Storm Warning - Mercedes Lackey [89]
“Yes, well, our younglings can be a rather timid and conservative lot,” she said casually. “At least the children of the courtiers can. At the moment, I don’t know of anyone in the younger set who would deliberately be rude or hostile to you. On the other hand, they’ve had a rather unsettled time of it; that can make even the boldest youngling into a mouse. Most of the youngsters here have lost at least one family member to the conflicts with Ancar, and there are a few who went from being fifth- or sixth-born to being second or third heir to their parents’ holdings within the space of a few weeks. Many of them don’t even have parents anymore; they’re under the guardian-ship of older siblings. They don’t like to think of any of that; to escape from their memories they tend to concentrate on some fairly shallow interests. The trouble is, no one has put you into the set that’s actually doing something with their time—mostly because they are as busy as you.”
That shocked him out of his own depression entirely. How many of the Valdemar elite had died in this war? Had Karse suffered as much at the hands of Ancar? Surely not, at least, not at first. Perhaps once the alliance had been made public—
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said at last, hoping his tone conveyed the fact that he really was sorry. “I don’t believe we had nearly that much trouble with him.”
“No, you didn’t, not at first,” Talia agreed. She ran her hand through her hair in what looked to be a gesture of habit. “For one thing, he really didn’t want Karse all that badly, and for another, he was under the rather mistaken impression for some time that Solaris was male.” She shrugged, and spread her open hands. “Once he learned she was female, it was only a matter of time before he included her in his vendetta against women. We guessed that was why Solaris sent messengers to Alberich, looking for a truce.”
Then she smiled again. “But this gloomy talk is not why I stopped here! I saw you looking unhappy, and I hoped I could cheer you up. I don’t think war-talk is going to achieve that, do you?”
“Probably not,” he agreed.
“I did want you to know that once people realize that you aren’t going to call up demons to avenge imaginary slights, they’ll probably be more friendly,” she continued. “I think I can count on at least a few of them being curious enough to start asking you questions. You certainly are not the most exotic creature gracing our Court, or even the most formidable; they’ll get over their nerves soon enough.”
He thought of the gryphons and found himself chuckling. “At least I walk on two legs,” he offered. “And I am afraid that my ability at magic is very overrated. Not only can I not conjure a demon—even if Solaris hadn’t forbidden the practice—but I can’t even light a fire. Candles, yes; fires, no. My master Ulrich is a mage, but he didn’t choose me for my magical abilities, he chose me for my scholastic bent. Your people are safe around me.”
He meant it as a joke, but she took the joke a step further. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” she replied, and if he thought he’d imagined a sly twinkle in her eye, he knew now it wasn’t imagination. “You’d be a very handsome young man if you just didn’t look as if you were about to deliver a sermon on Moral Life at any moment. If you smiled more often, I wouldn’t wager on any of our young women being safe around you!”
Belatedly he remembered that if she knew enough to quote the Writ correctly, she also knew that Priests of Vkandis took no vows of celibacy and only a modified vow of chastity. Which meant she knew that he was as free to pay court to young women as anyone here. He guessed she was encouraging him to do just that, and blushed.
Still, he found her very easy to talk to, and more so with every moment. She invited confidences and made it easy to give them to her; a lot like his own mother, in fact. Mother used to adopt every stray that happened by the inn, from motherless horseboys to kittens. Talia must be like my mother—that’s why she stopped