The White Gryphon

“I can see that,” she began, when there was a tapping on the door to the balcony.

Before either of them could answer it, the door opened, and the Black Gryphon stepped in, leaving the door ajar to let in more of the fresh breeze that followed him inside.

“I,” he said to both of them, “am one frustrated gryphon.”

Skandranon finished the third night of his patrols the way he had finished the first two; with empty talons.

Well, not quite empty—he had already caught three thieves this evening alone. One was not exactly a petty thief, either; he’d managed to scale one of the lesser treasure-towers, and was about to break in through a window hardly big enough to admit a child. Of course, since this man was either a dwarf or of some race that was naturally stunted, the window made a fine entrance. Since the thief was so small, he was able to comfortably snatch the small man from the wall. The Black Gryphon carried the man’s tiny, terrified body to the proper authorities, whereupon the thief blurted out a full confession, as they all had. Leyuet’s Spears had them all in custody, a neat arrangement so far as Skan was concerned.

He’d assumed that since magic wasn’t working properly, their enemies couldn’t be using it even to disguise their movement or hide themselves—and that his old night-combat and night-spying skills would be better suited to spotting the culprits from above than even the most experienced Haighlei guard from below. Whoever this was might not think about hiding himself from a watcher above him. Even Ma’ar’s people, as accustomed as they were to dealing with gryphons, still occasionally forgot.

All it had netted him, though, was the common and not-so-common thief. No killers. Most of the little rats had not been any kind of threat physically.

Put a bedridden old woman with a cane against any of these clowns, and 1 would bet on the old woman to beat them senseless.

But he was not going to give up. For one thing, Drake was watching.

The fact that Amberdrake was still considered to be the person in charge of this whole operation still rankled, even though he agreed logically with it. It rankled even though he agreed emotionally—at least in part.

He just hated to think he’d been superseded, and worst of all, no one had asked him about it. They’d all just assumed it would be all right with him.

That was what left the really sour taste in his mouth.

As he glided on still-rising thermals, circling with a minimum of wingbeats, it continued to rankle.

Drake is a terrific planner. Drake is a fine organizer. Drake knows what he’s doing, and yes, I am a bit too reckless, as long as it’s only my own neck I’m baring to the makaar’s talon. But still— if they’d just asked me. . . .

He probably would have said yes. He probably would have cheered. Now, it itched like an ingrown feather, and he couldn’t stop obsessing on it.

Only a few days to the Eclipse Ceremony, and we still don’t have our killer. That was his second ingrown feather. Shalaman can’t marry Winterhart, so he can’t ally with us that way. He can’t declare us allies while we’re still under suspicion. He can’t declare us innocent, not without forcing the hand of our enemy in some way we probably won’t like. Probably what would happen would be that he would just quit, leaving us with several corpses and no answers, but there are other things he could do— and Drake’s histrionics should make him go after another victim before the Ceremony. He ‘II probably make it look as if I did it, since I’m making myself so conveniently obvious as a potential killer.

Wait a moment. What’s this?

He turned a slow, lazy circle in the sky and peered down at the hint of movement below. There was something or someone climbing up the side of that tower— Now, it could have been a simie, one of those furry little creatures that looked so very human; normally they lived in some of the gardens and made the paintbox-birds miserable with their antics. But the simies often got out of their designated “areas” and went looking for something to do, some new mischief to get into, when they ran out of ways to torment the birds.

I thought the shadow looked too big to be a simie, though—heyla!

There he was. . . .

Skan spiraled down, taking care not to betray himself with the flapping of wings, and drew nearer. Silence. . . .