The Draykon Series (1-3)

Chapter Six

   Eva stood in the conservatory of her home on Glour's prestigious Fifth Circle, carefully dripping nara-fruit juice onto a bed of parchment strips. From beneath a neat nest of twigs emerged a questing nose, tiny, black and twitching with eager interest. She opened her thoughts to the creature, showing it images of food, and juice, and warmth. Parchment rustled as the mouse emerged, promptly sinking its small, sharp teeth into her finger. She allowed it to draw her blood along with the juice, smiling at its enthusiasm. This one would make a fine culinary assistant to an artisan chef.

   She nudged the mouse back into its parchment nest and withdrew her hand. It had built itself a home in the corner of her conservatory, settling close to the glass where the silver moonlight came through particularly strongly. The mouse seemed happy, but it would be time to move it soon.

   First, though, she had a bird ready to depart the nest. Just now it was hanging upside down from the roof of the conservatory; a curious posture for a bird, but then, it was called a bird only because nobody knew how else to categorise it. She coaxed it down, drawing it to her with a mixture of command and entreaty. She took the role of its mother in the bird's mind, a being to be both trusted and obeyed. The bird soared gracefully downwards, settling on Eva's shoulder, gripping her with talons that clenched and unclenched restlessly. Eva winced as those surprisingly sharp claws pierced her skin. She objected still more when it began to peck at her ear, insistent and wholly oblivious to her pain.

   'I suppose that is a mark of affection, is it?' She stroked the bird's soft feathers, careful to avoid the webby membrane of its wings. She slipped her hand into a thick leather glove and held up her hand. The bird walked obligingly onto the glove, smoothing its indigo feathers nonchalantly.

   She'd taken to calling the little dringle-bird Skritch, a charitable interpretation of the effect its pacing had on the flesh of her shoulders. She was rather glad he was now ready to be delivered to his new companion-master, a herbalist living a few circles away.

   She had spent the day inspecting the vast kennels the summoners kept outside the city. It was a ritual she observed every moon, even though it was years since she'd found anything to object to in the kennel masters' handling of the animals. Breeding season was approaching, and this year there was a good chance of a few new shortig pups. The species was notoriously hard to breed, and almost equally hard to track down in their native habitats in the Lower Realms. Their impressive tracking abilities made them in high demand with Vale's men, however, and he'd begged her to up the numbers available this year. Tricky, but she was certainly up to the challenge.

   She was still attired in her kennel clothes, plain cottons layered against the chill in the air. She wrapped a heavy wool cloak around herself, allowing Rikbeek, her gwaystrel, to tuck himself into the folds. He availed himself of an opportunity to bite her en route, which she ignored. It was an old custom. She left the house, keeping her thoughts bent on the dringle-bird pacing up and down her glove.

   It maintained its station obediently as she made her way through the streets beyond her house. Glour City was built in a series of rings, widening steadily from the nucleus of the city out to the broadest streets on the outermost edges. The innermost circles were the most prestigious: the first through to the fourth were reserved for city government offices and the manor homes - palaces, really - of its richest and most prominent inhabitants. Eva's position on the Fifth placed her among the second rank of citizens. She could have moved into the third or fourth circle years ago, taking her place among the other peers and government officials of the realm, but she liked the house she'd inherited. It made her feel a little bit closer to the father she'd lost, and the mother she'd barely known at all.

   Her destination was the house of her friend Meesa's husband, Numinar Wrobsley. A prominent and skilled herbalist, he lived on Circle Twelve in the heart of the trades quarter. Instead of situating his dwelling on the edges of the forest, as any reasonable potion maker might do, he had brought the forest to his home. The building was stacked atop tall stilts, which wasn't that unusual in Glour; many citizens liked to raise their houses a little closer to the firmament. Wrobsley's house was easily twice the height of even the tallest of the residential buildings elsewhere in the city. He had a garden spread atop the roof and he spent hours and hours up there, carefully tending the rare plants he'd had imported from the Lower Realms. He swore that the proximity to the pale moonlight kept his plants stronger and healthier than their sicklier cousins elsewhere in the city. It was as reasonable an explanation as any for his particularly potent concoctions.