Well, it's not every day Martin gets ordered to watch the Lady Niara.
With hands deep in pockets, humming a merry little air to himself, he
slouches off to the back gardens in search of her.

He finds her out in the Summer Gardens. Actually, he finds her tracks
first, wandering all over the snow-swaddled lawns. Deep ruts meander
willy-nilly around flowerbeds (and a few isolated deep prints suggest
others have been hopped over), across paths, and through hedges.

Then he sees her.

She has her head tilted back, back, back, watching the speck of purple
silk thrash about in the winter winds with a look of bitten-lip
concentration.

Martin's gaze takes in the signs of Niara's recent exertions, and their
effects on particular rosebeds in a quieter corner of the gardens.
Sighing, he looks over to where Niara stands, battling her kite, and
wanders over.

Niara is rosy-cheeked, despite her paling dark skin, and her gaze
bright.

"Hey there!" Martin calls as he tramps over the snow towards her.
"Better hold tight. Looks like it's winning!"

"Caedie!" she calls up to a too-curious gull, whipping her right hand
back and forth as if to shoo it. "Den ...na'ia?" She turns her head.

Niara blinks at Martin, then at the foot of line that starts to rifle
through her gloved palm. She swears, and grabs the cord with both hands.

Martin smiles, waves as he draws closer. "Helluva season to be flying
kites in. Or are you testing a possible escape route?"

"...picture!" bursts out of Niara's mouth as she bounce-squish-hops back
a few paces, jerking hard on the line as she whips coils of it around
her wrist.

She laughs then, shaking her head. A few more curls leak out of her hood
in the process.

Martin shakes his head to hide the laugh, and jogs the last few steps
over to Niara. "You saw it in a picture?" Martin echoes as he comes up
behind her, offering to lend her a hand with her kite.

Niara nods, twice. "Or I thought it was a picture. This was in one of
the library shelves."

She murmurs, "Poor little thing wanted to fly."

Martin titlts his head back and squints up at the distant kite. "Poor
little thing's trying to get away, looks like," he observes with a grin.

"That would be difficult," Niara mumbles, "Not at least without my
shedding some blood in the process."

Martin's glance follows the kitestring down her grip and to her wrist,
and he frowns, "If you haven't already."

Niara says "I do not believ..." The kite jerks upwards on a gust of air
as Niara turns her attention downwards. "Ah!" she says, yanking it back.

Martin jerks a hand upwards, grabbing a hold of the taut string above
Niara's grip, and quickly wrapping the slack around his other hand.
"It's going to hurt a whole hell of a lot more if you don't get that off
your wrist now."

Niara's mouth develops a sharp quirk as she mutters something vaguely
affirmative, and begins to roll her wrist out of the line. It starts to
stick after about three twists, a stickiness that is undone with a quick
tug, then another, and another. Finally, there is nothing but a knotted
loop holding it on.

"How's it feel?" Martin asks, as he watches her unroil the string from
her wrist, glancing up often at the kite above.

She grumbles when the knot begins to assert demands for an extra hand to
be involved in the effort. "Numb."

This said, she ducks her head so she can chew on the knot.

Martin nods mutely, as a gust threatens to yank him off his feet. "This
always looks so fun when someone else is doing it," he chuckles, a
small, not entirely amused laugh.

Niara emits a noise of utter disgust, and pulls her face back, turning
her head to press her mouth against her shoulder.

Martin's attention is on keeping the kite from taking his arm off at the
moment. "Uh, when you're done..? Want to find us something to use for a
bobbin?" he suggests.

Niara mutters, "I want to just cut the damned thing."

"So cut it." Martin says, glancing back at her. "It's your kite."

Niara, mouth still buried against her shoulder, reaches down toward her
right boot, clawing her hand under her skirt and into the leather,
knocking aside globs of packed snow.

Martin hauls on the string, dragging it downwards and shifting his grip
higher, to create as much slack as he can for Niara.

Bright green winks between Niara's fingers before she gets the dagger
out. The loop is parted in short order.

"Keep?" Martin queries, referring to the kite. "Or free?"

"Free." Niara shakes her wrist out, and stuffs the knife back where it
was. "It was probably cursed to begin with."

Martin nods, and takes a hold of the string above where it's wrapped
around his left hand, which unwinds itself free, and then he just lets
the string slide between his gloved hands, whipping up towards the sky
as the winds carry off the kite.

Niara watches it sail off into the sun-flooded sky, touching her lower
lip with hesitant fingers.

Martin watches the kite intently as he rubs his hands absently, testing
his fingers. "Where do you think it'll end up?" he asks quietly.

"Perhaps wrapped around one of the towers, or no, the wind is not suited
for that, is it?" Niara looks down. "Are you injured?"

Martin smiles, stilling his fingers as he turns his attention back to
Niara. "No. How's your hand now?"

"Still numb. I think my lip is choosing the same vocation." She says
"And, Martin?"

Martin pauses in the act of reaching for her hand to examine it, looks
to Niara instead. "Hmm?"

She smiles, carefully. "Good afternoon."

Martin raises a brow, and returns the smile, if a little uncertainly.
"It is, isn't it," he says.

Niara says "I did not wish you to think I was too distracted to say
hello." A pause, then "You have that look again."

Martin chuckles softly, "then Hello. I wouldn't mind even if you were-
what look?" he asks curiously.

"It is gone now." She says "I do not know how to describe it, exactly.
Like you were looking at the edge of a cliff ..."

Niara shrugs a little.

Martin just smiles, "...and thinking about diving off it? Probably." He
glances towards the castle, and then the gardens. "Would you like to go
back indoors, get warmed up again. Or just wander around out here for a
bit?"

Niara tilts her head back toward the trail. "Up there looked interesting
when I was trying not to go there with the kite."

She asks "What is back there?" She adds, quietly, "I know things will
likely start smarting if I go back indoors."

She grimaces, faintly, and fleetingly.

Martin looks over to the far end of the garden, where the peak of Kolvir
towers over the treeline. "Well," he says, nodding to the distant trees.
"If you feel like climbing mountains, there's a nice view to be had up
that way."

Niara looks at the sun overhead. "There is still sun. I had a good
night's rest."

Niara says "How far is the view?"

Martin smiles, "far enough."

Niara's brows come together, then smooth. "Ah, good."

"Maybe we'll see where your kite's got to," Martin teases.

"More like where the witch who cursed it lives." She tugs up her glove
some.

Martin chuckles, "Maybe." as he sets off across the gardens, snow and
ice crunching underfoot.

Niara follows, trying not to drag her skirts in the snow, and failing
miserably.

Martin keeps his pace slow. "So," he says after a time. "Antonio yell at
you much?"

Niara says "Not as much as I had anticipated."

Martin says good-humoredly, "He must be getting soft on you."

Niara shakes her head. "Oh, no. His favorite subject came up again."
She snorts, quietly, white air coming from her mouth and nose.

"Women?" Martin suggests with a smile. "Wine? Himself?"

"How my perceptions are irrevokably flawed and in need of repair." Niara
says "Well ... favorite subject to quarrel over with me, rather.

"Naturally, the women came up in discussion first. Wine, no." She
hesitates, before adding, "Thank you for warning me about the
decorations."

Martin tramps along, his breath coming out in little white puffs. "No
problems." He says, shrugs, "I wasn't sure that it'd... well, it was
only fair. He tell you who they're of?"

She nods. "One, I recognized fairly easily."

Martin guesses, with a laugh, "That'd be the only one you've actually
met in the flesh, so to speak."

"Mmm. So to speak." Niara says "Not that I would tell her for a small
portion of the world."

Martin hehs, "That would be Antonio's pleasure, I'm sure." After a
pause, he adds, "the rest of them would be your aunts."

"Yes. I realize this. He affirmed as much."

Martin hums to himself as he thinks, "If I remember rightly, Deirdre's
the one in the bed. That's Mira's mother."

Niara makes a vague assenting noise, as if she is not at all surprised,
and certainly not shocked.

Martin goes on, and probably would have even if Niara had been the sort
to shock easy. "Florimel's the one in the Main Hall. You'll remember her
as the mother of Harold-from-a-Begman-Duchy. The one combing her hair in
front of the mirror's Fiona, Brand's sister."

"I should have asked him if he had a portrait of Harold in the bedroom."
She says "Ah, well."

Niara tramps along, her boots making 'pfloomph'ing noises where the snow
is much less packed.

Martin starts to say "There's one he didn't paint-" when he breaks off
into laughter. Recovering, he chuckles, "Next time, next time."

"Hmm?"

Martin turns to Niara, "Next time you visit his chambers, you can ask
him if he has one of Harold." Ahead, the snow thins as the ground begins
to steep upwards into the trees.

"By that time, he will have probably painted one of me to accompany it."
Niara says "You mentioned another aunt?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Martin says. "Llewella. Green hair. You can't miss
her. She lives in Rebma most of the time. I don't know if Antonio's even
met her."

Niara's right bootheel scuffs a rock as she steps over it. "Green hair.
No ... I do not believe I would be able to miss her."

Martin climbs up a little way ahead of Niara, stopping to help her up
the steep sections if she needs it. Grinning, he says, "come to think of
it, it might just be the thought of all that green hair that put Antonio
off painting her picture."

"He would imagine mold, you think?" She chooses not to ask for help in
favor of clambering hands and feet when it is necessary.

"If he did, Llewella would kill him," Martin says with a laugh.
"Actually, her hair's a very nice green. Like jadestone." He makes his
way up the rocky slope, keeping a close eye on Niara's progress, and
watching out for slippery footholds ahead.

"That is pretty," Niara says, a few locks of hair sliding over a boulder
as she gets around it. "I used to see it from time to time in the souks.
The Imperial City, Velutta, Adonie, those sizes of places."

"Jade's pretty." Martin agrees. "Good to work with, too. I bet you
prefer the purple type, though."

She flashes a bright smile. "And orange pearls, and gold amber. Pity
they are white and brown, here."

"Bribing you will be easy," he grins.

Niara gets completely upright for a few steps, and tilts her head.
"Would you wish to?"

On the heels of this comes, "Silver from the air, orange from the sea,
purple from the earth, and gold from the trees. All these things..." She
laughs.

Martin pauses mid-climb, as if to consider. "Possible," he smiles.
"Would you like me to bribe you?"

Niara's dimpling smile is as bright as her laugh was. "Certainly. On
what petition do you wish me to place my mark?"

Martin chuckles, "We'll see, we'll see."

"Said the man of mystery." Niara forces the rhyme, through a chuckle of
her own.

"Well, I haven't a petition I need you to sign just yet." Martin
chuckles.

She looks up beyond Martin. "How far are we?"

"Almost there," Martin calls.

"I see," floats up from below. "A survey of the terrain."

"Wind's not so bad here," he says, as he waits for Niara to catch up.
"Not as steep either."

"Good," she says, a couple of minutes later, as she knees and hands
herself to a standing position. "Much more of this, and I fear I shall
tear the gloves you had made for me."

Martin grins, "gloves were made to be worn, after all." He shrugs, "and
I can always get you another set if that happens."

"One of these days, you should introduce me to your tailor so I can
thank him." Niara says "So ... where are we?"

"I'm sure he'd like that," Martin says, then. "Up on the bald spot of
Kolvir. There're taller mountains, but they're not as pretty."

Niara straightens, cautiously, blinking as she looks around. "It is
lovely," she murmurs, moments later.

Martin nods, gazing out around him in a slow circle. "There's Arden all
along the west," he says, indicating with an arm.

Niara takes two cautious steps over, leaning some to drink in the view.
"It seems vast."

Martin just nods in mute acknowledgement. For long moments, he doesn't
say much else. "Only what we see," he murmurs then.

Niara crouches, letting the lighter winds slip over her back and hood.
"Hmm?"

Martin shakes his head, smiles, "Nothing. Just babbling." He moves over
to the southmost edge, looking that way. "Like your kingdom?"

Niara's reply smacks of absolute seriousness. "I am growing rather fond
of it."

"Once it finds its way into your heart," Martin says quietly. "You'll
never be rid of it. No matter how far you go, Amber will draw you back."

Niara reaches down to pick up a chip of granite that was etched loose by
the wind likely hundreds of years before she was born. She turns it over
in her hand, looking some at it, looking more out at the darkening sea,
and the forest beyond it, and the glowing sky above.

Niara whispers, "And if you run, if you hide..." She bounces the chip in
her palm, then sets it right back down where she picked it up from.

Martin shrugs, "you're not going to run now. You want to know too much
what we have. What belongs to you by right of birth. And why you feel
this place singing in your blood."

Niara gets up from her crouch. "I am not going to run now, no.

"Odds would likely now be I would trip over something and break my
neck."

Martin gazes southwards, where the darkening sea meets the darkening
woods. A slow smile quirks up the corners of his mouth. "Likely," he
says. "The prospect of explaining the manner of your death to your
brother doesn't exactly feel me with glee."

She looks at her hands as she shrugs with them. "So clumsy here..."

Martin turns his gaze to the sunset. "Mm?"

Niara says "Oh? I would think a simple 'Antonio, your little sister
tripped as she was running away from me and broke her silly neck' would
suffice.

"No..." she pauses. "You said, 'not fill with glee', not 'would be
difficult'."

Martin hehs, his attention on Niara again. "I know the view's
breath-taking, but mind-addling, too? Perhaps we should return, eh,
before it gets too much darker."

"Yes." Niara says "And before I progress from numb to frozen."

"The climb back should fix that," he smiles, offering her his hand.

Niara takes it.

Martin gives her hand a quick, light squeeze, as he sets off down the
trail a little ahead of her, testing the path down for her.

Niara hitches up her skirt over her left arm as she follows him down,
each step a prelude to another swaying, rebalancing step.

Martin makes his way carefully down the trail along the sheltered back
of the mountain, until they reach the trees at the edge of the palace
grounds. From there, she just quietly, smilingly, follows him across the
gardens and back indoors, all the way up to the door of her apartment.

There she leaves him, with a Thank You and a wink, and he watches her go
in before he heads up to his own rooms, chuckling quietly to himself.

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1/18/98