Valdemar 11 - [Owl Mage 03] - Owlknight by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online

Firesong’s shoulder, fixing his talons carefully into the padded fabric. The long white tail trailed gracefully down Firesong’s back, curling around the thick, silver braid of Firesong’s hair.
    â€œWhose part are you taking, mine or his?” Firesong asked, looking into his bird’s diamond-dust eyes. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
    â€œAnd Aya is too smart to answer, anyway,” the kestra’chern laughed. “Not when he knows he can get treats from both of us this way.”
    It was Firesong’s turn to make a noise of derision; Aya stretched his head and neck under Firesong’s chin, and the Adept answered the silent request by scratching the firebird’s chin. Aya crooned with pleasure. “Don’t listen to him, little one,” he said into Aya’s ear. “He thinks everyone is as self-centered as he is—or more.”
    â€œOf course I do—since I’m not at all self-centered,” Silverfox replied matter-of-factly. He took Firesong’s elbow, and steered him in the direction of the staircase that curved around the trunk of their tree. “And don’t look now, but your pet is trying to coax me into tickling him, too.”
    Aya opened one eye and gave Silverfox a withering look at the word “pet,” but did not pull his head away from Silverfox’s fingers.
    Firesong felt a smile stretching the stiff, pitted and scarred skin of his face. Although life was nothing like he’d anticipated when he left his home Vale, it was very good. What’s more, I’m not sure if I’d be willing to do any of it over, since the end result is so-comfortable. It’s amazing now that I can wear so many faces here without any of them being a mask—and wear a mask without hiding my feelings.
    Silverfox followed him down past the bedroom to the main public room of the ekele. The tree wasn’t large enough to support an ekele very high off the ground, or for more than one room to be on a single level, but now that the Veil was in place, he’d had the hertasi construct an external stair linking all the rooms, so that the area that had been used for the internal staircase could be converted into usable space. Wide decks circled each level of the ekele, and the staircase threaded its way around and through them. All the windows were open to the balmy air, and flowering vines grown from k’Vala cuttings had been trained around each of the windows to scent, the breezes.
    There were plenty of masks hanging on the walls, but Firesong didn’t trouble to reach for any of them as he and Silverfox entered the room. Here in his own home, no one would trouble him who had not been invited—and no one who had been invited would be shocked or disturbed by his burn-scarred appearance.
    Some of Silverfox’s handiwork hung on the walls as well—gryphon feathers, shed by some of the residents of k’Valdemar when they molted. These were all primaries, secondaries, or tail-feathers, and the smallest was as long as Firesong’s forearm. Silverfox decorated the quills with beadwork, and painted the broad expanses with sinuous designs echoing the colors of the beads. Dyed leather and ribbons of strong textures complemented the interlace and lilt of the line-work. Feather artworks hung between each mask, and Firesong never tired of resting his eyes on them.
    He lifted Aya off his shoulder and set the firebird down on a perch mounted in the wall, one indulgently made of silver in the form of a vine-wrapped branch with a hammered brass reflector behind it as tall as a hertasi. Aya roused all his feathers and shook himself vigorously; bits of fluff flew off of him and rode the air currents of the room like wayward insects, and sparks of false fire crackled around him.
    â€œWasn’t the Joint Council meeting this morning?” he asked Silverfox, as he sank into his favorite chair and reached for a book.