The morning after his first stint at the Eastern Basin, Leslyn was more than happy to resume his regular duties. He woke up in his bed in the staff quarters just outside the castle, washed up in one of the two attached private baths, and fetched a fresh, palm-sized meat pie from the kitchen, eating it quickly as he crossed the courtyard to ready Romo for the day.
The prince’s red griffin, as usual, trilled a welcome as he entered the royal aerie, which was large enough to house ten griffins and had its own roomy flight cage built right into the outer wall of the courtyard. At present, Romo and General Xavara’s black Typhan were the only residents. It seemed that Xavara had gotten an early start that day, for the black’s apartment was empty.
Leslyn slid Romo’s apartment door open and walked inside. Patting the beast on the leg with a friendly, “Good morning,” when he came close enough, he looked around the floor for any wet spots or waste, which he then banished with a shovel and replaced with fresh straw. From there, he bid Romo to raise one taloned hind paw and then the other, making sure they were clean underneath and free of any infection or open wounds.
Well used to the routine, Romo lowered his breast to the ground and laid in the straw, making it a much simpler task for Leslyn to get up onto his back. Like a mouse crawling about on a lion, the youth clambered all over him, checking his freshest battle wounds to make sure they were healing well.
There was one in particular on his right hindquarter that bore watching, a length of the long gouge deep enough that it had to be sewed shut right away, and the griffin prohibited from going up against the dracats for the next couple of weeks. Leslyn applied a salve to the tender injury, lightly smearing dabs of the stuff and waiting until it somewhat numbed the area before rubbing it in.
He was just finishing up his chores when Koben and his cousin Arlis joined him, the big blond prince greeting Leslyn with the usual dizzying clap between the shoulder blades. “I hope you’re looking forward to today,” he said with a broad smile.
“I was,” Leslyn said under his breath, forcing it out through clenched teeth.
“What’s that, dear squire?”
“No talk,” Arlis said, crossing right to the saddle rack, “let’s go.”
Leslyn let out a bemused exhalation and went to help the boy with the griffn’s heavy saddle. Arlis’ words had been curt, but his eyes were bright with excitement, and for good reason.
Basic training would begin in less than an hour.
The excitement ramped up for Leslyn as soon as the Aerie grounds came into view, wind rushing through his hair as Romo banked toward a clear spot in the field to come in for his landing. There were already many riders and griffins gathered below, but not because of any dracat threat. It was simply that they were just as excited about this rite of passage as the recruits themselves were, and had come to witness their early steps toward officially joining the Guard.
Both his and Arlis’ paces were just short of running when they entered the building, heading straight for the keets’ shared apartment. The room was already half-packed with recruits, more arriving and swarming in at the same time as Leslyn and the prince’s young cousin.
Leslyn made a direct line for Valiant’s cage, smiling at the sight of the yellow keet craning his head and pacing on hind legs as he waited most impatiently for the youth to release him. He was nearly within reach when someone walked in front of Leslyn, roughly shouldering him as he passed.
Knocked a few steps back, Leslyn glared at Effran, the heckling son of the loud-mouthed delivery handler Rittan, who’d demanded that Leslyn and the others be punished for letting Wrath join in the fight against the pair of wyverns a few weeks before. Those two had been the entire driving force behind all the worst things that had happened to him lately, and that clearly still wasn’t enough for Effran.
As he went on to let Valiant loose, Leslyn tried not to notice several other glares being pointed in his own direction, as if it’d been him shoving Effran instead of the other way around. It was just another part of daily life at the Aerie.
The yellow keet pushed his way out of the cage as soon as the door was cracked, not even waiting the second or two for it to be swung wide. Walking on the tips of his toes, he spread his pathetically half-feathered wings in a long stretch, then flapped them hard as if airing them out. Without even a glance toward Leslyn, Valiant kept going, right for the exit.
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“Hold, Val. We’re not going to the flight cage.”
Similar calls rang out around the room as multiple keets made the same mistake, fully intent on carrying out their expected routines. As of that day, it was time for all of them to begin learning a new routine.
Unlike those other keets, most of which kept on toward their single-minded goals, Valiant stopped immediately at Leslyn’s call, looking back with pinned ears and pale blue eyes that were first sharp with annoyance, then softened with confusion, one ear slowly beginning to rise and his head tilting a few degrees to one side.
Leslyn could practically hear his thoughts, almost as well as if the keet was actually speaking aloud. How dare you stop me so rudely? Of course we’re going to the flight cage, just like we do every day. Wait… we’re really NOT going? I don’t understand. What ARE we doing, then?
He gestured toward a few recruits whose griffins were loyally following at their heels in the opposite direction from that of the flight cage, Erin with blue Phoebe and Arlis with red Larx among those pairs. “We’re going to the big flight cage. It’s called ‘outside.’”
Catching up with the yellow keet, Leslyn herded him along with the rest, gathering in his wings or catching up his tail once or twice when he started veering into someone else’s space. One of the benefits of his being so small was that this kind of effort needed to be made far less often than it did for those who had normal-sized keets.
Much bigger than Leslyn believed they could have grown in two months, some of the largest of Valiant’s clutchmates had to be seven stone at least. Val was less than half their size, and probably weighed just over three. He was still light enough to carry in a pinch, but even when wrapped, it was too awkward to do outside of an emergency—if Val would even let himself be wrapped. The last couple of attempts had ended with a pile of shredded towels, signaling an end of the keet’s need for coddling.
Leslyn already missed that tender stage of the little wind-egger’s life, for it was as much of a solace to him as it had been for the infant griffin. He had no one he could really talk to on a more personal level, and certainly no close friends. Quite the opposite, he was still considered quite the stench in many pairs of nostrils, thanks to the healthy accumulation of bad-faith rumors he couldn’t seem to prove his way out from under.
As for family…
He glanced at Erin as the recruits and their griffins assembled on the grassy field outside the Aerie and in front of the large audience of senior Guard riders.
Liren had become quite busy again with flying deliveries and messages between the Nilvar and its Flood-affected adjacent islands, but when the time was right, Leslyn planned to confront his wayward brother. If he could get Liren to admit his relationship to Erin, they could properly bring her into the family, if she'd have it. Perhaps it would allow the added mercy of awarding her Nilvaran citizenship through her father, and getting her out of Captain Tannoran’s house.
The merling Coyrifan’s influence was a part of the problem, but Leslyn suspected that her sudden self-isolation starting a few weeks ago was because Liren's utter indifference toward his daughter had made her feel unwanted.
It had to be Liren to bridge the growing gap, then, since she didn't seem to welcome Leslyn's attempts at helping or comforting her anymore. She barely even spoke to him, apparently preferring Arlis’ company instead. Leslyn wasn’t the type to push himself on anyone, so he respected her obvious need for space.
He did wish that she was a little more sensible, though. It seemed every interaction they’d had lately was him needing to give her some sort of “talk” or advice about something she’d done, and Erin lashing back.
He sighed, wholly doubting that was winning back any trust whatsoever. But, if Leslyn didn’t watch out for her, who would? Tannoran barely acknowledged her existence as long as she wasn’t actively embarrassing him, and Kaleit…
“Hey, watch your griffin!” one of the recruits yelped.
Kaleit's black Zabor was in a brown keet’s space, snapping at the other and kicking toward it with his talons in a decidedly unplayful fashion. It quickly escalated into the two griffins sparring in earnest, beating each other with half-feathered wings. Within seconds, they had slashed each other bloody, shrieking like banshees. Senior riders were calling for the two recruits to put a stop to it, a few of them already coming forward to help.
The other recruit froze, uncertain how to break the two keets apart without putting himself in danger, but Kaleit made his decision immediately, catching Zabor by a wing in each hand and wrenching him away from the other keet. Not realizing it was his master who held him, the frenzied Zabor craned his neck backward and clamped his beak and teeth around Kaleit’s forearm.
The tall youth was too focused on his keet to do anything more than flinch before the black griffin realized his mistake and let go. Kaleit didn’t allow the keet a moment of reflection, grabbing the animal by the jaw and forcing Zabor’s face toward him so that they were eye to eye. “You’ll never attack one of your siblings again,” he hissed through bared teeth, eyes bright with controlled rage. “And you’ll never put those teeth on me again. Ever.”
Leslyn’s mind suddenly flashed back to the ugly confrontation he’d once witnessed in the halls of the Aerie, hearing the captain issuing disturbing ultimatums in the same tone that his son now used on Zabor.
If he ever used that tone on Erin…
Zabor withdrew as his master had commanded, slinking around to sit and sulk behind Kaleit’s legs, but Leslyn saw no remorse in the griffin’s eyes.
Their final battle for dominance, when Zabor became confident enough to believe that he could win, was going to be very, very ugly.