The Big Meow

That made Rhiow laugh. “It’d be novel to think that the Queen and Her daughters were overly concerned with the details of my schedule,” she said. “Mostly when you agree to wizardry, your schedule becomes something the Powers rewrite as needed.”

“But it’s hardly a one-way agreement,” Hwaith said. “They have a responsibility to us as well. There has to be some reciprocity, some service done in return for the service we do the world….”

“Well, of course, that’s understood,” Rhiow said, watching the spiderling land on a scrap of bark and pause there to get its bearings. It looked about it with eyes almost too small for even a sharp-eyed Person to see, then moved off under another bit of bark. “It’s not as if they ask you to go out on errantry when you’re in heat, for example, or rutting, or kittening.”

“It wasn’t the strictly physical situations I was thinking of,” Hwaith said. “More the personal ones.”

Rhiow flicked an ear at that as she paused in mid-stroll, having caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of one eye. From a bud-tipped stem of one of the nearby rose bushes, a minuscule grey fleck was dropping toward the rough bark-mulch covering the ground. Rhiow leaned close and saw a tiny baby spider, hardly out of the egg, busily spinning its first thread as it made its way out into the great world. “Well,” she said, “you know how it’s supposed to be. No wizardly mission is ever commissioned by Them in strict isolation, we’re told. Every intervention in the Queen’s world is meant to affect not just the problem it’s specifically devised to solve, but every ongoing situation, from the most central to the most peripheral. The ripples spread…”

Down the spiderling went, spinning down on its delicate thread and intent on its business, apparently quite oblivious to Rhiow and her issues and the potential destruction of this world and possibly others. “And even the most broadbased missions,” Rhiow said as she watched, “are meant as much to serve the wizards enacting them as the beings or situations that need our help. ‘All is done for each…’”

Hwaith slipped up beside her and peered at the spiderling as it spun gently down. “Even in the situation we’re in now?” Hwaith said.

“I think we have to believe so,” Rhiow said. “The reciprocity ought to get more profound as the stakes rise, don’t you think? If They’re just. Which I think They are.”

The tiny spider came down on a shred of bark and paused there, looking around it with eyes almost too tiny for even a Person with good eyesight to make out. After a second it shook off the thread and started out across the bit of mulch, climbing up the first of a number of shred-marks on the brown, uneven surface like a climber assailing a hill. “Yes,” Hwaith said. “I’d agree with you there. I think that’s why we’ve met now.”

Rhiow continued watching the spiderling as it paused at a “hillcrest” and then started its descent into a valley-crease about an eighth of an inch deep. “You mean in terms of you and Helen and the Silent Man and our team all coming together to do this work –”

“Not exactly,” Hwaith said, and licked his nose. “Rhiow, I suppose there’s never really a perfect time to broach such a subject…”

The spiderling started climbing another “hill”. “Why,” Rhiow said, “what’s the matter? Do you have some kind of personal –”

She had been about to say “problem”, but the look in Hwaith’s eyes, vulnerable and yet peculiarly valiant, abruptly silenced her. “Yes I do,” he said. “Well, not that way exactly.” And he licked his nose again. “Rhiow, back where you come from – when you come from – is there someone for you?”

She completely lost interest in the tiny spider, and turned to stare at Hwaith.

“Well then,” he said. “I just want – no, what I mean is, perhaps you should know that –” He stopped and swore under his breath, and even through her complete shock Rhiow found herself thinking how very like Arhu Hwaith looked in this mode: the same helpless embarrassment, the same uncertainty about how to handle it, whether to be angry or abashed . “Whether you would be able to consider me for that role.”

“Hwaith,” Rhiow said. “Wait. Me?” Her ears were going back and forth in the immemorial gesture of a Person who can’t believe what she’s hearing — one which Rhiow desperately hoped didn’t make her look too much like a confused houff. “Hwaith, indeed I’m flattered, you have no idea, but, but why me?”

He looked abashed. “I don’t know that I’d be much good at explaining the reasons for this,” Hwaith said. “Don’t know that I could explain them to the Queen Herself right now if she showed up and started demanding details.” He seemed more able to look at Rhiow now, and those bronzy eyes locked on hers. “But then She doesn’t, usually. Except in shapes that we’re already familiar with…”