Mercedes Lackey: The Silver Gryphon

How she envied Tad his freedom! He really had no notion just how easy a parent Skandranon was to deal with. The Black Gryphon had a. sound, if instinctive and not entirely reliable, knowledge of just when to shut his beak and let Tad go his own way. He also attempted to restrain his enthusiasm for the accomplishments of his twins, although it was difficult for him. But at least he showed that he approved; Amberdrake had never been happy with the path-choice his daughter had made, and although he tried not to let his disapproval color their relationship, it leaked through anyway. How could it not?

Perhaps “disapproval” was too strong a word. Amberdrake understood warriors; he had worked with them for most of his life. He respected them most profoundly. He liked them, and he even understood all of the drives that fueled their actions.

He simply did not understand why his child and Winterhart’s would want to be a warrior. He can’t fathom how he and Mother produced someone like me. By all rights, with everything that they taught me, I should never have been attracted to this life.

That was a gap of understanding that probably would never be bridged, and Blade had yet to come up with a way of explaining herself that would explain the riddle to him. “Blade, would you play secretary and write the list for me?” Tadrith pleaded, interrupting her reverie. “Otherwise I know I’m going to forget something important.”

“If you do, you can always have it Gated to us,” she pointed out, and laughed when he lowered his eartufts.

“That would be so humiliating I would rather do without!” he exclaimed. “I’d never hear the last of it! Please, just go get a silver-stick and paper from the box and help me, would you?”

“What else are gryphon-partners for, except doing paperwork?” she responded, as she rose and sauntered across the room to the small chest that held a variety of oddments the twins found occasionally useful, each in its appointed place. The chest, carved of a fragrant wood that the Haighlei called sadar, held a series of compartmentalized trays holding all manner of helpful things. Among them were a box of soft, silver sticks and a block of tough reed-paper, both manufactured by the Haighlei. She extracted both, and returned to her seat beside Tad. She leaned up against him, bracing herself against his warm bulk, using her knees as an impromptu writing desk.

As the twins argued over each item before agreeing to add it to the list or leave it out, she waited patiently. Only once did she speak up during the course of the argument, as Keenath insisted that Tad include a particular type of healer’s kit and Tad argued against it on the grounds of weight.

She slapped his shoulder to get him to be quiet. “Who is the trondi’irn here?” she demanded. “You, or Keeth?” Tad turned his head abruptly, as if he had forgotten that she was there. “You mean, since he’s the expert, I ought to listen to him.”

“Precisely,” she said crisply. “What’s the point of asking his opinion on this if you won’t take it when you know he’s the authority?”

“But the likelihood that we’d need a bonesetting kit is so small it’s infinitesimal!” he protested. “And the weight! I’m the one who’s going to be carrying all this, you know!”

“But if we need it, we’ll need exactly those supplies, and nothing else will substitute,” she pointed out. “We don’t know for certain that there’s a bone-setting kit at the Outpost, and I prefer not to take the chance that the last few teams have been as certain of their invulnerability as you.” Keenath looked smug as she added it to the list, unbidden. “I’m going to insist on it. And if it isn’t in that basket when we leave, I’ll send for one. We may be in a position of needing one and being unable to ask for one to be Gated to us.”

Tad flattened his ears in defeat as he looked from one implacable face to the other. “You win. I can’t argue against both of you.”

Gryphons could not smirk like humans could, but there was enough muscular control of the beak edges at the join of the lower mandible that one could be approximated. More than a touch of such an expression showed on Keeth as they continued on to the next item. Part of the reason why Blade felt so comfortable in the Silvers and with the gryphons in particular was that their motives and thoughts were relatively simple and easy to understand. In particular, they made poor liars; gryphons were just too expressive to hold a bluff effectively once you knew how to read their physical cues, such as the lay of their facial feathers and the angle of their ears. Although they were complex creatures and often stubborn, gryphons were also exactly what they appeared to be. The kestra’chern, her father in particular, were anything but.

Their job was to manipulate, when it came right down to it. The whole point of what they did was to manipulate a client into feeling better, to give him a little more insight into himself. But she wasn’t at all comfortable with the idea of manipulating anyone for any reason, no matter how pure the motive and how praiseworthy the outcome.

Oh, I know things simply aren’t that black-and-white, but —

Ah, things were just simpler with the Silvers. Issues often were a matter of extremes rather than degrees. When you had only a single moment to make up your mind what you were going to do, you had to be able to pare a situation down to the basics. Subtleties, as Judeth often said, were for times of leisure.

She noted down another item, and let her thoughts drift.

Ican’t wait until we’re away from here. I wish we could go without having to talk to my parents.

Once they were away from White Gryphon, she would finally be able to relax for the first time in several years. And once again, it was her father who was indirectly responsible for her unease of spirit.

He knows too much, that’s the problem. When she had been a child, she had taken it for granted that Amberdrake would know everyone of any importance at all in White Gryphon. She hadn’t known any reason why he shouldn’t. But as she gradually became aware just what her father’s avocation really entailed, she gained a dim understanding that the knowledge Amberdrake possessed was extraordinarily intimate.

Finally, one day it all fell together. She put the man together with the definition of kestra’chern and had a moment of blinding and appalling revelation.

Not only did her father know everyone of any importance, he also knew the tiniest details about them—every motive, every desire, every dream and indecision. Details like that, she felt deep in her heart, no person should ever know about another. Such secrets gave the one who held them too much power over the other, and that would weigh as an unimaginable responsibility.

Not that Father would ever use that power. . . .

Or would he? If he had a chance to manipulate someone for a cause he thought was right, wouldn’t he be tempted to do just that? And wouldn’t the fear of having such secrets revealed to others be enough to make almost anyone agree to something that Amberdrake wanted?

She had never once seen any indications that Amberdrake had given in to the temptation to use his tacit power—but he was her father, and she knew that she was prejudiced on his behalf. For that matter, she was not certain she would know what to look for if he had misused his powers.

Oh, it’s not likely. Father would never do anything to harm anyone, if only because he is an Empath and would feel their emotional distress.

She ought to know; she was something of an Em-path herself, although in her case, she got nothing unless she was touching the person in question.