sending them back into the pile of cushions. They squealed and chirped, rolling around and batting at him in boundless exuberance—for the moment—and he wished that he could be as carefree and happy as they were.
Was everyone as unhappy as he was? He didn’t think so. In fact, he wasn’t quite certain when his current discontent had begun. It was simply that today, he was devoting concentration to realizing it was there, and just how deep it festered.
As arduous as the journey here had been and as fraught with danger and uncertainly, his job had actually been easier then than it was now. He’d only needed to offer encouragement, to keep peoples’ spirits up. He could step up and make a rousing speech, inspire hope, and tell well-timed stories. He was the cloud-white cock of the walk at critical times. Judeth had been in charge of protecting the army of refugees, Gesten and Amberdrake in charge of keeping everyone fed and sheltered. Lady Cinnabar had taken over anything remotely concerned with the health of the group. All he had been asked to do was to provide a figurehead, a reminder of the old days, and what the best of those days had meant.
Skandranon snorted to himself. In other words, vain gryphon, your job was to be their living legend.
Now he had to make decisions—usually difficult, uncomfortable decisions. Worst of all, he was the only “authority” anyone could agree on to arbitrate in disputes between nonhumans and humans—and even though the disputants might agree on him as arbitrator, they were seldom entirely satisfied with him. Humans, he suspected, always were sure he was favoring nonhumans, and the nonhumans were always convinced he would favor humans because of his special relationship with Amberdrake. Annoying, but there it was. And that just led to another source of discontent for him; if people were going to insist he solve their conflicts, the least they could do would be to pretend that they liked the solution! But no matter what he did or did not do, someone would grumble about it!
It almost seemed as if the easier life became, the more trouble people caused! In the beginning, when White Gryphon was nothing more than a collection of tents perched on the terraces, people just never seemed to have the energy or time to quarrel with one another.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe the problems are coming because people have too much spare time?
Surely that was too easy an answer. . . .
And it wasn’t true for everyone, either.
Maybe it was just the curse of civilization. I know that Urtho’s army had all the troubles that plague any big gathering of people. It stands to reason that once people aren’t completely absorbed in the business of trying to get the basic necessities, they’ll go back to their old ways. Look at that Hadanelith creature, for instance! I’ll bet ten years ago he was playing those same games down among the perchi; I’II bet the only reason he didn’t get caught then was because his clients just didn’t come back to him for more, rather than complaining about him. Or else—his clients just didn’t come back from the battlefield.
Or maybe Hadanelith hadn’t been old enough, ten years ago, to ply any kind of trade; Amberdrake hadn’t mentioned his age. That could be why he had been able to fake being trained—if he had lied about his training he could just as easily have lied about his age and experience. Most of the kestra’chern attached to Urtho’s armies had not wound up with the Kaled’a’in Clan k’Leshya; instead they had gone through the Gate that had taken the noncombatants from the purely human forces. That only made sense, of course; why should they have gone where the skills they had trained for would not be needed? The Kaled’a’in Clan k’Leshya had chosen to go with the gryphons and the other nonhumans because of their own special relationship with Urtho’s magically- created creatures—but the other Kaled’a’in Clans had not gone to the same refuge for purely pragmatic reasons. It was best not to put all the refugees in one place. If the Kaled’a’in were to survive as a people or even as a vestige of a people, it was best that the Clans split up, to distribute them over too large an area to wipe out. That Amberdrake was here was partly the result of his own friendship with Skan, and partly the fact that he had joined k’Leshya himself; besides him, there were only the k’Leshya kestra’chern and perhaps a handful of others.
So when there was leisure again, and people began to look for some of the amenities of the old days, there were some things—like trained kestra’chern, for instance—that were in short supply.
Which means that the more subtle unethical people will have the opportunity to revert to type, an opportunity that hasn’t been there until now. That makes sense. Probably too much sense, actually. Urtho might have been the most principled creature in the known lands, but there were not too many like him, in his army or out of it. I suppose, given how many people were pouring through whatever Gate was nearest there at the end, that we shouldn’t have expected that everyone with us was of an angelic nature. We shouldn’t have expected anything. We were just glad to be alive at the time. And later—everyone was too busy to get into trouble, even the potential workers of trouble.
That only depressed him more. Perhaps he was overly idealistic, but he had really hoped that they had left things and people like Hadanelith behind them. I suppose there is going to be crime now, theft and assault, fraud and chicanery, who knows what else. He sighed. More work for the Silvers; I’d thought Judeth was just creating make- work for them, but maybe she had more vision than me.
Or maybe she had just had less blind optimism.
Or maybe she is just smarter than the White Fool.
Well, whatever the reason, General Judeth had done her work well. The Silver Gryphons, with their silver
