“Meaning the gryphons,” Amberdrake said with pleasure. “Including Zhaneel.”
It was not his imagination; Skan’s nostrils flared at the sound of her name, and his nares flushed a deep scarlet.
He was going to probe a little further, but a shadow fell upon the closed flap of the tent. “Ah, here is our fourth guest,” he said instead, and rose and went to the door of the tent himself. “Lovely lady,” he said, bowing and gesturing for Zhaneel to come in, “you brighten our company with your presence.”
Zhaneel was looking very lovely, if rather tired; Winterhart must have helped her with her grooming. But then, since Zhaneel had been ordered to report directly to Urtho before she came here, the Trondi’irn would have taken pains to make her look especially good, at least to human eyes.
From the stunned expression on Skan’s face, she looked especially good to gryphon eyes as well.
She stepped inside, and only then did she see who was waiting there. She froze in place, and Amberdrake put one hand on her shoulder to keep her from fleeing.
“You know Gesten, of course,” he said quickly, “and this, as you know, is Skandranon—I do not believe you have actually been introduced, but as I recall, he gave you some good advice on the disposition of a valor-token.”
Amberdrake had no difficulty in reading Skan’s eyes. I’ll get you for this one, Drake. Well, this was fair return for the false impression that Skan had given poor little Zhaneel—however well the whole affair had turned out, he owed Skan for that one.
“I took the liberty of adding him to your victory dinner, Zhaneel,” he added. “I didn’t think you would mind.”
“No,” she replied faintly. “Of course not.”
But to her credit, she did not bolt, she did not become tongue-tied—in fact, she recovered her poise in a much shorter time than he would have thought. She blinked once or twice, then moved forward into the room, and took her place on the pile of pillows that Amberdrake pointed out to her.
Skan recovered some, but by no means all, of his aplomb. As the dinner progressed, he was much quieter than usual, leaving most of the conversation to Amberdrake and Gesten. Zhaneel managed to seem friendly toward Skan, and full of admiration, but not particularly overwhelmed by him, an attitude that clearly took him rather aback.
As darkness fell, and Gesten got up to light the lamps, she seemed to relax quite a bit. Of course, these were familiar surroundings to her by now, and perhaps that helped put her at ease. Before the dinner was over, Skan did manage to ask if she would accept him into one of her training classes, subject, of course, to Amberdrake’s approval—
“He’s my Healer, you know,” Skan added hastily. “Best gryphon-Healer there is.”
He fell silent then, as Amberdrake grinned. “Why, thank you, Skan,” the kestra’chern replied. “I personally think you’re more than overdue for some retraining, if Zhaneel is willing to accept someone who’s as likely to give her arguments as not.”
“I should be pleased,” she said with dignity, as her eyes caught the light of the lamps. “Skandranon is wise enough to know that one does not argue with the trainer on the field, I think.”
Her nares were flushed, but in the dim light of the tent, only Amberdrake was near enough to notice. “Did you know that General Farle is being given command of the Sixth?” he asked, changing the subject. “Skan brought us the news.”
“No!” she exclaimed, with delight and pleasure. “But that is excellent! Most excellent indeed! He is a good commander; most went according to plan, there were no missed commands, and when things happened outside of the plan, General Farle had an answer for them.”
“That leaves Shaiknam and Garber at loose ends, though,” Gesten put in, his voice full of concern. “I don’t know, I just don’t like thinking of those two with nothing to do but think about how they’ve been wronged.”
“But they haven’t been,” Skandranon protested. “They retain their rank, they retain all their privileges; they simply do not have a command anymore.”
“Which means they have no power,” Gesten countered. “They have no prestige. They messed up, and everyone knows it. They’ve been shamed, they’ve lost face. That’s a dangerous mood for a man like Shaiknam to be in.”
Amberdrake only shrugged. “Dangerous if he still had any power, or any kind of following—but he doesn’t, and thinking of him is spoiling my appetite. General Shaiknam will descend to his deserved obscurity with or without us, so let’s forget him.”
“I second that motion,” Skan rumbled, and applied himself to his coveted heart, as Zhaneel ate her eels.
And yet, somehow, despite his own words, Amberdrake could not forget the General—
—or his well-deserved reputation for vindictiveness.
Skandranon ached in every muscle, and he needed more than a bath, he needed a soak to get the mud and muck out of his feathers. But that was not why he came looking for Amberdrake, hoping that his friend was between appointments. Drake wasn’t in the “public” portion of his tent, but the disheveled state of the place told Skan that the kestra’chern had been there so short a time ago that Gesten hadn’t had time to tidy up.
As it happened, luck was with him; Drake was lying on a heap of pillows in his own quarters, looking about the same way that Skan felt, when the gryphon poked his nose through the slit in the partition.
“Thunderheads!” Skan exclaimed. “Who’ve you been wrestling with? Or should I ask ‘what’ rather than ‘who’? You look like you’ve been fighting the war by yourself!”
“Don’t ask,” Amberdrake sighed, levering himself up off the bed. “It isn’t what you think. You don’t look much better.” The kestra’chern pulled sweaty hair out of his eyes, and regarded Skan with a certain weary amusement. “Zhaneel, I trust?”
Skan flung himself down on the rug right where he stood. “Yes,” he replied, “But it isn’t what you think. Unfortunately. It was a lesson.” He groaned, as his weary muscles complained about just how weary they were. “I thought I might impress her. It was a bad idea. She decided that if I was that much better than the rest of the class, I could run her course along with her.”
Amberdrake passed a hand over his mouth. Skan glowered. “You’d better not be laughing,” he said accusingly.
Amberdrake gave him a look full of limpid innocence. “Now why would I be laughing?” he asked guilelessly. “You look all in; you’ve obviously been pushing yourself just as hard as you could. Why would I laugh at that?”
Skan only glowered more. He couldn’t put it into words, but he had the distinct feeling that Drake was behind all of this, somehow. Zhaneel, the lessons, the private lesson—all of it. “I have been pushing, and pushed, and I am exhausted. I need to borrow Gesten, Drake, or I’m never going to get the mud out of my coat and feathers. And I wish you’d let me steal your magic fingers for a bit. And—” he sighed, finally admitting his downfall, “—and I need to talk to you.”