Eyrie

by K Vale Nagle

  “No, we’re not sure which one. The markings on their harnesses aren’t ones we’ve seen before. The Crackling Sea opinici managed to fight them back.” His claws lingered on the blue water, the inland sea that gave the eyrie its name. “Feeding on the bodies of so many opinici turned the wildlife of the Crackling Sea into something different. Something violent.”

  “It’s not all fish, surely. There are a lot of fruits grown up in the cold climate, aren’t there?”

  “The eyrie was only the first attack. While the opinici fought in the skies, the gryphons slipped in low. At first, they contented themselves with stealing fruit and crops. After some were caught and strung up, the next time the opinici were busy with the invaders, the gryphons came in and salted the farm lands. Most of their fields will no longer grow crops.”

  Kia’s beak was open and dry. She’d never heard of such a thing.

  “We sent what help we could, but we had to keep our own eyrie safe. We raised a new army of sorts, sent food, and helped some refugees set up a small fishing village on the far side of the sea. We even quelled most of the gryphon uprising. A few attempted to escape and reunite deep in the peat bog. I don’t know if they made it or if the rangers caught up with them. There are still small attacks, but that could be the taiga pride. They enjoy the benefit of being able to disappear back into the mountains.”

  “Did Cherine know about this? Is this why he was taken?”

  “Oh, no, dear. I would never have let something happen to him. I’m not sure what’s going on there. But I do worry that his curiosity led him to some unfortunate places.” The headmaster placed his talons on the map and sighed. “There’s more, but I don’t have the heart to tell you myself. It’s probably safer now if you know, but first we need to turn Cherine’s journal over to the Reeve’s Guard. I’ll make sure it doesn’t contain anything that will hurt Cherine when we find him.”

  Neider walked to a window and opened the thick curtains, filling the room with sunlight. He plucked at a loud chime. The sound was like the resonate buzzing of a monstrous insect.

  “Won’t they notice that pages are missing?” she asked.

  “No, I suspect not. I have someone who specializes in this sort of thing. In your own field notebook, what did you say about Cherine’s?”

  “Nothing. Just that I found it. Oh, and it had blood on it,” she said.

  The headmaster nodded and selected a book from his desk with the same color binding as Cherine’s journal. “Come back tonight and meet me here. I’ll have a book for you to turn in to the Reeve’s Guard. Then I think it’s important you see something.” The lightness of his words belied the weight she felt at hearing them.

  As she was leaving, she saw the same black cockatiel opinicus making his way to the headmaster’s office. His harness was covered in ink stains. He looked different wearing it, no longer naked like a wild gryphon, and the fact that he was here now suggested that the guards never caught up with him last night, and he’d been able to retrieve it from its hiding place. Kia had no shame about going without her harness, but she would never be able to function without the associated pockets.

  Reeve’s Nest served as the capitol building for the Redwood Valley Eyrie. It was closer to a throne room and meeting hall than a nest. Kia didn’t know if it contained a place for Reeve Brevin to sleep but suspected the reeve kept off-site housing in the reaches of the northern quarter with the other rich opinici.

  Long strips of metal framed the building, showing off the wealth of the eyrie from the outside and catching the light. It was easy to spot during the day: it was the only building she couldn’t look directly at. Now, at night, it was easier on her eyes. The headmaster nodded to the guards but stopped just inside the entryway once they were alone to have a word with her.

  “It’s safer if they think you already know,” he said. His owl-like face and droopy feathers hid his emotions well. He was less groomed than she remembered. She wondered if this was a symptom of his time at the Crackling Sea Eyrie or a recent development related to Cherine’s disappearance.

  “About the book?” she asked. She was holding a new journal, same shape, nearly identical handwriting, and comparable blood stain to the real journal. The cockatiel, as relayed by the headmaster, said the blood was unlikely to have come from Cherine. Matching the hue of opinicus blood was easy, he claimed, so it probably came from one of the herd. The forger was good at his job. The ink seemed to grow fresher, more vibrant as she paged through from old entries to new ones. Her closeness to Cherine caused a sensation like the words weren’t his, but she couldn’t point to any example of what was incorrect. Also missing were his figures and calculations about how much food they were producing versus how much their eyrie actually needed.

  “About everything. The reeve believes it’s better with the growing unrest if we wait to release information about the Crackling Sea Eyrie attack and our aid until the food crisis dies down and we have some idea of who attacked them. I’ll imply that you were one of the scholars who helped with the initial herd analysis, though not one of the ones who underestimated how hard it would be to keep goliath birds. Those poor fools are manning a way station on the goliath bird pass for the foreseeable future. Where was I? Yes, right, if we leave the reeve’s perceptions of you to chance, they may assume you’re working with that gryphon you brought back. Better to let this fall on Jonas. They need him and will grant him some leeway. Whatever you hear at the meeting, say nothing. Stay by my side and don’t draw attention to yourself. What you’re about to hear will be uncomfortable.”

  She nodded and followed him through the foyer and into the massive, tall-ceilinged meeting room. Tapestries of past reeves lined the walls. Most prominent was a weaving of Brevin’s grandfather, an emerald-plumed peacock of an opinicus standing over the corpse of a large serpent. The snake was symbolic, of course, but she wondered if Zeph would even bother to mention having had to kill a snake. The headmaster motioned to her, and they settled into the meeting room. She sat well behind the headmaster and kept her beak shut. The meeting was already in session.

  “Why chance burning down the entire vale?” a burly opinicus said. It was the one who’d been by the reeve when Kia had been questioned. His harness had faded to a light blue and was decorated only with his military rank. The longest talon on his right foreleg had a metal covering which he tapped on the floor to reinforce his words. She’d seen this before on veterans and hunters who lost the end of a digit. Few refused the prosthetic, only those who wanted to make a point about the weight of their sacrifice to the eyrie. “Why not use the wingtorn to hunt them down? We run the risk of burning down the whole weald.”

  “What risk?” Jonas asked. “We have more than enough of the fire suppressant powder stored in the grasslands to keep the fire from reaching the eyrie.”

  “And we don’t know how many gryphons there are,” Brevin said. “As long as the untamed weald extends to the coast, it will harbor them. We’re going to have to clear most of it anyway. This is just expediency.”

  “We can’t risk leaving the Crackling Sea Eyrie undefended even for a moment, and I don’t think we can trust the wingtorn with this. I’m not sure they’ll be properly incentivized to clear out entire families.” Jonas kept his head lowered as he spoke, possibly in contrition after Zeph’s escape. He didn’t look like he’d been disciplined—he wasn’t part of this eyrie, after all—but he must be worried that word would travel back to the Crackling Sea about his misfortune. Kia wondered what rank he held at the Crackling Sea Eyrie. Most interesting was the medallion on his harness: the same fish from the reeve’s mystery gryphon visitor the night before. Had the gryphon come from the same eyrie as Jonas?

  “They’ve certainly given up a lot not to feel incentivized. Surely the squeamish ones didn’t make it this far.” The burly one tapped his metal talon on the ground. She leaned forward to try to get a better look at him in case it jogged her memory, but the headmaster pushed her back with a back paw. S
he was to be seen but not to draw attention to herself. He wrote the name Commander Wolden on a piece of paper and pointed to it. She nodded.

  “They sacrificed so their children could have a better life,” Brevin said. “They may feel differently when they see that we’re not offering their weald kin the same…kindness.”

  Jonas shrugged. “I won’t claim some aren’t having second thoughts. Losing your wings is a traumatic experience. Most are adjusting well to it. Having Jun in charge makes things easier. They’re used to obeying him.”

  “Surely there’s nothing we can do about that now,” said Wolden.

  “No,” Jonas said, “but anger makes everyone do strange things. It’s better if you use their anger against opinici instead of other gryphons. At least until the new batch has settled in. Once their children can fly and integrate into eyrie culture, they’ll be easier to manage.”

  He seemed to have more experience with the wingtorn than any of this eyrie’s opinici. Kia wondered how often he’d done this. She’d heard rumors that in past disputes some gryphons had agreed to join the eyrie at the cost of their wings. In return, they and their children became full citizens. The children’s wings weren’t clipped. She’d never seen the wingtorn herself, probably because the university was so high. She wouldn’t want to risk the upper tiers of the eyrie without wings, either.

  “Then we dispatch the wingtorn to the fishing villages.” Brevin’s voice was tinged with an agitation. “Once the coast is secured, we light the fires. They can clean up any gryphons who don’t burn.”

  “Some of them will escape into the mountains instead of heading to the coast,” the headmaster said. Hearing her mentor talk of genocide the way he spoke of plants or logistics made Kia uncomfortable.

  “Go back to academia if you want a perfect plan,” Wolden scolded. “This is our best, most effective option for securing the valley. We cannot afford to be fighting a civil war if another eyrie makes a move. The weald has remained wild for too many years. I can deal with a small insurgency in the mountains.” He eschewed his metal tapping to stand this time. “I cannot defend the eyrie if an unknown army of ribald masses waits to rise up the moment we’re under siege. That is the situation we’re dealing with, imminent invasion. If you want to keep your own wings attached to your body, I suggest you live in reality.”

  “There have never been any reports of wingtorn opinici,” the headmaster looked for assurances.

  “It does happen sometimes,” Jonas said.

  A shiver rose in Kia. She remained quiet for the rest of the meeting, mostly talk of supplies going out to the Crackling Sea Eyrie and the troops housed there. Then she slipped out with the headmaster and headed back to her nest. This was time she should have spent looking for Cherine.

  5

  The Forger

  When the sun rose the next day, Kia stayed in bed. She’d been through a lot, and the adrenaline that had fueled the previous day had burned out, leaving her empty. The headmaster had flown her home but refused to talk about the meeting without his sound-proof precautions. She couldn’t argue with him. Most of the night, she’d been forced to eavesdrop on a nesting dispute two floors down.

  The triller of the two was upset with her mate, who had let their chick play too close to the edge. The chick had fallen but was mostly okay—a broken foreleg, a sprain on the other foreleg, but its wings were fine. Instinct had kicked in, and it had flattened itself properly, minimizing the damage from landing. Most adult opinici forgot how to fall from great heights, forgot that chicks are more resilient than their parents give them credit for.

  Still, it’d proven impossible to make a case for conspiracy while eavesdropping. Kia had a lot of questions for the headmaster but suspected she wouldn’t get more answers than she already had. She had even more questions for the reeve but was already flying too close to the sun there.

  She went to the pantry, pushed aside the curtain used to deter flies, and pulled down some of the hanging dried meat for breakfast. Her father would have been horrified to know she’d slept in this late. She wanted to go search for Cherine, but being seen going to the weald, let alone talking to Zeph, would lead to her being locked up. The meeting last night had painted him as a spy.

  Yet, the gryphons seemed unaware that they needed spies. There was a war looming, and they had no idea what was coming for them. Failing to warn the gryphons might be as good as killing them herself, but what did she owe them? She had so many questions, but no one would talk to her. The reeve, the headmaster, the cockatiel, Jonas, surely none of them would help her with Cherine. But there was one person she hadn’t talked to, the strange gryphon with the Crackling Sea harness.

  Kia finished her meal, switched into her non-university harness, repainted the green markings on her back half so her fur matched her feathers, and headed to the market to find out where the gryphons in the eyrie lived.

  There was some sort of convention at the amphitheater, and the markets were nearly empty. Singing in the breeze, turquoise chimes and non-currency beads hung from every awning. The butchery remained packed as opinici went back and forth from the convention with salted meats. This was not their usual, upper-class clientele, and so the merchants found they had more time to chat with customers than was customary. Kia hoped she’d find information on an upscale gryphon in the upper markets but had prepared herself mentally to go down below if it became necessary.

  Her first questions about a gryphon at the market yielded the information she’d wanted two days ago, where Zeph had been. The upscale market sellers all recognized “Zeph Parrotbane” because of his past transactions. When someone, even a gryphon, brings parrots at a reasonable barter, they remember what he looks like.

  One of the opinici, a splotchy blue thing with a wistful expression, actually sighed when she spoke his name and kept talking about how the parrot meat was wrapped in leaves, and then feathers were used at the top to show what meat it was. “It adds that rustic touch the plumed elite just love!”

  He may not currently be popular among the elite who ate his parrots, but he was extremely popular with the merchants whose harnesses he lined with beads. It became easier to ask about non-Zeph gryphons. Most of the fisherfolk used the lower markets, but even the more adventurous ones were there strictly to trade. Only their leader, a monster of a crane opinicus with a booming voice named Rorin, used the upper markets. He handled the luxury goods, dealing in ambergris, exotic shells, and high-quality items that took merchants a while to offload on the wealthy.

  Once the fisherfolk and Zeph were out of the running, there was only one gryphon important enough to get her food from the upper market, meet with reeves, and have a Crackling Sea medallion on her harness.

  “Oh, you mean Satra,” the splotchy blue opinicus chirped. “She’s a bit stuck up when it comes to food. Those Crackling Sea types are uppity but not important enough for parrot. Still, someone is keeping her happy. She probably eats better than Jonas.”

  “What’s she like?” Kia asked.

  “Oh, who can tell with gryphons?” The merchant kept her sighs and blushing reserved only for copper hawk gryphons bearing feathered gifts, it seemed. “She holds her beak high. Polite like she’s one of us but keeps herself aloof. Comes with an escort most of the time. Usually takes her food with her.”

  Kia continued asking around and making small purchases. Most of the braziers were extinguished during the day, but a few still smoldered. Cherine’s doorway was missing its chimes, so she purchased a set with turquoise interwoven into the design for him.

  Asking around, always paired with purchases, led to another merchant admitting he had once delivered meals to Satra down in the depths. Kia paid him and attached packets of green and blue dye to her harness. There were few goods that weren’t designed or packaged to be attached to a harness. She wrote down his vague directions, flew as best she could with her new goods to drop them off at her place, then mentally prepared herself to descend into the lower quarters.
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  Kia flew down below the market. The mushroom-like platforms above blocked the light, creating an artificial dusk as she descended. The vines this far down looked brown and sickly instead of vibrant and green. She was grateful that she hadn’t worn her university harness. There was a feral look in the eyes of the people down here. She was flustered not by the poverty itself, but by the scope of it. The run-down nests and starving chicks ran more than twenty stories from the lower merchants to the bottom level. She’d never entered the city from below. It hadn’t occurred to her that there was so much down here, so many opinici, all hungry.

  Had Cherine known? He’d worked at a butchery salting food after the death of his little brother, back before he applied to the university. Is this why he’d kept the journal? She’d seen his estimated eyrie population. It seemed high then but accurate now. They could feed all these people if his math was correct but instead chose to send food to the other eyrie.

  Kia let gravity pull her down, circling a beam of light determined to thrust itself as far as it could before being snuffed out by the shade of civilization. Many of the nests she’d presumed were empty had signs of movement within them. Flies and moths crossed the beam of light uncontested. There were no pigeons below the light to fend them off. Did they need the light? she wondered. More squirrels than she’d ever seen before glided away at her descent. Was it only days since she’d been so excited to see the gliding squirrels in the weald? How could the university exist above while this existed below?

  She settled on a branch that seemed public enough to keep her out of trouble and checked her directions. The districts had names and numbers. The market was marked zero, with higher elevations going up from there. The numbers on the trees here were negative, leaving her with the uneasy feeling that she could descend infinitely to a place without light, a place with only hunger. She shook her head. No, she must be close now.