Kingfisher(2)

Suddenly, they were all smiling.

“No wonder you lost your tongue,” the giant marveled. “We’ve been up north, hunting our ancestors.” He held up his brawny arm; Pierce saw the fine embroidered medallion on the black sleeve: a white bear outlined in flames. “I am Sir Bayley Reeve. My ancestors took the Fire Bear. I’m not sure how,” he added with wonder. “She’s huge. She topped even me by a head.”

“And mine took the wyvern,” said the man with the sea-green eyes. “I am Roarke Wyvernbourne.”

Pierce swallowed, speech swollen like a lump in his throat. Even Desolation Point, the outermost stretch of isolated land along the coast of Wyvernhold, got a newspaper now and then.

“And mine the great Winter King of the north,” the pale-haired man said. “The Winter Merlin, who taught the ancient mage of the first Wyvernbourne king. Back when there were a dozen petty kingdoms and as many kings. That’s what you saw in me: the falcon’s wings. I am Sir Gareth May.”

They waited, gazing at Pierce expectantly, until he found his wits again. “Oh. Pierce Oliver.” He started to hold out his hand, felt the crab net rope still in it.

“Oliver,” the Wyvernbourne prince murmured. “Wasn’t there something . . .” He shook his head, shrugging. “Well.”

“Did you— Ah— Did you actually— I mean, with weapons? I thought they were already pretty much extinct?”

The knights were silent for a breath; Pierce saw the memories, complex and mysterious, in their faces.

“We came as close as we could,” Gareth May said slowly. “They leave a track. They leave a rumor. I climbed into the high forests, found the ancient nesting places of the Winter Merlins. I heard their voices in the wind. Maybe I saw one. Maybe it was a cloud. Maybe it was both.”

“I searched in fire,” Bayley said. “At night. Fire licking wood as the Fire Bear licks her newborn to turn them into flesh and blood; she swallows their fire, their immortality. Maybe I did that.”

“I found the caves where the wyverns raised their young,” the Wyvernbourne prince said. “I saw their high nests, hollows of stone where they laid their eggs, said to make a noise like thunder when they cracked.”

“What we hunted, what we took, is what you saw,” Gareth said simply. “That you saw it so quickly, so easily—that’s the wonder. We were searching for what we found. You weren’t looking for anything at all.”

Again they were silent, consulting one another with their eyes. Pierce watched, fascinated by their closeness, their fellowship. The motionless gull, which he had forgotten, gave such a sudden, piercing cry that he nearly leaped off the dock. It sounded, he thought as he caught his breath, like a curse.

He glanced down, saw more crabs wobbling to the edge of the rings, toppling onto the dock. He bent to pluck a couple of likely-looking dinners up, toss them back into the net.

“Look for us,” he heard, “if you come to Severluna. You might find a place for yourself in King Arden’s court.”

He straightened again, blinking at the thought. They were smiling at him again, welcoming him to their world, making him, for a moment that melted his heart, one of them. The moment passed; he was himself again, in all his awkwardness, his isolation, his inexperience: a young, tangle-haired man wearing a filthy apron at the end of a dock at the edge of the world, chasing after crabs instead of wyverns.

“I’ve always lived here,” he explained. “It’s home.”

Bayley glanced bewilderedly at the tiny town lining the main street, doors facing the setting sun. The others refrained from looking. “Oh. Well,” the giant said gruffly, and added, “Sorry about your dinner. Luckily there are more in your net.”

“They’re for my mother.”

“Oh.”

“She owns the best restaurant on the cape. I was working in the kitchen earlier; that’s why I’m wearing this ridiculous apron. Most of these are too small to keep.”

“What about that one?” the prince asked of the one Pierce had just thrown back into the net.

“Let’s see . . .” He pulled it out again, turned it over. “Nope. It’s female.”

They gazed at it. Bayley broke the silence.

“Hell can you tell?”

Pierce tapped the band on the underside of the shell. “It’s wider on the females.” He let it fall into the water; the young men watched the splash.

“I could eat,” Bayley murmured wistfully.

“Her restaurant’s open. It’s called Haricot. There’s crab on the lunch menu. Follow the street the direction you were going; it’s just past the Wander Inn.” He watched them query one another again. “A motel,” he explained. “If you keep going the same direction out of town, the road will loop around the cape and take you back to the highway.”

“Thank you.” They stirred then, stepped toward the waiting car, thoughts shifting away from Pierce, back to their journey. “We appreciate the help.”

“We’ll tell them at Haricot that you sent us,” the dark prince said with his father’s charming smile.

You won’t have to, Pierce thought as the dock swayed under their receding steps, and the gull finally flew off. She knows.

The knights were long gone by the time he pulled up the rings in the late afternoon and carried them and a bucket full of squirming crabs to the Haricot kitchen.