Owlknight

belly-aches.”

“Well, thanks to you, I’m going to get quite a few chances to do so in the near future,” she said, and laughed when he sighed. “Come on, it won’t be that bad, will it?”

“I’m not so sure. The easiest is likely to be the Ghost Cat ceremony - and for that, all of the men will be stripping down and cramming into the sweat house until we’re equally parboiled. Then I exchange blood with the Shaman - I gather we each cut our palms and clasp hands - he declares that I’m his true son, with his blood in my veins and mine in his.”

“That doesn’t sound too difficult,” Keisha observed. “Other than the parboiling part. By all the men, are you just talking about the Ghost Cat folk?”

She heard the grin in his voice. “Oh, no, this includes Lord Breon and Val - Snowfire and Wintersky have to get in on this too, and maybe Starfall - and certainly Herald Anda. Should be very interesting to see how he reacts.”

She giggled. “It should be very interesting to see how Lord Breon takes it!”

The rest of the guests had started to slip away, by twos and fours, while they talked. She took a quick glance around, and realized that they were completely alone; not even a single hertasi had remained behind.

He was still caught up in thinking about the ordeals he was about to undergo. “Before that, there’s the knighting thing. I’ve got to do a night-long vigil, then Breon gets to put on his show, which is supposed to take the rest of the day. Oathtaking, knighting, ceremony following the knighting, speeches, tournament, feast, more speeches. The Ghost Cat people are probably going to be bored silly - and I know I will be, at least during the speeches.”

“You will not - you’ll be making mental notes like you always do,” she retorted. “You’ll be figuring what people are thinking by what they say and don’t say, and who they look at while they’re talking. You’ll tuck all that away in your mind, and when we most need it and least expect it, you’ll pull something out in a Council session that will solve everything.”

“Oh, come now!” he protested, laughing, “I’m not anywhere near that good!”

“You only think you aren’t. The rest of us know better.” He didn’t say anything, but she could tell he was embarrassed. “You’d better get used to it; people rely on you, Darian, and you’re good enough to be depended upon,” she added. “I know, and Starfall, Firesong, and Snowfire know, that you’ve got the instinct. You read people beautifully.”

“I don’t like to think that I’m manipulating them, though,” he replied, his voice uncertain. “That seems so unethical.”

She chose her words carefully. “It isn’t that you’re manipulating them, it’s that you’re getting them to see things they wouldn’t think of for themselves. Eventually, when the problem is over, they do see, and the next time you won’t have to prompt them or coax them into it. I don’t think that’s manipulation, that’s education. Besides, in a sense, we all manipulate each other; that’s what happens when you are friends, when you trust and love someone. I manipulate people as a Healer, but it’s with skill and good intent. Sometimes I have to trick them in order to make their medicine work.”

“I don’t know. . . .” He still sounded reluctant. “It just seems that I’m getting people to do things they’d rather not do at the time, and I wonder if that’s right.”

“But aren’t they more inclined to do the same thing on their own, later, once you’ve persuaded them into it the first time?” she countered. “Think of Val! If you hadn’t shown him how awful fighting and warfare really is, he’d have been inclined to throw himself into the thick of battle the first chance he had! Now he takes the time to think things through, and see if there isn’t a way to solve a situation without killing anyone. I don’t doubt for a moment that if fighting turns out to be the only answer, he’ll still be right up in the front of it - you didn’t turn him into a coward, because that’s not in his nature. All you did was bring out a part of his nature he hadn’t bothered to develop before you talked to him.”

“But what if he had been fearful, and I had turned him into a coward?” Darian replied.

“What’s better? That he discover that he was really timid about fighting when he was in the middle of a fight, or when he was sitting safe at home?” she said instantly. “Which does the most harm - or the least? It seems to me that if he’d discovered he couldn’t bear the battlefield, he’d have had plenty of opportunity to cultivate courage or find an alternative place to be useful where he didn’t have to actually fight. But you know what kind of havoc a single fighter can wreak just by turning and running.”

Darian sighed. “I guess you’re right.”

She clasped both her hands over his and squeezed them. “You know I am, you mean. You never use your abilities with people to make them do something that’s alien to their nature - you just make them see alternatives and then try those alternatives. Some day it might happen that you run up against someone who doesn’t like the alternative you offer, and goes into it reluctantly, but you don’t nock an arrow to your bow and force him into it. He can always say no.”

“But people don’t want to say no when I ask them to do something,” he protested. “It makes them feel guilty