The Guild of the Cowry Catchers, Book 1: Embers, Deluxe Illustrated Edition (10 page)

A street vendor’s cart had been left
standing, full of roasted fruits. Gerard saw some of the sailors
helping themselves and resisted the urge to discipline them. He
looked around at the shacks. The bone-gnawing sense of
want
was almost tangible.
Give them a future, and they would give us
anything.

On their right, the tents gave way to a
series of blocky stone and mortar buildings, heavily locked and
sometimes guarded by unfriendly looking grishnards and griffins.
Silveo stopped before a squat, smallish building with an
intimidating grishnard guard. He proceeded to have an argument with
the guard, most of which Gerard could not hear from his position in
the back, although his height allowed him to see most of what
happened.

Silveo was hard to miss. He had apparently
elected not to wear ocelot fur. Instead, he was dressed in a black
and white striped cape, pants, and boots which gave every
indication of having once been the pelt of one or more zeds. The
leather had been cunningly sewn so that the furless sections formed
a pattern between the furred pieces. Gerard had always been taught
that wearing the pelts of shelts, even fauns, was tasteless and
perverse. Silveo had completed the outfit with a white linen shirt,
heavily frilled at the sleeves and a red hat bristling with
feathers.

“He looks like he’s wearing half a pegasus on
his head,” Alsair had commented. “Is he trying to look taller?
Because it isn’t working.”

“I can’t unlock it,” Gerard heard the guard
say. “I don’t have a key. I only patrol for the owner.”

“Gerard!” Gerard turned to see Alsair
dropping into the street, panting with excitement. “Shelts are
fleeing out the back of the building! I think some of them are
shavier. Quick or you’ll miss them!”

Chapter 12. The Contents of a
Warehouse

The status of griffins in Wefrivain is
strange, considering they are the animal counterpart of the
supposed dominant species. Although they are treated with respect
and allowed to hunt other sentient species, such as pegasus and
even some shelts, griffins are not considered equal with
grishnards. Alone, they are not permitted to participate in
government, to own property, or to vote on those islands where
voting is part of the governmental system. As the partner of a
grishnard, they may influence all these things, but only indirectly
through their rider. They are treated much like underage grishnard
children. In fact, although they cannot be bought or sold, the
griffins of Wefrivain are essentially chattel.

—Gwain,
The Non-grishnards of
Wefrivain

Everyone heard Alsair’s excited shout, and
Silveo reacted immediately. “Hold this one!” he bellowed and shoved
the warehouse guard at two of his followers (or tried to; Silveo
was a bit small to be shoving grishnards). “Around back! Now!”

Gerard was already away, following Alsair,
who evidently thought that taking to the air would require too much
time. The griffin dashed along the wall of the building. Without
breaking stride, he leapt over a sunken road, spreading his wings a
little to clear the gap. Gerard jumped over it as well.
Silveo
will never clear it.
Gerard was sure that at least a few of the
other sailors could jump the gap. The rest would have to either
climb down into the sunken road and back up, or they would have to
find a way around it.
But there will be enough of us to
fight.

As it turned out, no fight was necessary.
Alsair slid to a stop, growling in front of the open backdoor.
“Wyvern piss! I should have followed them. Or attacked them.”

Gerard shook his head.
I should have
stayed with you.
“It’s not your fault. You moved as fast as you
could.”

He turned to the handful of sailors who’d
followed him over the road. “Spread out and search all the
surrounding buildings. Arrest anyone who’s running or out of
breath, anyone who hides from you. Look for shavier. Go!”

They wavered a moment, clearly uncertain of
his status.

“I am a captain!” barked Gerard, thankful
that no shelt above the rank of watch master was present. “That’s
an order!”

They went, then, running into the maze of
warehouses.

“What’s an order?” snarled Silveo, coming
around the corner. He had somehow negotiated the sunken road well
ahead of most of the grishnards.

“I sent them after the shelts who ran,” said
Gerard. Belatedly, he realized that he was confirming Silveo’s
paranoia of losing his command. “If you don’t want that, I’ll send
Alsair to call them back. They haven’t gone far.”

“In the future, bring your own shelts to
order,” snapped Silveo, but he did not attempt to call them back.
His tail was bristling, and he was openly toying with a throwing
knife.

Is that for me or the rebels?

Gerard turned away with an effort, drew his
sword, and started into the building. “At least we know they didn’t
have time to hide much.” The warehouse, however, did not seem to
contain much that needed hiding. Gerard had expected to find boxes
of swords or spears or knives. He had thought that perhaps they
would find coins or sweet leaf—an addictive drug grown in the
mountains of Sern and some of its holdings. He had thought they
might find medicine or food or other essential supplies of an
army.

Instead, they found grape presses, close to a
hundred of the smaller variety, which could be operated by one or
two shelts. Even Silveo would have a difficult time finding
anything treasonous about grape presses. They were exactly the sort
of thing one would expect to find in a warehouse on Sern.

A few crates were discovered against one
wall. When they were pried open, they turned out to contain a great
many small, randomly shaped bits of metal. “Scrap,” Silveo
pronounced it. He tossed one of the pieces across the room in
disgust. “Scrap of no great worth. This warehouse must have been a
meeting place. The shelts were the only things of value here.”
Nevertheless, he set half a dozen sailors to disassembling several
of the presses to make sure there was nothing hidden inside.

Gerard examined one of the machines minutely.
“These presses look a little strange to me,” he said at last. “Has
anyone here worked with them before?”

No one spoke. Gerard forced himself not to
look at Silveo.
If you really did grow up here in the kind of
conditions shelts claim, there’s a good chance you’ve used one of
these things or seen one used.
But if that were so, Silveo had
no intention of volunteering the information to Gerard.

Alsair was batting a piece of scrap metal
around the floor. “Holovar, please send your creature back to the
ship,” said Silveo. He was peering into the one of the grape
presses, not even looking at Alsair.

Gerard frowned. “He was helpful, sir.”

Silveo waved his glossy tail. “And now he’s
just making a mess. Please send him away before he wets on the
floor.”

Gerard heard Alsair’s outraged hiss and half
ran to get between the griffin and the admiral. Alsair was
bristling to his tail-tip, his eagle’s eyes dilated and murderous.
Silveo was talking to one of his captains now and didn’t appear to
be paying attention. Gerard caught a fistful of Alsair’s ruff and
pulled the griffin’s feathered ear close to his own mouth. “Don’t
you dare!” he whispered. “He is baiting you so that he can kill
you! Keep your temper, Alsair!”

Alsair’s throat was throbbing on a kettledrum
growl. He was still straining against Gerard’s hold on his ruff.
Gerard shook his head. “You’ve done everything you can here. Go
back to the ship.”

Alsair’s golden eyes shifted to Gerard’s
face. Gerard winced at the hurt and anger he saw there.
I can’t
defend you in this!
he wanted to say.
The only defense is to
swallow your pride and stay out of his way.

Abruptly, Alsair jerked free, leaving some of
his tawny feathers in Gerard’s fist. He gave a harsh scream that
echoed in the building and made everyone’s ears flip back against
their heads. Then he whirled and stalked from the warehouse.

Gerard watched him go, wondering for the
hundredth time whether he should have forced Alsair to stay on
Holovarus. He wasn’t sure that he could have done it, but he could
have tried.
It was selfish to bring him with me into
exile.

Alsair had been raised as the bond animal of
a crown prince. He had been groomed from cubhood to be the
companion of wealth and power. He could read—something almost
unheard of in beasts. He not only knew how to fight, but how to
compliment the fighting of a shelt. He could fly like a gull and
not throw his rider. He could speak four languages—most of them
better than Gerard—and he knew the correct etiquette for a griffin
in every great island of Wefrivain and a number of the smaller
ones. He was more than a friend. He was a weapon and a tool, and he
was being largely wasted in Gerard’s present situation. A year ago,
Alsair could have shredded the likes of Silveo for a wrong look,
and no one (except perhaps Gerard) would have done more than chide
him. Now he had to swallow insults without even a reply.
And all
because of my choices.

Gerard felt suddenly tired. He had been
planning to wait until the sailors he’d sent away returned from
searching the area for the fugitives, but now he changed his mind.
Silveo will do what he’s going to do, whether I’m here or
not.
Gerard left the party to their disassembling of grape
presses and started back towards the ship.

This time he found more activity in Ocelon
Town. Evidently one lone grishnard was not as intimidating as fifty
Sea Watch. Gerard was wearing civilian clothes (the Police did not
have an official uniform, a fact Gerard intended to remedy when he
got around to it). Most of the ocelons coming and going in the dirt
streets paid him no attention, although the children stopped their
games to peer shyly at him. Their facial markings were delightfully
varied—some having almost none and some with heavily lined eyes and
stripes on their foreheads and cheeks.
Silveo should have been
born an ocelon,
thought Gerard.
No need for all that
kohl.
On an impulse, Gerard stopped outside a tent with tables
where two ocelons were eating. He opened the flap and stepped
inside.

Chapter 13. Tea with
Flag

The grishnard written language is an ancient
and cumbersome pictographic text. Each word is a little picture
with no clues to pronunciation. It requires years to learn to read
and write these characters with any skill, and they serve to
perpetuate Wefrivain’s rigid class system. Shelts without the means
to begin early training in the written word are hopelessly
outmatched by shelts who’ve been trained from childhood. Oddly
enough, phonetic characters have been known in the islands for
ages. They can be taught in a day to a willing shelt and would
greatly increase efficiency in almost every area of business and
learning. However, the beauty-cult of the wyverns dismissed
phonetic characters long ago as barbaric, crude, and ugly (the
worst sin). The wyverns and their Priestess may, indeed, find the
phonetic characters ugly, but I believe that they also find them
dangerous. The class system is to their advantage. They do not want
a reading public.

—Gwain,
The Truth About Wyverns

The tent was a teahouse. Gerard could smell
the tea as soon as he entered, but the interior was so dark that he
could see nothing for a moment. He stood there, his head brushing
the top of the low roof, fighting a sense of claustrophobia. Gerard
took a step forward, and something dangled in his face, tickling
his nose and making him sneeze. Gradually, he became accustomed to
the gloom and saw that the tent had been constructed of raw pelts,
fur-side inward. They made a crazy pattern of spots and stripes. A
number of the pelts had feet or faces of animals still attached to
them, and a couple of paws were dangling in Gerard’s face.

In addition to the pelts, the owner of the
teahouse had unaccountably sewn random bits of ribbon, bone, and
feathers into the walls. The whole effect was a bewildering array
of colors and textures. Gerard glanced over the tables. There were
only four, each large enough for two or three shelts. A leather
curtain partitioned the back of the room, which must be the
kitchen. The place was lit by only two censors, which gave off a
pleasant odor.

A lone ocelon sat at one of the tables with a
book and a cup of tea. He was wearing pants and boots and had a few
facial stripes. His hair was light brown. Gerard wondered if he
might be a sailor, as his pants appeared to be made from
sailcloth.

Gerard sat down across from him. The ocelon’s
eyes lifted slowly from his book, hazel in the muddy light. Gerard
was surprised. The ocelon was wearing little wire-framed lenses.
Eye-lenses were rare on Wefrivain, though Gerard had seen them a
couple of times before. They were expensive and difficult to make.
Most of the shelts who could afford them didn’t need them
(grishnards had legendarily good eyesight), and shelts who might
need them couldn’t afford them.

“Where did you get those?” he asked.

Gerard had intended nothing but honest
curiosity. However, the ocelon took off his lenses and slid them
across the table. Gerard felt ashamed.
Have these shelts been so
trodden upon that they immediately roll over every time a grishnard
points a finger at them?

Gerard forced himself to pick up the lenses
and examine them. The frames were only cheap wire, but the glass
itself was good work. He set them back on the table in front of the
ocelon. “I wasn’t accusing you of theft. I was only curious.”

The ocelon quirked a smile. He put his lenses
back on. “You must be Gerard Holovar. Welcome to Sern,
Captain.”