12 - They Must Nearly Have Killed Their Horses

Kyrus flipped his flight stick to a smooth stop in front of his mother’s rooms, not looking around.  He’d seen Werfas and Archibald go off somewhere together.  I’m not going to be jealous.  That’d be stupid. He’s my Wingbrother no matter who he sleeps with.  Just like… I’d like to be sleeping with him a little more than we have lately… or at least talk to Hara.  Everyone is scattered everywhere and everyone is holding their breath, waiting to see when Prime notices that he’s been deceived.  But… Archie?

Archie’s a skinny runt with jug ears and the manners of a scarlet runner, what he can’t use he tends to shit on.  Well, maybe not so bad. Cave-chested kid. He’s got a lot of good ideas.  I really would like to like him. He grates on me.  

And Hara.  She’s interested in that Terence dink. Who knows how long he swings ‘n sings? Who knows? But she’s mostly crazy building things.  Her boyfriend is a bunch of missiles that mostly like to explode. He absently patted the broomstick to make sure it was securely hooked against the wall.  Since you couldn’t really turn off the flames until they ran out of water, now that the birds weren’t stealing them, people were hooking them to the walls of the canyon as torches to light the galleries.

He sat down on the edge of the walkway and looked down into the valley where the birds were still playing chase, even if they no longer had a human lure.  Tzar… his bird… currently had the target chain in his beak and was croaking wildly and muffledly at his pursuers.

How much had changed in a year.  He felt like he’d aged a lot in that time, from when he’d nerved himself up to demand Ilax teach him.  The wedding and the war had changed the world.  There wasn’t even a ‘rat’ class anymore.  Everybody was working somehow.  Everyone was needed.  All of a sudden there weren’t lowly whores and high and proper zardukar.

A hundreds of people… thousands if you counted the Milari and the Trovi, all up and down the canyon… had come out of lung-rot and code-madness along with his mother.  For a moment he spared a thought to Nadian and added a habitual curse for what he’d nearly done to thousands of people.

Now he was learning to be a warrior in code… and help teach warbirds to fly.  He shook his head.  A courier from downriver zoomed along just above the water, zig-zagging back and forth to skim the rock.  The warbirds spotted him right around the same time and swarmed off to chase.

Kyrus untucked his veil from its flying clip, shook out the dirt caked in the folds, grinning as he heard his friend Ishi yelling at the flying flock. “No chase!  No chase!  Bad birds!”  Even as he evaded their exuberant brush-bys.  “No setting me on fire, bad birds!  You want ‘no stick’? Get away!”

That was enough of a threat to send them back off to their original game.  They’d play until they were drooping tired.

Ishi came up to Kyrus’s level and over the rushing roar of his stick yelled.  “Message for you Ky!  Your da says… “Go meet the Hippifrei… I quote Be a polite Siwion, I quote.  Take the new wrist stone and an escort!”

“Thanks Ish!  I’ll leave tonight!”

Ishi swooped away to deliver other private messages that could not be made private enough, on the Lin.

The Hippifrei are here already?  They must have nearly killed their horses.  Hm.  I’ll take warbirds but I’ll have to get them to stay back to not spook the beasts.  It wouldn’t be polite to do that. He got up and headed into his room to change into a clean set of flying veils.