Page 58 of Gryphon in Light

It seemed that getting orders immediately poured balm on the hertasi’s nerves. “Yes, Silverfox!” she replied, and turned and whisked out the door and down the stairs.

“I think we can assume that the gryphons can and will hunt for themselves,” he said to Ayshen, to snap the hertasi out of his daze. “So we just need to reckon on a few days of emergency rations.” He nudged Ayshen in the direction of his office. “I wonder if we shouldn’t offer to house them in our gathering room?”

“What? Who?” Ayshen replied, then shook his head vigorously. “Oh, of course. Firesong will want to interrogate them anyway. We might as well keep them here so his bed is convenient to be stumbled into.”

“Go to the Council Chamber and interject that invitation when there is a lull, please,” Silverfox told him. They had just reached the level of the office, and he paused at the door. “They’ll likely want you there as an expert anyway. I’ll be here, making adjustments.”

Ayshen ducked his head and dashed off. Silverfox took a seat at his desk and firmly resisted the impulse to bury his head in his hands. Instead, he took the steps he needed to compose himself. I am a Hawkbrother, he reminded himself. And the Hawkbrothers are accustomed to dealing with the unknown.

As if that thought had summoned him, with a whump of impact, Silverfox’s bondbird, a startling-looking hertasi-sized lammergeier (also known as a bearded vulture) named Hesheth, landed on the windowsill and shook until his quills rattled like rain. He tilted his head to the side and looked at Silverfox. :Spooked,: he remarked.

Hesheth was a bird of few words.

“Very,” he said aloud. “I’m inclined to read this in the most sinister way possible.”

:Silverfox friend. Cup not half empty. Cup not half full. Cup has hole, and allll wine leaking out.: The bird made the hissing sound that passed for chortling.

“It’s part of my job to prepare for the worst,” he pointed out. But the bird was right. It could be a waste of time to compare the moment to anything in his experience. “Well, what do you think?” he asked Hesheth.

:Think, prepare, but prepare to trust. Who tries is who succeeds.:

Well . . . that made sense. After all, that was how the Star-Eyed operated, at least. Up until you had given your all, She was silent. But once your last pennyweight of anything had been spent, if need be, She stepped in.

Every Hawkbrother worshiped in their own way, so there were no “priests” as such to ask. Anyone could read the record of the Star-Eyed’s few public appearances in the Heartstone, if they wished, and Silverfox had, several times. If she had ever appeared privately to anyone, they had kept the fact to themselves.

And his imagination was so afire that he actually expected for a moment that the thought itself would summon her.

But no. Just Hesheth, eyes narrowed to slits, head pulled down into his ruff, looking for all the world as if he was holding the answers to questions Silverfox didn’t even know he had, and was not going to let go of them without a fight.

Humans do an awful lot of talking, Kel thought, and not for the first time that day. What was there to talk about? They knew what the gods had said. They might as well take it all at face value. The gods hadn’t given them more information, because the gods themselves didn’t have that information. They knew where they were supposed to be going, and now they had an entire wing of gryphon scouts who could fly ahead and plot out the best path for the floating barges. They would take every weapon possible; they would be ready to fight or to parlay. The only thing he was concerned with, now that he’d convinced himself that the gods were not personally interested in him, was that it sounded as if they needed to finish up these interminable “preparations” and get on the move.

Meanwhile he had more immediate concerns. Vindaria had effectively made him her superior. And that meant he needed to lead what was effectively now his Wing.

My Wing. All but grounded, sure, and I might explode, but I am a Wingleader again. Suck on that, doubters.

But yes, as Wingleader he needed to care for them. And right this moment, with every candlemark that passed, the Iftel gryphons drooped a little more, despite their efforts to look sharp and alert. Hertasi brought around honeywater, but there was only so much that honeywater could do.

Finally Kel decided he had had enough. If no one else was going to display common courtesy, he’d remind them of it. “Our guests are leaving now until they are rested,” he said into a moment when no one was speaking. “And we need to find them a resting place. I do not think my ‘ekele’ outside the Vale can hold them all comfortably.” In that same instant, Jylan was at his side.

“Silverfox and Firesong invite the gryphons of Iftel to rest in their ekele,” Jylan said into the astonished silence. “They have space in the common room, or if they prefer higher vantages, on the sunning and night-viewing platforms at the top of their home. And Kelvren Skothkar is correct, they need to rest, for they have come a very long way.” She turned to the Iftel gryphons. “If you would follow me, please.”

The five—whose names he still did not know (since they never did get to the introductions before deliberations choked the air) and who had been almost entirely silent until now—immediately turned to follow Jylan. One of them was so very weary that he stumbled a little. “And this is where we part company,” Kel said to Vindaria, with regret. “I am not safe to be this near the Heartstone for so long.”

“Then I will come with you,” she said, making him feel as if he was flying through lightning. “I will rejoin the others later. There are things you and I must discuss.”

His ear-tufts perked, and he carefully reined his expectations in, not in the least because he sensed he was having to dump energy into more light. Well, he could not help but have hopes, but his more rational side knew very well that she probably had Very Serious Things to discuss and now was no time to be thinking about skydancing and—

Stop that right now, he told himself sternly. Yes, you are infatuated. Why? Because she is near and you are a lecher. No, that isn’t it. You think you should be a lecher but your heart isn’t in it right now. You’re infatuated by the idea of a possibility, of a chance, of maybe being lucky, if you had the strength. That doesn’t mean she is.

“I’ll need to stay in the middle of the path,” he temporized. “Right now I can be . . . hazardous to mage-lights. You can walk wherever you like, of course.”

“That is part of what I wish to speak with you about, but I would prefer to do so with a half-full belly and more liquid than I’ve had,” she confessed as they walked out of the Council Chamber, with the Elders still going on about just what they thought they should do about this new information. Not the situation; early on, they’d washed their hands of it and passed on the responsibility for what to do to Kel and Firesong. But they were more sensible than the Valdemarans, at least in Kel’s estimation. Or perhaps they just had fewer politics than Valdemarans. Because what they were discussing was various means, arcane and mundane, of collecting more information. Of course, this did include the possibly risky ploy of contacting the gods, but—

Not my millpond. Not my otters.

If they wanted to do this, then they should, and Kel would thank them for it. For his part, he knew for a fact that things weren’t dire enough to call on Them.

He had to lengthen his stride to keep up with Daria, and after a moment he sensed, as he never had before, the entire mechanism for how his feathers were sifting magic from all around him. And how that magic first tapped up his virtutem, then when that was full, needed to be released as light. He’d never been this acutely aware of what had always been instinctive, and it made him feel just a bit off balance. Is this how Firesong always is? Probably not; he doesn’t use the same systems I have. Mine were created, carefully plotted and mapped out and designed. His are . . . well . . . not designed at all.