Leximandra Reports, and other tales (5 page)

‘
Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘He still thinks he’s an
orboe.’

Ynara dropped
into a chair with a sigh. ‘He’d need to be at least that size to
take on a drauk and win. But he keeps trying.’

Aysun grunted
his disapproval. ‘Wild beast needs to learn manners. And
sense.’

‘
He’s
all right, Pa,’ said Llandry, hugging Sigwide close. ‘He’s never
seriously injured himself.’

‘
Only
other people,’ Aysun replied, casting a meaningful look at Ynara’s
bleeding arms.

Llandry winced.
‘Sorry, Ma.’

Ynara shrugged.
‘They’ll heal. My poor Egora will not, however.’

‘
Not
only stupid, but wholly ineffectual as a guard as well,’ Aysun
commented. At Llandry’s reproachful look, he softened the sting of
his comment by reaching over and tickling the orting’s
belly.

‘
Your
alarm device was wholly ineffectual, too,’ Ynara
retorted.

‘
Ah... it didn’t go off again?’

‘
It
did, but far too late. By the time I reached the ground, the drauk
already had Egora cornered. I couldn’t have rescued her without
getting sliced up by the thing myself.’

‘
It’s
meant to scare the thing away,’ Aysun muttered, his blond brows
drawn together. ‘I’ll work on it.’

‘
No.
That’s enough. I can’t watch any more of my poor birds get
butchered by the drauk population of Glinnery. As long as we live
so close to the woods, it’ll always be a problem.’

‘
You
sure, Ma? If Pa built a cage, they’d be safe.’

‘
And
imprisoned. That’s no solution, love.’ Llandry’s face - so like her
own, with her grey eyes, honey-coloured skin and dark black hair -
was anxious and sad as she looked at her mother. She was a worrier,
that girl, and seemed to feel every little hurt of her mother’s ten
times over.

Ynara smiled
reassuringly and squeezed Llandry’s hand. ‘It’s all right, love.
I’ll miss the birds, but we can go back to getting our eggs from
the market.’

Llandry nodded
dubiously. She looked at her father. ‘I’m sure we could come up
with something better. Right, Pa?’

Aysun looked
straight at Ynara and grinned. It was one of those boyish grins,
full of mischief and fun; it looked no less natural on his tanned
and lined face than it had twenty years ago when they were both
young.

It was the sort
of grin that gave her mixed feelings. Anticipation, because it
usually meant he was about to do something fiendishly clever and
amusing. And trepidation, because sometimes his fiendishly clever
plans went horribly awry.

‘
Don’t get carried away,’ she said warningly. But the
remarkably similar expressions on her husband and daughter’s faces
told her the warning was futile.

***

A week later,
Llandry sat in the tiny workshop she’d built in her own home, a few
minutes’ flight from her mother’s house. Sigwide was asleep in his
basket, for which she felt guiltily thankful. He could be
tremendously disruptive when she was trying to work, but she always
found it difficult to turn the loyal little beast away.

In her hands was
a tiny round piece of black jet, matching several others that lay
on her work bench. She had worked them into perfect spheres and
polished them to a high shine. They now lay glinting darkly in the
golden afternoon sunlight that streamed through her big
windows.

‘
A
pile of eyes,’ she murmured to herself as her slender fingers
worked away at the last stone. ‘How macabre.’

Sigwide stirred
in his basket and chirped something. She often wished she could
understand what he was saying; he so frequently sounded
conversational. He’d learned some of her words: he responded with
extreme excitement whenever anybody mentioned “food”, “nuts” or
“fruit”. The fact that she couldn’t decipher even a single phrase
of his made her feel dense.

She added the
final piece of jet to the pile and inspected it with some
satisfaction. She loved her work as a jeweller, but never more so
than when she was crafting something for her mother. The claws and
beaks were finished as well, worked in vividly red firestone. She’d
carved each one with precision, making them as lifelike as
possible. Now it was time to deliver them to her father.

She packed
everything carefully into her belt pouch, then slung Sigwide’s
carry pack across her shoulders. Once a grumbling Sigwide was
safely tucked into the travel bag, she stepped out onto the wide
ledge before her front door and unfurled her wings. Hers were pale
grey, a hue she secretly found insipid next to her mother’s
glorious dark blue.

But then, that
was essentially true of every feature. Ynara glowed with health and
beauty; Llandry only managed a faint sparkle once in a while, on
her best days. The contrast regularly mortified her, but she was
far too attached to her mother to mind.

Well. She didn’t
mind
that
much.

She adopted a
lazy pace, her wings beating powerfully but slowly as she soared
over the clustered glissenwol caps of the city of Waeverleyne. She
always flew high, enjoying the strong currents of air in the open
skies. And the view was spectacular. The realm of Glinnery was
always well-lit: when the sun set, the sorcerers drew a cloak of
soft, artificial light over the realm’s woods and towns, feeding
the needs of the light-hungry plants, beasts and machines that
their society required. Waeverleyne, Glinnery’s capital city,
reflected the perpetual light from its hundreds of bejewelled
buildings, its narrow rivers and its pools of still, clear water,
shining brilliantly even in the softer eventide hours. She made the
journey slowly, taking in the view.

Her parents
lived on the outskirts of the city, almost on the edge. The
glissenwol wilds loomed in a colourful mass a half-mile or so to
the east of their particularly tall tree. It had been a perfect
place to grow up, for they had all the conveniences of the city
within reach, and all the advantages of untamed nature a short
flight away.

There were also
downsides, of course, including regular visits from the vicious
drauks that decimated Ynara’s poultry. Well. If she couldn’t have
egg-laying birds, she could have an equally attractive substitute
for her pretty red-winged birds.

Her father was
at work in the rear garden when she arrived.

‘
Is
Mamma home?’ she asked as she landed lightly beside him.

‘
She’s out,’ Aysun replied. ‘Council meeting.’

Llandry nodded.
Ynara was an elected Elder of the realm of Glinnery, so she was
frequently absent. That was convenient today.

She nodded and
loosed Sigwide. ‘I finished the eyes.’

‘
Great. There are three ready to fit.’ He waved a brown hand
at a short row of small metal constructs, each one exactly as high
as an average bokren bird. The machines had legs, wings and heads
attached to their rounded bodies; all that remained were the
details she’d created. She grinned her appreciation as she examined
the metal birds. Her father was as much artist as engineer; these
fabricated poultry were minutely detailed and, in their own way,
quite beautiful.

‘
Do
they work?’ Llandry took up a cross-legged position next to her
father and unpacked her bags of gems and tools. She began fitting
eyes, claws and wing-tips to the first bird as her father worked at
the manufacture of another.

‘
Yep,’ he answered. ‘See this?’ He pointed to a thin strip of
dark panelling that ran down the back of the bird she held. ‘Just
needs a bit more light.’

‘
You’re amazing, Pa.’ He flashed her a quick grin by way of an
answer, still intent on fitting a wing onto the fourth metal bokren
bird. She focused on her own task, and for a time they worked in
silence. At last, when the sun was near to setting and the eventide
hours of the Day Cloak were drawing in, the birds were ready. A row
of six of them stood at Llandry’s left hand, all glittering with
the coloured gems she had set into the metal.

‘
Should be ready,’ Aysun said, getting to his feet. He walked
up and down for a few moments, wincing. Llandry understood his
discomfort as soon as she stood up; the hours of motionless
activity had stolen most of the blood from her legs, and they
prickled painfully as she moved.

Her father
crouched down behind the row of bokrens and nudged one of them with
his hand. It jerked forward, its wings flapping as its legs moved.
Llandry could hear the whir of tiny gears inside the bird,
maintaining the flow of movement. Soon all six were rattling around
the garden, walking jerkily but steadily in circles. Llandry jumped
as one of them opened its jewelled beak and emitted a
squawk.

‘
Reckon that’ll do nicely, don’t you?’ Aysun folded his arms,
observing his creations with a pleased expression.

‘
Reckon so,’ Llandry agreed. ‘Just one last thing.’ She dashed
away to the old bokren pen and grabbed a few of the real birds’
nests. They even had a few feathers still clinging to the woven
straw. She laid the nests around the garden, placing a few
dark-shelled bokren eggs in each one.

‘
Perfect,’ she beamed.

‘
Think she’ll like them?’

Llandry
considered that. ‘She’ll either love them or hate them,’ she
decided. Her father just nodded glumly.

‘
I’ll
wait upstairs.’ He wandered off to the stairs and began to climb
them slowly. Aysun was from the adjacent realm of Irbel, and lacked
the wings that Llandry and her mother both bore. Llandry sometimes
wondered if he felt like an outsider in Waeverleyne; few wingless
humans lived there for more than a few moons at a time. But he’d
never seemed dissatisfied to her.

She stooped to
grab Sigwide before he could get his teeth around the leg of a
downed metal bokren. ‘I’ll be up in a minute,’ she
called.

***

Ynara arrived
home with an aching head and an aching back. Too many hours spent
sitting in a hard chair in the councillor’s halls was never good
for her. She went straight up to her bedchamber to brush and
rearrange her hair and wash her face. Feeling revived, she
descended the stairs on her way to the kitchen.

Her husband and
daughter were waiting for her at the bottom.

‘
What? Is something wrong?’ She felt a flicker of anxiety
under their scrutiny.

‘
Nope,’ said Aysun.

‘
Did
you pass through the garden on your way up, Ma?’

‘
No,’
she said slowly, looking from one to the other. Where they were
expressionless before, now they were looking very pleased with
themselves. ‘What have you two been up to?’

‘
You
really need to come and see this,’ Llandry replied. The two of them
turned as one and went to the door. She followed them down the
exterior stairs, feeling that mixture of anticipation and
trepidation once again.

A scene of chaos
awaited her in the garden. Half a dozen metal birds flapped and
squawked their way around the flowerbeds, their wings shining a far
brighter red than any real feathers. They were bokren birds,
perfect to every detail; the very jerkiness of their mechanised
gait mimicked the graceless movements of the real birds eerily
well.

She took in the
nests filled with eggs that were scattered about, her lips
twitching into a smile.

‘
Good
grief,’ she managed faintly. ‘You two are just... just... there
aren’t words.’

‘
That’s not all,’ Llandry said. She pointed at one of the
blue-leaved glaeshur bushes that Ynara had planted around the base
of the stairs. Sigwide crouched beside it, watching the bokren
birds with avid interest. Then he exploded into action, yipping in
excitement as he charged at the nearest bird. He nudged the thing
with nose and paws until it changed direction and fell into step
with an adjacent bird. This step he repeated until all six birds
were marching off to the west, the dying sun’s bronze glow
flickering like firelight on their polished metal wings.

The absurd
orting paused for some moments to watch his handiwork. Then he
raced around to intercept the ragged row of bokren constructs and
began turning them to go back the other way.

Ynara began to
laugh. The sight of those ridiculous robotic bokren birds all
walking in a line; Sigwide’s herding game; the identical looks of
smug merriment on the faces of her husband and daughter; all of it
set her laughing until she could hardly breathe.

‘
All
right,’ she gasped at last. ‘That might be a truly resplendent
waste of time and resources, but I’ll admit it’s one of the best
things I’ve seen in a long time.’

Aysun and
Llandry were laughing too. ‘No wonder he’s so bad at guarding,’
Llandry said breathlessly. ‘He’s a herder by nature.’

‘
Crap
at that too, though,’ Aysun said. ‘Watched him try it with the real
ones. Not one of them would take him seriously.’

Ynara chuckled,
and picked up the orting as he raced past her feet again. She held
him in the air, his fur soft under her fingers.