The Silence of Medair

Hiding the Ibisian under a hedge outside the village, Medair walked in with a swagger and spent an unnecessarily long time haggling over the few riding animals available, merely because their owner had a fetching smile. Neither of the two she could convince them to spare were nearly fine enough to match her spirits.

She also bought some clothing to fit her burden, but did not dress him until she had found a horse trough to dump him in. The ring was handy for overcoming her distaste enough to scrub him thoroughly, until the water was polluted with mud. She laughed at the disgust of the yearlings which investigated the trough after she lugged her now slippery-wet Ibisian away to a bed of chewed clover.

He really was like Ieskar. Something wrong about the cheekbones, and the jaw was a touch stronger, but he possessed the Kier’s small nose and there was only a slight variation of the precisely-cut mouth. Those white-lashed eyes would probably dominate his features as the Kier’s had, if they were open. This man’s long, delicately-boned hands were just as fine as those she had watched move marrat pieces over too many games, though the right lacked the thin scar across the back of the fingers. And, of course, he was tall and slender and pale. Ibisians simply didn’t come in short, stocky or dark variations.

His hair was much longer than the Kier’s had been, quite past his knees, though very damp and tangled at the moment, the drying strands like spun silk to the touch. Immensely impractical. She sorted it absently into a braid, wondering why this Ibisian adept had been masquerading as a Farakkian boy.

Athere was the last place Medair wanted to go, and certainly not in the company of an Ibisian. To be obliged to shepherd a man who reminded her of Kier Ieskar was a cruel twist. She had had too much of him.

When Herald Kedy had died during the early stages of the war, while the Ibisians had been taking Holt Harra and Laskia with an ease which was almost insulting, Medair had been the only envoy to the Ibisian court halfway fluent in the language. The Kier would not again condescend to speaking Parlance during official audiences, though he was perfectly capable of using the Imperial tongue when he wanted. Instead, he’d had one of his court, a woman named Selai las Dona, teach the Imperial Heralds Ibis-laran.

Medair’s training had been tested to the limit listening to the Kier’s exquisitely polite words of war, whatever language he delivered them in. It had been so much worse when Kier Ieskar had departed from the formality of his throne room and decided to play marrat with the Imperial Herald. He’d just summoned her one day, at the beginning of the first winter, and informed her that he would teach her the game.

Medair had lost count of the times she had matched with him during the months after the first stage of the invasion. Often the games had been completely silent, as they concentrated on the complex patterns of disks. Infrequently, Kier Ieskar would ask her a spate of questions on some facet of life in Farakkan, so that he could "know whom he must rule". Once, having observed that the Imperial Heralds wore different colours according to the kind of message they carried, he asked her what colour she would wear when she brought him words of surrender. She had managed a courteous reply even to this, unable as ever to read the thoughts behind his pale eyes. And silently prayed to Farak that she would never again wear anything but the mulberry-red of war in his presence.

She never had. Athere, betrayed by the West, was finally overwhelmed by the invaders, but Medair was not there to witness the defeat. Herald Jorlaise had carried out the formalities of surrender. Jorlaise had been the last person Medair had seen before heading north, rueful with the necessity of improving her Ibis-laran. "If anyone can pull this off it’ll be you, Medair," she’d said. "You’ve always had the luck of a cat. We’ll be waiting to hear from you."

Had Jorlaise thought of her as she’d stood before the Kier wearing black, delivering the words of surrender? Luck of a cat. Medair had seen too many cats starving on the street to see that as the compliment Jorlaise had obviously intended. Her luck to rescue a shape-changed Ibisian adept.

It was much more difficult to dress a damp, fully-grown man than it had been to deal with a dirty, undersized boy. His skin was very warm beneath her fingers, but she kept to business, trying to estimate the extent of his spell shock and puzzle out his role in the battle which had left so many dead. Tranced into deep sleep, he did not so much as stir.