City of Death Read online

  It was silent within the Nest as Kles told the Keeper and his clan elders of their pursuit and how Badik led them to Roland.

  “Roland is a rich and powerful man,” the Keeper noted. “You do not pick simple enemies.”

  “The goddess Nanaia helps us in our quest,” Kles said and nodded to Scirye, who pulled off her glove self-consciously and showed the mark glowing on her hand. The Keeper studied her palm as the elders rustled and murmured again to one another.

  The lap griffin briefly told the gathering about their quest and when he was done, Elder Kacar said skeptically, “It’s hard to believe a dragon could do all that, let alone human hatchlings and … and … a lap griffin.”

  Laughter from the other war griffins mixed with the protests from other lap griffins at that comment. The Keeper struck resonant notes from her branch until they grew quiet.

  “Elder Kacar,” the Keeper snapped. “I wouldn’t want to think you were saying that war is more important than any other task.” She indicated a beautiful golden disc of a scene of Nanaia riding upon her lion. Chips of lapis lazuli created a blue sky. “This was given to a courtier of our clan who negotiated the Treaty of Peking, saving many lives.”

  Kacar lowered his head stiffly. “Yes, Keeper.”

  “And he did it with no army backing him, only his eloquence and logic—but both of those were considerable,” the Keeper went on. “I think that took considerable courage, don’t you?”

  Kacar bobbed his head again. “Yes, Keeper.”

  The Keeper turned her gaze back to Bayang and her friends. “And so you claim Roland is trying to reassemble Yi’s magical bow?” the Keeper demanded.

  “Alas, we were unable to keep him from acquiring the bow and the ring,” Kles said. “What he needs is the arrows.”

  “Which are somewhere in the City of Death,” Scirye finished. “We have to find them before he does. We were on our way there when the lord of thunder ambushed us. Roland had hired him to keep an eye out for us.”

  Bayang cleared her throat. “I also think Roland might have hired the lyaks to keep us occupied while he searched for the arrows.”

  The Nest burst into noise once more as every griffin began speaking until the Keeper silenced them with ringing blows to the branch. “My lord and lady elders, I suggest that I question our guests in detail before we discuss what to do about the lyaks. Captain Kaccap, if you’ll bring them to my chambers?”

  Then, spreading her wings, she spiraled gracefully upward and through a circular hole in the ceiling.

  13

  Scirye

  As soon as Scirye and the others mounted the griffins, the warriors rose into the air. Higher and higher they flew, past more trophies and honors, some so ancient that the banner cloths were disintegrating. Scirye felt as if she were rising through time itself.

  Kles flew beside her, head raised high, his fatigue gone as the elders of his clan watched him soar through the air.

  The hole in the ceiling was decorated with gold vines from which grew silver crescent moons, and they flew through it to a new level. Here the ceiling was only twelve feet high, and they flew down a corridor past offices and archives staffed with a mixture of human and griffin clerks.

  At the end of the corridor was a stone oval door decorated with panels of human kings and queens receiving gifts from griffins. They were posed stiffly but rendered realistically.

  “This door came from an ancient king of Babylonia,” Kles boasted to her.

  When Captain Kaccap knocked, a griffin servant answered. His beak was decorated with swirls of gold inlay. “Please come in,” he said with a bow before he flew away with a note in his paw.

  Kaccap and his patrol stayed outside while Scirye and her friends entered. The room was the first in the eyrie that she felt comfortable in. Plush, richly colored carpets covered the floor and the room itself was furnished with human chairs and divans as well as griffin perches. In a corner was an old-fashioned Victrola with a crank handle to power it and huge horn towering above it as a speaker. Scirye guessed that the Keeper entertained human visitors here.

  Glancing at her own filthy clothes, Scirye hesitated to sit on the elegant antique furniture.

  “Lady Scirye, please be at ease.” The Keeper bounded easily onto a perch about four feet off the floor. Immediately, a human maid brought her a small golden plate filled with preserved dates and bread flat as a disc. “Your father and I are old friends and I hope that we will be too.”

  On the other hand, Koko didn’t hesitate to make himself right at home, throwing himself onto a cushion-covered couch. “Yeah, this is more like the life I want.”

  The Keeper regarded the badger with amusement. “And from what jail did Lady Scirye recruit you, badger?” she asked in accented English.

  Koko defended himself. “I was in a perfectly respectable museum, getting culture.”

  The feathers around the Keeper’s eyes twitched in amusement. “Or picking out what to steal, but no matter,” she said, wagging a date at him. “Just make sure you leave with no more than when you arrived.”

  Koko rubbed his paws together as more human servants brought in trays of food and set them on tables. “I’ll settle for a square meal,” Koko said as he watched a servant begin to slice meat from a haunch of venison. “Don’t be chintzy now. Oh, heck. I’ll take the whole thing.” When the servant handed him the platter itself, the badger happily picked up the whole haunch and began to munch away.

  Another servant brought over a tray of small cakes in the shapes of rabbits, deer, boar, and other game.

  “My favorite,” Kles said in delight.

  “Yes, I remembered,” the Keeper said, pleased with his reaction.

  Though Koko had an entire venison haunch, he couldn’t resist setting it down and snatching one of the cakes greedily. “Hey, this is pretty tasty. What’s it called?”

  “Honey cake with freshly ground mealworms,” Kles said. “We’re quite famous for them.” As crumbs sprayed from the badger’s lips, the griffin went on. “The minerals in the eyrie’s water give the worms a unique nutty flavor.”

  The Keeper eyed the coughing badger and then turned back to Māka. “And I trust that you and your friend”—she inclined her head to the lynx, whose head was half-buried in the side of a roast pheasant—“will not be providing any more entertainment in our lands.”

  Māka lowered the pheasant drumstick in her hand. “You know about the banquet?”

  “I wouldn’t be the Keeper if I didn’t know everything that went on,” the griffin said.

  “There will be no more performing until I help Lady Scirye complete her quest,” Māka said. “I promise.”

  “Good.” The Keeper swung her gaze to Scirye and her large black eyes seemed to bore into the girl. “Yes, I see the resemblance to your father, but even at his wildest—did you know we were hatchlings together?—he never dressed up like an Arctic pirate.”

  Her father was always so serious that it was hard to believe he ever did anything crazy. “My father was wild?”

  The Keeper nibbled daintily on a date. “So he didn’t tell you how he saved my life once?”

  “How did he do that?” Scirye asked.

  “Have you ever heard of skimming?” the Keeper asked.

  “That’s when you fly over the rapids of a river as close to the surface as you can,” Kles explained. “But it’s forbidden.”

  “Yes, and I’ll punish any fool I catch doing that. But back then I thought it was some silly rule that old hens had made up. So he and I went skimming when the river was in full spring flood,” the Keeper chuckled. “I got a little too low, and right away I found out that I wasn’t as good a swimmer as I thought. Fortunately, your father swam like a fish and pulled me out.” She fixed her eyes on Kles. “None of which should ever be repeated.”

  “Consider it forgotten, my lady,” Kles said.

  The Keeper purred her satisfaction briefly and then asked Scirye, “And you’re pleased with Kl
es’s services?”

  “The eyrie trained him well,” Scirye said politely.

  “I think it’s more the princess’s doing than ours,” the Keeper laughed. Kles had originally served Princess Maimantstse before she had sent him to Scirye. “Kles was always a feisty little thing. But then he had to be. The others were always picking on him.”

  “You knew, Keeper?” Kles asked.

  “As I said, a good Keeper knows everything,” the Keeper said.

  “And you didn’t help him?” Scirye couldn’t help asking, indignant for her friend.

  Kles answered for her. “She couldn’t. At some point I was going to have to go where she couldn’t protect me. I had to learn how to do that for myself.” And he gave her a respectful bow. “And I thank you for that.”

  “There was no griffin more stubborn or determined than Kles,” the Keeper said with an approving nod. “He made himself into a wise and able diplomat who served the princess well.”

  “And as he does me now,” Scirye said, growing more comfortable with the Keeper. It was as if she had shed the regal manners and attitude with the signs of her office, and she was simply an old friend of her father’s, happy to be reminiscing with Scirye.

  The Keeper studied her claws. “I am not ashamed of the warrior’s path—we must all do what we were born to. But when I was young, I dreamed of seeing the wonders of the world. So my size and strength seemed like curses to me.” She nodded to Kles. “I envy you, Kles.”

  “Me?” the little lap griffin squeaked.

  The Keeper gestured to Scirye. “You not only have the great honor of serving the Lady Scirye, but you have traveled from one foreign capital to another. But I doubt that anyone dresses in a costume as eccentric as your lady’s.” The Keeper rested her beak upon a forepaw. “I suppose there is a reason?”

  So they told her more about their adventures, but Scirye noticed that the Keeper always addressed any questions to Kles. Scirye realized that the Keeper was doing more than satisfying her curiosity. She was also trying to restore Kles’s pride.

  When Kles was done, the Keeper dusted off her paws with a very humanlike gesture and motioned for the servant to take her plate of cakes and dates away. “So you think it’s Roland behind our troubles as well, do you? But the City of Death lies outside our lands.”

  “He probably doesn’t want you investigating if you hear any reports about activity there,” Bayang said.

  “So you’ll help us?” Scirye asked eagerly.

  “Roland’s planned well. I don’t dare leave the eyrie and the mines unprotected.” The Keeper laced her claws together. “And I have obligations to protect the town that houses our human servants too.”

  “Even a few griffins would help,” Scirye coaxed.

  At that moment, someone tapped at the doors. When a servant opened them, a brown lap griffin darted inside. He lighted on a small branch next to the Keeper. In his beak, he had a note.

  Taking the note, the Keeper began to read, gradually straightening with each new sentence. When she was done, she glanced at the servant. “Ask for confirmation,” she said gravely.

  The servant bowed. “We already did that, Keeper.”

  The Keeper crumpled up the note and threw it away from her as if it were polluted. “I’m sorry. I have been ordered to send you under guard to Bactra.”

  “Oh, dear,” Māka blurted out. “The guild only threw vegetables. What will they throw at court?”

  “Nothing we can make a stew out of. It’ll be daggers most likely,” Tute said. “So I hope all of you wore your iron underwear.”

  14

  Bayang

  Bayang reared up in anger and disgust. She was surrounded by treachery. The first griffin who tried to touch her or the hatchlings would be sorry.

  “I didn’t take anything,” Koko bawled. “Get me a lawyer.”

  “Yeah, we’re the good guys,” Leech said. “We’ve been chasing the thieves all around the world.”

  Scirye was sitting, frozen with disbelief, but it was Kles who had the presence of mind to spring from his chair and hover in front of the dragon and spread out his forelegs. “Don’t do anything rash, Bayang. The eyrie is not Prince Tarkhun’s caravansary.”

  Prince Tarkhun was a Sogdian prince they had rescued from an attack by Roland’s men in the Arctic. Worried about their safety, Prince Tarkhun had tried to hold them in protective custody when they wanted to follow Roland into the Arctic wastes. Bayang had demolished a door and assorted furniture during their escape.

  But Kles was right. This was not the same situation. For one thing, both of her wings had been healthy, so she could fly. For another, they had had a whole wilderness nearby in which they could hide. Here, they were in the home territory of griffins who trained for war. Even a company of seasoned dragon warriors might not be able to get free.

  Bayang sank back down, but she eyed the Keeper coldly. “Why have you arrested us? I thought we were your guests.”

  “They didn’t give a reason for the command. But I suspect you’ve become pawns of a court intrigue.” The Keeper rested her beak upon a forepaw and then swung her gaze thoughtfully toward Scirye. “Your father is an important member of the reform party at the court. The conservatives are probably trying to strike at him and his cause indirectly by accusing you and your friends of some crime.”

  “My father?” Scirye asked.

  “Yes, the Princess Maimantstse is the leader of the reformers and your father is her right hand,” the Keeper explained. “You didn’t know?”

  “I don’t get to see him much,” Scirye explained. “He stayed in Bactra while I went with my mother when she was posted to embassies in other countries. When he visited us, he never talked about those things to me.”

  “He didn’t want to trouble you,” Kles said.

  “I can accept that,” Scirye said accusingly, “but how come you never told me about his situation, Kles?”

  Kles shrugged apologetically. “I tried, but you always got bored whenever I tried to talk about current events. The only thing you wanted to hear about were the Pippalanta.” The Pippalanta were a famous band of female warriors whom the Europeans and Americans insisted on calling Amazons. Scirye had developed an interest in them when her own sister, Nishke, had joined them.

  Of all of them, Scirye seemed to be taking the arrest the hardest, but that was only to be expected. The girl lived her life by Tumarg, the code of honor by which Kushan warriors lived, and yet her father’s enemies had still managed to accuse her of as yet unspecified crimes. A blow to one’s faith was as bad as a blow to the head.

  “But this isn’t right,” Scirye grumbled. “It’s not—.”

  “Tumarg?” the Keeper supplied. “No, it isn’t, but the conservatives often twist that word for their own selfish reasons. Just as they often manipulate the laws to get what they want.”

  “I’m liking these characters less and less,” Koko declared.

  “I have no love for them either,” the Keeper said. “If they had their way, they would turn the clock back a thousand years. We griffins would not have the freedoms we have today.”

  Bayang had not survived this long without learning how to master her own fury. An emotional assassin was soon a dead one. “We have no choice,” she said to the others. “We have to go to Bactra or give the conservatives even more ammunition against Scirye’s father and his group.”

  “And do not underestimate the princess and Lord Tsirauñe,” the Keeper advised. “They will right this wrong as they have others. And I will tell the court as well that this is a miscarriage of justice. And my opinion carries not a little weight in Bactra. But you yourselves are the best ones to convince them.”

  “And while we’re telling the truth, Roland could be taking over the world,” Scirye objected.

  “Even if I could refuse my emperor, I cannot refuse my friend, your father,” the Keeper soothed her. “In addition to the imperial order was a request from Lady Scirye’s father that I
send her to him.”

  “Oh, just great,” Leech grumbled. Raised in an orphanage and then surviving in the streets of San Francisco, he’d never known his parents. Family obligations were just words to him.

  Bayang understood though. “He’s worried about Scirye, but it’s an awkward time for that.”

  The Keeper nodded. “Yes, it’s unfortunate. And now I am ashamed of what I have to do next.” She clapped her paws together, and griffin mages with sashes emblazoned with stars and crescents entered.

  Koko put a paw to his neck uneasily. “Nothing involved with chopping off heads, is it? I sort of like mine where it is.”

  “No, but I have been commanded to place wards on you, the dragon, and the magician,” the Keeper said. “That’s so the first two won’t be able to transform, and the other cannot work spells.”

  “Oh, dear,” Māka said.

  “It’s really a silly precaution,” Tute snapped, “unless you have hay fever.”

  Bayang suspected that the ward wasn’t necessary for Māka. All the Keeper really had to do was take away the fledgling’s pamphlet. As a griffin mage applied a paper charm to her side, she said, “Can’t you let Māka go? We only met her today so she couldn’t be involved in any of the charges against us.”

  “My orders command me to send everyone.” The Keeper spread her paws. “And after all, she is guilty of causing a riot in the town at least. But her only real crime is being inept. And I will tell the court that.”

  Māka swallowed, “Thank you, I think.”

  “Well, you know I’m as inept as they come,” Koko wheedled. “How about putting in a good word for me too?”

  “I think a muzzle would suit you better,” the Keeper warned.

  Koko waved a paw. “No, no, I don’t want to be a bother.”

  When Bayang and the others had all received charms, the Keeper descended from her perch with a graceful flutter of her wings. “Come Lady Scirye and Klestetstse, I will walk with you as far as the entrance to our eyrie.”

  There was such a great difference in size between the Keeper and human hatchling and even more between the elderly war griffin and the lap griffin that Bayang might have laughed if she didn’t know what a great honor this was. The Keeper was not only showing the eyrie how important her visitors were, but that she also disagreed with the order she’d been given.