broke off suddenly and glanced toward the door with a slightly fearful expression. “Never mind. It doesn’t—it’s not important. I just n-need to rest a while, till I’m better.”
“Good idea,” said Bran. He stood up. “Sorry, everyone, but I gotta be off home. Early start tomorrow.” He nodded to Arren. “G’night, sir. Hope yer feeling better in the—well, all right, not in the morning. By lunchtime, maybe. I’ll come back an’ see yeh later.”
Arren had closed his eyes again. “Right, right,” he mumbled.
Flell put the blanket over him, careful not to touch the bandages. “Just get some sleep now, Arren. I’ll come back in the morning, all right?”
He yawned and covered his face with one arm. “If—don’t tell anyone. Lock the door.”
“I will, Arren,” said Flell. “Goodnight.”
She hustled the other two out of the house and locked the door behind her with the spare key. The moon was up by now, and the torches in the street were lit.
Gern leant against the wall of the house and wiped his forehead with his arm. “Phew! That was horrible!”
Bran shook his head. “I’ve seen him drunk before, but never that bad. He’s really lost it, hasn’t he?”
“Who can blame him?” Flell snapped, lifting Thrain into her arms. “And if either of you two had any sense you’d have put a bit more effort into finding out if he was all right. That’s how people die, you know, because no-one bothers to check on them. I’ve heard about people who’ve killed themselves, and no-one found them for months just because they lived alone. What if that’d happened to Arren while I was away and you were off worrying about yourselves?”
“I just thought he wanted to be left alone, that’s all,” said Gern, shamefaced. “I mean, he’s always been pretty solitary.”
They walked off into the city.
“Everyone needs other people,” said Flell. “And that includes him. And tomorrow I’m going to go and have a word with my father. I can’t believe he and the Mistress just let Arren go like that and didn’t do anything to help him. It’s outrageous.”
“Well, they’ve always been a bit off about that,” said Gern. “Arren being a griffiner, I mean. I mean, he’s not a noble like you. He’s not even a Southerner.”
“Yes, he is,” said Flell. “He was born in Idun, just like you were.”
“He’s got a Northern accent, though,” said Gern.
“So? It doesn’t matter.”
They stopped at a crossroads, and went their separate ways. Flell walked back toward her home on the other side of the Eyrie, with Thrain riding on her shoulder.
She knew perfectly well that other griffiners privately disapproved of her relationship with Arren. She didn’t care.
She still remembered the day they had met, in the great council chamber at the Eyrie, when they had both been inducted as new griffiners. Thrain had only been a tiny hatchling then—half the size she was now—but Eluna had already been close to her adult size.
Flell had noticed the tall boy with the black hair during the ceremony and had watched him curiously. She’d never seen a Northerner before that day, although she had heard stories about them from her father, who had owned Northern slaves during his youth and had fought others during a rebellion in the North itself. She had already heard about how one of them had become a griffiner, but she hadn’t seen him in person until that day. He had seen her looking at him, and she had been frightened when he looked back. His eyes were black, and it was hard to tell where they were looking or what the mind behind them was thinking. She had looked away nervously. But after the ceremony, during the celebrations that followed, he had come to find her.
“I’m Arren,” he’d said in forthright tones. “I saw you looking at me.”
He’d laughed at her stammering apology.
“It’s all right. Everyone always looks at me. They all want to know why there’s a blackrobe in the Eyrie.”
That had given her confidence, and she’d introduced herself and Thrain. They had talked about their homes and their families and how they had become partnered with their griffins, and Flell had started to like him almost immediately. So solemn and serious, but with such a sweet smile. Handsome, too, in a cold kind of way.
Now she reflected on him as she had just seen him—barely recognisable under the beard, his chest cut up and infected, mumbling in his drunken despair—and her fists clenched.
Arren slept badly that night. He heard Flell leave,