Evastany

29 IV-3

Ori sighed, and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I can’t wait.’

When patient, good-natured Ori is so rude as to express his doubts about another person out loud, and to their face, one would do well to pay attention. And I did. Nyden was clearly going to need some management.

The question of who best to appoint to the task occupied me for some time. Avane would have been the obvious choice, if I hadn’t felt that I would be condemning her to weeks or moons of cruel and unusual torment in the process. Ori obviously was not disposed to be landed with the job, and neither Tren nor I would have the time to be always at hand.

I needed a perfect candidate: someone who would know exactly how to deal with Nyden, who would have the patience (or something like it) to manage him without going mad, and who had a good chance of keeping him interested.

Lacking such a perfect specimen, I gave him to Adonia instead.

This may seem like an odd choice, but let me explain. Adonia is just the kind of oddity to appeal to a mind like Nyden’s, or so I believe. She has quirkiness enough to match his, with some to spare. And she is probably as much in need of a challenge as Nyden, considering that she, too, tends to exist in a fog of palpable boredom enlivened only by an occasional gossip magazine.

When I got home, I said: ‘Adonia, I have brought the most charming but also the most annoying man alive back with me and I need you to keep him in line.’

Her eyes lit up at once, and when she saw Nyden, she practically purred. ‘Yes, boss,’ she said, and I knew I had done well.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Having agreed upon the matter of Nyden and secured Avane’s consent to the business (what a sweet and obliging woman is Avane! I like her so much), we made preparations to leave.

I wanted to linger a great deal longer, of course, but I could not justify it at the time. We stayed only long enough to hear Llandry’s news — of which there was not much, yet, though she declared herself cautiously optimistic about the future of Orlind — and then we left. Tren rode with Ori on the way home, and I accepted Avane’s invitation to travel with her. I found the return journey more peaceful, though whether that was because of Avane’s presence or because I had got my grouches out of my system on the way over, I cannot say.

One other thing happened before our departure. You might have noticed that I referred to Nyden as a man, a few paragraphs back. That I introduced him to Adonia as such, and failed to mention that he was anything other than human.

Well, I could hardly take Nyden back with me as he was, could I? Apart from anything, there is no way he would fit into our classrooms.

So we had a talk, he and I, after the others had drifted back to Llandry’s house. Nyden might have been offered the reprieve he was desperate for and had new and exciting prospects laid out before him, but he still did not appear to consider this reason enough to move. He lay inert as ever, still partially submerged, though the fog of deep gloom had lifted a little. I even thought I saw a faint, fangy smile hovering about his mouth.

‘Nyden,’ I said with my nicest, most conciliating attitude.

His smile vanished at once. ‘Yes?’

‘I am going to need you to change your shape.’

‘No.’

‘It is not negotiable.’

‘I never shift!’

‘You do! I have read of it. You Changed yourself into something small, so that Llandry could carry you out of the Library before it blew up.’

Nyden sniffed. ‘That was different.’

‘It was not.’

‘It was an emergency!’

‘It still counts.’

‘Why do I have to Change? Am I not perfect as I am?’

He was indeed a perfect specimen of draykoni…dom. Draykonhood? Let’s go with that one. A perfect specimen of draykonhood. But that was entirely beside the point, so I didn’t make the mistake of agreeing with him.

‘You are too big,’ I informed him. ‘Far too big. You will be associating with human-sized and human-shaped people in human dwellings, and I need you to fit in.’

He grinned at me and purred, ‘Then make the dwellings bigger.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘I do not see why not.’

‘Because the houses are not flexible, but you are.’

He crooned a tune under his breath, keeping time with his tail. ‘That is your problem, Eva, not mine.’ The wretched creature sang the words along with his mad little melody, and ended with a few whistled bars.

I folded my arms. ‘Insubordination will not be brooked!’ I declared, losing patience with him. ‘You cannot have this assignment if you will not comply with these terms. It is physically impossible for you to perform the role in your current shape.’

Nyden looked at me out of one eye. He looked calm, thoughtful, not at all like he was about to mount a rebellion, and I relaxed a bit. He was probably more reasonable than we all expected, he just liked to make a show of—

I had to abandon the thought because Nyden streeeetched luxuriously and then… he began to shrink. He contracted in size until, from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail, he was about as long as I was tall. ‘Will that do?’

As I was struggling to control my temper, a voice spoke from behind me, so suddenly and unexpectedly that I jumped. ‘What you have to do,’ said Pensould, ‘is… well, I will show you.’ He walked past me, went straight up to Nyden, and kicked him in the ribs.

‘Ow,’ Nyden observed.

Pensould kicked him again, much harder.

‘Ow. I said ow already!’

‘Saying ow does not mean that the thrashing will stop,’ said Pensould. ‘It stops when you cease doing whatever it is that earned you the thrashing.’

‘I wouldn’t be human,’ Nyden said sulkily.

‘Why not?’

Nyden squirmed. ‘Because it’s so untidy, that’s why. Look at you, with your bits flapping around everywhere. Isn’t it uncomfortable?’

Pensould blinked, and looked down at himself. He was looking neat and tidy in simple trousers and a shirt, boots, a good coat. Nothing messy about him. ‘What bits?’

Nyden opened his mouth, but — most uncharacteristically for him — he withheld whatever it was that he was planning to say. ‘Never mind.’

Pensould nudged Nyden with his toe. ‘Do it.’

‘It’s so demeaning.’

Pense’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re going to get kicked again.’

‘Fine.’ Nyden sat up and Changed, so fast that I had not even had time to register that he had capitulated.

The miniaturised, black-scaled draykon disappeared. In his place stood a tall, elegant man in a dark suit, his skin darker still. He had night-black hair swept back from a widow’s peak, and inky-black eyes. He caught my eye and smiled a smug, smirking smile, smoothing back his hair with one immaculately-manicured hand.

‘Better,’ said Pense.

Nyden looked at me, clearly waiting for me to be impressed.

I narrowed my eyes. ‘Nyden,’ I said.

‘Yes?’

‘You have done that before.’

‘Never.’

‘You have. You must have. So polished a vision of masculine urbanity does not spring from nowhere.’

Nyden frowned in annoyance, and licked the tip of one fang. I noted his incisors were still rather longer than they should have been. ‘I do not know what you are talking about.’

‘Mhmm. There’s just one thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Your skin. It’s too black.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I am serious. Many humans there are with gorgeous black skin, but it’s… not like that.’

See, Nyden was proving himself a little too attached to his blacker-than-black scales. He had given himself black skin like onyx, solid black, like he was carved from marble. He would have made an exquisite statue, but that wasn’t quite the effect we were going for.

Nyden thought about my comments for a moment, and then said: ‘Is that better?’

‘No,’ I replied, having failed to discern the slightest alteration in his appearance.

He sighed deeply. ‘Humans,’ he growled. ‘So limited.’ But he adjusted again. His skin didn’t lighten exactly, but he altered and blended the depth of the colour until it looked more real.

‘Lovely,’ I assured him.

Nyden admired the back of one of his own hands, and gave a satisfied smile. ‘I know.’