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It had been many years since Valens willingly attended a salutatio of any kind, other than his own, of course. He never expected to feel so relieved to grant his alumna a morn off and drag himself to the stuffy event.
Cerasus had avoided him for almost a week now and had only relented. Valens had nearly fallen through the gates during his daily attempt to visit, prepared for a resistance that was at last no longer there. One of the Armati guarding the gate had the gall to laugh at him as he stumbled.
He was on his finest behavior for perhaps the first time in his life. He awoke early so as not to be late. He always dressed with impeccable meticulousness, but today he took extra care to wear attire proper for a man of his station. He donned his longest, lightest starched tunica and paenula, each an ice blue so pale they almost appeared white.
The fur from the creature's belly grew a rich blue that clothiers bleached to any shade desired. Even more prized, the long fibers of its wings came in a pale crystal blue, and wealthy men paid extravagant amounts to don clivia wing cloth to formal events. However, its usefulness outshone its beauty. The fibers hid the clivia, as well as anyone wearing garments made of its fur, from heat-sensing night-side predators.
Some people believed fabrics woven of the filaments shielded a wearer from the Eyes' influence. Valens found the idea ridiculous, but these garments once obscured him from a clivia eager to sample warm day-side flesh. The creature couldn't digest him any more than his body could process the bestia's meat, but that didn't mean the clivia had been reluctant to try.
Valens meant to remind Cerasus of that particular incident and the crucial work he did for their curia and provincia. There were far better uses the Praetor could put him to than providing remedial education to a rude Pullati brat.
Compared to those of many provincias' Praetors, Cerasus's domus exemplified simplicity. Other than its rebellious origins, the world knew Silvula Salutis curia most for its self-denial and frugality. Waste not, want not, as the Ancients used to say, and among the Silvula Salutis the principle applied to everything from promenia to architecture.
Simple, however, did not mean plain or ugly. Cerasus's airy hall of polished beige marble restrained its decor to tranquil fountains, unadorned sandstone columns, and potted day-side green and night-side cyan plants on understated sandalwood tables.
Valens and the other curia members gathering for salutatio wore elegant but simple tunicas and paenulas, no fancy embroidery or jewelry among them. Not like those curias far from these frontier lands, where paenulas could be so gem-crusted no hint of fabric showed on the mantle at all. Or, worse, the ones deep in the night-side, where fashion ranged from barbaric in its rudimentary design to bizarre in its elaborate ornamentation.
Other than Valens, ten Promethidae gathered near the raised apse at the end of the hall, waiting for their Praetor to arrive and take his seat on the dais.
