Endling: The Last: Part Three

At every possible docking point, passenger boats, private yachts, and freighters were tied up two, even three, deep, so that people on the outermost berths had to walk across other boats to reach land.

Expensively attired nobles rode on palanquins that jostled by the crowd.

Horses and donkeys vied for space.

Raptidons, creatures that could easily snatch puppies or badgers to their nests for a quick meal, preened far too close for my comfort.

The inn had seemed quiet from the outside, but the interior was bustling, filled with crowded tables and boisterous customers.

The sleek cat seemed to be absorbed in conversation with a grizzled old man.

“It’s a sort of funeral for the species, as I understand it,” Eldon said. “Three days of drinking and carousing. And some solemn speeches, no doubt. But mostly—”

I had arrived in this place just in time to witness drunken revels for the death of my species.

Khara spread out the food Eldon had procured.

It was protected by a low stone wall, behind which hired men wearing the black-and-gold livery of the Academy stood guard, tall pikes at parade rest, brass helmets shiny in the morning sun.

He was thin and gangly, perhaps Khara’s age, with a clever face.

I’d seen a book once. It had belonged to Dalyntor and was his most prized possession. It was small and thin, hand sized—nothing like these heavy tomes—and made of bark and pressed leaves.

I turned to see her embracing an old man in a long gold robe inscribed in black with writings, runes and glyphs.

I stepped back a few paces, and Tobble stood resolutely beside me.

“I brought Byx here,” Khara said, “because I felt certain you would know what to do with a dairne. She masqueraded as a dog during our journey. You can imagine how worried I was that she’d be recognized for what she is.”

To Khara, I said nothing. What was there to say?
She gave me a bleak smile.

I didn’t respond, although I was seething at his calm, almost smug tone.

He gave a wry laugh. “We humans are good at naming our mistakes.”

I let this shocking news sink in. The idea that felivets might be endangered, just like dairnes, was hard to fathom.

But above all else, I could hear the echoes of Gambler’s words to me: Never underestimate the human when it comes to duplicity and slaughter.

I could just make out a human form beneath the light. I squinted, trying to discern features.

I went to the door of Gambler’s cell, stepping out of the miasma of light.

“So this...this travesty funeral is going ahead?” I asked.
Luca nodded, looking at Khara. “It cannot be stopped. If the scholars admit they were wrong and dairnes aren’t yet extinct, they’ll lose all influence with Araktik, and with it, most likely, the protection of the Murdano..."

We crept around the plaza’s perimeter, and Luca led us into one of the buildings. It had scaffolding rising up over its face, and once inside we saw that it was being completely rebuilt.

He pointed to a row of dormer windows overlooking the Plaza of Truth.

The library was a pillared beast of a building with friezes and bas-reliefs showing the long line of Chief Scholars—humans, felivets, raptidons, natites, terramants, and dairnes.

The library was a pillared beast of a building with friezes and bas-reliefs showing the long line of Chief Scholars—humans, felivets, raptidons, natites, terramants, and dairnes.

The natite audience was arrayed along the banks of a C-shaped canal. The blue-green water entered the plaza at the southeast corner, curved through, and exited by the northeast corner. Within the space delineated by that canal, felivets paced or lounged on cobblestones.

Her bare arms were covered in tattoos, blue and red and green. Luca explained that they were magical runes and seals, the visible manifestations of powerful theurgic charms.

He loped over and, by resting his forepaws on the windowsill, took in the view.

He bunched his muscles and soared straight up, an impossible leap that took him just short of the eaves of the building above us.

Gambler moved like a raging river through a steep canyon. He was sheer, sinewy power combined with fluid grace.

Luca knew all the back alleys, and the throngs of merrymakers filling the main streets meant it was easy for us to go unnoticed.

As we made our way, we were surprised to see hastily printed handbills posted on every corner by the constabulary, claiming that the “flying dairne” was a hoax perpetrated by enemies of the Murdano.

Luca was at the top of the list, described as a “conniving traitor and mediocre scholar.”

“It’s way over my head.”
“Because you’re just a simple poacher girl,” I said, half tease, half reproach.

I was only an ignorant young dairne, little versed in history, blissfully unaware of the wars and strife of humans and other species.

But even I knew of Kainor the Magnificent, the man who’d defeated the Svorsk invasion. At least, I’d heard the name and knew it was held in reverence.

“A mythical land called Dairneholme. My teacher said there was a river and a deep, deep valley, hidden away from the world on a magical sentient island that floated from place to place.”

When I said nothing, he went on, “If we go south, we head back to places we’ve known. I can return to my own territory. Khara can rejoin the poachers. Luca can perhaps ingratiate himself again on the isle, or find his own people. And Tobble can go back to his folk.”