Brightly Burning

to him. He couldn't have moved if he'd wanted to; he had no idea where the rest of those his age were at the moment, though he shrewdly suspected they were at the park. The adults had commanded the parlor, and at this point they were probably bombarding his parents with questions of their own. He wondered what they were telling everyone, given that his father hadn't even thought that there was a difference between a horse and a Companion.

It was the children who saved him from further awkwardness. They were dying to hear about what being a Heraldic Trainee was like, and inundated him with questions. Was his Companion really smart enough to come get him? Did she talk like a human? How could she speak in thoughts? Where did he live? Was the Collegium really in the same place as the Palace? Had he met anyone important? He'd met the King's Own? Had he ever seen the King?

The answer to each question only gave birth to a dozen more, which prevented him from having to make conversation with the adults. That was just as well, for they kept drifting over from the parlor in little clumps to listen as he spoke to the children; he could feel their eyes on him all the time. If the children treated him as one of their own who had returned from a far country with incredible tales, the adults watched him as if he had changed into some new and strange creature utterly unlike a human.

He had become, unwittingly, the main source of entertainment for the afternoon. Although the adults didn't stoop to asking him any questions themselves, they certainly didn't hesitate to listen while he answered the children.

He tried to concentrate on them rather than anything else. They were certainly excited and happy to see him and pelt him with their questions, and after all, it certainly was the first time that any of them had gotten close enough to a Trainee (much less a Herald) to ask all the questions that they wanted to.

It was only after darkness had fallen and a servant had gone around discreetly lighting the candles that his mother appeared in the parlor, clapping her hands to get their attention. Nelda was not dressed in her absolute finest, which she reserved for important meetings, festivals, and parties involving Guild functionaries. Instead, she wore something much more casual, a simple-cut gown of soft brown wool, bound around with a hanging girdle embroidered, not by her own hands, but by Macy—it had been last year's Midwinter present. Her hair was done in a single loose braid down her back, and Lan thought she looked much better and softer than when she wore her best.

'Enough questions for now, little ones!' she called, just a shade too heartily. 'It is time for the Feast!'

Since Lan would certainly be around after the Feast to continue to question, the children abandoned him for the pleasures of the table.

The children ate apart from the adults in the kitchen, the parlor, or anywhere else that small tables could be set up for them. The adults had the dining room to themselves. And Lan could tell at a glance that there had been some last-minute reshuffling of the seating arrangements. He was escorted to the seat of honor that Sam usually took, at his father's right. Two of the cousins who hadn't spoken to each other for years had somehow gotten placed side by side, and his brother Sam had been positioned between two very pretty but (matrimonially speaking) completely unsuitable country relatives. Neither of these seating accidents would ever have happened if his mother had been paying attention, so evidently his arrival had flustered her.

Or—not his arrival, but his appearance. She had probably expected that he would appear on foot, in his rather forgettable Trainee uniform. Clearly his parents had not bothered to tell anyone of his new status. As usual, the adults would have dismissed him from their minds as entirely unimportant. His theatrical arrival had completely thrown all of her expectations into the dust.

That wasn't entirely unsatisfactory, although he would much rather have been where Sam was. It would have been rather nice to have both his pretty cousins making calf eyes at him over their cups.

As it was, he was between his grandmother, who had displaced him from his own room, and his father. Well, at least he wouldn't be required to make conversation. Grandmother was as deaf as a rock, and his father clearly was reluctant to make conversation with him.

Grandmother evidently considered his new clothing to be some sort of clever invention of his mother's; she looked him up and down, then announced loudly, 'I'm glad you managed to get the boy into something presentable, Nelda! He finally looks like a Chitward, and not like a ragpicker's son.' Then she applied herself to her food, blissfully unaware of the nervous giggles from the foot of the table or Nelda's embarrassed blush.

The chief ornament of the Feast was a remarkable dish composed of a brace of deboned quail stuffed into a deboned pheasant, stuffed into a deboned capon, stuffed into a deboned duck, stuffed into a deboned goose. It must have been cooking all day, but at least it ensured that there was plenty of bird to go around without burdening the table with five different platters. The rest of the table groaned beneath the huge variety of dishes thought necessary to the Midwinter Feast; mashed, roasted, or candied root vegetables, bowls of five different bean concoctions, mashed peas, stewed greens, four kinds of bread, two kinds of rolls, plain butter and butter creamed with honey, gravies, jellies, stewed fruit, pickles, pitchers of cream, small ale, wine, cider....

Lan knew that they wouldn't eat it all, but at least what wasn't eaten would be carried with great ceremony to the nearest Temple of Kernos to be distributed to the hungry before it even had a chance to cool. Grandmother would lead the procession, pushed in her canopied, wheeled chair, just as she had back in Alderscroft, with Nelda on her right and Macy on her left. Those female relatives who cared to would accompany them. The priest would pronounce a solemn blessing on the creators of the dishes who were so generous as to share them, paying special attention to the matriarch of the clan. Grandmother loved every moment of it; it was her opportunity to be the queen of the family.

At least everyone got a Midwinter Feast that way, for the poor were waiting right there in the temple to be fed.

'So, Lavan,' one of the unsuitable cousins piped up from farther down the table, fluttering her eyes at him. 'Are there many pretty girls being trained as Heralds?'

Lan was torn between saying the expected, 'None as pretty as you,' and the indifferent, 'I hadn't noticed.'

He compromised on, 'Most of the time we're all being worked so hard that we're too tired to tell the girls from the boys, and the rest of the time we're trying to catch up on sleep.'

'Oh, come now,' a particularly obnoxious uncle said, in a patronizing tone of voice. 'There can't be that much to learn! What does a Herald do, anyway, but ride about and look important, maybe settle an occasional feud between farmers?'

Lan took a very deep breath before answering to remind himself to keep his temper, ignoring the frantic look on his mother's face. 'Well, as it happens, I get up about a candle-mark before dawn, unless I happen to be one of