The sun was rising high above the market square, and everywhere, slightly salt-caked granite glittered like seaspray in the noonish light. A sentimental climate, thought Kelcetrix, the sky shepherd, who, warmly taken back to the airy, cliff face temples of Kann Kaer, grinned.

The atheist monks of Prighuyt Tuzhk had just finished relating the unhelpful words of the Ellusenese official.

“Anyway,” grunted the elder, Arzado, in conclusion, “we’ll be leaving the day after next. Don’t forget why we’re here--don’t get yourself killed in the meantime.”

Kelcetrix’s grin twisted into a sneer, though, besides an imbalance in his lengthy whiskers, it might have been hard to tell. The old abbot treats us like novices, he realized. It had been some decades--he’d almost forgotten how it felt. And, perhaps, some of those present really wanted a stern bit of patronizing…

The Sprunishmen, once they’d caught the gist of the Tushikans’ message, had almost instantly vanished into the market throngs. Kelcetrix could hardly guess why: what would they buy? Where would they find the money?

But that’s an assumption, he realized. Perhaps they do have some shekels tucked away…

No--it was too difficult to imagine. The large one insisted that he was the “prince” of something, but he wouldn’t fool a deaf-blind beggar with all of that--even if he had a modicum of charm. Proof in point: his retainer, who had wandered off in an opposite direction--and for obviously different reasons.

Currently, the bearded little peasant was busy working over a cluster of unoccupied guards. He made his solicitations mostly with his hands and eyebrows…for what? Booze? Prostitutes? Prostitution? Nothing would have surprised Kelcetrix. The man was a goat--a survivor. He looked hard, and better fed than harder men whom Kelcetrix had known. More than anything, though: he looked utterly unconcerned with the well-being of his lord.

“They’re beasts, I think,” Kelcetrix mused with the Afgal Oberoto, vassal of the Shu. “One’s as stupid as a boar, and the other, as aggressive as one.” The king said nothing, didn’t smile or frown, but allowed one slow nod of his broad, turbaned head. Kelcetrix liked that humble sobriety, one absolutely typical of the Mighty Shu’s many servants. It made them comforting allies--and sporting adversaries.

“Although I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising,” he continued. “After all, they say that Sprunishmen consort with horses, and become one with them on the battlefield.”

“There hasn’t been a horsetongue in Sprune for ten generations,” snorted Arzado, who seemed to have just manifested in the space between the sky shepherd and the king. “And instances of men copulating with horses are exceedingly rare; women, almost non-existent.

“Besides, bird-talker,” he nearly spat, “the same could be said for you.”

Kelcetrix grinned, his wide, red eyes furled into flaming teardrops.

“Oh, but the goddess Kaer has made a bird of me. I am one of her raptors.”

“More like her chicken,” Arzado blasphemously sneered, “and I’ve got some rather disconcerting statistics on human relations with--”

Luckily, his young apprentice interrupted him, snapping something off in their native tongue. Lucky for him, anyway. Kelcetrix, in his capacity as Kaer’s raptor, had met more than his share of Tushikan monks. Besides being godless, they were all exceedingly clever, but despicably craven--and those who weren’t dead, by excess only of the latter.

The Sprunishmen soon reconvened, and it was decided (by Zigrel) that the party should return to the inn for some food and rest. “Prince” Ayricalt, meanwhile, proudly displayed a three-belled Noriac forkflute to his companion, on whom its fine craftsmanship was thoroughly lost. The latter then leaned up to the big one’s ear, and whispered something. He wore a devilish grin and arced his dark, hairy eyebrows ominously high. Kelcetrix noticed Ayricalt, who was pale as a thirsty cloud, blush into floral redness.

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“Barbarians,” he muttered, shamefully wagging his head.

“Indeed,” Arzado bitterly agreed.

Kelcetrix lagged a bit behind as they descended the hill. Even early on, he’d decided to avoid (the best he could) showing his back to the others--even the gentlemanly Afgal Oberoto. And a bit of privacy proved a welcome symptom of the decision.

The weathered bushes of Codisurn, which stretched arthritically from the hard, rocky dirt, danced with the flittering, blue fruits of their island’s namesake. These were tiny bluebirds, more like chickadees than those of Kelcetrix’s homeland (who were modest in size, manner, and beauty), or indeed the jays (who, even among the corvids, were profane and selfish). These little songbirds boasted pastoral innocence. They spoke often, but only of pretty things: favorite seeds, morning sunlight, pleasant company--and even then, only in idiot terms.

Plain brown finches darted around the dust-clouded feet of the road traffic. They had more meat on their spiny, little skeletons, consequently more reason to worry about cats and ospreys, and therefore much more interesting things to say. In fact, they were practiced worriers, and directed quite a good deal of their nervous attention toward humans. It seemed that they, in an analogous manner to mortals blaming gods for bad harvests, treated food availability and feline activity as symptoms of human activity--of course, without any of the usual religious reverence.

Still, they were small, stupid birds, their penchant for gossip betrayed by the mundanity of their human interests. From them, Kelcetrix learned that the “lady of fragrant milk” (a cheesemonger, he hoped) had hung her rugs up to prepare for winter. They treated this as a good omen for “the sweet seed,” and a warning about the orange-flanked tom who prowled the southern neighborhood.

“Does it rain much in the winter?” Kelcetrix asked.

“The winter is rain,” they replied, with condescension they must have usually reserved for their naive bluebird neighbors. Anyway, he couldn’t press them any further than that; the cheesemonger’s rugs were the talk of the day, and one perceptive human would hardly distract them from it.

As they descended into the port town, Kelcetrix kept his eyes on the rooftops. It seemed all the buildings in Codisurn, no matter how mean or molding, boasted intricately carved parapets of the same sparkling granite which had dominated the acropolis. Wide-eyed fish wiggled in stalagmite seaspray, while the dissolving busts of ancestors bowed beneath full sculptures of bold Noriac heroes.

But Kelcetrix wasn’t examining art or architecture--he was looking for pigeons. He could hear their telltale mockings, the whispered insults which were typical of the ubiquitous city birds. They offered the same scatalogically themed abuse from the Gilded City of Arasgal to the half-barbarian Seliban. Pigeon shit; human shit; the very metaphorical essence of shit: they were always cutting new facets to examine their deranged subject.

“Shit-hatched!” one cried from behind a drunken-looking dolphin’s head, which came gasping out of the petrified surf. Another replied: “Look, she’s ready to burst with a brood of shit-eggs.” Kelcetrix grinned. He found this coprophiliac cosmology oddly compelling. According to pigeon lore, the earth itself was merely a canvas for their own heavenly droppings. Humans--who lived on, ate from, and, dying, were buried in this earth--therefore occupied a universe of shit.

Despite the implicit condescension, however, these great rats-of-the-sky undoubtedly obsessed over the vagaries of human culture. If you could decipher the shit metaphors, there were no better spies. Unfortunately, this tribe remained up on their roofs, not even deigning to swoop over the busy roads to perform that favorite evocation of their fecal worldview.

Crows, on the other hand, never missed the opportunity. “Outsiders die in these lands,” squawked a particularly meddlesome hen. “Die. Die.” She was perched up on the frame of a warehouse doorway, cackling in poorly repressed fits. Kelcetrix ignored her--crows were always saying such things: perceptive enough to know a bird-talker when they noticed one, and insightful enough to know how to disturb one. But for all their relative intelligence, they suffered little curiosity for humans. They could be helpful, if bribed, but this sky shepherd wasn’t in the mood.

Not a very helpful cast of natives, he realized, his grin sardonically sharpening. Perhaps that comes with insularity… No doubt some more disciplined sky shepherd had written on the subject, but Kelcetrix, regretfully, had never been good about keeping up on his readings.

Anyway, if the island birds weren’t yet helpful, at least they provided more pleasant conversation than the region’s gulls. Even now, as their descent reached the busy port district, he could hear them squawking those familiar themes which had apparently enraptured all the seabirds from the blue walls of Syftulyk clear across the sea:

They just wouldn’t shut up about “the Deep One” and his “Domain of Never-Day.” Good fishing, apparently.

Hearing this--though by no consequence--Kelcetrix grinned.