The Floating Islands (34 page)

“I never heard that!” Araenè exclaimed, staring.

“It was long ago. There are accounts in my private library. They are available to you, if you wish. You may find them instructive, if you find yourself speaking to fire dragons on a frequent basis.”

“Oh!” said Araenè, and was silent, repressing the urge to leap up at once and go find the master’s private library.

“The school put itself in your way. Your cousin abetted you. Master Kopapei knew what you were, and he did not condemn you. Nor do I. What other opinion concerns you?”

“I don’t know,” Araenè whispered.

“You do your Islands and your city and this school an injustice,” Master Tnegun said gently, “if you condemn them out of hand and without trial.”

Araenè said, “It was easier—” but stopped without completing the thought.

“It is often easier not to try,” agreed the master. “If you wish to leave the hidden school, I cannot prevent you. But if you do not wish to, then no one will cast you forth. I would thus prefer that you cease walking about as though you are afraid of waking a basilisk with every step.”

Araenè made herself meet his eyes. It wasn’t easy. But she did not look away. She nodded instead, and said, not whispering this time, “All right.”

“Good.” Master Tnegun rose to his feet, bent, collected a sphere of black iron, and weighed it in his hand. He said, his manner sardonic, “And I believe you may have an unusual chance to bend the opinion of the city in your favor. A visitor has come calling for you, Araenè. You will, I believe, find him waiting for you in your garden.”

Trei,
Araenè thought at once, but immediately knew that could not be right. Her second guess … She knew, once she had thought of him, that her second guess was right. A smile, unfamiliar in these days, tugged at her mouth, and she glanced down at herself. She was wearing a plain dress, as she did these days when she was in the school. Now she wondered whether the dress was too plain. Whether she ought to have found something more … more feminine.

“My advice, though you have not asked for it,” said her master, “is not to fuss.”

“Yes …,” Araenè said distractedly. “Excuse me …,” and she opened the carved ebony door that stood suddenly at her hand, and stepped through.

17

T
rei came back to Milendri less than a senneri after he’d left it. It seemed to him that he’d been away much longer.

Nor was this arrival at all like the first. He’d come like a Tolounnese boy the first time: staring up from below, stunned by his first sight of the winged kajuraihi, amazed by the floating stairway … amazed by everything. And dazed with grief and the memory of grief.

The grief was still there. But muted, and … not the same. And there was, this time, also an unexpected sense of coming home.

This time, Trei came down from the heights like a proper kajurai: riding the living wind under the inscrutable regard of transparent dragons half visible above. He gazed down through the infinite layers of the air to the white towers of Canpra. And he came in company, surrounded by other kajuraihi: Master Anerii Pencara below and to his right; others, with crimson wings, or white, or gold, flying above and below and all around.

They dropped toward Canpra: the shining towers grew more distinct, and beyond the towers the wide, tree-lined streets of the Second City and the crowded bustle of the Third.

Trei hesitated … then slanted his descent toward Master Anerii. He called, “Can we—?”

The novice-master turned his head. He was too far for Trei to read his expression, but after a moment his gruff shout came back: “Why not?” Allowing the other kajuraihi to go on without them, Master Anerii turned out into a wide spiral that would take them well out across the city before bringing them back to the kajurai precincts at the edge of the Island.

At first, Trei thought that surprisingly little damage had been done by the Tolounnese attack. There were large areas, at the edge where Canpra had been built down into the stone, where buildings had been broken and ruined. But there was nothing, of course, of the damage catapults would have done against a recalcitrant grounded city.

Of course, Tolounn had not required artillery to enter Canpra, which had neither walls nor any other defense save its height above the waves. A closer look showed that the people of Canpra had not prevented the Tolounnese from penetrating deeply into their city. There were the marks of fire, where buildings had been put to the torch by either attackers or defenders; there were the remnants of hasty barricades in the streets; there were places where one building or another showed damage from the powder bombs Tolounn had developed according to Yngulin formulae. And, as they passed inland, they overflew a large new cemetery where the red earth was as fresh and raw as a wound.

Master Anerii and Trei turned at last across the city, back toward the sea and kajurai territory. Trei found that the balcony nearest the novitiate had been badly damaged; Master Anerii passed it by and guided Trei to another. This one was smaller and much more difficult to come down on; one had to stall very neatly in order not to rake feathers across the wall. Trei managed it with something approaching grace and tried to look as though he always landed that well.

Master Anerii lifted an amused eyebrow, not fooled at all. But he merely said, “I’m to report to Wingmaster Taimenai at once. So are you,” and gestured for Trei to turn so he could help him off with his wings.

The wingmaster was not in his office. He was in the map room, which Trei had previously seen only during lessons. The map posted on the big wall at the moment showed the long sweep of the Tolounnese coast, from Tetouann in the north all the way down past the great island of Toipakom and then past Marsosa and Goenn and Teraica to Emoenn and Gaicana in the far south. Toipakom had only become a part of the great Tolounnese Empire a few years ago. It hadn’t actually
wanted
to join the Empire. Either.

Wingmaster Taimenai was not alone in the kajurai map room. Lord Manasi Teirdana was there, standing close by the map with a pointer in his hand; so were two men Trei didn’t know. The wingmaster was stepping around a long table cluttered with other maps in order to approach the big one.

Trei hesitated at the door, but Master Anerii went right in. So Trei followed, uncomfortably. Wingmaster Taimenai turned his head and at once all his motion checked.
His
expression wasn’t neutral at all: Trei stopped in his tracks, startled at the relief and gladness in the wingmaster’s face. The two men he didn’t know caught the wingmaster’s reaction and turned, glancing first at Master Anerii and then, with obvious surmise, at Trei.

“So Goenn seems to offer the best possible combination of access to resources from the interior and access to shipping down the northern currents,” Lord Manasi was saying. Facing the map, his back to the room, he hadn’t at once realized no one was attending to his words. But now, finally perceiving the change in the quiet, he swung around. His eyes widened, then narrowed.

“I believe we shall finish this discussion at a later time,” Wingmaster Taimenai said.

“Taimenai—” Lord Manasi began.

“We may all hope that after we have had time to consider Master Anerii’s detailed report, our discussion will become more fruitful. I hope my lords will not find a brief postponement too inconvenient,” the wingmaster said. Firmly.

“Well …” Lord Manasi gave Trei an odd look, combining wary approval and simultaneously a kind of suspicious dissatisfaction. “Yes, I suppose so.…” He moved toward the door along with the other two men. Master Anerii shut the door behind them.

Wingmaster Taimenai said, “Anerii! Well done!” He crossed the room in two strides and caught Trei by the shoulders, looking at him closely. “Trei. Are you well? Genrai brought us word that you were carried away from the Teraica engines. We believed you injured—imprisoned—possibly close-questioned—” He looked a question at Master Anerii.

“Injured, healed, imprisoned, and released,” Master Anerii answered that look. “You will indeed wish to hear my report. Which,” he sighed, “I suppose I shall have to put down properly in black ink as soon as possible. Tonight, I suppose.”

The wingmaster grinned at the other man, actually grinned, an expression Trei had never imagined breaking through his stern manner. “I fear so.” Then he looked back down at Trei. “Trei—”

Trei tried to find words past an unexpected tightness in his throat, but failed.

Wingmaster Taimenai, seeing his difficulty, let him go, stepped back, and drew the familiar reserve across his manner as though he donned a cloak. “We are glad to have you back among us,” he said formally. “We had feared worse. You had no need to go to quite such lengths to prove yourself to us, however. Or if you did, I’m sorry for it.”

“I didn’t do it for that,” Trei protested, but then stopped, uncertain.

“Didn’t you? Well, it had that effect,” the wingmaster answered drily. He reached out, tipped Trei’s chin up gently, and looked into his face. “Welcome home, Trei.”

Trei had not exactly expected punishment, not after … everything. But neither had he expected this welcome. It was as though a weight he’d braced himself to carry had, if not lightened, at least shifted into an easier load to bear. He didn’t trust his voice to answer.

The wingmaster let him go, stepped back, and said sternly, “I will ask you to add your own detailed report to Master Anerii’s. Write it tonight, if you please. You may begin with a justification of your decision to venture out of the novitiate despite the strictest possible injunction to remain within. Then continue to the moment you departed Tolounn. Is that clear?”

Sternness was much easier to answer than open joy and relief. “Yes, Wingmaster,” Trei agreed, though he winced at the thought of the work that report would entail. “Um, Ceirfei? Genrai and the boys? Rekei—he was injured? He didn’t …” He couldn’t make himself say “die.” He asked instead, “My cousin? Do you know what … Is my cousin all right, do you know, sir? Master Anerii said he didn’t wait for much news to come in. Please, may I have leave to visit my cousin?”

“Ah.” The wingmaster sounded so serious that Trei was immediately afraid
everyone
had died. But he said instead, “Everyone is well enough, Trei. Rekei was injured, as you say: another kajurai caught him and managed—somehow!—to keep enough height to gain a low balcony. Ceirfei, ah. He and your … cousin … apparently worked with that Yngulin mage of ours to support your own efforts and thwart the Tolounnese.” He paused and then added, “Of course you must visit your cousin as soon as possible. I am confident she will tell you a far more comprehensive tale when you see her.”

Trei cleared his throat. “I’m sure she will. Sir. Is she … That is, she is still …”

“She is, I believe, generally to be found at the hidden school. And Genrai, Kojran, and Tokabii are properly back within the novitiate,” Wingmaster Taimenai concluded. “Where you should be, Novice Trei, by dusk, if you please.” He gave Trei a dismissive nod. “I expect that report! Clear and direct, novice, and reasonably concise, or I will ask you to rewrite it. I will ask you to have it in my hands by second bell.”

“Yes, sir,” Trei said. The cool dismissal did not at all blur the warmth of the wingmaster’s initial welcome. He added quietly, sincerely, “Thank you, sir.”

The wingmaster gave him a nod, then, turning to Master Anerii, said, smiling, “Anerii, if you will stay a moment …”

Trei slipped out. But then he hesitated. The wingmaster was one thing, and his cousin was important, but the person he really wanted to find right now was
Ceirfei.
Trei had no way to find him if he wasn’t in the novitiate. But then … perhaps Araenè knew some way?

He no longer had the little crystal pendant Master Tnegun had given him. But he thought maybe Araenè might be listening for his voice, or at least have done something so he could find her. So he put his hands against a door across from the map room—he had no idea where it led—and whispered his cousin’s name. Nor was he surprised when the door swung open under his hands to reveal not whatever room ought to have been there, but a tangled, overgrown garden that smelled of sunlight and herbs, with an iron fence bordering one side and a brick wall on the other. His cousin’s voice came clearly from somewhere in the garden: she was laughing. She sounded happy, Trei thought, surprised. His own heart lifted.

He stepped through the door and made his way through the garden toward Araenè’s voice, stepping over herbs that had spilled out over pathways and ducking under branches that, as often as not, seemed to have thorns as well as flowers. It seemed a surprisingly large garden when he was actually trying to find someone in it. Araenè laughed again and said something indistinct, and he followed her voice around a small, contorted tree with delicate leaves like lace and red berries like polished garnets.

Araenè was sitting on a low stone by a pool, amid a tangle of vines with small white flowers shaped like trumpets and big-leaved shrubs with purple flowers dangling like bells. She was wearing a plain linen dress with green embroidery around the hem; a narrow green silk cord gathered the dress up around her waist and crossed between her small breasts. Trei paused and frankly stared: she was not exactly pretty, but despite her cropped hair, no one would have mistaken her for a boy. In fact, now that she wore girls’ things, her short hair only accented the slender length of her neck and the fineness of her bones; it was hard to see how she had ever looked like a boy.

And an arm’s length from Araenè, one foot braced on another stone, stood Ceirfei. He was looking down at her and smiling. Then he looked up and saw Trei, and the smile slipped.

Trei started forward again, more slowly. But no matter the coolness of Ceirfei’s reaction, he was glad Araenè looked well—she
did
look well: happy and confident. She hadn’t seen him yet. He called, “Cousin!” and held out his hands to her.

“Trei!” Araenè looked up, then jumped to her feet and ran to take his hands, smiling into his face. “I didn’t know you were back! It’s wonderful to see you!”

“Didn’t anyone tell you—?”

“Oh,” Araenè said quickly, “yes, Wingmaster Taimenai—isn’t he a dear?—told me he was sending a kajurai official after you—and Master Tnegun showed me how to look for you in a glass sphere, because glass is good for visions of wind and sky. So I looked for you every day, and yesterday I saw you in the sky at last! So then I knew you were all right. I was so relieved! And now you’re back at last! Can you stay to visit?”

“Yes …” Trei found himself laughing, happy in his cousin’s enthusiastic welcome. “Or no, not really, not tonight. I’m glad the wingmaster was kind to you, but he expects a long report from me! But I wanted to see you—”
And Ceirfei.
He looked past Araenè to Ceirfei, who was standing stiffly to one side, unsmiling, his arms folded. Trei’s happiness faded.

Araenè glanced quickly from one of them to the other and let go of Trei’s hands, taking a step back. “You need to talk to each other,” she observed. “I’ll leave you, all right?” She added to Ceirfei, “When you’re ready to leave, the gate will take you wherever you ask. I think!” And to Trei, “But, you, come find me before you leave, all right? Even if you can’t stay long. Promise me you won’t leave without letting me see you again! I don’t want to wonder if I just imagined you were back!”

“I’ll find you,” Trei promised her.

“Good!” His cousin darted away, down the overgrown path; she stepped up on a white stone outside a window and then onto the windowsill and, ducking her head, through the high window and into the hidden school.

Trei gazed at Ceirfei. The heavy scent of crushed herbs rose around him, so that the heat of the afternoon seemed somehow heavier and more oppressive. The older boy was dressed as he had been when Trei had first seen him: as a prince. All in white, with a violet sash and a violet ribbon threaded through his dark hair. But his eyes were kajurai eyes, and he looked … not exactly older. Harder, maybe. The senneri just past had been no easier for Ceirfei, Trei thought, than for himself; he wondered what had happened in the Islands while he had been flying to Tolounn and then imprisoned in the oubliette and then flying back.… He said, feeling desperately awkward, “I’m sorry.”

“You’ve no need to be,” Ceirfei said at once, and smiled at last. But his shoulders were stiff, and there was a constraint to that smile Trei had never seen before. He continued formally, “By all accounts, you did very well indeed. I am glad to see you well; we were worried. The Islands owe you.…”