Lirenna was still pulling up weeds when Master Gammon, another of their neighbours, came for them.

     He was a leatherworker who owned a small shop in the town and he was one of the people who knows everyone. One of those who loved to spend endless hours chatting, learning everything there was to know about everyone he met. Thomas heard their conversation through the open study window and came out to greet the fat, cheerful, red cheeked man and keep him entertained while his wife popped back inside to tidy herself up and change into clean clothing. He invited him inside and offered him a slice of apple pie, which he accepted eagerly, his eyes widening with delight. He was just finishing it off when Lirenna appeared again, wearing her favourite flowery dress.

     "Now I can greet you properly without getting your clothes all dirty,” she said, giving him a hug. "What a surprise! We were just saying it was about time we paid you another visit, weren't we?"

     “Every day we don’t see you is a day lost,” beamed Master Gammon. “I trust you are both well, and your wonderful child as well?”

     “We’re all very well,” replied Thomas. “All the better for seeing you. And your own family? We heard some wonderful news from Mistress Fenwell, that you’re expecting another child?”

     “Indeed!” replied the leatherworker, his grin widening even further. “The Gods have blessed us again. I’m sorry that you heard it from a third party. You should have been one of the first that we came to tell…”

     “Nonsense!” cried Lirenna, though, flapping her hands at him dismissively. “You have so many friends, and everyone loves to talk about you. You would have had to run up here the moment you heard the news yourself to prevent us hearing it from someone else.”

     “You are too kind,” replied the leatherworker, bowing his head. “She suspected some weeks ago, but we kept it to ourselves until we were certain. She is due in the first month of winter, just after the harvest festival. We are hoping for a second daughter. II’m not sure what we’d do with a sixth son.”

     “I know what you mean,” said Thomas, smiling. “We find just the one a bit of a handful.”

     They spent several minutes more on trivial pleasantries, enquiring after one another's families and offering wishes of continued happiness and wellbeing. Master Gammon had a large family with five brothers and seven sisters, over a dozen uncles and aunts and over twenty nephews and nieces, not to mention his own wife and children. Any conversation with him, whether it was a chance encounter in the street or business dealings in the shop, always commenced with a thorough update on each and every relative and he had an easy way of talking that meant that no-one ever got bored or impatient listening to him.

     The two wizards, who'd had almost perfect memories even before they'd been taught several mental disciplines to improve them even further, now felt, therefore, that they knew his family even better than he did and they were able to use that knowledge to pre-empt his repetition of details he'd gone into during their last meeting.

     Such tactics weren't necessary this time, though, as the tubby leatherworker seemed to be in a hurry to put the formalities behind him and get to the point of his visit. Thomas and Lirenna glanced at each other and shared a secret smile.

     "There, erm, there seems to be something going on in Daisywell Meadow. I'm not sure what. There seems to be a large crown of, er, people, gathering down there, and a tent going up, or something. What do you think it could be?"

     "Something going on?" said Lirenna in wide eyed innocence. "Why. I've got no idea."

     Thomas, however, had gone as white as a sheet. Daisywell Meadow! The largest area of common land this end of the valley! By the Gods, he has invited half the drassing valley! I wouldn't be surprised if the Queen herself turns up as special guest of honour! Oh Gods, what am I going to do?

     "Are you all right?" asked Master Gammon, staring at him in concern. "You seem to be a little, erm, a little upset about something. Are you?"

     "I'm fine," replied the wizard, grinning broadly to show how all right he was. It made him look like a mad axe murderer, and the leatherworker shifted uneasily in his chair, flicking a glance at Lirenna, who smiled reassuringly back at him. "A crowd, you say," added Thomas." A large crowd. Well, well, well, fancy that. We used to have gatherings like that back in Ilandia, whenever they had a public execution." Lirenna giggled behind her hand and Thomas shot her a look of pure venom.

     "I don't think it's a public execution," said the leatherworker doubtfully. "We don't, er, have capital punishment in Haven, as it were."

     "Well, there's a first time for everything," said Thomas, still grinning. "And there's more than one way to execute someone, you know,"

     Lirenna put a hand on his arm and he jumped as if he'd just been given an electric shock. "Er, is he all right?" Master Gammon asked her in concern. "He seems to be a little, er..."

     "He's fine," replied the demi shae, giving Thomas’s arm a friendly squeeze. "He's just being a big baby, that's all. Listen, why don't we all go down there and see exactly what's going on?"

     "That's a good idea," agreed the leatherworker in relief. "I was just about to suggest that myself."

     He and the demi shae stood, but Thomas remained seated, a nervous, haunted look on his face. "Look, er, you two go. I'll just sit here and, and..."

     Lirenna hauled him to his feet by the scruff of his neck and pushed him towards the door. "The walk'll do you good," she said firmly. "And I know they'll be glad to see you. Won't they, Master Gammon?"

     "Oh I guarantee it," agreed the leatherworker, nodding as he gave Lirenna another grateful look. "It just wouldn't be the same without you."

     Thomas continued to hang back as he was ushered out the door and down the path, but after a few moments he gave a shrug of resignation and walked a pace or two ahead of the others, his head held high and his hands in his pockets. All he needed was a cigarette and a blindfold to complete the image of a man being led to a firing squad.

     Reaching Daisywell Meadow, Thomas stared in dismay at the three or four hundred people gathered there, already clumped into small groups and chatting merrily. They were gathered at the narrow end of the field, where the stream and Rindle Lane came together to run side by side towards the neighbouring town of Amberham, and the sheep and chickens that normally occupied it, brought to the common land by half a dozen neighbouring families to graze and fatten up for the market, were all huddled together at the other end, keeping a wary eye on the intruders.

     It was a beautiful day for an outdoor event. The two suns, close together above them, were shining out of a cloudless blue sky, and only the very slightest movement of air ruffled the furry heads of the cotton crass growing in the fields on either side of them. The towering mountains formed a glorious backdrop to the scene, their lower slopes dotted with goats and yetigons, their sharp, knife edged peaks permanently covered by caps of glittering snow and ice. Their defence against the outside world, or at least they had been until recently. Lirenna deliberately stopped herself from looking up to see if Kronos was in the sky.

     Between the mountains stretched the valley of Haven, laid out in all its splendour from this vantage point, a little way up the valley's northern slope. Thomas saw a shining strand of silver running along the centre. The river Coldwater, gently twisting and turning as it made its lazy, unhurried way towards the entrance of the valley, to the east. On either side was a patchwork of fields. The gold of corn and maize, the green of leaf and root crops and the silver of cotton grass. Here and there were little clusters of farm buildings and cottages, some of them large enough to properly be called villages with curls of smoke rising from red tiled roofs.

     Thomas looked to the west, past more fields and villages. Right at the limit of sight, just barely visible above the undulating hills that lay between, were some of the spires of the Silver City, glittering like jewels in the early afternoon suns. Some of those spires belonged to the Silver Palace itself, Thomas knew, and he tried to distract himself from the horrors to come by trying to pick out which ones they were.

     All too soon, though, they were in the field and surrounded by cheering and laughing Havenites, kissing them and offering them heartfelt congratulations for their twenty years of marriage. They were hurried over to the cluster of large gazebos they'd put up to keep the hot, yellow sun out of their eyes and shown the seats that had been set aside for them. Virtually everyone was standing, though, milling around in small groups, so Thomas and Lirenna made no move to sit and the crush of people around them pushed them into a more open area where they were immediately surrounded by more congratulating guests.

     Other tables and chairs stood nearby, both under the gazebos and out under the suns, and they were all piled high with food, all the essential ingredients for a party. Nobody was eating yet, though. There was too much talking to do as everyone caught up on everyone else's gossip. Most of the guests didn't seem to have even noticed that they’d arrived yet and were too busy chatting with each other to look. The air was filled with the sound of conversation; a loud hubbub above which one had to almost shout to be heard.

     Thomas scanned the crowd for his son and Lirenna's grandfather and found them together, standing with a group of other shae folk. Lirenna's relations. In their company Derrin looked a much more normal size, not dwarfed into midgethood as he was among humans, and he was chatting happily in shayen with a pure blooded shae child; a twelve year old cousin who was even smaller than he was. The graceful, goldenhaired shae child was about the only person present at the party capable of making the half human Derrin look clumsy and awkward, but neither child seemed in the least bit concerned with making comparisons and, to judge from the hand gestures they were making, they were discussing two rival techniques for casting a fishing line into a river.

     Then Dallon, Lirenna's grandfather, saw that the guests of honour had arrived and came striding towards them, arms wide. “Tom!” he cried in delight. “Lenny! Welcome, welcome, welcome! And happy anniversary!”

     “Happy anniversary!” chimed in everyone in the immediate area, and more anniversary wishes came from people further away as they heard the exclamations and realised that the happy couple had arrived. Soon, Thomas and Lirenna were shaking hands and accepting kisses from one person after another while others called greetings over the heads of people in front of them or shouldered their way past to get to the front.

     Thomas thanked them one at a time and shouted more words of greetings into the air to reach the others further away while trying to avoid feeling swept away by the quantity of love and well wishing he was receiving. He'd been to parties like this one before, held in honour of people celebrating special occasions, and he had rather cynically thought that the Havenites just jumped on any excuse for a party, but now that he was on the receiving end he was beginning to realise just how wrong he’d been. The love and jubilation was genuine! They really were here to honour him and Lirenna and not just to eat, drink and party. He looked over at Lirenna and saw her giving him a knowing smile and a nod. She'd grown up here, of course. She knew what her people were like, and she looked amused that it had taken her husband twenty years to come to the same realisation.

     Glasses were pressed into their hands and filled with wine, and Thomas took a sip in order to gain a moment's escape from the constant well wishing. The first well wishers were giving up their places to allow others to move in and the two wizards had to shake more hands and accept more kisses. After that, though, the initial rush began to die down and Dallon was able to show them to the two places that had been prepared for them at the main table.

     Thomas knew that the shae man was over four hundred years old, but there was no sign of that great age as he took the seat next to his granddaughter. He looked to be in the very prime of life with a smooth, unlined face, short yellow hair and little silver studs on the tips of his sharply pointed ears. His small, thin lipped mouth that was stretched wide in a grin of delight. His hands were as small and slender as those of a human girl and his fingernails were long, thin and perfectly manicured. A human might have thought him to be as young as twenty, unless he found himself looking into his sharp, thoughtful eyes, and then he might have seen a depth of wisdom and experience that only the luckiest, or unluckiest, of humans would have been able to match.

     A little way along the table, between one of Lirenna's uncles and a cousin, was an empty chair. A chair that would remain empty for the duration of the party. Before taking his own seat, Thomas went over to the empty chair and raised the glass of wine to his lips before holding it out to the chair, as if offering it to the invisible occupant. He saw Dallon nod his head to him in gratitude before solemnly repeating the gesture.

     Someone watching might have thought they were honouring a recently deceased relative, but Radlin, Dallon's father, was very much alive, or had been the last Thomas had heard. He had gone to the Turna Sat, the Community of the Old, as his six centuries of life finally began to catch up with him. When that happened, the loss of the grace and beauty they'd taken for granted all their lives tended to hit them hard and other shaes became uncomfortable and awkward around them. Elderly shaes formed a community of their own, therefore, far away from the rest of their race with the most newly arrived looking after the more elderly and infirm.

     Thomas thought it was an appalling way to do things, little different from a leper colony, and had been shocked and horrified when Lirenna had first told him, but the entire shayen race seemed to agree that it was the best way to do things, even knowing that they themselves would all be going to Turna Sat sooner or later. Thomas himself had had many sleepless nights since then imagining Lirenna spending the last years of her life there, and hoped to persuade her to live among humans instead when the time came.

     Dallon dutifully allowed Lirenna to give him a kiss on the cheek before she sat, and then leaned forward to offer Thomas a friendly greeting. “Twenty years!” said the Shae, smiling broadly. “Did the time pass as fast for you as it did for me?”

     “It seems like only yesterday,” the wizard replied. “By the Gods, twenty years! That's like a third of my whole life, and it went just like that!” He snapped his fingers to show how fast.

     “There’s a human saying that seems particularly apt,” said Dallon. “Time flies when you're having fun.”

     Thomas laughed. “And it has been fun. I've loved every minute of my time here. This is such a wonderful place, with such wonderful people.”

     “Made even more wonderful by the addition of yourself and your wonderful son. You have blessed this valley with your presence.”

     Thomas felt himself starting to go red with embarrassment. Bald compliments, for some reason, made him feel rather uncomfortable. “Thank you,” he said. “It’s kind of you to say so.”

     Dallon beamed at him again, then turned to speak to Lirenna, who was sitting between the two men. On Thomas’s other side, Master Gammon chuckled to himself. “He has certainly, ah, warmed to you over the years.” he said, leaning closer to speak without being heard by the shae man.

     Thomas nodded. The shae had been reserved and suspicious towards him for the first couple of years, occasionally verging on being outright hostile. “He wanted her to marry a shae man,” he said, also keeping his voice low enough to keep his grandfather in law from overhearing. “Derry's five eighths human. An undeniable hybrid. If his father had been a pureblooded shae, though, he’d only be one eighth human. Small enough for him to pass as a pureblood.”

     Gammon frowned. “I'm sure that’s not, ah, the reason,” he said. “You were so young, that’s what it was. You were only, ah, twenty years old when you first came here, and young humans are so, so…” He paused as he searched for the right word. “Impulsive. Especially from the point of view of the shae folk who are accustomed to take, er, years to consider an important decision. The worthy Dallon didn’t know you, didn't know what kind of man you were. He probably thought you might change your mind and leave the valley again, leaving his granddaughter in the lurch, as it were. He now knows you better and, despite the, er, despite the odds, you succeeded in giving him an heir.”

     Thomas nodded. “And, of course, he knows that he's only got to wait a couple more decades for me to die of old age.”

      Master Gammon shook his head vehemently. “Oh no!” he cried. “I'm sure your eventual death will devastate him. He's grown so fond of you.”

     “Maybe he has,” replied Thomas, “but the fact remains that, when I'm gone, Lenny will still be young and beautiful. Young enough to marry a pureblooded shae and give her grandfather almost pureblooded descendants.”

     “I'm sure no such thought has ever entered his head!” protested Master Gammon. “You do him a great injustice, and at the party he's thrown for you as well!”

     Thomas shrank down inside himself with guilt. It was the first time he’d given voice to the thought that had been nagging at him ever since meeting the formidable shae man. He'd kept silent all this time because he’d known how people would react, and Gammon hadn't disappointed. He should have kept his mouth shut!

     “I know,” he said therefore. “You’re right. It's just, I mean, look at them!” He indicated Lirenna and Derrin, the boy sitting at the next table with half a dozen other children. “They're so… So beautiful! So graceful! I look like a goblin next to them. I suppose it makes me feel insecure, and that makes my mind go places it shouldn't. I know I'm being silly to think such things…” Except it didn’t feel silly. Looking at Dallon, still smiling as he chatted with Lirenna, the thought seemed more plausible than ever.

     Gammon smiled, though. Understanding, or thinking he did. “Lirenna must, ah, must think you're handsome or she wouldn’t have married you, and I'm sure Derry didn't get all his looks from her. Take a look in a mirror, young man. You are what might be described as good looking.”

     A human might think so, thought Thomas, who had also been proud of his good looks in his younger days, before meeting so many shaes. He told Gammon that he was right, though. He promised to stop being so silly and then changed the subject.