it to light several of the lamps, banishing the darkness.
He wondered how much she would really hear if he spoke to her. 'I talked to a lot of people today, actually. I went out to the spring beyond the Palace—the one the unicorns drink from—and helped fill one of the water wagons. I also met the woman who made my clothes while I was helping to water the forest, but—'
'But, what?' Idalia asked, turning, and raising an eyebrow at him.
He sucked at his lower lip, trying to articulate what had bothered him about the encounter. 'She doesn't seem to think much of them, so tomorrow I'm going to go to her shop so she can make me new ones—and that just doesn't seem right. I mean, Idalia, doesn't it seem to you that there are better things to worry about at a time like this than whether I'm wearing the right color tunic?'
'Not for Elves,' Idalia said—rather grimly, Kellen thought. 'Elves are… perfectionists,' she said, as if she was choosing her words with care. 'If you stay here long enough, you'll find that there's no such thing as 'good enough' to the Elvenborn. They have a strong sense of, well, I sup' pose you'd call it 'fitness.' And until something meets their standards, they don't leave it alone—no matter what else might need doing at the same time.'
'But… now?' Kellen asked, bewildered. 'With the drought, and everything?'
'Elves do not hurry,' Idalia said, taking a large pie from the sideboard and sliding it into the oven to warm. 'They live a thousand years. They don't have wars, other than the Flower Wars—not recently at least, and not in any way we humans understand the concept. So…' She shrugged. 'For most of them—not all, but most—there is never a sense of urgency about anything, and they can be so narrowly focused on their own personal obsessions that they weigh things like the drought and clothing design in equal importance. That is the negative side; the positive side, of course, is that they take a very long view of anything, and what may seem like a crisis to one of us is, often rightly, seen by one of them as little more than an inconsequential ripple.'
'I guess it's hard to see much wrong with that,' Kellen said uncertainly.
'Whereas,' Idalia finished, with a wan smile, 'something that is an ongoing offense to the eye and an irritation to the senses of all beholders, like an ill-fitting tunic, is a fault that should be corrected immediately.'
Kellen snorted, though privately he wondered if some of Idalia's refusal to even talk to Jermayan was because of just those things.
He'd seen a great deal more than he had realized in the time he'd spent in the Wildwood and Merryvale. He'd seen flirtations and light-loves, and true-loves and courting couples, and above all, the deep devotion of the happily mated. He knew what love looked like, at least, from the outside, and he knew Idalia loved Jermayan. Caring for him as deeply as she did, and if Elves really did mate for life, how could she want him to spend centuries alone after her death? Now, if it had been him, he'd try and figure out a solution of some kind, but, well, it was her choice, and not his when it came down to it.
But if Jermayan was as much of a perfectionist as, say, Iletel or Tengitir, and spent as much time on things that didn't seem to matter one way or the other as far as Kellen could tell, he'd drive Idalia crazy in a year, let alone in sixty or seventy. So maybe that was a factor, as well.
Still, in every way he'd yet seen, the Elves were so much better than humans that sometimes since he'd come to Sentarshadeen he felt almost ashamed to be human.
IDALIA sat down beside the table, gazing back at the pattern of stones on the great room floor. North. There were tiny flaws in the balance to the west, only a few, and hints of trouble in the south and east—the direction of Armethalieh—but almost all of her stones had been laid out toward the north. That was the direction in which the trouble lay, and that was where she had to go looking next. Not in the direction of Armethalieh and the Council.
And that was a great pity. Countering the meddling of High Magick would have been trivial to what she feared—and making trouble for Lycaelon would have been immensely satisfying.
She glanced at Kellen, who was foraging among the drawers and cabinets of the food storage with the same single-minded interest as a bear in a honey-tree. She'd been doing her best to hint to him about the way the Elves' minds worked before he got himself too badly hurt, but she doubted she was getting much of anywhere. Right now, all Kellen could see was the perfection of Elven ways, but like anything else living, the Elves had their faults, too, stubborn inflexibility being chief among them.
Compared to some among the Elves, Lycaehn Tavadon is vacillating and spineless.
But Kellen wasn't worldly-wise enough yet to catch a hint. She supposed he'd just have to figure it out for himself—and he'd be wildly indignant when he did, too; as indignant as he'd been when he discovered the High Mages acted out of self-interest more than disinterested justice…
'You look tired,' Kellen said bluntly, turning back to her with the makings of a young feast in his hands. 'Look, come sit down and I'll feed you.'
'I've been working,' Idalia said, taking a seat at the table as he laid out sliced vegetables and meat, bread and cheese.
'And you found out the drought's not a freak weather thing?' Kellen asked.
