Chapter Fifteen Taissa #3
“And,” Cronus adds in a grumble, “you just fell through the sky and almost died. I want to keep an eye on you, hatchling. You’re a danger to yourself.”
Her eyebrows lift.
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Cho.” Kion’s voice is exasperated (but when is it not?), like he’s been trying to catch her attention for a while now. “What are we doing?”
But she’s already backed up, preparing for her running start necessary to mount Cronus.
Taissa’s perfected the High Mount by now, and launches onto his back with nothing more than a whuff of exertion, and quickly etches a Mending glyph into the snapped saddle-belt before fastening it around her waist.
“Come on, Locke,” she says, ignoring the curious looks of the reporters and other team members below. “It’s time for some ‘ice cream.’ ”
Wind whips through Taissa’s hair as she and Cronus swoop over Lantern Street, inciting surprised hollers from below.
Technically, the stymphs are supposed to remain in the stables when not in training or game-transport, or heading into retirement with their player.
But technically, greasy handlers like Markus can kiss her saddle-sore ass.
Cronus is hers, and she’s his. And she knows that the elderly bird has spent his entire life cooped up; that match in Dunanaird was his very first time out of the Nexitory’s property. He hasn’t even seen the rest of Pinion-upon-Keat.
Besides, the rule is mostly ignored by every pro carriwitchet player.
When she was bonded with Sansa, she’d often take the little wyvern on soaring rides through Banallan’s lush green fields.
As long as she doesn’t test Cronus’s limits (long-distance flights are a no-no, especially for a stymph of his, ah, esteemed age), nobody can say anything without annoying both rider and Winged (a deadly combination, that).
Next to her, Kion leans forward on Cato, who seems to be bickering with his father in the language of the stymphs, chittering and clucking in annoyance as the two of them soar over the wide-eyed shoppers.
“Do you want to finally tell me where we’re going?” Kion demands, casting a suspicious look at her.
“Cherrybush Lane!” Taissa hollers back.
“Cherrybush?” Kion demands as she mentally requests Cronus to veer right. Her stymph obliges, turning gracefully. “What the fuck is there?”
“More like who the fuck is there.” As their stymphs angle into a Parallel Position, the tips of their wings nearly touching, Taissa wonders if maybe, possibly, she should have called Alun Davies first. This has the potential to be extraordinarily and extremely awkward.
It’s been years since she last saw him, and their encounter had been brief (“Many men finish too quickly. It’s nothing to be ashamed about,” she’d told him in resignation, approximately twenty-two seconds after flopping onto his bed).
But he’s the one she needs now—well, more specifically, him and his abilities.
If the stymphs are cursed, looking through DMR files isn’t going to do much good. But Alun…
Well, Alun could be useful. For once.
(He owes her something satisfying.)
She doesn’t say any of this to Kion.
At least, not right now, at the risk of bugs flying into her mouth.
Instead, she ignores him, concentrating on finding Cherrybush Lane, using the Tally Ho Tavern below as a marker. That’s where they met that night, and then…
Thirteen minutes later, Cronus lands on a cobblestoned road (narrowly avoiding crushing the parallel-parked cars), bronze talons clicking against the worn stones as Taissa jumps off him, eyeing the row of flats—redbrick with white trimmings and small black-fenced balconies—lining the street.
“What’s that smell?” demands Cronus, and despite the usual displeased edge to his tone, Taissa knows he’s exhilarated.
His giddiness swirls in her chest. In approximately twenty minutes, he’s seen more of Pinion than he’s seen in probably seventy years.
Maybe two hundred years. She’s not sure how old he is.
Between seventy and two hundred seems safe.
“There’s a fish-and-chips shop just around the corner.”
“Disgusting. I want to try some.”
“Later,” she promises.
As Kion’s boots thump on the stone, Taissa eyes the flats. “If I remember right,” she muses out loud, “his is 42B. Or maybe 43—44? No, 42—”
Kion’s hand closes around her forearm before she can finish striding away. Somehow his touch manages to be firm yet gentle at the same time. “What are we doing here?”
Taissa shakes off his grip, and nervously unplaits her hair. “We’re here to see Alun Davies,” she says slowly, wishing she had a mirror. Some charm may be needed here with Alun, despite the little debt he owes her. “He’s a síceach.”
The captain’s eyes widen, but only fractionally. “A síceach,” he repeats. “You know a bloody psychic?”
In the UKHC, síceachs are rare. Not as rare as, say, the endangered selkies or leshy (fur-hunting and deforestation have really done a number on the poor things, respectively), but síceachs are scarce all the same.
They’re not witches or warlocks, not really—they can’t use glyphs in the way that Taissa and Kion can—but they’re, well, as a gnome is to a dwarf. Different, but…similar.
(In the case of gnomes and dwarves, the most startling difference is temperament. Short-tempered dwarves, although not Unseelie, make up a large portion of Shackell Penitentiary’s inmate population for murder. Gnomes, on the other hand, like to garden.)
While síceachs cannot use glyph-magic, they have something that witches and warlocks do not: the Sight, the ability to read auras, or the magic surrounding them. If the NCL Stymphs really are cursed, Alun will (hopefully) be able to confirm it by reading their auras.
If, of course, he still lives here.
“How the hells do you know a síceach?” demands Kion as Taissa starts up the stone steps toward a flat with 42B painted neatly on a black door. She’s not concerned about leaving the two stymphs on the streets—nobody will try to steal them, and if they do, well, Cronus has a nasty bite to him.
The last thing Taissa wants to do is to discuss her sexual history with Kion Locke. “We, erm, met—briefly—a few years ago, when I was in Pinion for one of the Wyverns v. Stymphs games,” she explains quickly, pausing with her knuckles just above the door.
“How briefly?” Kion is looking at her a little too closely for her liking.
“Too briefly,” she mutters before taking a deep breath and knocking tentatively on the door.
Ten seconds, twenty, thirty. Nobody comes. Taissa shifts on her feet. Underneath the summer sun, and away from the windchill of flying, she’s hot in her leather uniform.
“You knock like a wuss,” mutters Kion.
“Sod off.”
“Let me knock.”
She blocks his body with hers as he tries to step forward. “We don’t need to bang the door down.”
“Maybe we do. Your lad’s not answering.”
“I’ll knock again. And he’s not my lad.”
“So you two didn’t shag?”
Ugh. “I never said that.” She bristles. “Stop breathing down my neck.”
“I’m not.” But then he does it again. On purpose.
“Yes, you are—” Right as her knuckles graze the door again, it swings open to reveal a very puzzled looking Alun Davies.
He’s…not quite how she remembers him.
Taissa had been charmed by the sandy-haired, dimpled young man with bright green eyes and an easy laugh in Tally Ho.
What’s before her now is Alun Davies, if Alun Davies had suddenly and unfortunately plunged into a goth phase.
His hair isn’t the soft, wavy thing she remembers: It’s jet-black and spiky.
Smudged blue eyeliner rims his lids; he’s wearing a white T-shirt with so many rips and tatters that it no longer looks fashionable or artistic—it looks like he lost a fight with a blender down at a smoothie shop.
For some reason, a red tie hangs loose around his neck, only half done.
And he’s wearing no trousers.
His boxers (blue-and-white checkered, with rubber duckies) are very, very visible.
“Oh, dear,” says Taissa. She can’t help herself.
Behind her, she feels Kion stiffen. Either he’s holding back a laugh or a sneeze.
Morgana help her.
Alun’s eyes are squinting, and then widening in recognition. “Well, well, well! If it’s not Taissa Cho!”
“Hello, Alun,” she says weakly. Alun’s eyes drift toward Kion behind her. His eyebrows raise. One of them has a piercing in it. “It’s, ah, er, nice to see you, uh, again. We…Well, we could use your help. As a síceach.”
“Oh?” Alun’s eyes snap back to her. Kion hasn’t bothered to say hello (of course he hasn’t). “Yeah, yeah, okay. Uh, you guys want to come in, or what?”
“Sure,” croaks Taissa. “Thanks.”
As they follow Alun into his flat, Taissa’s conscious of Kion’s incredulous stare. “This is your type, then?” he whispers out of the corner of his mouth. She elbows him deeply in the ribs as a response.
The flat smells like burnt sage and beeswax candles.
Alun leads them into the sitting room, where an overstuffed couch sits before a telly, and chunks of glittering crystals sit charging on the room’s windowsill in the sunlight.
Her riding boots are noiseless on the thick black carpet, which matches the dark walls.
Someone down the hall is blasting the Howling Pumpkinheads.
Alun clears off the sofa for them, shoving aside an odd assortment of things: pouches of what are probably dried herbs, tattered divination cards, one or two empty boxes of Jumping Jellies (there are a few of the stray candy beans hopping gleefully around on the dusty edges of the room near the bookcase), and a smudged crystal ball with more than a few cracks in it.
“Sit, sit,” says the síceach magnanimously.
As Taissa obliges, with Kion following, Alun stands before them looking both concerned and wary.
“If you’re asking me to predict how your season ends, I’m afraid I can’t do that. Ethics, and all.”
Taissa bites the inside of her cheek to keep herself from rolling her eyes. Síceach sports predictions are fickle at best. “That’s not what we’re here for.”