Whatever the reason, Tiera likes us three, tolerates other women and dislikes the male half of the population, especially when they get too close to me.
I push the gryphon aside, and she allows it. As Mom says, she’s imprinted on me as her mother. When I shove, she squawks but moves, and I’m about to apologize to Dain when I see what he’s holding, and I gasp.
I hurry forward and take the bundle from him. It’s a hen-like bird with red and black feathers and a bright-red comb. One of Wilmot’s basans…limp and lifeless in my hands. I swallow hard as I turn to Wilmot.
“I am so sorry. I…” I examine the bird quickly. “I don’t feel any wounds…”
“It died of a heart attack,” Dain says. “Your blasted gryphon scared it to death.”
Tears fill my eyes. Basans are monster birds, and Wilmot was the first hunter to domesticate them. We’d brought the small flock from his cabin and set up a coop here, next to our chickens.
Dain and I had been in a monster-study lesson when Tiera got free. As soon as we’d heard the shouts, we went running to find her lunging at the coop, trying to get her beak through and grab a basan.
I step up to Wilmot, the dead basan in my arms. “I’m—”
“Yes,” he says, his tone abrupt. “You’re very sorry.”
The tears fall then, and he lays one hand on my shoulder, squeezing, as he says gruffly, “No one’s blaming you, child. I checked Tiera’s gate earlier. She fooled me, too, pretending she couldn’t fly. All we’re saying is that she’s growing up fast, and you won’t be able to keep her for as long as you’d hoped.”
“I know.”
He takes the basan from me. “This one was old. Her heart was already weak. If you want to make it up to me, keep watching those eggs and hope one hatches.”
I nod. “You’re right about the shackle. I don’t like the idea, but it’s better than confining her to the hay barn.”
Berinon promises to smith the shackle himself, out of the lightest but strongest material we have.
Mom and Berinon leave, and I’m about to say something to Wilmot when a figure rounds the barn and my whole body tenses. It’s Branwyne, Heward’s daughter, who is next in line for the throne if my mother is unseated.
Branwyne’s twenty, already old enough to be queen. I didn’t know her well growing up, but since Jannah’s death, Heward has brought his children from their own lands to live at their village house, so they can spend more time at the castle. He says he’s just preparing them in case of an emergency, but I feel like Malric when Jacko hops too close to his spot on the fire hearth.
Branwyne doesn’t even look at me. Her eighteen-year-old brother, Kethan, follows, and he acknowledges me with a strained smile and a nod. I suppose Kethan is the one who should raise my hackles—he’s next in line for my job—but he doesn’t. Sometimes he trains alongside Dain and me, taking advantage of Wilmot’s lessons. I never feel like he’s competing with me, though. His sister? That’s another matter. Even Tiera hisses at her.
“I hear that beast of hers got away,” Branwyne says to Wilmot.
“The princess’s beast, you mean,” he replies, his voice deceptively mild. “Since she’s standing right there, perhaps you should address her.”
Branwyne snorts. “If she’s not capable of restraining that creature, I’ll address someone who might be.”
“Branwyne…” Kethan says.
“You need to do something before it kills someone. It’s a gryphon. That’s what it does, as the queen should know better than anyone. The girl can’t handle the beast.”
Branwyne turns to Dain, who tenses. She waves at him. “Give it to him. At least he seems reasonably competent.”
Wilmot opens his mouth, but Branwyne is already marching away. Kethan leans in to whisper, “Ignore her,” before following his sister.
Dain glances at me, mutters something I don’t catch and stalks off in a different direction. Tiera butts my shoulder for a scratch, which I give her absently.
“Don’t take Kethan’s advice,” Wilmot says, his voice too low for anyone to overhear. “He means well, but the worst thing you can do is ignore his sister. Do not engage her unless necessary. Do not ignore her either. She will cause you trouble if you do.”
I start to respond, but he only clasps my shoulder and says, “Take your gryphon and go play. You could both use the exercise.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
A week later, I’m tending to the basan eggs. They were my special project even before the basan died. Now I’m extra diligent, determined to see at least one hatch.
Wilmot has one rooster and five hens. While he’s been raising them for years, the fertilized eggs never hatch. My theory is that captivity makes the hens less than attentive mothers. It’s not uncommon—some animals don’t reproduce well in menageries. So I’ve been collecting fertilized eggs and experimenting to reproduce a hen’s care. Heat is the main thing. The problem is getting the right consistent temperature.
I may actually have it this time. I’m crouched in front of the coal-heated box, and one of the eggs is rocking. Jacko perches on my shoulders, bent over by my head, his face nearly blocking my view as he watches the egg.
“We may be close,” I murmur.
Malric bends to sniff the box. With one eye on me, his giant jaws open and begin to close, ever so carefully, around an egg.
Jacko chitters and hisses at him.
“Not breakfast,” I say, shooing the warg back.
I hand him an unfertilized egg from the coop. He retreats to eat it. Malric has discovered a fondness for the red eggs. I don’t blame him. They’re twice the size of regular hen eggs…and twice as delicious.
I lift the moving egg. When I cup it in my hands, it knocks against my fingers and I smile.
Chikako appears and awkwardly flaps her wings to hop into the box, where she equally awkwardly lowers herself onto an egg, wrapping her tail around it. She has appointed herself foster mom and regularly sits on them, which doesn’t seem to do any harm.
“That chickcharney is going to be very pleased with herself if any hatch,” Wilmot says as he walks over from the coop.
“I think this one might.” I hand him the egg, and he wraps his hands around it.
The only time I’ve seen Wilmot smile was when he’d been suffering from his head injury and mistook me for my aunt. While he doesn’t smile now, his blue eyes lighten with satisfaction as he cradles the egg.
“There’s definitely something alive in there,” he says. “Something that wants to come out.”
I spot Dain, walking past and glancing our way.
“Come see,” I say. “This one seems close to hatching.”
“It won’t,” he says. “You’re wasting your time. Time better spent…” He touches the bow slung over his shoulder. “Training for your actual job. Hunting monsters. Not playing with them.”
“I’m not playing. I’m experimenting with breeding.”
“Looks like playing to me.” He walks on. “I’ll be in the courtyard training with the monster hunters who aren’t princesses.”
As I watch him go, I seethe, and Jacko chitters.
“Tiera has the right idea,” I mutter. “If he’s a jerk to me, I should be a jerk back. Better yet, drive him off like she does.”
“That’s one way to handle him,” Wilmot murmurs.
I give a start, and my cheeks heat. I’d forgotten he was there. “Sorry. He’s just…”
“Stubborn. Difficult. Argumentative.” Wilmot eases back on his haunches. “I have no idea where he gets that from.”
I want to smile at that, but I’m too angry. More than angry. I’m hurt.
“I don’t know what I’ve done,” I say. “He was like this when we first met, and then we became…” I flail, unable to say the word.
“Friends?”
&nbs
p; “Obviously not.”
Wilmot passes the egg back to me and I place it back down in the box. Chikako bobs over to settle her rump onto it.
“I should take the blame for his ill temper,” Wilmot says. “We share a similar disposition, therefore, I must have made him this way. Yet, at the risk of defending myself, Dain was like this when I met him. Worse, if anything. Sullen. Morose. Getting a word from him was like getting a bone from Malric.”
He reaches to rub the warg’s ears. The first time Wilmot did that, I’d jumped in, terrified he was about to lose his hand. Even I can’t pat Malric. But Wilmot was with Jannah when she found the warg pup, and he helped raise Malric. Sometimes I think the warg would rather be with him. I’ve tried suggesting it—giving Malric permission to stay in Wilmot’s cabin—but he just trudges after me, like I’m dragging him on a chain.
Jacko climbs down and curls up in my lap, making his odd purring sound, as if sensing my mood.
I glance at Wilmot. “About Dain…That’s not the story he tells. He says he begged to be your apprentice, and you wouldn’t have him. So he followed you home, begged again, and you sent him off.”
“Begged?” Wilmot makes a sharp sound that may be a laugh.
“Well, maybe he didn’t use that word, but it was certainly the impression I got.”
“Then his idea of begging was to stand in front of me and say, ‘I want to be your apprentice.’ And, when I refused, he stalked off without another word. I’ve been called prickly, but that boy is a porcupine.”
“I made progress before,” I say, petting Jacko.
“And you will again. You hesitate to call him a friend because he doesn’t always act like one. He doesn’t know how, Rowan. He went from indentured servitude to life with me in the forest. I don’t think he’s ever had anything remotely like a friend.”
“It would help if you let him speak to my mother about his servitude. Let her explain that she had nothing to do with it. I know she didn’t.”
“As do I.”
Frustration darts through me. “Then why allow Dain to believe it? He’s grown up hating my mother, and sometimes I feel like he blames me, too.”
“He doesn’t. He doesn’t even blame her. I’ve explained that if his parents owed taxes, it wasn’t to the queen.”
“Then whoever they did owe must be punished. Indentured servitude is illegal. His parents lost their farm through no fault of their own, and they were forced to sell him to save the family.”
“And if that’s not true?”
I glance sharply at him. “What?”
Wilmot looks around, and while there’s no one within earshot, he still lowers his voice. “That is the story Dain’s parents told him. What if I suggested that it isn’t true? That they weren’t poor farmers beset by troubles, forced to part with their beloved son.”
“I don’t understand.”
He studies my face and nods. “Of course you don’t. I remember when you and your brother were born. Your father was ready to burst with joy. Your mother’s happiness was always quieter, but she was just as excited. They were deeply in love with each other, and deeply in love with you and your brother before you were even born. Berinon built your cradles by hand. Jannah cured your blankets from monster hides, so many that I told her you’d smother under them…while I was secretly making some myself. That’s the family you know. Anything else? Any other experience?”
He shakes his head and meets my gaze. “There are other experiences, Rowan. Rationally you know that, yet you cannot quite comprehend one that is so far from your own. I might suggest you try to understand a life that isn’t filled with people who love you. A life where you only have one crotchety old hunter.”
I nod, still stroking Jacko as he purrs.
“Dain changed on your adventure, yes?” he says. “He lowered his porcupine quills.”
I nod again.
“And I’ll wager he lowers them when you two are alone, on hunts or training.”
“He does.”
“He respects your brother, but Rhydd still makes him nervous. He is Dain’s future king, after all. Alianor…he likes her well enough, but they have little in common besides your mutual friendship. You have your brother—a twin, no less—plus Alianor, your mother, Berinon, a castle full of people who’ve known you since birth. You also have…” He waves at Jacko, Malric and Chikako. “Now you even have a gryphon. He has me and a new friend with many others sharing her attention.”
“So I need to make more time for Dain?”
“No. In fact, I would suggest that is entirely the wrong thing to do. I know firsthand what happens when you demand the undivided attention of someone who cannot give it.”
His gaze slides to the box, and he leans over it, his expression hidden as he touches the eggs, each in turn. “I would strongly suggest that this is Dain’s problem to resolve. You’ve made room for him in your life. It’s his job to take that space…or decide he’s too proud to accept it.”
Wilmot lifts an egg and passes it to me. As he does, it gives a violent wobble.
“Oh!” I say. “Another one.” I run my hands over the shell, feeling the beast within moving. Then I glance at Wilmot. “I tried to get Dain to help with this project. I thought it was something we could do together, as monster hunters. He refused.”
“Probably because he’s been trying to hatch basans himself for two years, with no success.”
“What?” I look at Wilmot. “Why didn’t you tell me? I…”
“You wouldn’t have done it, for fear of showing him up?
That’s what you were about to say, wasn’t it? Then you realized it would be a lie.” His eyes brighten with amusement. “You wouldn’t abandon a project to avoid offending him. You just would have felt bad if you’d succeeded where he’d failed. Again, this is his problem to work out, Rowan. You have a gift that he and I both lack.”
He glances at Malric. “Do you know what I said when your aunt found this wee orphaned warg pup terrorizing chickens?”
I shake my head.
He scratches behind Malric’s ears. “I told her to put him down. That he’d never be anything but a wild beast who would surely turn on her. I told myself I had Jannah’s interests at heart. She was my best friend, and I didn’t want her hurt. The truth is that I was young, too young to put a proper name to what I was feeling.”
He looks at me. “It was jealousy. She had Courtois, who wouldn’t let me near him. She had a hoop snake, too, who’d followed her home when she rescued him from a snare. Neither wanted anything to do with me. After she rescued Malric, he nipped me hard enough to draw blood and I…”
Wilmot scratches his chin. “I was ready to march to Jannah and show her what he’d done, in hopes she’d return him to the mountains. Then I looked down at him, a ball of black fur no bigger than your jackalope, and I understood what I was really feeling. So I bandaged my finger, and I went to get him some meat from the kitchen, and I resolved to be kind to him instead.”
He pets Malric, and I try not to be envious myself, but he catches my look. “You think he doesn’t like you much, don’t you?”
“Dain or Malric?”
Wilmot’s lips twitch. “Both, I suppose. Malric, I meant.”
“He’s stuck with me, and he doesn’t want to be.”
“If you feel that way, perhaps he does, too.” Wilmot takes another egg from the box. “Malric is a grumpy old man, like me. He’s fond of you, in his way. Dain is, too, in his. Both are wary, watching to be sure of their welcome. With Dain, I know his recent foul mood upsets you. Don’t let it. Don’t tolerate it either. He must find his place in your life, and he must find his place here, in the castle, or he will always feel like an outsider. No one is making him feel that way except himself. Let him resolve it.”
The egg then gives a tremendous crack, and a tiny red beak pok
es through.
Wilmot hands me the egg. “Your first basan birth, great Royal Monster Hunter. Just try not to let this little one imprint on you.”
He winks, and we settle in to watch the basan peck its way into the world.
* * *
I’m not sure I really understand what Wilmot said about Dain. I do understand the part about Dain not having experience making friends. To an outsider, it probably looks as if I’m surrounded by friends of my own. While there are dozens of children living both inside the castle gates and in the village just beyond, they’re kept on the other side of an invisible wall. If they’re the children of castle staff, their parents erect that wall, making sure their sons and daughters don’t treat the royal children like equals. If they’re the children of courtiers, their parents push them toward us in hopes of alliances, and we must erect the wall. Behind it, there’s only my brother and me, a play circle of two.
Even with Alianor, I’m always aware that her father didn’t leave her here as an extended playdate. It’s fostering, where Alianor stays with us to learn court life and cement her new friendship with a very useful princess. It’s also a friendly hostage situation. Mom and Alianor’s father—Everard of Clan Bellamy—have come to a peaceful agreement, and keeping Alianor here ensures the bandit warlord will uphold his end of the deal and stop bandit-ing. So while Alianor might be a genuine friend, there’s an awkward element to it. Like Wilmot insisting that Malric likes me just fine—even if he does, he’s not with me by choice, and that makes things uncomfortable.
So I understand that friendship is new for Dain because it is for me, too. What I don’t understand is Wilmot’s advice to just leave Dain be and let him figure it out for himself. Isn’t friendship supposed to be about helping each other? Being supportive and understanding?
Wilmot’s right that if Dain’s in a mood, I can’t just stand there and be his whipping girl. But if the problem is that Dain’s more comfortable alone with me, then shouldn’t I try to make time for that?
What we need is an adventure for two. A chance to bond over the thing we have in common: monster hunting. I don’t mean luring him into another secret hunt either. This must be an actual queen-approved adventure. And the next day, the perfect opportunity lands in my lap.
The Gryphon's Lair Page 6
