The Crackling Sea by K. Vale Nagle

Author:K. Vale Nagle [Nagle, K. Vale]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781643920351
Publisher: STET Publishing, LLC

Iony made sure his pride members were being taken care of before slipping away from Bogwash and towards the raftworks. He didn’t have a good pretense for doing so, but it would be easy to claim he’d gotten lost.

Cielle, a gryphon he found it hard to be mad at considering his heroics the past few days, had used up all of the spare feathers. The strange taiga-fisherfolk was now a rainbow of flight feathers, but that put Iony in a predicament. He needed to get word north to Rybalt, but he wasn’t about to walk there—especially not after finding out that the Seraph King’s forces were attacking the Crackling Sea.

A chance comment had offered him an opportunity to solve both of those dilemmas. One of the rangers left watching the raftworks during the rescue operation commented that a goliath bird wagon had arrived just before everyone left, and a particularly bossy Redwood Valley merchant had demanded to be treated like a reeve in their absence.

The merchant, a blue bird with a splotchy pattern, had fled the Crackling Sea with all of her wares.

Iony had always felt himself in possession of a large amount of luck, and he was happy for a chance to cash it in. Between the evacuation of his gryphlets and his rescue at sea, he’d used up a good portion. But it seemed he had a bit left.

He snuck up behind a merchant stuffing her face. She’d stolen several eel steaks from the celebration and was packaging them away to eat—or perhaps sell—later.

“Hello, Didi,” he drolled.

She screamed and hit him with a fillet. “What are you doing here?!”

“I was rescued by your hosts.” He licked lemon-orange sauce off his whiskers. “From the Seraph King’s flagship, no less.”

Seeing that she wasn’t moments away from being killed by Iony’s associate, Didi relaxed the slightest bit. “Well, they should have left you there. It’d certainly make my life easier if you’d jump head-first into the Emerald Jungle and get—”

“It’s always such a pleasure talking to you,” he growled. “I need you to pack up your wagon and bring us north. They’re out of imping feathers here, and I need to check on my gryphlets.”

Didi sat on only her hindpaws, an opinicus trick that put her eyes above his, though his ears still towered above her. “Oh no, I know what this is about, and there’s no way in the depths I’m going back to the Crackling Sea! Even if I wanted to, they’re evacuating the place. They don’t want me there.”

Iony wasn’t one to be intimidated by any opinicus, let alone one of the squeaky ones. “Fine, you’re a merchant. Let’s strike a bargain. I need to get north. You give me a few of the feathers off your wings. If I get imped tonight, I can fly tomorrow. I’ll head up to Poisonmaw. Then you take my pride north on your wagon. Surely, an eyrie has enough feathers to spare. Once they’re taken care of, I’ll tell Rybalt what

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