Mercedes Lackey - Owlsight

“I’ve been told that you have the old cottage that I used to share with Justyn,” the young man said, with a friendly enough smile. But immediately Keisha worried. Did he want it back?

“ Ye-es,” she replied carefully. “No one was using it - you don’t mind, I hope?”

He chuckled, and his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Why should I mind? It’s nice to know it isn’t sitting empty, or worse, fallen into a ruin. I just hope you’ve managed to make more of it than we did.”

“People fixed it up for me. They fixed the walls, the roof, everything,” she told him, and hesitated a moment. “I don’t suppose you’d want to see it, would you?”

His face lit up with his smile. “Actually, yes I would, quite a bit. I was trying to think of a way to ask you if I could.”

“I will - if you’ll let me see the gryphon up close!” she said, suddenly thinking of a way to achieve her own wish.

Now Darian laughed. “Let? Havens, when he comes in from patrol, you’ll have a hard time keeping him away! If there’s one thing that Kel loves, it’s an audience.”

That led her to questions about gryphons in general and Kel - or “Kelvren” as his name really was - in particular. Darian was perfectly willing to answer them, and while he was talking, she didn’t have to.

Darian was a vast improvement over her brothers, both in manners and appearance. He never interrupted, passed platters without being asked, offered food to her before taking some himself, and never heaped his plate with the best cuts. He used knife and fork properly, didn’t wipe his mouth on his cuff, and didn’t make sarcastic or cutting remarks, even when Mayor Lutter was holding forth with great pomposity on things he obviously knew nothing about. When that happened, he just exchanged looks with others of his party, and hid his smile by turning his head.

As for appearance - well, Keisha didn’t blame the rest of the girls for competing to serve him, nor did she blame them for their posing, their flirtatious glances, their outright adoration in some cases. He was really one of the best-looking young men she’d ever seen, and the leather Hawkbrother clothing with its fringes, beadwork, and tooling only gave him an exotic touch that was very attractive.

He seemed completely oblivious to their attempts to catch his eye, though. Mature and self-possessed, he managed to pay attention to Keisha’s questions and to the discussions that the Hawkbrother Elders and the village officials were having at the same time. She was used to having to listen to more than one conversation at the same time, since she often had two or more people babbling at her about an illness or injury, but she’d never known anyone else to have that gift.

Well, maybe he’s too busy with that to pay any attention to the girls. Or maybe he’s used to admiration. At least he doesn’t seem vain about it, if he is.

“The bondbirds are mostly in the trees around the edge of the village right now,” he said, in answer to her last question. “No reason to call them in, and too many strangers make some of them nervous. Firesong is enough strangeness for all of you to handle, I think!”

“You have a bird, don’t you?” she asked.

“Of course! I couldn’t be a Hawkbrother without one!” he laughed. “His name is Kuari, and he’s an owl. He’s fledged of Snowfire’s two birds. When we’ve got lots of space, I’ll call him in if you’d like to see him. He is really far too big to call into a crowd.”

“What’s it like, having a bondbird?” she asked curiously. “Is it something like having a Companion?”

“Huh. A bit, I’d guess. The bond strengthens with time; in the beginning, you have to work to talk to them, but after a year or so, they’re always in your head and you’d have to work to keep them out - assuming you’d want to.” He raised his eyebrows. “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to, though. They’re so different from humans that it isn’t like having someone eavesdropping on you.” He warmed to his subject. “Their needs are very different from a human’s, and their interests - it’s only because they are bred to be extremely intelligent that they have much in common with us at all. Have you ever been around ordinary birds of prey at all?”

“Not really,” she admitted. “In fact, the only raptors I’ve ever seen up close have been a couple of bondbirds, the ones that come with Hawkbrothers who’ve brought things to trade.” She offered a slow smile. “I really like Steelmind’s buzzard, he’s so calm.”

He chuckled. “You haven’t missed much with ordinary raptors. Oh, they are beautiful, graceful, and amazing to watch, but there isn’t much room in those heads for anything except hunting, breeding, and survival skills. They’re very focused. That’s the way Nightwind puts it. Bondbirds are less focused, but they do have intelligence and the ability to socialize, and not just with us. They play games and socialize with other bondbirds, and not just of the same breed. They have to be able to do that, or they couldn’t work together - and too many of them would be on the dinner menu for the biggest of them, if they didn’t have that ability to tell friend from food!”

She stifled a laugh. “I never thought about it that way.”

“Believe me, it’s quite true.” His attention wandered for a moment, as he caught part of one of the other ongoing conversations. It was only for a moment, though, and it came right back to her. “When you see the size of Kuari, you’ll understand. Honestly, I’m not strong enough to hold him for long without something to help support his weight.”

That candid remark surprised and charmed her. She couldn’t imagine any of the young men she knew admitting they weren’t strong enough to do something.

By this time, the meal was just about over; the last of the dishes were whisked away to make way for bowls of fruit and pitchers of wine. “Would you like to see the cottage now?” she asked, and when he hesitated, she assured him, “There won’t be any serious talk going on yet. Mayor Lutter won’t want any real discussions of anything happening in front of the whole village.” She listened a moment to the Mayor’s current topic, the past Midsummer Faire. “He’s on the Faire. The next thing will be the harvest, and the number of traders he expects. He’ll be priming your people for suggestions later about what they might bring to trade on a regular schedule. You can see the cottage and be back before he gets onto the next thing.”

“That sounds fine, let’s slip off.” He rose from his seat at the same time that she did. He set out in exactly the right direction, and it took her a moment to remember that he had lived here for years, so of course he would know where the cottage was!

“Well,” he exclaimed, as they approached the workshop. “You were right about people fixing it up. It certainly never looked this good when I lived here.”

She felt a bit of pardonable pride, for it was a neat little place now, with the stone walls scrubbed and morning glories and moonflower vines climbing up the trellises she’d built on either side of the door. The thatch had been patched and freshly trimmed last fall, too, and this spring she’d painted the shutters white.

“Show me around the outside first,” Darian urged. Always happy to show off her garden, Keisha took him around to the back.

“Oh, this is good,” he exclaimed, as the garden came into view. “What have you got here?” Without waiting for her reply, he walked carefully around the beds, identifying plants aloud. “Feverfew, wormwood, basil, thyme, lobelia, comfrey - ” Keisha was impressed, for she would never have thought he’d have any knowledge of herbs. “I must say, I’m glad Justyn didn’t have all this.”