135 - Lice In His Feathers

Werfas looked up from where he mended his bird's hood. “Kyrus. You really need to quit complaining about Arch. He's a pain in the cloaca and says all kinds of rude things but he's a deemander even at his age and he's just going to get better. He understands code better than he understands people.”

Kyrus looked down at the leather in his hands and untwisted it. “I suppose.” He felt uncomfortable and unsettled as if, well --

“--Ky quit squirming as if you had an infestation of lice in your feathers,” Werfas grinned at him.

“I'm not squirming like that!”

“Yes, you are. And you can quit staring a hole in the back of his head whenever he's with your da. You aren't going to lose your da, you know.”

Kyrus dropped the leather pieces into his kit and closed it up abruptly. “Werfas, there's one thing you aren't going to understand. Your parents value you. I didn't have parents for a long time and the stuff I did then isn't going to make my da like me much, if at all, bein' so honourable and stick upen his arse-like. Arch... he's GOT what I didn't have. He's good at what he does and his ma knows it and values him fer it. He's flippin' wallowin' in, 'n vomitin' up more feast 'n he kin eat, an' at that age I got bones 'n sunburn!” He was breathing hard. Where in the enlightened and endarkened world did that rant come from? He crushed his veil against his face with his hands.

“I'm sorry.” Dag's voice came from behind Kyrus. “I wasn't there.” She reached up and pulled her veil down. “It was my responsibility, and I was fighting what that assassin had sent against us. I'm sorry I left you so alone, my son.”

Kyrus leaped up as though the saddle he was sitting on had stung him. “Ma! No. Um. I um. I'm not jealous, truly!”

She smiled, clear without the obscuring cloth. Clearly a smile built out of tears. “You have a right to be jealous, son. But look.” She waved a hand over toward where da had turned away from the Nadu Head and her son. Archie was still waving his hands and crowing over something that he'd gotten from Hara. He'd gotten Hara's attention as well as da's. But da was turning away and coming this way. “Your father is proud of you, son. He glows at your successes. Just as I do. I'm not sure it's right, because we both failed you at one point or another, but we do the best we can.”

“Oh. Um did he hear me? Oh bakon-shit.”

“Thank you, Dag,” his Radiance said. “I am proud of my boy and, even though I cannot claim any credit for his resilience, I am inordinately pleased with him.” By the end of that little speech, Ky was starting to look around for a convenient hole to crawl into. Werfas just kept his mouth shut and took it all in, hiding behind his well- cultivated stolid face.

“Dag, I'm glad you're here,” Kyrus Sr. said, firmly changing the uncomfortable subject, though the eye he cast on his son showed that there was going to be a talk later. “There will be somebody coming to fetch the cuddle flock and all us political types to Lainz. Thriti has used something Hara came up with, to get us all back to Lainz a lot faster because everyone is convinced that Prime will discover us sooner rather than later. I need to ask you... could you zardukar convince the new flock to learn how to fly?”