by K Vale Nagle
Triddle and four copper hawk gryphons made their way into the flameworks. He’d interacted with the members of Hatzel’s pride from time to time but never could tell them apart. Most of the ones who weren’t magpie-plumed liked Xavi resembled the ones with him now, a nondescript brown with a slight build that presumably made hunting easier but made it impossible for Triddle to distinguish them from each other.
He’d only learned how to identify Zeph because of the way Zeph held himself. His plumage wasn’t flashy, but he was always interacting with Hatzel, and Hatz was easy to spot. Once Triddle knew to look for her giant, saberbeak form, he could always locate Zeph hovering nearby.
With these four, Triddle could only identify them based on the colors of the pads on their paws. One had all black, one had grey, one had a mix, and his favorite had a single back foot with pink pads while her other feet used black pads.
They landed at the edge of the flameworks, and it was only once they were on the ground that he found the failure in his cataloging system. With all their feet on the ground, he couldn’t tell Pink Paw from the others. Depending on how things went tonight, he may need to work out a better system for identifying Hatzel’s pride. He and Askel had decided that it would be better to eat parrots with Hatzel’s pride than to get stuck in an evacuation camp in Strix’s territory if the weald fire got out of control.
Triddle, Pink Paw, and the other three gryphons padded around a field that smelled of manure and saltpeter and crept to the flameworks’ entrance. It was the first building Triddle had ever seen composed of stone instead of treated redwood, and he loved it on that merit alone. He and Askel used to sneak up to the water mill to see how the opinici got the water all the way into the sky. The waterworks used treated redwood and thick bamboo to move the liquid. The flameworks, by contrast, was designed to limit accidental flammability. Unfortunately for them, Triddle thought, it had not been designed to prevent someone from coming in and trying to blow it up. Askel is going to be so jealous that I got to blow something up.
There weren’t any guards. The stone entrance slid open without a squeak. No alarms sounded. No oversized ground parrots had been specially trained to defend against attackers—Askel’s pet theory for how eyrie buildings were defended at night. Triddle had devoted exactly one pouch to parrot treats just in case. Neither of them had managed to train a ground parrot to do, well, much of anything, but both were inspired by stories of peafowl being trained to kill cobras. Now it looked like he’d brought the parrot treats with him for nothing.
A brazier hanging from the ceiling lit the entryway. Whatever they were using to light it wasn’t the usual oil. It produced almost no smoke. The wall had a black outline of an opinicus with a plaque that read: Felicio the Phoenix is remembered for his contributions to the wellbeing of the eyrie. Miner, pioneer, inventor, father. He lived as he died, consumed by flame. -Bario
The four gryphons with Triddle couldn’t read, so he read it to them and explained what a blast shadow was. They looked askance at the wall.
Past the entryway, the flameworks was divided into two sections by a thick wall. Taken together, they were around the same size as a nesting ground. The larger half to the left contained storage and packing. It was full of crates of saltpeter. The far side was open to the fields where it looked like they were trying to create saltpeter by leaching water through a mixture. He’d listened to Askel interrogate Kia on the flameworks and saltpeter on the way over.
As best Triddle understood it, Felicio had been in charge of the early mining attempts, and they’d come across a mine of saltpeter while looking for copper. When the known section of the mine was around halfway played out, an incident caused an explosion that closed off the mine and created the blast shadow in the entryway.
Bario had been more interested in creating saltpeter by other means, but as long as the mine was not yet played out, there was no money for research into alternative methods. While the loss of his father was tragic, it provided him with the funding and resources he needed. What he did in the flameworks was seen by the common opinicus as more witchcraft than science, but the addition of the braziers to the city had been a boon to industry and nightlife. If the scent-free, smoke-free brazier by his father’s shade was any indication, Bario had continued to iterate on the design.
Triddle took off his harness and detached the saltpeter he’d brought with him, still wrapped like parrot meat. He stuck a claw into the top and showed the gryphons how to create a trail of saltpeter from the warehouse through the entryway to the outside. While they got to work, he went to look inside the right door. He mostly trusted the explosion to take out both sides—just look at what several crates had done by Hatzel’s nesting grounds—but it didn’t hurt to be safe. And, if he were honest with himself, he really wanted to know what Bario’s laboratory looked like. Askel would have so many questions about it.
Unlike the entryway door, this one was thick and emitted a metallic squeal when Triddle pushed it to the side. The lab looked like it’d been designed to keep any explosions contained. The wisdom of building a flameworks that was both laboratory and storage was dubious at best, but if the door hadn’t been effective at keeping explosions isolated on the laboratory side, Triddle wouldn’t need to be here blowing it all up. The laboratory was full of strange mechanisms and pots of different powders. There were metal gizmos of every shape and size. He wished Askel was here to see it with him. Triddle had never seen so much metal before in one place. It remained too precious to be traded outside of the eyrie. The few pieces he’d acquired had been scavenged from harnesses in the eyrie trash heap.
The door rolled shut behind him, probably a safety precaution, and he looked around for a brazier to light. His eyes adjusted a little, and he saw one across the room. He reached for his—well, Cherine’s—flint and tinder, but they were in his harness in the entryway. He heard the sound of someone else striking the flame.
“Hello? Is someone there?” asked a sleepy, trilling voice.
While Strix had said he would wait on the eastern side of the eyrie for the explosion, that had been a lie. An explosion after sun-up? Who wanted to kill people in the light? No, that simply would not do. Not when he already knew the eyrie so well.
When the other pride leaders had chirped and chuffed about how no opinicus rangers could have snuck through their hunting grounds, he’d laughed to himself. He’d been sneaking through their hunting grounds for years. Though, at night, weren’t they really his hunting grounds?
He’d hunted all manner of game over the years. If a species flew or walked and lived in the weald, he’d stalked and probably eaten it. Some of it was his devotion to excellence. Hunting different game taught him to be a better hunter of all game. Some of it was a hunger within that only became satiated by novelty. He could only match wits against a type of animal so many times before it became boring. The rush of the first kill halved with each subsequent.
He believed this was a problem most gryphons faced. Their intellectual curiosity required constant maintenance. He’d seen it in gryphlets. They’d hunt small lizards and squirrels around the nesting grounds until there were none left. Then the gryphlets would hunt each other. All play, of course. Strix even organized games several times a year that allowed for gryphons to hunt other gryphons for prestige and recognition. It helped focus their minds.
Old gryphons that became too weak to hunt or play went mad with boredom. He’d have gone mad long, long ago if restricted to his own plateau. So, he ranged across the weald until it, too, made him bored. Then he’d ranged into the eyrie’s hunting grounds to kill turkeys, the northern mountains to hunt feral goliath birds, the kjarr to dismember sailfins, and finally circled back.
Yes, he’d eaten the strange, fuzzy herd beasts on the grasslands. He’d grown fond of the taste.
Then he’d infiltrated the eyrie itself. First, he came in through the forgotten ground-level gates and looked around. Owl opinicus and gryphon front legs were both so shaggy that he wasn’t worrie
d about being identified from a distance. He’d never been teased about his lack of ears, but it pleased him that they helped hide him in the eyrie.
He’d stolen a harness that looked official and worn it inside the city. The upper levels were lit by braziers, but the underbough was not. It was a dark place, and no one saw him. He’d seen the wingtorn, their hostage gryphlets. He knew about the waterworks that held Triddle’s attention so. He’d smelled the awful saltpeter operations at the flameworks. He just hadn’t felt like he needed to share that knowledge with the other prides. They’d want to know what he was doing in the eyrie, which was none of their business.
More than the plateau, more than the weald, the eyrie had become his hunting grounds. Opinici came in all shapes, sizes, and combinations. Thus far, no two had been quite the same. He’d not eaten them, of course. Well, he may have tried a little. Capybaras had ruined him on other game. This hunting was just to assuage the hunger in his mind. But he was running out of combinations in the lower levels. He’d managed a Reeve’s Guard and a ranger, but he wanted a reeve. He’d overheard the wingtorn talking about how an opinicus had killed the reeve of the Crackling Sea Eyrie, and the idea had stuck in his mind like a parasite.
The soft calls he made were imperceptible to all but the most sensitive of ears. The reciprocating sound he received back was calming, like the absence of other noise. He counted to three, then slipped through the opening in the Reeve’s Guard Headquarters’ roof with six of his pride. There were no sounds. Strix and five shapes slipped back out of the roof and disappeared into the city in all directions. Strix made his ascent alone towards Reeve’s Nest.
Several minutes later, a Reeve’s Guard came back from patrol. Possibly from having been admonished for using the roof entrance several times, he came in through the door. His mind only had the barest amount of time to register the carnage inside before the seventh gryphon, left behind, took care of him. There was a thud and the sound of the owl-gryphon dragging the body to the others, then the quiet scraping as she closed the door and waited for the next Reeve’s Guard to return from duty.
Ninox, Strix’s daughter, licked the blood off her paw. Too salty, she thought. It was her first time for opinicus. Already, she missed the taste of the capybaras they’d stolen from the grasslands.
Triddle stepped behind a stone bench to hide his forepaws.
“Hello, who’s there?” Bario called.
“Hello! My name is Askel,” it was the only name that wasn’t Triddle’s that he could think of on short notice. “The reeve sent me. I was told you had a report concerning the explosion last night?”
There was a small makeshift nest in the corner. Bario probably had quarters in the eyrie proper but preferred to stay here when he worked late.
“What? Oh, yeah. I wrote down a few notes. I, er, didn’t know the reeve would be wanting to read them. A ranger was here earlier. Are you part of the rangers?”
“University scholar, assigned to help the reeve temporarily.” Triddle did his best opinicus accent, the one he used when explaining things to Askel.
“Oh, okay. Hmm. It was an interesting explosion. Most likely the crate itself was lit while the oil was still packed in its protective jar. The concussive blast is fascinating. It had the effect of actually limiting the spread of the flames. Explosives to stop fires! Can you imagine?”
Triddle could absolutely imagine. He’d heard Askel suggesting such things for years now. This was all Askel tended to imagine. Triddle decided he liked Bario despite the rumors regarding his father’s demise.
Bario finished wrapping a scroll of vellum with his findings and handed it to Triddle.
Triddle reached out with his paw to take it.
They both looked down at their paw and talons holding the vellum, and then Triddle headbutted Bario as hard as he could.
The opinicus fell, unconscious. The gryphon still stood but now had a headache. He reached up to smooth down his crest feathers. Askel had always said that their heads were their greatest hunting assets.
Triddle propped the door open with the stone bench and shouted, “Pink Paw.” Evidently, this was something she’d been called in the past, for she showed up with an unhappy expression on her face. Still, she helped him drag Bario out of the workshop while the other gryphons finished spreading the saltpeter around. They returned but seemed reluctant to bring Bario along. Triddle couldn’t bring himself to let the opinicus stay here and burn.
While the Hatzel pride gryphons worked together to fly the unconscious opinicus to safety, Triddle retrieved his harness. Askel had worked out a system of dry vines he thought could serve to delay the explosion and sent them with Triddle. As he placed them down, he recalled seeing something similar from the workshop. He side-stepped the bench and looked around. There were many metal talon models, some of which allowed a kind of poison sac to be secured to them. There were fuses. There were all sorts of goodies. He grabbed as many odds and ends as he could stuff in his harness and the longest fuse he could find, then went back to the entryway. He had no way of knowing how effective this new saltpeter was, but he wanted enough time to fly as far as he could from the blast. He struck the flint and tinder fungus using his beak and paw and as soon as it caught, he flew out of the flameworks and made a break for the hills.
The blast shadow of Felicio overlooked the burning fuse as it crept from the entryway, down the hall, and into the saltpeter storage facility.
Orlea, their opinicus poacher guide, led Hatzel and her gryphons—with Kia and Zeph bringing up the rear—as they crept through the underbough of the Redwood Valley Eyrie towards the hatchery where they hoped to find Satra. They wanted to be in position when the blast hit so they could evacuate the gryphlets in the confusion.
Hatzel found the undergrowth to be disgusting. It was a combination of opinicus waste, vines, decay, and bugs. She hoped the flameworks explosion would remain contained and the eyrie wouldn’t burn, but these bottom levels were in desperate need of a purging fire.
Knowing Triddle would likely get distracted in the flameworks looking for shiny prizes to bring home to Askel, Hatzel motioned to Orlea and the others to stop and help her scrape away at some of the vegetation. Hatzel inspected one of the redwoods that formed the pillars of the eyrie and found rot both in the tree and in the iron vines that reinforced it. Given enough time, she thought, the eyrie would come down under its own weight. It was unfortunate they couldn’t afford to wait that long.
When they reached the hatchery, they didn’t find Satra. Instead, they found Merin and his pridemates waiting for them.
“Take the scenic route?” Merin quipped. “We have a problem.”
There weren’t thirty gryphlets, as Kia had found, but nearly a hundred. Merin’s pride had come in from a different direction and found two more hatcheries.
Merin had twenty gryphons with him, eighteen of whom were wearing special harnesses designed to carry gryphlets. Kia confirmed this was where she’d met with Satra. There were racks along the wall, suggesting she’d had the harnesses made here at the eyrie for this exact contingency.
Hatzel had another twenty gryphons with her, but she could tell it wouldn’t be enough. A few of the kjarr gryphlets were no longer gryphlets. They were now fledglings, young adults who could fly. They wore harnesses with pink fish on them like they were Crackling Sea opinici. To their credit, they hadn’t raised an alarm. Satra must have prepared them for the possibility of escape. Still, it didn’t help with their problem. Even if every weald gryphon on the rescue team carried a gryphlet, they’d need twice their number to evacuate the hatchery.
“Where’s Satra?” Hatzel asked. She’d meant to ask Merin, but one of the new adults spoke.
“The reeve wanted her close until they heard from the shore,” the kjarr fledgling said.
“We can’t do this without bringing her along,” Hatzel said. “If we bring them and not her, the wingtorn may think we’re kidnapping their offspring.”
“We can’
t search the entire eyrie for her,” Merin countered, but his mind seemed to be catching up to Hatzel’s. There were too many gryphlets for the few wingtorn who had been stationed here.
Most gryphons didn’t lay an egg every season. If each pair of parents that had a gryphlet had become wingtorn, that was still two hundred gryphons. Counting the old, infertile, newly fledged, and adult gryphons who may not have chosen to have gryphlets, the number of potential wingtorn grew.
There could be as many kjarr gryphons as all the weald prides combined. However many wingtorn had been housed here at the Redwood Valley, there could be hundreds more enslaved at the Crackling Sea Eyrie. If Hatzel’s gambit left even a quarter of the gryphlets behind, they could have made enemies of hundreds of wingtorn parents. They had no way of knowing right now.
Hatzel frowned. Had Satra withheld the accurate number because she thought no one would try to rescue a hundred gryphlets? It was too late to back out.
“Jonas will be with the reeve or in his quarters,” the other kjarr fledgling said. “If you need Satra, and it’s true that she knew you were coming, you only have to go where Jonas is, and she’ll come to you.”
Merin and Hatzel looked at each other.
“Why is that?” Merin asked.
The two kjarr fledglings looked at one another. They still seemed unsure of their rescuers. One shrugged, and the other spoke.
“Jonas did not cut the wings off the gryphons himself, but he was the one who developed the method for cutting the wings and keeping the gryphon alive. He was the reeve’s consort. He wielded massive power before the eyrie’s fall.”
“Okay, new plan. I’ll go investigate Reeve’s Nest and see if Satra is inside. You find this Jonas and wait there,” Hatzel said. To her surprise, Merin agreed without argument. He ordered the eighteen gryphons with harnesses to fly their gryphlets to safety. That left Hatzel with eighty gryphlets to worry about.
