Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [17]
The people of Timmuzz are as pragmatic as their city, and as sturdy. The city is young, as the empire which she governs is young, and most of her citizens are only a generation removed from farmland roots. They have retained the sense of hard work and the openness in dealings that so often mark rural people. They tend to be courteous and friendly, though no civilization is without its predators. I had dwelt in Timmuzz only a brief time but it felt comfortable to me. It was good to see the place again after having been gone for the past two months.
“Makes you think of sunrise,” Rannon said, looking with me out over the shining expanse of her home.
“Yes,” I agreed, then grinned at her. “And of a woman.”
She smiled and took my arm as our firewood barge was warped against one of the massive quays that run like a monster spine along the city’s river-side. Rannon had been seen and crowds awaited us as we disembarked. It was much warmer here than in the highlands where I’d returned from Earth. There was no snow and laughing throngs escorted us through cobbled streets toward the palace.
On all sides of us the city stood decorated for the Spring Passage, the ten day period when the blue-white sun of winter turns green for the spring. This “Passage” is only one of four such periods. At start of summer the sun bakes to gold, and in the fall its light shifts to a sullen red. In the cold, cold of winter, the sun grows an icy pale blue, such a color as was only just now starting to fade.
The Spring Passage was already a day old and the people were in a festive mood. Perhaps most of them did not yet know of the air attacks that had been occurring along their borders, or perhaps they knew and were ready to release their tension at a carnival.
My own spirit, my “khi” as the Talerans call it, was filled with another kind of tension. I ached to be away in search of my brother. But there were certain conventions to be observed. I well recalled the words Rannon and I had said to each other just before I left for Earth two months earlier.
On that winter day we had walked alone in a glass-enclosed garden of her father’s vast palace. Heated fountains had drawn skeins of mist in the air. Miniature trees had bloomed with flowers that thrived in the artificial heat of this private spot. I had stopped her where a vine-covered path of polished stones gave way to an open space alive with butterflies.
“I could never love another,” I told her.
“Nor I,” she’d replied.
We had spoken, then, of a wedding. And in the speaking I created for myself a position as consort to the Princess of Nyshphal. Neither the lady nor the position were to be taken lightly.
It was Rannon I cared for, but part of loving a princess is loving her people as well. There were duties that I would be expected to perform during the Spring Passage, parties that I would be expected to attend. With word of Bryce so fresh in my ears, I felt even the thought of such duties as a yoke around my neck. And I feared that yoke would chafe until my impatience exploded in anger.
Rannon would have understood my leaving Timmuzz, even at this time. She would have known that the need to find my brother was no slight on my love for her. Her father was a different matter. Already he had doubts about me, not particularly from personal animosity but just because I was the man who was going to marry his daughter. And he did not think that I, or any man, was quite good enough to do so.
As well, Rannon had told me that there were nobles of the empire, some of whom wished to press their own suits for her hand, who were urging her father to send me away. I imagined he still wavered in his decision, wishing his daughter had chosen another, but not quite willing to put aside her desires. It could only harden his heart against me if I left the city before the festival, if I failed to carry out my