"The records of the founding company being what they are-- or, more accurately, what they aren't-- it becomes a challenge to know who, if anyone, may have a prior claim. Also, one would want to take a proper look around, and invite the scouts to do likewise. If they find the situation pleasing, then we might ease the pressure cooking of culture in the capital city."

"Do so many scouts follow the Dragon?" Daav asked, startled.

"Ms. dea'Gauss' database will be definitive, of course. My impression is that there is an...ideological divide between those who consider themselves to be scouts and those who consider themselves Liaden scouts."

"Yes, so Clonak had said. I had not understood the rift was so wide."

"Becoming wider, as I hear it --" Shan raised an arm to point. "That tree will have to come down, if we do nothing else."

"It is rather precarious, isn't it?"

"Speaking of precarious...Uncle Daav, are you well?"

Drat the child; he was as tenacious as his father had been.

He kept his voice cool. "As I had said, I am somewhat tired."

"I imagine that you would be, carrying Aunt Aelli all this while."

He sent a quelling glance into the boy's face.

"Does she weigh so much?"

"Who can tell the weight of a soul?" Shan mused, with the air of quoting something. "I wonder, too-- forgive a nephew his natural concern for a favorite uncle!-- if there might be another burden. One cannot help but see --"

"Can one not?" Daav interrupted, tartly. "I had thought Healers were given training."

"And so we are. However, having observed a certain flavor of melancholy, I can hardly unobserve it, now can I?"

"I suppose not." Daav sighed, and turned his face aside, ostensibly scanning the edge of the track for other perilous trees.