The Windward King, page 6
Shara’s muscles tightened, and feline ears he didn’t have slid back to pin against his head.
But there was a chance he could still salvage this. Better to admit the truth now than spend the next month slowly disappointing Korith day by day. “Korith, listen . . . I appreciate what you’re doing, but there’s no point. You’re wasting your time.”
“Wasting . . .” Korith’s good humor vanished. “Wasting my time on—”
“On me.” Sighing, he dragged a hand through his hair, realizing too late that his fingers were sticky with honey. “Whatever ideas you have, there’s no point wasting them on a teveth.”
Korith’s serious expression faded into confusion. “You’ve lost me.”
Disappointment boiled into faint anger as Shara sought the words to explain. Why couldn’t Korith let him be? He’d been happy, content . . . “Look, it’s—”
A clatter across the room drew his eyes to the storekeeper, who bent to retrieve a slender ivory tool from the ground. The man didn’t so much as glance their way, but Shara slunk from the shop anyway, not sure whether he wanted Korith to follow.
But follow he did, down the street to a small terrace bordered on the far side by a waist-high wall. Two children toddled along it, arms outstretched, bragging to their watching parents about their balancing prowess. Shara halted at the other end of the wall, shifting out claws and scraping them over the stone. For a moment he felt calmer. Then he felt like a molting idiot.
You just ran away from books.
But it had not been merely books. Memories flooded through him, and his claws dug deeper as Korith perched on the wall beside him. They stared out at the water. Ships and gliders ferried people around the little islands that made up the rest of Farna, like a half-submerged sea dragon curled within the bay’s embrace.
After several futile attempts, Korith gave up brushing hair out of his eyes. He scooped up a rock and slowly lifted and lowered it in some sort of exercise for his shoulder. “Teveth, was it?”
How strange that there were people in the world who did not know that word.
“It’s . . .” He sighed. “I told you that unbonded alvithi sleep together in groups. The teveth sleeps closest to the cave opening—literally the word just means wind-side. Windward. But since the teveth is generally the youngest or least-experienced group member, it also gets used for new apprentices, young hunters, younger siblings. The person who gets all the least-pleasant tasks.” He thought of Thosena and Tishel. “Like a new recruit, but not so official.”
“Hmm.” Up and down went the rock, lilting in rhythm with the church bells as they sounded the hour. “So the teveth is the strong, trustworthy, reliable one.”
“What?” Had Korith been listening at all?
“You said the teveth sleeps closest to the cave entrance—that means it’s the person bearing the brunt of the wind and weather and the first person to face any threats that come through, right?”
Annoyance raged through him. “Oh please; it’s—”
“And it’s the person everyone relies on to do all the necessary tasks that keep your clan—”
“Korith!” The intended snarl erupted instead as a frustrated squawk, so loud that the children paused in their wall-walking game to look over. It worked, though: Korith’s smug expression faded, and Shara pressed on. “This isn’t a joke. It means I’m untalented and . . . and not good enough for anything, and whatever you think I can help you with or whatever you want me to be . . . and all the books . . . Well, I can’t.” He wasn’t going through all that again. He leaned heavily against the wall, suddenly exhausted. “I’m so tired of failing.”
He hadn’t meant to say it aloud, and now he prayed human hearing was as bad as he’d always believed.
If Korith did hear it, he didn’t respond. Instead he pushed off the wall and stood directly beside Shara. His fingers twirled around the silver chain he always wore tucked beneath his shirt. “Is that why you left your clan?” He paused. “Or did they . . .”
Heat bubbled through him at the suggestion; thank the Eagle he had not endured that shame. “I left. I . . .” He wasn’t ready to explain. “I left. I’m sure they don’t miss me.”
His shoulders sagged, and only then did he realize he’d been watching for them, closely observing the motions of both people and animals, waiting and wondering. But no one would have come after him. Not Shara.
He swallowed past the wad of fur lodged in his throat.
“Well, I’d miss you.” Korith prodded him with the rock. “Even if you do eat raw meat and chew on my flowers when you think I’m not looking and leave my door open to the whole world. So you’ll stay, won’t you? If I promise not to offend your alvithi sensibilities with too many books?”
Embarrassment and surprise spun a slow dance in Shara’s chest, and he puffed out a long breath. “I . . . You’re sure? You don’t mind that I’m . . .”
Korith’s arrogant grin spread over his face again. “I’m always sure. It’s part of my charm. And no, I don’t mind that you’re the strong, trustworthy, re—”
Shara whirled and strode away, too relieved to be truly annoyed. Laughter echoed behind him, and Korith drew abreast and shoved against him.
“Come on,” he said, directing them left—away from the book shop, thank goodness. “You may be teveth, but I know you can fly. Let’s see if my new glider is ready for testing.”
Chapter 10
The Sketch
“Stop!”
Shara obeyed so abruptly that the teacup slid the length of his little platter and toppled over the edge, shattering in a scorching puddle over his bare feet. Hissing, he leapt back and wiped his toes hastily against his pant legs.
From his position on the bed, Korith winced. “Sorry. The light was perfect.” He fluttered his sketchbook.
Dark, rain-soaked skies stretched over Farna. “What light?”
“The dramatic kind. Just stand there a bit.”
Shara rolled his eyes but did as asked. Korith regularly drew from memory, but he had Shara now, an infinite number of models all in one person, and he’d been taking advantage of it as often as Shara would allow. This was the first time, though, that he’d drawn Shara himself.
It wasn’t a pleasant sensation.
“Korith, your tea?”
“It can wait.” His arm moved in broad strokes, his eyes darting between Shara and the paper. “Turn a little to the left.”
The wall of portraits greeted him. Tishel and Na Mithel; Lady Bethen, who’d still not managed to catch Korith on a favorable day; Nareni, the girl at the Crown and Raven. Lower on the wall hung new portraits, all of them Shara. An angry young man with dark hair and a fierce scar over one eye scowled out at the apartment. Beside him beamed a portly old man stroking a pointed beard, wisdom in his eyes that Shara himself certainly didn’t possess. Even that was more Shara, though, than the curly-haired woman and her teasing, secretive smile.
“There. Thank you.”
Shara’s gut tightened in anticipation, but Korith kept sketching, so he scooped up the shards of shattered teacup and ducked into the kitchen to prepare another cup of tea.
Grimacing, he pushed aside a bottle of mead and pulled down the little ceramic canister bearing the alsum, which he’d hoped not to touch again for several hours. He clamped his mouth shut, scrunched up his nose, and twisted his head as far as his neck would allow, then spooned a tiny dose of the reddish powder into the teacup.
He’d given up trying to talk Korith out of taking the poison—his cave-brother assured him that it was fine in small doses, that humans took it all the time to dull pain or anxiety, that there was nothing dangerous about putting it in a tea blend already intended to bring about sleep. Whether true or not, Shara wasn’t the one in the middle of a pain flare, so it didn’t matter what he thought.
When the lerian-root tea was steeping, he tossed a small bunch of piko seeds into the cup and padded back into the main room.
“Here you are. A delicious cup of poisonous, sleep-inducing, crunchy tea.”
Mishala’s horns, humans were odd.
Accepting the cup carefully, Korith toasted him with a strained smile and downed the entire thing with a long sip.
“Is there anything else I can get you? More pillows?” He hated that Korith had days like this, but after a month in his company, Shara had learned that all he could do was offer his help and make jabs at Korith’s pillow collection. It felt so insignificant, but then again, that was fitting for Shara. “Less rain?”
Korith chuckled and adjusted the pillow beneath his left knee. “It’s not the rain. Well, it might be in part. That’s the fun—I never know. I crash into the sea in a storm and dislodge my arm and feel normal the following day, and yesterday I attend Lady Pachel’s birthday celebration and now this.”
Absolutely nothing about that sounded fun. “Fewer nobles, then?”
“Or birthdays.” He grinned weakly and lolled his head to the side to peer out the rain-streaked window. Shara snuck a glance at the sketch, but it looked the same as all the rest from this angle. After a silence, whatever thought Korith was chasing seemed to elude him, and his eyes focused again on Shara. “Can you bring me that pencil off the desk?”
Several dozen pencils littered the desk, but only one was that pencil. Shara picked it up, hesitated, and glanced at the books.
He hadn’t completely convinced Korith to leave him alone or bury the ridiculous teveth redefinition, but Korith had assured him that the small collection of books would better educate him on humans—specifically, nobles. “If you’re going to be helping me, you’ll need to know some of this eventually.”
Exactly what help some of these books were going to be, Shara still wasn’t sure. Did anyone really have a use for A History of the Noble Houses of Barath from the Ascendance of His Most Royal Majesty King Inthar to This Present Time, Researched and Compiled by Lord F. A. Manthas and His Daughter, Her Ladyship Etharia Manthas?
He’d made it through the title, anyway.
L. Roald’s History of Barath was surprisingly interesting, but today he picked up the book on speechmaking and climbed carefully onto the end of the bed. Korith accepted the pencil, and they fell into familiar silence.
Shara stuffed a pillow behind his back and opened the book in his lap. He trailed his fingers over the smooth paper while his eyes and mind adjusted to the cramped letters and dark, intimidating paragraphs. Intimidating yet fascinating, and somehow the discussions of rhetorical techniques always left him thinking of nights spent weaving riddles for Thia and her friends.
His fingers tightened around the book; he’d not said goodbye to her. He hadn’t said goodbye to anyone, but Thia might actually miss him.
Eventually a flutter of paper pulled his attention from its wanderings. Korith set his sketch and pencil on the table beside the bed, looking half-asleep already. His jaw clenched as he lowered himself onto his back and brushed clumps of hair from his damp forehead. He mumbled something too incoherent for Shara to make out, then faded into silence. Only the rain and the soft crackling of the fire remained.
Even with the tea, Korith slept fitfully, if at all. He passed only minutes in stillness before shifting, twisting, tucking pillows and blankets here and there.
Shara’s reading went no better, and after a quarter of an hour, he gave up and wandered to the kitchen. He nibbled at the sweet, dark slab of what Korith had called chocolate—not as good as fresh fruit, but not bad—but the kitchen itself needed no attention. He’d cleaned the bathing room yesterday, and the Guide’s shrine was dusted. He dared not touch Korith’s desk except to eat a wilting flower.
His search for occupation paused beside the bed, and after assuring himself that Korith was asleep, he slipped the drawing from the table.
The face was Shara’s—the slant of the jaw, the slope of the nose, the mess of dark curls. Yet sketch-Shara’s gaze was direct and sure. His eyes shone bright and proud. His chin jutted out confidently, and his lips parted in a cocky smile.
Shara’s face, someone else’s soul. Invisible hackles lifted at the disconnect.
“What do you think?”
Korith’s voice nearly sent him leaping through the rafters. His fingers spasmed around the sketch, wrinkling its edges, and he shoved it hurriedly back on the table.
If only he could so easily push the image from his mind.
“It’s nice.” Rain lashed against the window, and he swallowed down his roiling emotions and turned away to stoke the fire. “You have a vivid imagination.”
>><<
The rain passed into a bleak, windy afternoon, and after a brief flight to occupy his restless mind and body, Shara shifted into a lynx and curled up purring beside Korith.
He awoke to evening shadows and the familiar shf of pencil across paper. Stretching, he folded his paws more comfortably over Korith’s legs, and a heavy hand settled on his head and scratched between his ears.
“Evening, furball.”
It was worth being called furball to have a cave-brother he could nestle against, but even so, he gave a disgruntled yowl and pushed out his claws to prick Korith’s leg.
The scratching ceased, and a flutter of wind magic ruffled his fur in all the wrong directions. Shara hissed, though with no real malice, and Korith hissed back. Either that or he was gasping for breath and dying horribly—it was difficult to tell the difference.
Rolling away, Shara leapt off the bed, stretched again, and shifted. As always, a chill shot up his suddenly furless limbs, and, as had become habit, he pulled the drape of his mother’s coat over his head in a makeshift hood. Behind him, the bed creaked as Korith slowly slid his legs over the side and planted his feet on the floor.
“Are you feeling better?”
Grimacing, Korith reached for his cane and pushed himself standing, and Shara could see the answer in his movements before he spoke. “Not as better as I’d like. Not that I expected any different, but . . .”
“But?”
“Never mind.” He raked a hand through his tousled hair, nearly obscuring the frustration that flashed over his features. “Is it supper time yet?”
Shara let the obvious subject-change pass. “Fresh mountain goat tonight?”
Korith’s face twisted, but he disappeared into the kitchen without the usual retort.
Extra sunspots instead, then.
Shara pushed the window open enough to fly out. Cold air rushed over him, sweet with lingering rain. Across the bay, a light flickered, but he’d only learned enough of the light signals to discern a few letters. They didn’t spell Tethamari, anyway, and apart from the coronation, Princess Nashai’s impending arrival was all anyone talked about—some more enthusiastically than others.
He was about to shift into a seabird when his gaze caught on the portrait. The air grew stifling as sketch-Shara’s eyes met his, and suddenly he felt . . . broken. Korith had captured so many people in his drawings. Bared so many souls. Shara had watched him do it—Korith was always honest.
But not with Shara. That gaze, that smile . . . None of it was Shara.
There was nothing in Shara worth capturing.
His fingers trailed over the paper’s rough edge. After a quick glance over his shoulder, he snatched it from the table and stuffed it into his coat pocket.
Korith said nothing about the missing portrait. He might not have noticed its absence at all, for he kept glancing out the window while they ate, and his attention returned regularly to the timekeeper on his desk and the church bells sounding out the evening hours. With each chime, he talked less and fidgeted more, and at the end of the meal, most of his food remained untouched.
“Is something wrong?” Shara finally asked when Korith began prodding at a pillow with a pair of eating sticks.
The sticks clicked out a quiet, intense rhythm. Korith’s unfocused eyes followed their twitching movements, open and closed and open and closed, until they stopped abruptly and he looked up. “I need a favor.”
Shara didn’t like the sound of that, but he wrapped his arms around his torso and waited.
“I’m supposed to visit the palace tonight. The Guide obviously has other plans for me, so I need you to go as my representative.”
“Me? Go to the palace?” He was still working out being a proper human in the Crown and Raven. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Excuse me, I thought of it, so it’s a brilliant idea.”
“Not all your ideas are brilliant.” He folded his arms and forced his face not to break out in scales. “Look, why don’t you ride instead? I can be a horse again.”
Korith was already shaking his head. “Not like this. By the time I arrived, I’d be in no state to meet with His Highness, and—”
“His Highness?” Shara squawked so loudly that the shop downstairs fell briefly silent. “You want me to go to the prince?”
“Prince regent, and yes. There’s a gifting ceremony—it’s tradition for a new ruler to present each of the nobles of the court with a token gift, and for the nobles to reciprocate.”
“That’s a lot of nobles,” Shara said, grasping at grass. “I’m sure he won’t notice if—”
“If my gift is the only one left unclaimed at the end of the evening?” His fist tightened around the eating sticks, and he glanced toward the timekeeper again. “No. I’m not going to lose my standing at court or have my future king think I’m unreliable because my body chose today to laugh at me.”
“And has it occurred to you,” Shara managed after several incoherent moments, “what might happen to your court standing if you send me?”
“You’ll be fine.” A hint of urgency tinged his voice. “Trust me, it’s a simple, formal exchange. You give him the gift, offer him House Aman’s best wishes on his upcoming coronation, and accept his gift on my behalf. That’s it. It’s a perfect opportunity for you to meet him.”
“But—”
“I’ll tell you exactly what to say. It’s not long, and anyway, you’ve been reading that book on rhetoric, haven’t you?”
