Sentinel could see it too, and it was several minutes before she could persuade the giant eagle to land in his appointed eyrie. He flew into the opening and landed, flapping his great wings in distress, refusing to settle until Lanae climbed down from his back.
No servants came to greet her, although she must have been visible on her approach for half an hour at least, and this was strange. When she stepped down from Sentinel’s back she heard a familiar gruff voice.
“Stand still Lanae.” It was Bansher D’Bregen, although she could only tell him by his voice, for he wore a bucket helmet that covered his face and he carried a naked sword in his hand. “Step away from the bird.” He ordered, and she noticed that he was wearing chainmail beneath his tabard as well.
“Bansher.” She said simply. “What has happened?”
“I said stand still.” His voice was hard and he approached her warily, his sword in the guard position.
“I can’t stand still and step away at the same time.” She said saucily. “Besides, if you come any closer to me, Sentinel is going to break your neck for you.” The eagle had spread its wings protectively around her, and his head was forward with his beak open and threatening. She felt the wings around her like a protective covering. Sentinel had been like this ever since the Whitewood, the bird somehow sensing that there was danger to Lanae, and determined to ward it off.
Bansher stood still, then he sighed, scabbarded his sword and removed his helmet. “You are right as usual Lanae. Let me take a look at your eyes.” He walked forward slowly, as if to assure Sentinel that he meant his rider no harm. The eagle managed an odd low squawk that somehow managed to convey the same meaning as a dog growling when Bansher reached forward and lifted Lanae’s chin, staring into her eyes for a long moment.
“Oh, it’s me, all right.” Lanae said. “Has it been so long you don’t know my face?”
“You are all right.” Bansher said, then he sighed with relief. “You had better come with me. I have a lot of questions for you.” Lanae stroked Sentinel’s worried head briefly while Bansher looked on wonderingly, then she stepped through the doorway and into a central hall, in the middle of which was the spiral staircase that led down into the lower reaches of the tower. Torches set in iron brackets illumined the wary swordsman.
“What is going on, Bansher?” Lanae asked. “Why are you wearing mail and carrying a sword in the eyrie? Where are the servants?”
“You’ve been gone a long time, Lanae.” He replied. “Things have been very bad here.”
He directed her down the spiral staircase, past the several floors housing other eyries, and she noticed that the usual sounds of eagles preening and calling to each other were absent. So was the noise of servants chattering and riders calling to each other. The eagles’ tower was as empty and as quiet as a temple on Beggarsday. When they reached the bottom of the staircase they walked through a wooden door in which an iron grill was set. The grill had been newly installed in a hole newly cut into the door. Lanae noticed the addition but did not comment on it.
They entered the chamber beyond, which was the king’s eyes’ eating chamber, and Lanae saw that it was empty, and it had a clean and sterile smell, as if no food had been served here for weeks.
“Have a seat, Lanae.” Bansher told her, then he sat himself, directing her to a chair across the table from her. She noticed a layer of dust on the table.
“Where is everyone?” She asked.
“I will answer your questions in a moment, Lanae. First you must answer mine. Where have you been?”
She told him her story, omitting no details, and she was honest about failing to see the change in the color of the flag. She described the Brizaki clearly, and Bansher did not seemed surprised at her description.
“Yes.” He said. “Those sound like Brizaki, all right. I’ve dealt with them before.”
When she got to the part about the wizard and his attempt to bewitch Sentinel, he interrupted. “You can leave that part out when we talk to the king.” He said. “At least, leave it out if the bishop is there. I don’t need you ending up in front of the inquisitors, and we’re going to need you able to fly.”
“Really?” She asked. “You still want me to fly?”
He nodded grimly. “Things aren’t like before. The king needs riders he knows I trust. I’ll tell you why in a moment. Go on with your report.”
So she told him about the ship, and the Thimenians, and Levin Askelyne. She told him about masterfarmer Felder and Nevermind, and her trip to Walcox. She left out her experience with the deserters in the Whitewood, although she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps she didn’t want him to feel sorry for her. Nor did she tell him that she had already told the whole story to her mother. She supposed he guessed, but it was still a breach of security.
“So I took the reports from the Privy Lord, and I’m sorry, but that’s what everyone calls him, and I took them first to Nevermind. I thought that the people there should have the casualty reports at least, and I’d promised the Lord Mayor I would deliver them. I didn’t have the courage to stay and see how the poor parents reacted, but I did make sure that masterfarmer Felder was rewarded for finding me. He was really very kind to me. Then I flew back here without further delay, except that Sentinel needed to hunt twice, and I recorded the locations of the farms where he took meat.”
Bansher nodded when she finished. “A very thorough report.” Then he continued. “If this were the old days, I would have grounded you and probably had you arrested for failing to follow protocol regarding the flags. Or I would have had you arrested for failing to come back here straightaway from Nevermind. But these aren’t the old days, and I understand your needing to see your family after being caged for three months.”
“You aren’t having me arrested?”
“No. These aren’t the old days. Lanae, things have changed here, and in a very bad way.”
“Go on.” She urged. “Whatever it is, I think I can handle it now.”
“You do seem to have grown up a bit, Lanae.” Bansher said, looking into her eyes, considering. “Unless I miss my guess, you’ve had to face something hard. Maybe man-killing hard, and probably there’s something you had to do while you were a prisoner that you aren’t ready to bring into the light. That’s fine. I’m not going to press you. Whatever it was, it can’t have been worse than what’s happened here.”
“What has happened?”
“Well, you went missing on the thirtieth of Mardis. We sent out searchers two days later, when you failed to return from your last mission to Zoric. We found the bodies of all of the men from the waystation, Captain Lioshelm was apparently the only one who put up any kind of a fight. His sword was blooded and the dogs found the naked body of one of the Brizaki buried there. None of us would have known that it was anything other than a man, except one of the foresters from West Zoric recognized some weirdness in its eyes. I guess you know what I mean. Apparently cat’s eyes aren’t so uncommon as we’d like to think, and there’s some folk like that in the East Forest.”
“I didn’t know that.” Lanae replied.
“Not many do.” Bansher said, idly fingering his crimson tabard. “Anyway, the search went on for a week or so, then the war broke out and we had to send most of the king’s eyes north. That’s been a bad business for us. The Duke of Northcraven decided he needed to use the king’s eyes for scouting, which is none of our task at all, and none of the girls trained for it. Ghaill Earthspeaker, he’s the Ghaill the Auligs are following, well, he apparently gave orders to kill the king’s eyes.
“Lanae, Limme’s dead. Vallia’s dead, too. They killed Goldwing, Wraith and Shroud, and Elliana’s missing up there somewhere, probably dead as well.”
“Sweet Srari.” Lanae said, breathless. “Not Limme.”
“All of them.” Bansher replied, shaking his head, “And that’s not even the worst of it.”
“What else?” Lanae asked, trying unsuccessfully to hold back tears.
“The worst of it happened here. On the night of the fourth of Gaey three servants and a rider killed seven eagles here.”
“No.” Lanae found herself unable to talk.
“Yes. It was Lashella O’Nenea. She and two of the servants, a girl named Larienna and a man named Ohlten, went mad in the middle of the night. They snuck into the tower and started at the top, slipping into the eyries and stabbing the eagles in the eyes and the throat with these long thin blades.” He made a stabbing motion with his hand, demonstrating. “The Larienna girl got killed by Darkfeather in his nest, for apparently he woke up and figured out what she was doing, but Lashella and Ohlten were still at it when I heard a noise and stopped them. I had to kill Ohlten, but we caught Lashella, even though she stuck one of the guards with her knife. Now Darkfeather won’t take any rider, and he’s wild. I had to chain him to keep him from flying off and hunting wherever he wants.”
“What happened to Lashella?” Lanae asked. “Did you hang her?”
“Well, here’s where things get really strange, and you should mention this to no one.” Bansher said, pausing as if weighing whether it was appropriate to tell her the next. “The guard she stabbed, his name was Riol, and he went to the infirmary. He had to get some stitches. Meanwhile they locked her in a cell down below, and sent in two men to interrogate her. I was upstairs with most of the staff, cleaning up the mess and waiting for them to report, when Riol comes up first. He didn’t say any greeting to me or anything, so I went over to talk to him.
“Lanae, his eyes were green.”
“What do you mean? Lots of people have green eyes.”
“No, not the pupils. The white parts were green. It wasn’t something you’d notice at first, and not in just any light, but he started talking to me, and his voice was weird, like he was in shock. I told him he should go back to his quarters and get some rest, and that’s when I noticed the whites of his eyes, only they weren’t white. They were this light green color, like an egg you’d dye for a King’s Day feast. ‘Your eyes don’t look so healthy.’ I said, and he pulled steel on me.”
“He did what?”
“He drew his sword on me. Tried to kill me in this very room. Fortunately, he wasn’t that good, and it was him that ended up dying.”
“But you still haven’t said what happened to Lashella.”
“Well, here I am looking at the dead body of Riol, and he was a friend of mine, you know? I mean, not best friends or anything, but I helped train the man and I bossed him for over a year, and I figured to know him pretty well. There I am trying to figure out what I’m to tell his kin, and the door comes open and there’s Lashella. She’s got the two interrogators with her, and they give me some cock-and-bull about needing to look over the scene of the crime so she can confess.
“Bullshite, says I. I’m the Eyrie Master, and no way am I allowing anybody up in the eyries and near my eagles until I can sort what’s happening, and they pull steel on me, too. That was a bloody mess and they nearly had me, but there was something wrong with them, like they didn’t have their minds all in one piece. I swear that if they’d come at me with all of their faculties, they could have killed me. I trained the men, and I know. Instead I killed them, all three of them, although I took a bad wound in the leg for it.”
“You killed them here?” Lanae looked around the room in horror.
“In this very room.” Bansher admitted. “And when I looked at their eyes, they were green, too. Same thing, the whites of their eyes gone this weird greenish shade. I didn’t know what to make of it, but it was a rider and two servants that it started with, so I imposed some security measures.”
“Like the grill in the door.”
“That’s right. And nobody but the King himself is allowed up past this chamber without my permission, and I look them in the eyes first thing. I shut down the kitchens and I discharged all of the servants, which leaves most of my day cleaning up bird shite or fetching food for Darkfeather but I don’t mind. The eagles’ safety comes first.”
“When I was in Nevermind and Walcox and I never heard any of this.” Lanae said.
“That’s right, because nobody’s been told. I cut up the bodies of the eagles and took them up to the roof and burned them. The only folks that know of it are the king of course, me and the half dozen riders we have left. I sent most of our girls home, only keeping the ones who already knew everything.
“Lanae, if word gets out that the king’s eagles aren’t safe, Falante will fall and the whole kingdom could fall with him. The power of the throne is in the eagles. The eagles tell the king where the enemy is, where to put his troops, and they keep any of his enemies from putting together an army to take him down. I’m not talking about the Auligs here, I’m talking about the barons and the dukes. You think the Duke of Dunwater would hesitate to break away from the king if he knew he wasn’t watched by the king’s eagles?”
“The Duke of Dunwater is dead.” Lanae replied without thinking. “It’s in the report from Walcox. He died fighting Auligs there.”
“Well, that’s a storm of shite, isn’t it?” Bansher answered in his usual profane way. “I mean, I never liked the man, but he was a D’Cadmouth. With Limme killed and Hanjenger killed and now the Duke of Dunwater, we’re going to start running out of D’Cadmouths. Although, here’s some good news for you. Queen Eleinel’s had a son. Kaelen he’s called.”
“I don’t care about the politics, Bansher.” Lanae replied quietly. “What are we going to do about the eagles?”
“The way Sentinel was acting, I don’t think I trust anyone but you to ride him.” The man replied. “Nobody else ever wanted to ride him anyway, he’s just too dangerous. Darkfeather’s going to need at least a month’s training before I can put an eye on him again. That leaves us with eight eagles I can put in the air, and I can’t put any of them at risk. There’s a man we have in Flana who sometimes finds eggs for us in the Sandy Mire, but they are few and far between. It’s going to be a long time before we can fill up this eyrie again.”
Lanae sat back in her chair, trying to absorb the shock of what she had just heard. After the Whitewood and after the bodies she’d seen at Walcox, she had thought she could handle anything, but the eyrie had been her home. Now it was all changed and danger seemed to lurk around every corner.
“Why haven’t I seen any eagles here, Bansher?”
“They’re all on missions.” He replied. “There are so many missions to fly, and me with only eight reliable birds, we can’t do them all. The barons and dukes have gotten used to regular visits from the king’s eyes, and if they don’t get their visits, they’re going to suspect something, so we try to keep things going like they were. When we can’t run all of the missions the king’s eyes tell them that we have a lot of eagles committed to the war. The truth is, we only have one. Miriella on Sky.”
“Sky is a good bird, and Miriella a fine rider.”
“One of the best, but I tell you, I am glad to have you back with Sentinel. The king will be pleased.”
“I’m glad of that, at least. Will you tell him that I’m happy to serve?”
“You will tell him yourself.” Bansher said, to her surprise. “Weren’t you listening before? We are going to see him in half an hour. You will want to clean up.”
Half an hour later Lanae was clean, having bathed herself with a basin of hot water and a fine linen towel. She was dressed in formal riding leathers beneath a crimson tabard banded in white and embroidered with an eagle in gold thread. She had put her hair up in a plaited braid and she wore polished black riding boots. The formal attire of a king’s eye looked not unlike a pageboy’s clothing, for the idea was to look as if she were ready to leap into riding harness at any moment. As if she would go riding with perfume and a golden brooch in her hair.
Bansher waited for her outside of her apartment in the lower portion of the eyrie. She had been dismayed to find her apartment emptied of all of her personal effects, for everyone had assumed she was dead,
but the items had been found in storage and servants in white livery banded in red were even now returning her things to their proper places, bowing as they entered her room. The ones who remembered her smiled and offered congratulations on her safe return, but their eyes were guarded, too. They knew as well as anyone what could happen when a rider lost her eagle, and went before the king to answer for it. It was plain that many of them did not expect to see her return from the palace. She tucked Levin’s dagger under her pillow and closed the door when she departed.
The Master of the Eyrie was dressed in formal attire also, and Lanae noticed that Bansher’s tabard was lined in lace as well as gold thread, but his plain black boots were the same as hers. His sword was in its scabbard, within easy reach of his hand, but he’d wrapped the hilts so that it could not be drawn without first untying it. Undoubtedly this was a routine security measure for anyone who was to visit the king.
Bansher took her hand and led her down the broad stairs to the doors of the eyrie, and Lanae noticed that a new bar had been installed, and the number of armed guards doubled in the antechamber. A closed carriage of white and silver drawn by a team of six horses waited for them on the cobbled drive within the gated courtyard of the eyrie. The coachman was wearing crimson livery with the king’s eagle sigil centered on the chest. Another coachman opened the doors of the carriage and Bansher sat opposite her on the cushioned velvet seat. The interior was decorated in crimson.
“The king knows all that I know, but most of what I told you has been kept from his advisors. If your audience includes more than just the king and the queen, keep your mouth shut and don’t say any more than you absolutely have to. This isn’t some farmer’s cothold in Northcraven, and every person there will be hanging on every word that is said. Even some of the servants like to gossip. I like Falante, and he’s a good king, but be forewarned. Sometimes he fails to guard his tongue.”
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 61