The Guild of the Cowry Catchers, Book 1: Embers, Deluxe Illustrated Edition (3 page)

“Go.”

Morchella lingered a moment, staring into the
empty pool. Outside, the sun was setting, playing streamers of
soft, colored light across the gently undulating water. “Thessalyn…
Gerard, you do not know it, but you have saved her life
tonight.”

Chapter 2. The
Minstrel

The minstrels of Wefrivain are
quasi-religious figures, schooled in the old stories. Their role in
society is not only to entertain, but also to encourage religious
devotion.

—Gwain,
The Truth About Wyverns

Gerard found his friend and mount, a griffin
named Alsair, waiting for him outside the Priestess’s Sanctum.
Wordlessly, they walked through the Temple complex and then out
into the streets of Dragon’s Eye.

“Well?” demanded Alsair as they started into
the press of shelts coming and going in the late afternoon
rush.

Gerard shook his head.

“What did she say? What was it about?” Alsair
butted Gerard playfully with his beak. Their heads came to the same
height when they were both standing. “You can’t say nothing, not
after an audience like that.” They had been together since
childhood. Gerard’s silences were legendary, but Alsair had always
been good at making him talk, and when that failed, Alsair could
always fill the silences.

Gerard shook his head. “Not now.”

They were coming to the market. Throngs of
shelts hurried home as the day ended. They were mostly grishnards.
A few shavier fauns—pegasus shelts—moved furtively in the press.
They were probably the slaves of great houses. All the shelts—both
grishnard and faun—had long, tufted ears that flicked back against
their heads at the flies and the noise.

As Gerard and Alsair drew closer to the
docks, the numbers of non-grishnard shelts increased. A filthy
urchin, probably a pickpocket, darted across the road, and they saw
the flash of his red fox tail. “There goes a long-lost relative of
our dear admiral,” muttered Alsair nastily. “Shall we invite him to
the ship and ask their relation?”

Gerard did not honor this with a reply.
Silveo Lamire was a fox shelt. Rumor had it he’d risen to his post
from the slums around the docks.

“Did he do you a favor by trying to kill
you?” asked Alsair. “Was the priestess impressed with what you
could do with one row boat and a few rowers? Especially when you’d
been intentionally stranded among enemies?”

“We don’t know Lamire intentionally stranded
me,” said Gerard. He strongly suspected it, but he did not
know.

“Well I do,” said Alsair. “He locked me in
the hold.”

“Anyone could have done it, perhaps even by
accident.”

“You know as well as I do that Lamire ordered
it,” growled Alsair, “and someday, I’ll pay him back.” He made a
sharp clicking noise with his beak.

Gerard frowned. “Stay away from him, Alsair.
He’s afraid of griffins, and Lamire is the sort of shelt who gets
vicious when he’s frightened.”

They stopped in front of an inn—the grandest
on the waterfront, with high, arched ceilings reminiscent of some
noble’s audience hall. Two hulking grishnards loitered near the
entrance, making sure that none of the dock’s riffraff bothered the
patrons. Every shelt within was almost certainly a grishnard.
Alsair snickered. “Do you think they’d toss Lamire off the dock if
he came here without his insignia and bodyguard?”

“Probably.” Gerard pushed open the door. “I
don’t want to talk about him anymore.”

“But you haven’t,” complained Alsair. “Only I
have.”

“Hush.”

At the far end of the long, elegant common
room, someone was singing to the music of a harp. Her voice had the
haunting quality of doves at dawn or the high and lonely cry of a
falcon. She sang one of the temple songs about wyverns and their
coming to the islands of Wefrivain. She sang all the verses—the
very old ones, unfamiliar to most shelts. She sang of the terrible
wizards—shape-shifters, mind-parasites, slavers. They had come upon
the islands in ages past, and they brought fear and pain and death.
She sang of how the Firebird had sent the wyverns to free the
shelts of Wefrivain. The song might have been dry as dust in the
mouth of some temple harpist, but for her the song opened like a
flower.

“Go stretch your wings, friend,” Gerard told
Alsair. “Hunt on the ocean. I’ll envy you.”

Alsair snorted. “You won’t even
think
of me.”

But Gerard was already gone. He forced his
way through the crowd around the singer, using his height and broad
shoulders to muscle them aside.

She was a grishnard with glossy golden fur
and hair so pale it looked almost white in the lamplight. Her eyes,
too, were white, and they shone as though she saw visions and not
the crowd around her. In truth, she did not see them, for she was
blind.

As the last notes of the song faded, Gerard
reached her and scooped her up in his arms, catching the harp with
one hand. Several shelts in the crowd protested, but Gerard ignored
them and carried her away. At the foot of the stairs, the innkeeper
met him with more protests. “My wife,” said Gerard, “has more than
filled your hall. She’s paid for our room ten times over. Good
night.”

Thessalyn nestled against his chest. “Did you
see her?” she whispered. “Did you see the Priestess?”

“I saw her,” said Gerard. He did not speak
again until he’d reached their room and unlocked the door. “I saw
her and I spoke to her. She is beautiful and terrible, as they say,
but she was not as beautiful as you.”

Thessalyn smiled and shook her head. She had
never seen her own beauty, for she had come sightless into the
world. Gerard had always found that a great paradox. “No one sees
like you do,” he’d told her once. “I think sometimes you have the
gift of prophesy.” She denied that, but she did not deny she had
the gift of song. Thessalyn had been born to one of the tenet
farmers on a little island holding of Holovarus. Many farmers would
have drowned a blind baby girl—a useless mouth in their world of
labor—but her father was gentle and soft-hearted, and music ran in
his blood.

By the age of five, it was apparent that she
had a great gift, and the family had struggled to save enough to
send her to the prestigious school of minstrels on Mance. They
found the money, but a recommendation was required from a reputable
source. The family boldly petitioned their lord, Gerard’s father,
to listen to the child and recommend her to the school. He did
both. He even paid for her books and supplies and finally for her
tuition when her family fell on hard times the next year.

Thessalyn charmed everyone, including her
teachers. She made her debut tour at fourteen and soon had a throng
of potential patrons, but she chose to return to her family seat.
Holovarus welcomed her as court minstrel. Her beauty, her
blindness, her imagination, and her splendid voice had made her one
of the most famous minstrels in Wefrivain, and little Holovarus
basked in the prestige she brought with her.

Her success made her a great asset to the
court and a worthy investment to the King. However, it did not make
her a suitable mate for the prince. If Gerard had been content to
dally with her, his father might have taken no notice, but marriage
was different. Thessalyn might be beautiful and talented, but she
worked for her living, and she brought no dowry. Gerard did not
like to think about that last year, so full of darkness and grief.
Thessalyn might be able to forgive the gods, and he did not
begrudge her the peace her faith brought her. She might talk of
higher purposes, but Gerard could never forgive what had happened
in the temple on Holovarus.

We’ve come far since that night,
he
reminded himself. It was ironic that he’d retreated into the Temple
Sea Watch, but Gerard thought of himself as a servant of the
Priestess, not of the wyverns. The Sea Watch offered an honorable,
if humble, escape from his family. His problems with his commanding
officer, Silveo Lamire, were nothing to the churning sea of
troubles he’d left on Holovarus.

Gerard set aside Thessalyn’s harp—a
confection of dark, curling wood, half as big as the girl who
played it. She nipped at his ear and he kissed her, but then set
her down gently on the bed and stretched out beside her. “You’re
tired,” she said, stroking his ink-black hair. “And worried. What’s
wrong, Gerard?”

He spoke in a near whisper. “Sing to me,
Thess. Please.”

So she sang, in a very soft voice, an
achingly sad lullaby for the child they had lost. (Thessalyn had
the gift of knowing when he did not wish to be cheered.) Yet, like
most of the songs she composed herself, the end was full of light
and distant shores and coming home. Gerard made her stop at last.
“I have to go.”

“Where?”

“To the dungeons. I have to help Silveo
Lamire interrogate prisoners.”

She stroked his cheek. “Why, love?”

“Because I am her Highness’s new captain of
Police.”

Thessalyn’s fingers stopped moving. A long
silence, then, “It is work that someone must do. The Police protect
us.”

“The Police drag shelts from their homes in
the middle of the night to pull out their fingernails in
basements,” snapped Gerard. He felt her tremble and regretted it at
once. “Forgive me. I didn’t come here to make you sad.”

“You are
good,”
said Thessalyn softly.
“Good things cannot be evil.”

Gerard sighed. “I don’t know about good. I
certainly am what I am, and I cannot seem to be otherwise. I will
do what I am able. Perhaps I can make the Police into something
more than an ugly threat. It’s no wonder their captains keep
disappearing.”

He stood and kissed her fingertips. “Thank
you, my dear.”

“I’ll be waiting for you,” said Thessalyn.
“However late you come.”

“Or whatever I’ve done in the meantime?”

“Or whatever you’ve done in your
lifetime.”

Chapter 3. The
Prisoners

Those with paws eat those with hooves. Just
as pegasus are food for griffins, so fauns are food for grishnards.
This is right and natural.

—Morchella,
Sacred Text

As Gerard suspected, Silveo had already come
to have a look at the prisoners. Gerard found him in the hallway of
the temple dungeons, haranguing the unfortunate guard. “Have you
been living under a rock for the last ten years?” demanded Silveo.
“Do you not know who I am?”

“I know who you are, and I cannot allow you
to enter. The Priestess has forbidden you access to these
prisoners.”

“Can you let me in?” asked Gerard.

Silveo spun around to glare at him. He was a
silver-furred fox shelt with hair of the same color and pale blue
eyes. He was a vain creature with a plume of a tail, braided
frequently with ribbon or gold thread. His eyes were lined with
more kohl than Gerard thought seemly or necessary to reduce the
glare of the sun. In apparel, Silveo had the unfortunate tastes of
the newly wealthy. His clothes were frequently heavy with cloth of
silver, pearls, and exotic furs. Gerard’s taste for elegant
understatement seemed to annoy him.

In fact, nearly everything about Gerard
seemed to annoy Silveo. Fox shelts were one of the little races.
Adults stood no taller than a ten year old grishnard child. Silveo
had to look up at most grishnards, but with Gerard, he had to look
even higher. Gerard suspected this had been the original source of
Silveo’s enmity. However, they hadn’t taken long finding other
reasons to dislike each other.

Gerard spoke to the guard at the cell door.
“My name is Gerard Holovar, and I think you’re supposed to let me
interrogate the prisoners.”

“That is correct,” said the guard. “Her
Highness left instructions.”

Gerard glanced at Silveo’s confused
expression. “I have been made captain of Police,” he explained.