Ah well, silence is also an answer.

Chapter 1. The Coming Of The Honeychild

Reyna Hayaka leaned against a Sequba tree at the edge of the Abey-zaza Grove, dug out his strikebox and his ti-pipe. He packed a pinch of bhaggan into the smoke-hole, fired it up, and sucked in a mouthful of the smoke. He was pleased with himself. He’d found all the herbs and roots Tai needed and got them in first light with the dew still on them. The best time.

The smoke trickled from his nose and faded into the warm green shadow.

A breeze whispered through the leaves of the canopy and in that gentle rustle he started hearing murmurs from the Sequba moththeries, translucent elusive creatures that even the Kassian ‘Tai saw only from the corner of her eye.

Tai. Corner of her eye. Corner of her eye. Tai. Wild-magic. Never-never fly-you-by.

He smiled dreamily as a wispy something soared past on gossamer wings and swooped in and out of the feathery smoke.

In a burrow beneath the knotted roots of a nearby Sequba, a famma bird sang and his mate answered with a demure twitter. Deeper in the Grove a pan-tya chittered, broke off abruptly. All around, there were furtive rustles, small squeaks and chirrups, the thousand sounds of life beneath the trees.

Sing a song of slippery slides, atip atoop atwitter, hot hot hotter, damned dirt gets dirtier. Tike tiki tirriah.

And a twee twi twee-ee.

A bee hummed past, then another. Reyna tapped the pipe against a root, ground his heel over the ash. He stretched and yawned, settled the basket handle more comfortably over his arm and started for the River.

Reyna Hayaka was Salagaum, tall and limber with long, narrow hands and feet and the breasts of a woman. His blue-black hair was plaited in hundreds of thin braids that swung in a limber lion’s mane down past his shoulders. He had honey colored eyes and his skin was burnt caramel, smooth as silk with amber lights where it was pulled tight across the bone. He wore a white cotton-and-silk underrobe, cinched tight about his waist with a wide black leather belt, a heavier overrobe with broad stripes of crimson and amber which fell in straight lines from his shoulders, blowing back as he moved to show the lining of amber silk.