Three days passed, and still no orders had come. Rather than waiting idly, Tirlav began to drill his vien again, and the other plumes in the encampment followed his example. Training served more to keep them occupied than anything else. In their two years, the company had grown tremendously in skill. Tirlav tried to vary the challenges, making their training harder or more unexpected, but what did he know? He had never been to the Mingling. He was no more skilled than any of those who looked to him for direction.

  Since they’d come to the High Tir, Tirlav noticed the mood of the contingents grow even more sullen, the music sparser and more melancholic. Tirlav suggested—and the other plumes actually agreed—moving the camp further south and away from the High Tir, away from the smells of the food and the sounds of joyous music.

  On the third night, Hormil summoned the plumes to a dinner of lavish baked and sugared fruits, vegetables roasted in oils and spices, and wines of various kinds. When the invitation had come by rider, Tirlav had suspected that their orders had come down from the Synod. The especially sumptuous meal only made him anticipate an announcement more, so he had little appetite and only picked at his food. Hormil, on the other hand, drank heavily and finished three entire honey-baked mangos before moving onto glazed breads full of candied dates. He spoke little, asking one plume and then another for reports on their contingents and their activities during the previous season. Halfway through one such report, he interjected with a long discourse on the variable uses and downsides of bodkin, broad-head, and crescent-moon arrowheads in the Mingling.

  “Son of Aelor,” Hormil said at length, startling Tirlav, who had let his mind wander.

  “Liel?” Tirlav replied.

  “What ails you? You have hardly eaten.”

  It was rude not to eat well when invited to dine. Tirlav had let his worry overcome his manners. Not wanting to admit that he was anxious, he cast about for an excuse.

  “I thank you for the repast,” Tirlav replied. “I only think that perhaps I am setting a poor example when my vien are not so favored.”

  “Are you suggesting I am setting a bad example for so pampering my plumes?” Hormil asked. Tirlav realized he had replaced embarrassment with blunder.

  “No, liel, I am sorry, I. . .” Tirlav hesitated, and Hormil held up his hand to stop him.

  “Your concern does you credit,” Hormil said. “Worry not. In the Mingling you will receive no such privileges. I am sure you will be happier then.” He raised an eyebrow and the corner of his mouth. “Yet these dinners serve a purpose, if only to make your contingents suppose you know more than you do. I recommend that you not disenchant them. Besides, eating and drinking well is one thing that the Synod has not forbidden us, and so long as I am able, I will take advantage. The Synod will not allow me to feed the whole company in such style, though my allotment is generous. Enjoy it. You will have little enough to enjoy soon.”

  “I thought that perhaps we would receive our commandment tonight.”

  Hormil shook his head at that.

  “See how eager he is to ride for the Mingling?” Hormil asked Selnei, who was the only guest at Hormil’s table who was not a plume. Selnei shrugged, shaking his head as if in bewilderment. Turning back to Tirlav, he continued: “Be thankful for the time. The order will come soon enough, but the Synod will move us when the Synod wishes. Not before. There is no use questioning the timing.” Hormil drank down the rest of his cup and refilled it from an ornate blue-glass pitcher. “From now until the company departs, plan on dining with me in the evenings, all of you.”

  ***

  Tirlav ate little but drank well, and he purposefully walked slowly when they left the house of Hormil. The other plumes ranged ahead. It was solitude that Tirlav sought. The others were soon out of sight, and he turned aside on different paths, walking with his helm beneath his arm. At the center of the city was the massive hill itself, dominated by a grove of towering ancient ebony and eucalyptus with trunks so thick that often the paths passed through tunnels carved through them. Their branches suspended massive and ornate structures of carved wood. Many of the trees in the city had been woven together branch and stem over the centuries until they formed natural bowls, lattices, and frameworks upon which the Vien anchored their marvelous artifices of woodworking. Such was the skill of the Vien carpenters that the houses and structures appeared suspended among the trees on impossibly delicate supports—but it was all artifice. Accidents were exceedingly rare.

  Fireflies flickered along the paths, and the wavering lights of the habitations above, shielded behind glass panes of blues, greens, and yellows, made the capital a panoply of deceptive lights and shadows. The smells of the carefully tended gardens and the fruiting vines joined with the eucalyptus sap and conifer needles in delightful aroma. Always, music could be heard falling down from above like gentle rain, for the Vien loved little as much as singing.

  When Tirlav had first visited the city with his father, walking those paths in the night was delight upon delight to him. The delights were still there, but now his heart ached at them. The walk was both torment and pleasure. He had always thought that beauty was transient; that he would never be able to hold onto it and keep it from fading away. Now, he knew this beauty would long outlive him. He had never lived thus before.

  He had slowed to a stop and stood staring up into the distant branches when a movement nearby startled him. A vienu joined the path abruptly through an arched opening in an arbor just a few feet from him. Turning toward him, she jumped in surprise, herself.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “I am merely walking. . . I. . .” She hesitated, looking at Tirlav. Her hair was white. No, it was not white. White itself was a color, or something akin to it. Her hair had less color than white hair, and her skin less color as well. He could see her veins through it, delicate blue threads. He stared agape, forgetting manner and decorum. By description alone, he knew what she was, yet he had never seen an Insensitive before. What had he expected? The translucence of her visage, her hair and skin, brought back to mind the no-doubt apocryphal stories of Vah returning to their folk from time to time as a spirit to warn them.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “I only left for a time,” she went on. “I will return. I simply wished to go for a walk.”

  Tirlav was confused. Why was she trying to explain herself?

  “Return where?” he asked.

  “To the house,” she said, turning her head to the side and squinting.

  “Who do you think I am?”

  “Oh,” she said, looking around, but did not answer.

  Tirlav bowed, placing a hand on his chest. It was not necessary for a plume of the company to give such courtesy to a strange vienu, but it felt right.

  “I am Plume of the Aelor Contingent of the Sail Chasers,” he said.

  “I am Jareen,” she replied. Tirlav squinted, confused. That was not a Vien name. It sounded almost human, and she gave no history of her tree.

  “That name,” he said, but realized he did not know how to ask without sounding impertinent.

  “It is a Noshian name,” she said, a note of defiance in her voice.

  Before Tirlav could think of the propriety of doing so, he responded to her in Noshian:

  “How come you to have Noshian for name?” he asked, knowing he fumbled.

  Her eyes widened, and she stared at him for a moment. A smile crept across her mouth. It was clear she tried to fight it, but she failed. Tirlav felt suddenly embarrassed, shifting his weight onto his back foot.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in Vienwé, putting her hand before her mouth to hide the smile. “Where did you learn Noshian?”

  “Do you speak it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered, using the Noshian word and continuing in that language. “Were you at the embassy before?”

  “No,” he answered in Noshian. “I learn by letter.”

  “By letter?” she asked, smiling again and looking away from him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Your accent,” she said, switching back to Vienwé. “I can tell what you’re trying to say, but. . .”

  “It is terrible,” he finished.

  “Yes it is.” She laughed. Tirlav found himself smiling as well.

  “I have not heard it spoken in decades,” he said. “I have learned by reading.”

  She frowned.

  “But why?”

  “It interested me. There is a different music to the language.”

  She squinted at him again, tilting her head. There was no color to her eyes, just a mist around her pupils. They shone like moonlight, reflecting lamplight from above. It gave him the impression of fragility, as if she was formed of cloudy colorless glass.

  “You said your were of the Aelor. What is your name?” she asked.

  He hesitated. He had not been on a first name basis with anyone since he was mustered with the company.

  “I am Tirlav, Son of Aelor.”

  The vienu took a step back.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You are a warrior?”

  “I am plume of a contingent of riders.”

  “Since when?”

  Tirlav was confused. What kind of a question was this from a stranger?

  “We were raised two years past.”

  The vienu stared at him without response, her mouth slightly open. Even her lips were colorless. She was wearing a long silver dress that draped down to her ankles, ending above bare feet. It was simple, with no ornament except for blue hem-work, but the simplicity complimented her. For a time, he gazed back, until discomfort urged him to speak.

  “How is it you come to have a Noshian name?”

  The conversation had become so odd that he no longer cared that he pried.

  “I lived there,” she said.

  “I thought no vienu served the embassy or were permitted aboard ship.”

  “I was not of the embassy. I went to Nosh of my own accord.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said. Tirlav did not know how such a thing could be.

  “You know what I am,” she answered, a hint of annoyance returning to her tone. “It cannot be hidden. I wished to live my life how I pleased before I died.”

  He did not know how to respond to that. Her answer raised so many questions and feelings.

  “Do not pity me,” she said, obviously misreading his expression. He laughed, overly loud in the night air.

  “Pity you? For living life freely before you die?” Tirlav shook his head. “I am not free, and you will outlive me, like as not.” He realized he should have said, I am already dead, but it was not so easy to let go and keep it so. The temptation to grasp at life pestered always.

  His reply had an effect on her, it was clear, but he could not tell how. She glanced back the way she had come. Tirlav thought she might be thinking of leaving, and on instinct he asked:

  “Why did you return?”

  “I. . . I am trained to care for the. . . sick. The Departing.” She interjected the Noshian words. “I was brought back by the ambassador.”

  “You care for those stricken by the malady?”

  “Yes. And it might not be safe to be near me. The malady may spread.”

  “I don’t care,” he said with a wave of the hand. He was fairly certain he didn’t care, at least. From what he had heard, he would be in far more danger from the Canaen sorceries in the Mingling than in the High Tir. “It would do me great pleasure if you would walk with me and tell me of Nosh. The evening is fair.”

  “The evenings are always fair here,” she answered.

  Tirlav thought of the nights of rain he had endured along the Tlorné shore.

  “Please make it fairer still,” he answered, feeling a blush of heat on his face. What was he doing?

  What did it matter? He extended an arm to the side, offering the path. She hesitated, looking back once more the way she had come.

  “What is it you would know of Nosh?” she asked.

  Tirlav had no real responsibilities before dawn. They walked for an hour before Jareen swore she must return, and it felt like mere moments to him. They had talked of Nosh, and she had even explained a few points of Noshian pronunciation to him. He had gathered much vocabulary, but his ideas of the Noshian sounds were rudimentary. It was more than a little embarrassing. It felt like a dream, meeting this rarest of creatures, and one who knew of Nosh, who had lived among the Voiceless Sisters, the same Order that Coir had once written about in a letter. That strange world had sprung to life in a way he had never imagined, and on the paths of the High Tir!

  Far too soon, she said she must return. He accompanied her back to a small rear door in a massive and intricate structure built up the base of a redwood near the foot of the tir. As she passed through the door, she glanced back, and he took the opportunity to speak one last time:

  “I will. . . If fate permits. . . I will walk the same path tomorrow.”

  She pressed her lips together, nodded, and closed the door, leaving Tirlav alone in the deep of night.

  Patreon. The support is appreciated.

  https://discord.gg/JtJYdhmsVp