At the Feet of the Sun (Lays of the Hearth-Fire, #2)

by Victoria Goddard

The flowering was due to the fact that he had finally thought to ask an Islander botanist what she thought might be the problem. On her recommendation he had brought soil from under a thriving, blossoming grove of the trees at home, in case there was some crucial microbial lifeforms that his tree was missing. The tree had perked up noticeably within a week.

His goal had never been to be king of the world. He was, in the customs of his people, the tanà, who was not the chief or the paramount chief, but to whom, when he spoke, the chiefs listened. He Held the Fire: he did not run from its burn.

Aioru was no aristocrat, and had grown up in a squatting culture: he was comfortable with Solaaran furniture, of course, by this point, but he had been the champion of alternative desks from his earliest days in Cliopher’s offices.

“when I look at you now, I see not only how you have changed since your elevation to Viceroy, but also how you have always had those qualities of character. You are very different than you used to be, and yet far more yourself than you ever were before.”

Was this what it would be like to be married? To be able to eat together any evening; to fall asleep every night beside someone; to wake and know they would still be part of your life that next day.

His formal hand had been used as the model for two type-fonts, as well as the Secretariat’s short-hand and archival scripts;

He had wanted to sail the Wide Seas with his Radiancy beside him, as Elonoa’a had sailed with Aurelius Magnus; he had wanted to find a new island, a new star, the currents that would open up the gates between worlds.

Rhodin waved that aside. “They have mushrooms and places where the sunlight comes down through the crystal so they can garden.” “And it’s just them?” “Just them,” Rhodin said reverently. “And their dinosaur soulmates, of course.” He looked intently at Cliopher. “Dinosaurs are another word for thunder lizards, you know. We—those of us who are seekers after the wisdom of the Merrions—use dinosaur, or sometimes you will hear saurian, when we are speaking of the hyperintelligent telepathic cousins of the brute thunder lizards.”

“His name,” said Ludvic, “was Masseo.”

They travelled together as far as Boloyo City on one of the sky ships, and Cliopher rather thought he’d gotten along better with his mother over that day and a half than he had in perhaps his entire life.

The book of censored poetry was the only thing he’d ever stolen from the Palace. Well. Except for the government, of course.

“It’s an old word for friend,” he said, for he would not start lying to his Radiancy now. “A … pair. Two halves of a shell.”

I

“I think,” Fitzroy said, his voice very low, and yet … certain, too, “that you have tried very hard to be of use, Kip. You give and give and give so that you can feel as if you are part of things, don’t you?”

“There’s no shame,” he whispered, “in loving something, however big, however small.”