But she couldn’t keep reminding herself of that while that same man was waving a bottle of softening conditioner in her face and proudly extolling its detangling virtues.
All of a sudden, she had to stop herself from laughing. This was insane.
“. . have you got all of that?”
Laela pulled herself together. “Er, yeah, I think so. .”
“Good, then I’ll leave this by the tub for you-there’s already plenty of water in there. Now, time to show you your outfit. I think you’ll like it.”
Laela had expected a new dress. What she found instead was something she recognised but had never thought she would wear herself.
“Dear gods, is that. .?”
“Of course,” said Arenadd. “I had my tailors make it. You’re entitled to wear it.”
It was a griffiner’s ceremonial outfit. It looked as if the tailor who’d made it had started with a fairly ordinary gown made from a rich brown-gold fabric, before they’d added a patch of brown fur attached to a long “tail” that reached almost to the ground, and had sewn hundreds of small feathers onto the bodice until it was as fluffy as a bird’s chest. The shoulders and sleeves had been decorated with more feathers, but these were definitely griffin feathers-huge, long, strong wing feathers that formed a kind of cape. They were brown, too.
“Not Oeka’s,” Arenadd told her. “Normally, she’d have to donate the feathers, but she’s too young for hers to be long enough, so we found a griffin who was about her colour and collected some from his nest.”
Laela fingered the outfit, noting the green gems sewn into the fabric and the embroidered vine designs. “This is. .”
“How do you like it?” said Arenadd.
Laela caved in. “I can’t wear this! This is. .”
“You don’t like it?”
“It’s magnificent,” said Laela. “I can’t wear somethin’ like this! I’m just a-”
“You’re a griffiner,” said Arenadd. “You have to wear it. I’ll be wearing mine.”
“I s’pose so.” In fact, Laela was dying to try it on.
“Clean yourself up first,” Arenadd advised.
After he’d left, and she had some privacy, Laela bathed and washed her hair-following his instructions as well as she could remember. She was surprised to find that the lotions worked as well as Arenadd had claimed, and after using them and the various combs he’d left, her hair was clean and neater than it had ever been.
Once she was dry, she put on the ceremonial outfit. It made her feel so important that she didn’t even notice how hot it was. She walked around the cabin, trying to get used to the feeling of the feathers on her shoulders.
Oeka darted excitedly around her. “A true griffiner at last!” she chirped. “We will be an impressive sight to the Amoranis.”
Laela understood her well enough to catch the gist of it, and she grinned. “Griffins are impressive, an’ now I’m dressed up like one.” She fingered the patch of feathers on the front of her gown, and wondered how long it must have taken someone to sew them all on. And Arenadd had had it all prepared, just to surprise her.
A chill disturbed her good mood. Not for the first time, she wondered helplessly how someone could be so kind and generous one moment, and so utterly depraved the next. The man was a walking contradiction.
As if reading her mind, Arenadd appeared at that moment. “How d’you like it?”
“It’s amazin’,” said Laela. “Perfect fit.”
Arenadd looked her up and down. “Well, I never. You actually look like a lady now. Who would have thought it?”
Laela grinned and shoved him. “Yeah, well, I’m still waitin’ for the part where
“You don’t think I do?” he asked, unexpectedly serious.
“Not really,” said Laela. “I s’pose I think of yeh as a man first an’ a King second.”
Arenadd’s face creased into a smile. “And that’s why I like you so much.”
Laela smiled back without thinking. Somewhere inside at that moment, she realised that no matter what he’d done, she couldn’t hate him.
“Something on your mind?” Arenadd inquired.
“Nah, just wonderin’ how long it’ll be till we’re there,” said Laela. “How long’s it been since we left home, anyway? I lost track.”
“Just over four months,” said Arenadd. “We made pretty good time. Now, I’d better go and talk to our fellow griffiners and make sure everyone knows how they’re expected to conduct themselves. The Amorani have different expectations than we do, you know.”
Laela did know. During the voyage, she’d spent some time listening to Vander describe how she would be expected to conduct herself in Amoran. Their laws and customs sometimes sounded weird to her, but at their root they weren’t that much different than the ones she knew.
“Ain’t this excitin’?” she said to Oeka. “Amoran, at last!”
Oeka clicked her beak. “Soon, we shall meet a mighty ruler indeed.”
“Yeah,” said Laela. “An Emperor, eh? Fancy that.”
“And his human, of course,” Oeka conceded. “Now, I think that while we have time, you should fulfil your duty as my own human.”
Laela guessed what she was getting at quickly enough-this “duty” was one Arenadd had taught her about, and she’d practised it several times. She went into the cabin and fetched the brush and the talon-cleaning tools. When she returned, she found several adult griffins already on deck, being groomed by their humans.
“Little room for us,” said Oeka. “Others will take their place once these have done. We shall go back into our nest.”
Laela nodded and retreated, not wanting to be around that many large griffins anyway. In the cabin, she spent a good chunk of time brushing Oeka’s furred hindquarters, going over each patch until the fur was smooth and glossy. After that, she had to go through her feathers, looking for parasites and removing any dead or damaged feathers. Oeka didn’t like that much, and hissed warningly once or twice, but she kept still and let her finish before obligingly lifting her forepaws one by one so that Laela could clean the talons.
Once that was done, Laela took a bottle of very expensive scented oil and rubbed some into Oeka’s beak- making it shine as if it had been polished.
After that, she could rest and have something to eat, while the griffin groomed her wings herself.
When she was fairly sure the grooming up on deck was over (she waited until the ship had stopped rocking so much), she went back outside. Sure enough, only one or two were left, and the rest were in the air, following the ship as it drifted up the mighty River Erech.
From the deck, Laela could see the faint lights of buildings on the riverbank, and her heart began to flutter. She was seeing the first tiny parts of Amoran-a country that, among their party, only Vander had ever seen, one so far away that most Cymrians believed it didn’t even exist except in legends.
Oeka, of course, looked completely unflustered. “Amorani griffins are smaller than us,” she remarked. “I shall feel very much at home, I think.”
“Yeah.” Laela was finding her partner easier to understand all the time.
There didn’t seem to be much more to say after that, and girl and griffin stood together in silence on the stern, watching as the lights of Instabahn came into view at last.
Laela knew they were there when the griffiners assembled on deck. All of them were wearing their ceremonial outfits. Laela, sweating horribly in hers, went to join them.
Arenadd was there, also, and he, too, was in his ceremonial clothing. His, however, rather than being a tunic enhanced with feathers and fur, was based on a robe. It looked more or less like one of his customary black robes, but the area over his chest was covered in Skandar’s silver feathers, and the wing feathers on his shoulders and sleeves were a mix of silver, black, and white. The patch of fur below the feathers on the chest was white, and the end of the “tail” had been decorated with a fan of more feathers in imitation of a griffin’s own.
He was wearing the crown, too.
