Starling by K. Vale Nagle

Author:K. Vale Nagle [Nagle, K. Vale]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781643920207
Publisher: STET Publishing, LLC

16

What the Jailor Saw

Ninox had gotten lost in the tomes of new information in Orlea’s library and forgotten about the threat of Merin’s kin. Once she saw a journal marked Reeve’s Guard: Founding to Disbanding, curiosity got the better of her, and she looked inside. She skipped past the creation of the guard to the end, then worked her way backwards.

During the conflagration, most of the Reeve’s Guard perished in the fire, attempting to save the lives of civilians.

She felt disheartened. Strix was mentioned as participating in the rescue effort and battling Commander Wolden, but his family weren’t mentioned at all. On the one paw, this would make gryphon-opinicus relations much easier. On the other paw, did anyone think all of the Reeve’s Guard had vanished in a fire?

Strix had put her in charge of holding the Reeve’s Guard headquarters. Ninox herself had over twenty clean kills. Her siblings had spread out and covered the other stations. There were many good kills there that hunters were not getting credit for.

Orlea snored in the corner. Ninox looked at the sleeping opinicus. Clean kills might be the wrong words. An opinicus was not food. Nor was it a gryphon. She knew it was not right to hunt gryphons, but food was also not the right distinction. Sometimes, she’d hunted things that were not food with her father. Every few years, for reasons she didn’t understand, the population of weald monitors would explode out of control in the spring, and they would need to be killed. They were not food, but they counted as hunting kills.

Orlea was not food, prey, or a gryphon. Orlea was a friend. Many of the opinici in this pride were interacting with gryphons. Eggs being laid in gryphon prides could hatch as opinici in the spring. Her own egg could hatch as an opinicus. It was a possibility she hadn’t considered until now.

Her hunting instincts were the same for hunting opinici as monitors. If the invaders came, her pride would have to hunt opinici. Thinking of it as hunting made it easier, gave satisfaction to the kill, made it a game. When something was a game, owl gryphons learned faster and became better at what they were learning. She should think on this longer before she shared her thoughts.

What if the Ashen Weald were to attack? The thought came out of nowhere, but it presented a new problem. What if she needed to learn to hunt gryphons? If that were made into a game, what would the implications be? Implications was a word Cherine used a lot. It was not one Strix had ever used, not in front of his children.

She went back to her reading. After beaking through several other tomes, she found no explanation for how the eyrie fire started. Cherine’s account was not in here, except in little hints. She’d hoped that once she and Cherine were closer, he would tell her his story. So far, he had not, and they were very close now.

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