The air had cleared as the floaters had settled out of the wind and dug
in, the frosting of clinging bugs fluffed and beaten off feathers and gear and
clothing. Everyone’s veils had been
taken off and beaten clean.
The road now ran flat, though half-covered with drifted sand, winding
through the lolipapera trees almost all the way to Gada Samapti, the little
border village on the river. The trees provided frequent enough shade to give
everyone some relief. Glass bug reactions,
the blisters raised where floaters had gotten through clothing, had been
treated and everyone had had water.
The wind had dropped and the riding and pack birds had all settled
down. Ky was use enough to the twitch
and play of leg and wing muscles under his knees under the riding pad that he
almost didn’t notice it any longer. His
bird... he’d named it Pikro because it kept trying to eat Tizzie. The ferret was asleep in his hood, a fuzzy
ball at the back of his neck. It should
have been an idyllic ride now, except that he had his father riding on one side
of him and Zon Marya on the other side.
He would much rather have been with Hara and Werfas. They wouldn’t have been running him through
lessons while on birdback.
“You need to make these kinds of defenses work even if you aren’t paying
attention. You could be attacked by an
opponent on the field who may have clinery and tries to take your internal
organs apart. Or just your eyes. De-couple a few connections and you’re
helpless,” Kyrus was saying.
Marya nodded. “A very warrior-like way of putting it. In Milar there is no one who would be practising that skill against another person. But against a bush dragon or a sand-sheet... you need to know enough to defend yourself.”
“Of course you Milari don’t practice against each other.” Ky grinned at
Marya over his son’s head. “It’s why
your politicians all have mandery armour like carbon steel.”
“Naturally.” The old woman smiled.
“Ky, set your defenses as you learned from me, if you haven’t forgotten,
then we’ll have the old man here try and take them apart from the outside.”
“While you distract me, no doubt, Zon,” Ky said sourly.
She didn’t answer and both she and his da laughed. Fluffy
kissers. He let his eyelids droop slightly but didn’t close them entirely –
not on bird-back – and set his codes.
Base code like a foundation. Like
stones in a wall he began stacking instruction on instruction, imagining each
defense set in place by his dragonflies zipping around to seize and place each
one.
He was sure that Zon Marya wouldn’t let him get set peacefully, or that
his father would wait until he had everything solidly in place, so when she bumped his bird
and made it stumble and squawk and strike at her bird, he was ready with his
goad to rap it on its beak, weight shifting so Pikro could gain his balance
again. That was, of course, when da
thrust a clinery point into his defenses, trying to open a hole.
His armour... his wall... had actually been a fake. It flowed away from da’s strike and let the
clinery zip through, but along a path of his choosing, skittering off an inner
shell that he’d built before. It wasn’t
rooted hard in anything and so spun the attack off as if Kyrus had tried to
skewer a spinning wheel.
Kyrus’s clinery snapped and spun out in molecular fragments that blew
away in the wind.
“Nicely done.” That was Zon
Vishna. She was riding just behind.
“Let us try that again,” Kyrus said.
He didn’t praise but his smile was visible behind his veil.
**
It was an hour later when they stopped to let the birds rest and let
everyone drink that they let up on Ky and his defense practice. “Why don’t you show me your functioning
machinery?” Kyrus asked his son. “Ilax told me that right at the beginning you
almost had it, even without training.”
Ky sat down on the sand with a bump.
He nearly whined that he was tired but that was just what a child would
do, not a grown man. “I think I can do
it with what I have, da. Let me try
that.”
He pulled out the tiny bag of bits that he had around his neck... just
for these kinds of practice, though he’d only been doing extra work with Hara
around to see. “It still... I still don’t
like it.”
“I know.”
It was something in da’s eyes that let Ky take up his practice pieces
with a lighter heart. It’s not just me. He must have felt the same way, being taught
by those old zon up on the mountain... when he thought he was dead to everyone.
He added a pinch of sand to the pile of hair-fine wires and beads small as powder and thought command code: real world functionality, human interface required.
With Werfas and Hara both watching and his da and Ilax and everybody, he
thought he’d get a quiver of response and then nothing. It was a blur in his
hand as the sand whipped up and when he blinked he had a silver dragonfly in
his hand, transparent wings opening and closing slowly. In his head he heard a
click and the word Accomplished.
It was the first time he’d succeeded at interfacing with the larger
command. Da had said that if he
managed it, he wouldn’t have to maintain the machine with his own attention,
but it would be the normal way he interacted with the great code. “You did it!” Werfas clapped him on the back
and the dragonfly buzzed up to hover over his head as he rocked forward.
“Stop it, you might as well have bashed me with a rock you slapped me so
hard!”
“Sissy.”
The dragonfly circled around and buzzed over to Pikros’ headstall,
landing on it even though the warbird shook its head. For a long moment it hung like a Hive lady’s
brooch on the hood, then crumbled into component pieces and blew away.
“Damn. Too bad, son.” Kyrus
said. “You’ll get it solid next time.”
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