Kyrus sat on his bedroll.
Thankfully, it wasn’t leather, though the drawstring of its leather
carry-sack and the mouth of it were crumbling.
It was the remnant of the continuing mindless attack on any kind of protein that
carried traces of his touch that had pointed out that it was a focussed attack. All the straps on the saddle, the saddle
itself, the hood on the bird, all of his leathers in his things had
disintegrated, until Werfas’s clinery had blown the attack to bits.
I wanted to make a name for
myself. I wanted to be a warrior. I’ve worked and studied and accepted all
kinds of weird and odd things to get that name, and I find out I didn’t need
to. My father would have acknowledged me
without me being a good warrior. But I
wouldn’t have found him, still alive, if I hadn’t done what I did.
The Emir-al and the Amir would
have found me, in the Basin, and Milar wouldn’t have been involved. Da might
have lived and died in that cave without anybody knowing it. He sighed and poked at the embers of the fire with a stick.
Hara lay
asleep, rolled in hers across the fire with stepda’s bedroll empty behind. Ilax was taking watch. Everybody not on watch was asleep, like he
should be. Since Milar, he’d slept well. It was at home that he didn’t sleep.
The spring running through the cave ran slow enough that stars and
falling stars reflected in the pool they were camped near. It was so funny, the warbirds that the
Emir-al had brought weren’t used to all this surface water, even after weeks in
Milar, and lifted their feet in funny dancing pats at the surface and plunged
their whole heads into it if you let them.
They were all staked out with a chain run through their leg bands and asleep too, heads under wings or buried in
neck fluff till all you could see was tips of their meat-hook beaks and
squinched shut eyes. One or two even
gave off little tweeting snores more suited to a bird the size of a cat or a
fluffy, instead of something the size of a man.
Who am I kidding? The avalanche would have brought him out,
whether I was there or not. I might have
gotten killed in the Basin, forced to join a boy-sex gang, or fighting not to. Oltarios might have set me up as his secret
mistress, until the law was repealed and then – he was a decent man – maybe acknowledged
me as his male zardukar, even if I wasn’t trained at the school. I wonder if they are accepting boys now? I don’t imagine Mother Thriti would be so bigoted
that she wouldn’t train boys for sex.
Most people don’t know about the
secret classes you can attend, if you’re veiled like a girl. But its dangerous. Boys disappeared, probably raped and thrown
off the edge if they were caught. That’s
what the gangs believed. Safety in numbers.
And now? Now I’m Siwion and my da is probably Kraganzh?
That’s scary as a world with no water at all. That’s a scary as finding out that the CEO
has found out that we’re all alive and contenders for ownership.
He’d probably pound us flat with
ice from the moon. He doesn’t want us
alive. The bombardment is probably
enough to break through all the caves in the badlands and all the valleys in
Milar are vulnerable. Nadumar, Rumon,
Charnan, Hippifrey, and Trovi... everybody’s vulnerable to gigantic chunks of
solid water falling out of the sky. We have
no way to stop it.
I wonder if His Radiance has a
way of stopping it? His Radiance. He’s my great-grand da. Um. That’s just weird.
I’m going to have to
walk up to him and say ‘Hi, great-grand da, I hear people are trying to kill us
to inherit the Great Hive and all of Lainz?’
No. I can’t even imagine walking
into the Sunrise Loggia. I used to sit
and look up at the big gates in the sun that glittered hard enough to make my
eyes hurt. You could see the tops of gigantic
trees over the walls. Trees that held
water in the city. Baskets and balconies
crammed with flowers and bees, all part of making the planet good for us. Plants and insects that turn this place into
more like the home planet every day.
He lives there. He’s the oldest man alive and I... what am
I? Kyrus Talain, the younger. His blood.
They’re teaching me to do mandery.
I’m learning to be a warrior. I’m
my father’s son and HE has a reputation that any Basin rat would kill for.
He got great big brass ones he
kin clang tagether w’ the Highest.
Endark! Great big gold balls
tah clang in any choob’s face ifn’ they give lip or hip. ‘n he’s hipper ‘n
most. He kin draw hip outta nuthin’ cut
yah and let it go ‘fore yer red hitten the dirt an ‘vaporatin’.
His Radiance got even bigger uns.
He kin hit yah w’ Hive ball size o’ birds wi’ all feather out.
Oh dark. What am I going to do? I'm nay siwion. Jess a Basin rat chitterin' flitterin'. They want me to be this prince, this siwion. I’d
be inclined to just cut ‘em up tah bird feed, set new uns. Old uns doin’ squat
but bad.
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