to body. That would come later.
So he came with hopes and dreams and we would plan to make them true. It was maps that we spread across my bed. It was books that we caressed. We fumbled with Latin, Greek, English, and Mandarin.
The way that time folds and bends and collapses is something that most humans don’t live long enough to understand. Memories become islands in a sea of forgotten. So it was months before I saw Wolf Who Rules again, and yet, now, it seems as if after that day in the garden, we were always together. I know that it must have been months, because it was at Winter Court that he first found his way to my bedroom. (It was not a simple task. I spent my childhood housed with my mother, but when I shifted to my father’s caste, there was no ready place for me. Sword Strike’s place was at the queen’s side; there was no room for a half-grown, hot-tempered child in his quarters. My father and I both thought I was fated for the Wyvern training hall but we had not counted on my mother, who quietly had my things moved to a sprawling room in the palace attics. A grand place indeed but difficult to find.)
I do remember that I was about to retire, so I was in my sleeping clothes, when he pounded on the door. I opened it to find him juggling books, maps, and scrolls.
“Discord!” he cried. “My gods, they’ve hidden you away! It took me forever to find you!”
“Wolf Who Rules?” I remembered my training and stepped back to let him into the safety of my room. I checked the stairs to see if he’d been followed. A Wyvern waited at the bottom of the steps. “What are you doing here?”
“We must plan!” He dumped what he was carrying on my bed since I had no desk.
“Plan for what?” I eyed the materials with dismay. Foolishly, I’d rebelled against the rich furnishings that my mother had piled on me, thinking she was trying to lure me back to her training. I’d carried everything I could to hidden corners of the palace like some anti-thief. At that moment I realized that she knew perfectly well that Wolf would be spending untold hours with me in my rooms. (He later helped me to “steal” them back, laughing at me as we moved them quietly through the halls. As a measure of my mother’s influence in the palace, no one ever questioned this bizarre behavior.)
“We must plan for our future!” He spread open the map showing the great expanse of the Western Ocean. Unlike all the other maps I’d seen, though, there was land defined on the other side of the water.
“This is the Far East?” I tilted my head and then tilted the map. The great Far East Seas were missing as were the Dawn Islands. “Where is this?”
“Shortly before we were born, the humans discovered two complete continents. These are maps that they produced of the lands. They called them the Americas. I am calling them the Westernlands. Here, look at this.” He spread out a print showing a great level plain cleared in a forest with orderly enclaves being erected. “This is Savannah, Georgia, in North America. A human named Oglethorpe landed here with a hundred and twenty people and within a year had this! And this is New Amsterdam. The Dutch colonized this. Look. Look at the land! A whole world without clan disputes!”
I grasped immediately what he intended. I’d been raised at court, after all; I’ve watched the circus countless times. When domana neared their majority, they would come swaggering to court, expecting riches to be piled at their feet. The hard truth was that nearly every square foot of the Easternlands was tied up with multiple claims. When the Skin Clan fell, there’d been a desperate scrabble for resources that led to the Clan Wars. Well established domana held vast amounts but through a network of promises to protect the beholden working the land. They could not share their holdings even if they wanted to; they needed the wealth of the land to protect their people.
A new continent meant Wolf’s holdings wouldn’t be limited.
It was a stunningly bold stroke but with many inherent risks. No one would trust Wolf to succeed, not without the proper people at his back.
And I was not one of those proper people. I didn’t even need my mother’s abilities to know that if I was his First, he would not succeed.
He saw the realization dawn on my face. “Oh, come, Discord. Give me at least a decade before you count me as lost.”
“Second Hand is good enough for one such as me.”
“Discord. My father…”
“I am not Otter Dance. Her modesty does her well but you must realize that her parentage only brings her honor. You need a strong First Hand or you will never get the backing that you need.”
“Who of that caliber would follow me into this insanity?”
With my father’s knowledge of sekasha, I knew who was the perfect fit. “Wraith Arrow.”
“Howling’s First? Are you serious? Howling could barely talk him into being his First, and my grandfather was a proven warlord. Wraith Arrow would see this as babysitting. He’s at High Meadow Temple because he couldn’t take a household overrun by ten children.”
I considered my mother’s training on how to best maneuver people to where you needed them to be. “He will do what is best for the clan; he can be swayed by sheer logic. If you present a strong enough case, he will agree to it. With him, you could take two Hands easily. Three even. We will have to have a solid plan of attack before you approach him.”
“So you will follow me into this insanity?”
I had always believed that my mother had some great plan for me. I’d spent my life looking for the reason of my existence. Here, at last, was something large enough to soothe my pride. “Yes. Willing.”
I met Galloping Storm Horse on the day he was born. It was on the day I reached majority and formally pledged myself to Wolf Who Rules. The first was a public affair of winning my sword, proving my right to call myself sekasha. (The second was between just him and me, a quiet reconfirming of what we’d agreed upon decades before.) Hence my mother was at the Wind Clan Quarters when Otter Dance gave birth to Pony.
It means, of course, that Pony and I were born a hundred years apart to the day. Others might find great significance in this, but I know my mother too well. Just as she planned my birth, she must have planned Pony’s too. Nor did I at first attach any importance to his name, for it was my mother that named him, not a random temple priestess who was trying to appease his deadly parents.
Since my father was there to witness my testing, the queen’s First Hand was there for support, although I don’t know if it was for me or for him, in case I failed. So of course within minutes of delivering her son, Otter Dance was washed, dressed, and proudly showing Pony off.
With my mother right there, it was only natural that Otter Dance present her infant to be named.
Now, one has to understand that during her long life, Pure Radiance has seen thousands of babies. I think she might be the most experienced person of our race in newborns. When I was young, I had no clue how she could even stand the constant barrage of screaming infants. I realize now that she has some unnatural fascination with them. (I often wonder if she might have invented the entire naming custom to give her access to an unending supply of newborns without upsetting the sekasha.) First thing she always does is undress the babies. Normally this makes the infants cry and upsets their parents, who often had never seen a child before in their life. After my mother gets her fill of tiny little feet and amazingly small fingers, the screaming finally wears out her patience and she hands them back to their bewildered mothers.