The Fire Queen

Chapter 13

Lucy took to the chicks with the same maternal affection with which she had taken to Anbu. Whereas Anbu played with the chicks, Lucy was watchful and protective, especially when we started taking the chicks outside to run around in the fields. With me, Lucy and Anbu watching the chicks, Myra was free to fly off and procure food. She went to get food every day, and every day she came back with something different. Once she came back with a buffalo, which meant that she had gone north to hunt; another time she came back with a konto, a large horned reptile which, Cyrus explained to me, inhabited lands in the western kingdom of Dranii. Cyrus came with us sometimes when we went to visit Myra and the chicks. As a beastmaster he was fascinated to learn all that he could about them and told me that he would give anything to see them up close. I told him that I would be happy to take him on one condition: that he come with me to the palace. I had told him everything about the Overseer and the Overseer's plan to present me to the citizens as the reincarnation of the fire queen.

"As soon as you are done with the items I asked you for we'll be leaving, so I need your answer soon," I'd said to him when he'd asked if he could see the phoenix.

"Don't you think you're being a bit hasty?"

"In what way?"

"Well, for starters, don't you need to learn how to fly that thing first?"

He was right. There was a lot that I still needed to learn about Myra before I could truly consider myself her master. And there was no guarantee that just because I arrived in the capital city on the back of a phoenix that I would face no opposition. The sensible thing to do would be to have a plan in place for countering any opposition I faced within the city. The opposition, if there was to be any, would come from the syndicates, who depended on the nobles and their backing from the queen. From my time with the bandits I knew that between them the syndicates operated with roughly a thousand members. If I was free to use Myra I could have easily torched the lot of them, but with them being in the city amongst innocent civilians that wasn't an option. The opposition from the syndicates would have to be suppressed with physical force, for which I needed manpower. I decided to delay my journey to the capital city until I had mastered Myra and had assembled a large enough militia to confront the syndicates and the queen's guard with.

I flew with Myra for the first time as soon as Cyrus was done with the saddle and the harness. It took him longer to make than he'd originally estimated because after seeing Myra up close he realized that what he'd been working on wasn't going to work as Myra was much larger than he'd thought--she was actually more like five times larger than Lucy. I needed Cyrus's help to put the harness and the saddle on her because of how big they were and how long the leather straps were. Cyrus and I were extra careful while securing the straps to Myra; if we made a mistake and she reacted angrily she could easily kill us both. Once Myra was all strapped in it was time for our first flight. I put my foot in the stirrup and climbed into the saddle nervously. Myra took flight slowly and hovered in the air for a few moments while I got comfortable with being in the air with her. She flew gently and straight at first. Just like when riding a horse, I used my body to guide her. She turned when I leaned to the side, descended when I pushed forward and climbed when I pulled back on the harness. Myra's response time to my guidance improved fast and it wasn't long before we were doing barrel rolls, nosedives and steep climbs through the clouds.

With flight mastered we went to get Myra and the chicks' food for the day. We flew north, too high to be seen, over the capital city, the Northlands and the frozen expanse that was beyond Lake Huron. We flew all the way to the ocean, which I'd never seen before, and descended. We flew over the water and surveyed the surface for signs of prey, eventually spotting a shoal of fish that were jumping in and out of the water. We got behind the shoal and stalked it while we worked out what the perfect timing would be for us to swoop down and grab one while it was out of the water. Myra could have easily done this on her own, and had done so many times before, but on this occasion she waited for me to give the command for her to dive, which, when I did, was timed perfectly. Myra swooped down and grabbed one of the fish clean out of the air, her talons piercing straight through the fish's body and killing it instantly.

The fish was huge, it was almost the size of a buffalo. As he always did when Myra brought back food, Anbu unreservedly joined the chicks in feasting on the carcass. Myra and Lucy held back, content with the leftovers. I asked Cyrus about the fish that we'd brought back and he told me that he didn't know anything about it, he'd never been so far north before.