Storm Warning

Most of the tables were full, or nearly, but Natoli knew exactly where she was going. 'Come on,' she told him, as she peered across the room with her hand shading her eyes. 'It looks as if everyone's here.'

She started out across the crowded room, expertly dodging chairs and servers as she moved. 'We form up in groups according to what we're interested in, and each group has its own tables,' she explained over her shoulder, as he struggled through the crowd to keep up with her. 'The teachers are all in the back room, of course—you know they've graduated you when they send you an invitation to join them. That's when you stop taking classes and start looking for work or a patron, or start teaching, yourself.'

'Oh,' he replied, which was really all he could say, for by that time she'd reached the table she wanted—a long affair surrounded by two dozen chairs at least, all but three of them filled with blue-garbed young men and a few young women, and covered not only with tankards and mugs, and platters of food, but with books and papers, water-stained and dotted with mug rings. Now the reason for the good lighting in here came to him. It looked as if these people were as accustomed to doing some of their work and reading here as in libraries or other quiet places! No few of the people who greeted Natoli were just as foreign-looking as Karal himself, though he was the only one wearing anything other than that ubiquitous blue uniform. They greeted her with varying degrees of enthusiasm, from boisterousness to carefully contained cheer.

'This is Karal,' his guide said, when they'd finished. 'He's with the Karsite ambassador. Secretary.'

'Really?' One of the nearest, a young man with sharp, fox-like features and a wild shock of carrot-colored hair, raised his eyebrows in surprise. Then he grinned, and said in careful Karsite, 'I would be grateful, good sir, if you could tell me the direction of the Temple.'

'South, about four hundred meiline from here,' Karal replied shortly in his own tongue, then continued in Valdemaran. 'Your accent is really quite good, but you need to form your gutturals farther back in your throat, and they're like hoarse breathing, not like gargling.'

'Ah! Alberich never could explain that properly, thank you!' the young man said, and he hooked the nearest empty chair with his foot, dragging it over. 'Have a seat, won't you? Natoli, we need your help on the drawbridge project.'

Karal took the proffered chair as Natoli helped herself to another, and was immediately engulfed in a technical discussion of which Karal understood perhaps half. The center of attention for the group was a huge piece of paper, covered with scribbles surrounding a drawing of a bridge, that they had placed in the middle of the table so that everyone could look at it at the same time. Someone got him a tankard of light ale, and someone else shoved a plateful of cheese-topped bread rounds at him, and everyone else at the table acted as if he belonged there, so he simply sat and listened while they thrashed out whatever the problem was. When the topic turned to other subjects—the problem of the drawbridge having been satisfactorily dealt with—on the occasions when he could contribute a word or two, he did.

To his pleasure, these people ignored what he looked like and where he came from in favor of what he thought and said. Granted, at the moment, that wasn't much—he was much more comfortable with simply listening to the others—but the few things he did say were treated with no more and no less respect than what anyone else said.

He drank his ale and kept his ears and his mind open, covering a great deal of astonishment by hiding his expression in his tankard. He had never before seen anyone with the kind of unbounded curiosity these young men and women shared. They talked and acted as if there was nothing that was impossible, from flying like birds to moving beneath the surface of the water without needing to breathe, like a fish. And they behaved as if there was nothing, no subject, that was 'not meant for man to know.'

He knew what most of his teachers would have said by now. At one point or another, every single one of the people sitting at this table uttered something that could be taken as blasphemous, and at least before Solaris' day, blasphemers met with the Fires.

By the time Natoli declared that they both needed to get some sleep and led him back out into the cold darkness, his head was swimming with so many conflicting ideas and emotions that it felt as if a hive of swarming bees had come to rest inside it. Excitement warred with nervous fear, and he was glad that the darkness hid his expression from Natoli as she led him back to the Palace. Her own excited monologue about some mathematical progression or other required only that he make vague noises in response from time to time and covered the fact that he couldn't have answered even if he'd known what it was she was talking about.

The guard at the gate knew her very well, it seemed, and shook his head when the two of them approached. 'I don't know what I'm going to tell your father, young woman,' he said, as soon as they came within earshot. 'Out until near midnight, and with a young man!'

'Who is someone Father told me to introduce around, so you can curb your lurid thoughts,' she replied smartly. 'As for coming in late—if he doesn't ask, you don't have to tell him, do you?'

The guard continued to shake his head, but he opened the gate for them and locked it behind them without another word.

She left him on the path to the Palace, parting from him with a cheerful wave and a promise to meet him tomorrow. 'I live in the dormitory with the Bardic students,' she told him. 'Most of the people you met tonight actually live in town, rather than on the Palace grounds, but since Father's a Herald, they let me live here. Will you be free right after lunch tomorrow?'

'Uh—yes,' he said, responding before he could think.