Without a glance behind him, Svarezi marched into the lower stable rooms and gazed about the cluttered aerie floor.
The lean black hippogriff Shaatra had found herself a prime position. Sleek flanks gleaming, she turned around and around widening her nest; twigs and straw had been bound together with painstaking skill, and the bottom had been lined with astonishing flame-red plumes. Crooning softly to herself in age-old songs, the hippogriff prepared the cradle for her first-ever clutch of young.
Svarezi took one look at the nest, strode across the floor and kicked the little structure to the winds.
'Not you! I have need of you. Find another year for warming shells.'
The warlord crushed tufts of fine black down beneath his heel as he snarled out for the grooms.
'Keep this beast out in the cold! And don't let it stare at the accursed stallions!'
Shaatra stood gaping in numb horror at the ruins of her nest. With a piercing scream of pure despair, she flung herself on Svarezi's unguarded back. Her beak tore sparks from the human's armor, spraying blood across the walls. With a vengeful, sobbing cry she whirled about to gouge him with her claws.
Bleeding great sheets of blood all down his back, Svarezi unhurriedly linked his armored hands. He swiveled heavily as the hippogriff came on, and crashed his fists clean across her brow.
The bird screamed and staggered, her head snapping sideways in shock. Svarezi struck her again and then again, hammering down blows until the beast collapsed at his feet. Careless of his wounds, he reached for a training staff and beat the creature methodically up and down its hide, crashing blows into the moaning animal as it weakly tried to crawl aside.
Finally, he left Shaatra to her pain. Tossing aside the bloody staff, he turned to the grooms.
'I care nothing for their love. Only for their fear.' He met the staring eyes of his underlings with a blank, cold expression. 'Life is nothing but a contest of unremitting power.'
With that, the warlord of Sumbria and Colletro left the tower. Behind him, Shaatra whimpered and reached out for a fallen fragment of her nest. Black talons closed upon a crumpled orange plume, and the hippogriff wept silent, bitter tears.
Safely ensconced inside a massive wooden bath, Lorenzo lifted up one gleaming leg and soaped thoroughly down along the line of hairs. He stretched tired muscles, wriggled up his clean pink toes, then lounged back to let the hot water spread its soft, delicious spell.
A bath at last. Battles survived, struggles overcome, now rest at a long, hard journey's end. Lorenzo smiled; Lorenzo sighed; Lorenzo luxuriously rolled his head and came face-to-face with a pair of brilliant hazel eyes.
'Holy Ishtishia!'
He crammed himself beneath the scanty cover of a floating sponge and turned lobster pink from head to toe. Beside him, Miliana settled herself on a folded towel and made wet rings upon the polished floor with two steaming cups of tea.
With her long hair wound up beneath a towel, and wearing a thick white bathrobe, Miliana seemed softly serene. Smiling calmly behind twinkling spectacles, she passed Lorenzo a steaming drink and balanced it firmly on the edge of the tub.
Lorenzo's eyes appeared across the rim like a mouse peering from its burrow.
'Miliana, what are you doing?'
'Oh, it's just equal time.' The girl seemed utterly at ease. With a warm yawn she patted the tall sides of the tub. 'You've seen me in my bath. I simply thought I might return the compliment.'
'But I had the door locked!'
'Your sister gave me the key.' Made tired by warmth and steam, Miliana adjusted her spectacles. 'An odd girl. Actually, I think I like her.'
Caught in the warm fog that just preceded bedtime, Miliana sat and sipped her tea. Comforted by the shelter of oaken planks, Lorenzo emerged to lean across the edges of his tub. He accepted Miliana's gift of tea, propped himself up on his elbows, and fondly gazed at her through a haze of steam.
'You seem quiet.'
'I feel quiet.' Miliana, damp and glowing from her own time in her bath, looked up at Lorenzo and creased a sweetly anxious brow.
'Lorenzo… am I too foul-tempered?'
Her companion fumbled a dripping hand across the tub; Miliana caught the fingers in her own and gave a squeeze. Lorenzo reached across to push a damp curl back from Miliana's face.
'No. I'd say that you're just foul-tempered enough.'
'I suppose so.' Miliana flexed her fingers in Lorenzo's grasp. 'It's just that-back home-I've evaded, snarled, and schemed. But until you came along, no one's ever really been worth arguing with before.'
From the pocket of her robe, Miliana pulled a borrowed coin-a half-ducat piece from Sumbria. Her father's face had been stamped across the electrum disk-a face that still showed its habitually cold stare.
Miliana held the coin before the mask of her spectacles.
'I try to think of all those funny little plazas-those fountains and streets we both walked through-as they were. Not how they must be now, all broken down by Svarezi's men.
'I like your home, Lorenzo. I don't want what happened to Sumbria to happen here.'
'We'll fight it.' Lorenzo looked quietly at Miliana's wistful face. 'We'll win. Hey, you're a real princess, remember?'
For an answer, Miliana shifted the coin and stared into her father's face.
'He's really dead, isn't he.' The girl looked softly at the portrait with its blank, unseeing eyes. 'I loved that city, and now it's gone.
'And do you know what he'd have expected me to do about it?'
'What?'
'Absolutely nothing. The man scarcely knew I was alive.'
Miliana's fist closed over the coin and clenched, slowly squeezing it until her knuckles turned white.
'We'll show him…'
Lorenzo gripped Miliana's free hand, changing her bitterness into a wan little smile.
'Yes. We'll show him.'
They kissed softly, lips touching as each wound fingers into the other's hair. Resting forehead to forehead, they clung together in silence, companionship, and steam.
Finally, the girl rose, kissed Lorenzo's fingers, and wandered to the door.
She halted and looked back at him, her face soft and fond behind the panels of her spectacles.
'Argue with you tomorrow?'
Lorenzo smiled.
'Tomorrow.'
Moving out into the hall, Miliana closed the door behind her and wandered quietly into her borrowed bedroom. A candle burned warm and yellow beside the bed, while Tekoriikii sat in a nest of straw happily reading the pages of a picture book. Miliana stroked his crest fondly as she passed, then sank onto the bed.
She lay curled on her side, staring at the little disk of gray metal in her palm. The warm scent of straw and bird spread its spell across the bedroom, and Miliana's coin hung heavy in her hand.
Minutes later, it slipped onto the covers, off the bed, and rolled across the wood floor. Craning his neck up across the bed, Tekoriikii watched his friend for a long, quiet while, then softly drew the blankets up across her freckled arms.
The girl lay calm and quiet. Tekoriikii gently snuffed the candle, tucked his head beneath one wing, and sank into a contented world of sleep.
14
Winter on the shores of the Akanamere came in hard and strong. For the tiny city-state of Zutria, it was a welcome time of unprecedented harvest. For days on end, wild storms and winds would lash against the coast; the
