Page 34 of Gryphon in Light

“No ties back in Haven?” He couldn’t resist asking the question.

“None to speak of. There’ll be lads and lasses asking for transfers, no doubt, but plenty more at Haven wanting a touch of adventure and the promise of action.” The cook shook his head, but didn’t comment any further.

Hallock knew what he was thinking, old veteran that he was, and the cook was right. Younglings think they are immortal.

He spotted a few of his own people off in the near right-hand quarter of the tent and went to join them. Some officers preferred to eat alone in their tents, but there were enough like him that preferred to be with their people that he didn’t stand out.

People quieted down as he took a seat, moving over on the bench so he could have the end. He nodded thanks and hello, then put his head down and concentrated on his food so conversation would start back up again.

And it did . . . but he realized, as he listened, that they weren’t speaking as freely with him there as they would have without. Which was appropriate, after all; he was an officer. They weren’t supposed to regard and treat him as one of them. On top of the realization that he wasn’t going to see Genni for a good long while, this distancing made him feel melancholy.

So melancholy that it was several moments and a deepening silence before he realized that there was an orderly waiting politely at his elbow.

“Speak up, soldier,” he said, straightening.

“Major wants to see you, First,” the dark young woman said, all business, her uniform as immaculate as his was not. But this was his reserve uniform, so that was to be expected; the one he’d been wearing had been cut off him by the Healers, and hadn’t been replaced.

“I’ll see to your kit, First,” Bennak Fenn volunteered. “Leave it clean in your tent.”

“Thanks, Bennak,” he said, and stood to go with the orderly.

It was a short walk to the major’s tent, and Hallock reflected that things had vastly improved since Major Trask had been replaced by this new fellow. Major Fisher. Major Fisher had taken control of the situation between the Guard and the town, armed with warrants of every sort from the Crown that specified exactly how business was to be conducted down to the smallest detail. Not that Trask had been a bad leader; as a military man, he was highly competent. But the deviousness of politicians, and the chicanery of the politicians here in particular, had left him baffled and enraged, and he himself had petitioned to be replaced. The very first thing Fisher had done when he arrived was to march into the town hall with a squad, round up the mayor and every member of the Town Council, and present them with his warrants, which made it quite clear that Fisher had the backing of the Crown itself to enforce the provisions of those warrants.

They’d never dared have done to Kelvren what they did if Fisher’d been in charge.

The orderly rapped her knuckles on a tentpole, then held aside the flap for Hallock to pass through. “First Hallock Stavern, sir!” she said briskly.

The major, a handsome, dark-haired, dark-skinned, middle-aged man in an immaculate uniform that made Hallock twitch a little with envy, was standing at his table in his two-room tent, bending over a map. “Ah, Stavern,” he said, and Hallock relaxed a little at the generally positive tone. “You may go, Liren,” he said to the orderly, who saluted, dropped the tent flap, and went on about her business.

Hallock saluted. “Sir,” he said.

“At ease, First,” said the major, and took a seat on a camp stool. Hallock stood at ease, mentally going over everything that had been happening since Fisher took over from Trask, trying to figure out why Fisher needed to see him. The sounds of the camp settling down for the evening came through the tent walls completely unfiltered.

“Have you ever heard the old saying about marriage and the Guard, First?” Fisher asked, a hint of a smile on his lips.

Considering how he had just been thinking about Genni, he had to repress a start. This is not going where I expected it to.

“Can’t say as I have, Major,” Hallock replied honestly. “Though I expect it mostly boils down to, don’t.”

The major chuckled. “Well the saying suggests that it is a very good thing indeed—mandatory, almost—for upper-level officers to marry, and lower-level ones are strongly discouraged from doing so.”

Is this about Genni? But—

“I suspect whoever made up that saying never encountered your wife, First,” the major continued, taking a folded document out of his tunic—one of the pieces of palimpsest that was used for messages from the teleson operator. “She makes a compelling argument for why she should join you here.”

She—wait, what? Oh, of course he knew she was a Healer’s Hand, one of the trained helpers that supplemented the Healers’ work. And he knew she was a good one. But he had never pictured her as wanting to leave the civilized surroundings of Haven and Healer’s Collegium for the rigors of a far-off garrison, much less a camp on a civil-war footing.

“Very compelling indeed. And if you were going to be staying with us, I would not have hesitated in authorizing her as a camp auxiliary. We can’t have too many Healer’s Hands out here, I suspect.” He tapped his chin with the folded paper, as Hallock tried to get his mind wrapped around what his superior officer was saying. “And I would absolutely approve getting her here, no question at all. The problem is, you are not going to be staying. But since she could be equally useful where you might be heading, I am going to leave the decision up to you as to whether I have her sent through on the next Gate opening, or tell her that she can’t go where you are going.”

“Uh—sir?” Hallock said, feeling very much as if he was drunk or otherwise befuddled.

Fisher regarded him gravely. “Ripples and cracks, Hallock. That clever gryphon of yours did everything right, and still managed to stir up a bit of a hornet’s nest. We are playing a complicated game on a four-level board, because some people are shortsighted and greedy, and will trample over their own mothers to gain far more than they could ever earn honestly in their lives. That’s why I’m here, instead of Trask. That’s why Lord Breon claimed he gave the gryphon orders to suppress the revolt and remind the insurgents that even though the Queen in Haven has her hands full, she has plenty of creatures ready, willing, and eager to act on her behalf. But people are still looking sideways at the Scary Monster acting on behest of the Crown, and wondering if this is some sort of long game by the equally scary Hawkbrothers. And that’s why the gryphon needs to be . . . somewhere else, other than k’Valdemar Vale . . . for a while.”

Hallock just blinked. He heard the words. They were in sentences. They just didn’t make any sense, and mingled with his bewilderment was outrage. Kel was a hero! He had solved the conflict at Deedun with no further fighting! And obviously the Queen understood that perfectly, so why was Fisher saying Kel needed to be “somewhere else”? And where was “somewhere else”? And what did all this have to do with him, or Genni?

“Now, what this has to do with your wife and yourself is this,” the major continued, uncannily, as if he was reading Hallock’s mind. “The Hawkbrothers have told the Crown that they are going to mount an expedition to the northern end of Lake Evendim, led by a mage called Firesong and the gryphon. It has something to do with magic that I don’t understand, but is evidently connected with the Mage Storms. They’ve requested that we send along a couple of representatives for Valdemar. They specifically requested Guard, and they specifically requested you, because you are someone Kelvren considers a friend, and as an officer, your presence makes things much more . . . official. It shows that what they are doing is investigating a mystery that has the same potential to wreak havoc across multiple lands that the Storms had, and that as a result this will be an expedition of allies. Does that make things clearer?”

Hallock gathered his scattered wits, managed to put it all together in his head in a way that made sense, and was able to answer. “I—that is a lot to take in, sir. Yes, sir. Am I to be thinking that you’re in favor of this, and of Genni coming along?”