It belatedly occurred to him as he took to the air and began a series of slow, lazy circles in the damp morning air that he made a dreadfully conspicuous target. It isn't as if there are a lot of creatures the size of a horse or larger, pure white, flying about in the sky around here. If someone who happened to like one of those women happened to decide to take the law into his own hands, I could be in deep—
Something sent a warning shrilling along his nerves.
Only years of dodging the inventive weaponry used by Ma'ar's soldiers—and the fact that his fighting instincts were coming back with a vengeance—saved him at that moment.
He thought later that he must have caught a hint of swift movement coming up from below, movement so subtle it didn't register consciously. His nerves just screamed a sudden alarm at him, and he sideslipped in the air, violently and unpredictably altering his path.
What in— oh,sketi!
And an arrow passed through the part of the sky where his chest had been a moment before, actually whiffling through his outermost three primaries on his left wing without touching the wing itself.
It was close enough that he reached out, still without thinking, to snatch it out of the sky.
A foolish move, of course—although it did give him the satisfaction that his reactions were quite good enough now that he caught it. He spiraled violently away before a second arrow could follow it, scanning the ground below him for signs of the archer.
There was nothing, of course. Whoever had sent off the shot wasn't willing to risk a second. And he wasn't about to show himself with a bow in his hand, either.
The arrow was plain, quite ordinary, without owners' marks or fancy fletching. It was probably nothing more than a plain target arrow, one of a hundred thousand like it in this city alone. It might not even have been shot at him; someone might have been stupid, overly exuberant, or a very bad hand with a bow.
Oh, yes. Surely. And pigs are flying in parade formation around the sun at this moment.
There was no point in pretending that this arrow had come zinging at him with any innocence involved in its flight. Someone down there on the ground did not like him. Someone in the Palace wanted him perforated. Suddenly he could hardly wait for a particular barrel to arrive with the augmented "diplomatic" corps. For some reason, even by day, it was harder to hit a black target in the air than a white one. Human perception, perhaps.
But this arrow carried far more implications than that. For someone among the Haighlei to bypass law, custom, and protocol and go shooting at Skandranon personally meant that the situation had eroded to a very dangerous point indeed. These people simply did not dothat. They were so law-abiding that it was ridiculous.
And neither he, nor anyone else, had taken that possibility into their considerations last night. It might be a lot more dangerous to be the chief suspect of all these killings now than they had thought. That put Amberdrake in a very precarious position.
I think I'd better talk to Drake. Quickly. Besides, the sky is not a healthy place to be at the moment.
Mere heartbeats later, he was backwinging to a landing on Amberdrake's balcony—and Amberdrake, much to hissurprise, was pushing his way through the curtains to meet his early-morning visitor.
The kestra'chern looked as if he hadn't gotten a lot of sleep, either. His eyes were red and a little swollen with a hint of dark circles beneath them, his long hair was tangled, and the loose robe of rich, multicolored silk was something he had clearly just pulled on when he heard Skan's wings outside his bedroom.
It's a good thing that Winterhart sleeps as deeply as she does, or I'd be in trouble. She hates being wakened too early. At least Drake will put up with it.
He made one of the better landings of the last several months, at least, touching down gracefully and sending Amberdrake's hair whipping around his face with the wind from his wings.
"Drake, we have more trouble," he said shortly, as Amberdrake looked up at him, with one hand absently rubbing his temple, a sure sign the kestra'chern had a headache. Well, there were a lot of headaches in the Palace this morning. "Look." He held out the arrow, and Amberdrake took it. "Someone thinks foreigners make great targets, especially flying foreigners. That could change, though. Walking targets in silk robes might be next on the target range."
Amberdrake chewed his lip thoughtfully, his brows knitted with worry. "Meant to warn, or to strike?" he asked, coming straight to the point.
"To strike, unless they were counting on my being able to dodge it," Skan told him bluntly. "The thing is, you don't get out of the way as well as I do, especially if you're on a balcony or in a corridor. We might want to rethink this plan of ours; Winterhart isn't going to be very happy with me if you end up full of holes."
You're not a warrior-hero, Drake,he thought silently, willing the kestra'chern to be sensible. You were never meant to be on the front lines. You don't have to do this if you don't want to. Don't pretend to be something you aren't.
"If I become the chief suspect, I can keep to my rooms," Amberdrake pointed out reasonably. "In fact, if I become the chief suspect, I'll have a good reason to keep to my rooms. The others will be here in a few days; I'll have guards enough then to keep me safe, don't you think?"
"You can never have enough guards," Skan muttered, but he nodded reluctantly. "I want to go on the record as thinking this is a very bad idea, though," he continued. "You aren't and never were a fighter, no matter what most of the Kaled'a'in are. You never got any closer to the front lines than the Healers' tents. You haven't got a fighter's instincts. I—"
"Skan, you forget what I was before I was a kestra'chern," Amberdrake interrupted softly. "I haven't been sheltered from violence my entire life. I weathered the flight from Ma'ar's troops as a boy, I weathered the war with his army, and I managed to do all right on the journey into the West. And I may not be a fighter, but I've kept myself in shape the whole time."
If that remark was supposed to annoy the gryphon, it fell wide of the mark. "I've gotten myself back in shape, too, Drake," Skan said, just as pointedly. "I make a better target than you. I'm not human, and I am a fighter, with plenty of practice at dodging whatever is thrown or shot at me."
"You make a much more conspicuous target than I do, and I'd say that disqualifies you," Amberdrake snapped, then looked contrite. "I'm sorry; I'm short on sleep and on tolerance, and this hasn't helped. I promise, I will be verycareful, but this thing is too important not to take some risks in order to get it solved. Is that enough?"
Skan closed his eyes for a moment, trying to quell the sick feeling he had in the pit of his stomach when he thought of pulling that same arrow in his talon out of Amberdrake. Odd. I was always the one who went charging off into danger, and it never bothered me like this. But put Drake on the line of fire—The sick feeling rose to his crop, and he fought the nausea down. Is this how my friends felt about me? I can't stand the idea of him being in danger! I not only want to protect him, I want to keep him out of it!
Yet wasn't it Amberdrake's right to decide what he did, what he volunteered for? I certainly didn't need anyone telling me what to do with my life, and I'd have resented anything Drake did to "protect" me. And he is right, damn him. These murders are going to wreck everything with the Haighlei and may send us into a war neither side can win if we can't solve them.