Kingfisher

ACE BOOKS BY PATRICIA A. McKILLIP

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld

The Sorceress and the Cygnet

The Cygnet and the Firebird

The Book of Atrix Wolfe

Winter Rose

Song for the Basilisk

Riddle-Master: The Complete Trilogy

The Tower at Stony Wood

Ombria in Shadow

In the Forests of Serre

Alphabet of Thorn

Od Magic

Harrowing the Dragon

Solstice Wood

The Bell at Sealey Head

The Bards of Bone Plain

Kingfisher

COLLECTED WORKS

Cygnet

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.

Copyright © 2016 by Patricia A. McKillip.

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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-14052-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McKillip, Patricia A.

Kingfisher / Patricia A. McKillip.

pages ; cm

ISBN 978-0-425-27176-6 (hardcover)

I. Title.

PS3563.C38K56 2016

813'.54—dc23

2015007963

FIRST EDITION:
February 2016

Cover photographs: woman © Nina Pak / Arcangel; wet stones © Scorpp/Shutterstock; water © Zffoto/Shutterstock; decorative elements © il67/Shutterstock.

Cover design by Judith Lagerman.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For the excellent folk of the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve. With a tip of the hat to Roger's Zoo and Bizarretorium for inspiration. With very special thanks to Susan Allison.

CHIMERA

P
ierce Oliver was pulling crab rings out of the water off the end of the dock at Desolation Point when he saw the knights.

They were throwing doors open, clambering out of a black touring car half as long as the dock, it looked, and inset with strange devices depicting animals so rarely seen most were presumed extinct. Three young men, sleek and muscular, adjusting their black leathers and quilted silks, heads turning this way and that as they surveyed the tiny harbor, caused Pierce to forget what he was doing. The line went slack in his hands. The tiered, circular frames of the net he had hauled up, dripping and writhing with crabs, slumped into one another. A fourth door opened; another head rose out of the driver's side, black-capped and masked with sunglasses. His voice queried something lost in a sudden squall of screeching gulls. The three shook their heads, turning from him toward the dock.

They were all, Pierce realized abruptly, staring back at him.

A crab hit his shoe, skittered over it. He glanced down hastily, pulled the rings taut again, knelt to shake crabs back into the net and bat the smaller escapees back into the sea. He felt the tremor of footsteps along the dock. Boots, black, supple, and glistening like nacre, came to a halt under his nose.

“Sorry to interrupt your work there, but could you tell us where in Severen's name we are?”

Pierce, the crab net rope in one hand, a lime-green plastic measure in the other, opened his mouth. Nothing came out. The shadow stretching out from the boots on the dock seemed to have grown wings. They expanded darkly across the wood, rising to catch the wind. The boots under Pierce's transfixed gaze refused to levitate, ignoring the wings.

Then the broad, shadowy wings were gone, and he could lift his head finally, look helplessly up at the speaker, who had hair like cropped lamb's wool and eyes like a balmy afternoon sky in some other part of the world. The eyes were beginning to look more bemused than tranquil at Pierce's silence.

“He doesn't know either,” the dark-haired man with a green jewel in one ear the color of his eyes guessed with a laugh. The third, a golden-haired giant as solidly massive as a slab of oak, flared suddenly, flames licking out all around him. Pierce jumped, dropping the crab measure.

“Cape Mistbegotten,” he gabbled hastily, not wanting to rile them into further displays of weirdness.

“Mistbegotten?”

“Des—Desolation Point.”

“Des— Seriously?”

A gull landed on the dock beside him with a sudden, fierce cry. After the crabs, he thought, but it stayed very still then, raking the strangers with its yellow-eyed glare. He retrieved the crab measure, stood up shakily, and realized that he had forgotten to take his apron off. It hung limply around his neck, untied and grubby from the kitchen, the trellis of green beans on it like some stained mimicry of a heraldic device. Another crab was snarled in his shoelace, trying to untie his ancient, cracked trainer.

“Desolation Point,” he repeated more clearly, though his mouth was still dry. The dark-haired man's shadow seemed to have grown a barbed tail; it lashed sinuously, soundlessly, as though to sweep the crabs off the dock. It stilled finally. Pierce closed his eyes tightly, opened them and his mouth again. “It's the only town on the cape. The sign got blown into the ocean during a winter storm. It's still a little early in the season for tourists; we haven't bothered to replace it yet.”

They were gazing at him with varying degrees of incredulity. “People come here?” the fire-giant said dubiously. “On purpose?”

Pierce shook the crab off his shoe; it landed on its back, legs waving at him furiously. “Like I said, it's the only town on Cape Mistbegotten.”

“Then why isn't it on the map?” the blond with the temperate eyes asked reasonably. “Our driver couldn't even find it on paper.”

Pierce grunted, puzzled. Something in the gull's grim eye, its oddly motionless stance, enlightened him. “Oh, that was probably my mother. Sometimes she hides things and forgets.”

“Your mother.” The burly giant's face flattened suddenly, all expression gone. “Hides. An entire cape.” He had shifted suddenly very close to Pierce, forcing Pierce's head to angle upward. “Are you mocking us? Do you have any idea who we are?”

Pierce, caught helplessly in the hazel-eyed smolder, finally registered the odd crunch in the giant's wake. “Not a clue,” he said breathlessly. “But you just squashed a perfectly good dinner crab.”

The giant looked down at his boots, raised one slowly, grimacing at the legs dangling from the sole. The fair man with the wings dropped a hand on his shoulder, shook him lightly, fearlessly.

“Temper, Bayley,” he murmured. His eyes, on Pierce's face, widened in sudden comprehension. “We must have wandered off the map into the realm of a sorceress.”

“Or a lunatic,” the giant muttered, shaking crab off his boot.

“No.” The intense gaze fixed Pierce, held him motionless. “He is the sorceress's son. That's why you couldn't speak. Isn't it? You saw something in us. Tell me what you saw.”

“I saw—” Pierce whispered, losing his voice again, “I saw your shadow. Your wings. And I saw your fire,” he added to the giant, then to the dark knight, “I saw your barbed tail.”

Suddenly, they were all smiling.

“No wonder you lost your tongue,” the giant marveled. “We've been up north, hunting our ancestors.” He held up his brawny arm; Pierce saw the fine embroidered medallion on the black sleeve: a white bear outlined in flames. “I am Sir Bayley Reeve. My ancestors took the Fire Bear. I'm not
sure how,” he added with wonder. “She's huge. She topped even me by a head.”

“And mine took the wyvern,” said the man with the sea-green eyes. “I am Roarke Wyvernbourne.”

Pierce swallowed, speech swollen like a lump in his throat. Even Desolation Point, the outermost stretch of isolated land along the coast of Wyvernhold, got a newspaper now and then.

“And mine the great Winter King of the north,” the pale-haired man said. “The Winter Merlin, who taught the ancient mage of the first Wyvernbourne king. Back when there were a dozen petty kingdoms and as many kings. That's what you saw in me: the falcon's wings. I am Sir Gareth May.”

They waited, gazing at Pierce expectantly, until he found his wits again. “Oh. Pierce Oliver.” He started to hold out his hand, felt the crab net rope still in it.

“Oliver,” the Wyvernbourne prince murmured. “Wasn't there something . . .” He shook his head, shrugging. “Well.”

“Did you— Ah— Did you actually— I mean, with weapons? I thought they were already pretty much extinct?”

The knights were silent for a breath; Pierce saw the memories, complex and mysterious, in their faces.

“We came as close as we could,” Gareth May said slowly. “They leave a track. They leave a rumor. I climbed into the high forests, found the ancient nesting places of the Winter Merlins. I heard their voices in the wind. Maybe I saw one. Maybe it was a cloud. Maybe it was both.”

“I searched in fire,” Bayley said. “At night. Fire licking wood as the Fire Bear licks her newborn to turn them into
flesh and blood; she swallows their fire, their immortality. Maybe I did that.”

“I found the caves where the wyverns raised their young,” the Wyvernbourne prince said. “I saw their high nests, hollows of stone where they laid their eggs, said to make a noise like thunder when they cracked.”

“What we hunted, what we took, is what you saw,” Gareth said simply. “That you saw it so quickly, so easily—that's the wonder. We were searching for what we found. You weren't looking for anything at all.”

Again they were silent, consulting one another with their eyes. Pierce watched, fascinated by their closeness, their fellowship. The motionless gull, which he had forgotten, gave such a sudden, piercing cry that he nearly leaped off the dock. It sounded, he thought as he caught his breath, like a curse.

He glanced down, saw more crabs wobbling to the edge of the rings, toppling onto the dock. He bent to pluck a couple of likely-looking dinners up, toss them back into the net.

“Look for us,” he heard, “if you come to Severluna. You might find a place for yourself in King Arden's court.”

He straightened again, blinking at the thought. They were smiling at him again, welcoming him to their world, making him, for a moment that melted his heart, one of them. The moment passed; he was himself again, in all his awkwardness, his isolation, his inexperience: a young, tangle-haired man wearing a filthy apron at the end of a dock at the edge of the world, chasing after crabs instead of wyverns.

“I've always lived here,” he explained. “It's home.”

Bayley glanced bewilderedly at the tiny town lining the
main street, doors facing the setting sun. The others refrained from looking. “Oh. Well,” the giant said gruffly, and added, “Sorry about your dinner. Luckily there are more in your net.”

“They're for my mother.”

“Oh.”

“She owns the best restaurant on the cape. I was working in the kitchen earlier; that's why I'm wearing this ridiculous apron. Most of these are too small to keep.”

“What about that one?” the prince asked of the one Pierce had just thrown back into the net.

“Let's see . . .” He pulled it out again, turned it over. “Nope. It's female.”

They gazed at it. Bayley broke the silence.

“Hell can you tell?”

Pierce tapped the band on the underside of the shell. “It's wider on the females.” He let it fall into the water; the young men watched the splash.

“I could eat,” Bayley murmured wistfully.

“Her restaurant's open. It's called Haricot. There's crab on the lunch menu. Follow the street the direction you were going; it's just past the Wander Inn.” He watched them query one another again. “A motel,” he explained. “If you keep going the same direction out of town, the road will loop around the cape and take you back to the highway.”

“Thank you.” They stirred then, stepped toward the waiting car, thoughts shifting away from Pierce, back to their journey. “We appreciate the help.”

“We'll tell them at Haricot that you sent us,” the dark prince said with his father's charming smile.

You won't have to, Pierce thought as the dock swayed
under their receding steps, and the gull finally flew off. She knows.

The knights were long gone by the time he pulled up the rings in the late afternoon and carried them and a bucket full of squirming crabs to the Haricot kitchen.

His tall mother, nibbling a strawberry, glanced at him past the ear of Cape Mistbegotten's only sheriff. Her eyes, a rich blue-green, narrowed, questioning. Pierce took off the apron and scrubbed his hands at the sink, hearing her voice through the falling water.

“Well, I can look, Arn. But it's been a while since I've done anything like that. I've been retired for years; cooking is my magic now.”

Ha, Pierce thought, and felt her gaze between his shoulder blades.

“Thanks, Heloise,” the sheriff said. “It's the third time those interpretive signs and telescopes on the point have been vandalized, and I still haven't got a clue. If you could just—Well, keep an eye on them now and then, when you have a moment.”

“I'll try to remember.”

There was a short silence. Pierce, drying his hands, heard what Arn Brisket was not saying, what he'd not been saying since the third time Heloise had told him no. Not for the first time, Pierce wondered why. Arn was decent, honest, with maybe more shoreline on his head since the first time she had said it, but his chestnut mustache was still bold and thick as a squirrel's tail. And it would be a timely solution. Pierce froze then, at that unexpected thought, staring at the towel in his hands with its little edging of green beans.

“Pierce.”

He looked up dazedly. Arn had gone; his mother, trying to retie her apron without tangling her long red braid in the strings, nodded in the direction of her office. Pierce went to her, took the ties out of her fingers. They seemed oddly chilly. He swallowed something hard in his throat.

“I'll just get the crab pot on to boil first.”

She nodded again, briefly, left him without looking at him, her backbone straight and rigid as a flagpole.

Staff chattered again, voices muted, as he filled the huge pot with water. Arn, they talked about softly, and his stubborn, persistent longing, since his wife's death a decade ago, for the sorceress turned cook and gardener. Pierce heaved the pot onto the stove. His thoughts drifted to the strangers who had gotten so completely lost they had managed to find Desolation Point, the westernmost thrust of land on the entire Wyvernhold coast. So did everyone else's thoughts, then. The knights might have come and gone from Haricot, but they had left behind them vivid impressions. Pierce responded absently to the questions and comments as he lingered beside the crab bucket. The strange idea in his head took on clarity, dimension. He nudged an escaping crab back into the bucket and felt his mother's eyes again. But she wasn't visible; she was in her office, checking the evening menu or balancing accounts while she waited for him.

Or maybe sitting motionlessly, watching him out of a borrowed pair of eyes.

He left the crabs to the staff, went out the back door through her rambling, burgeoning kitchen garden, and drove home.

Home was on the outermost cliff on the cape, where it jutted into the wild sea amid the shards and wreckage of time and the raw, irresistible forces of nature. Shreds of morning mist still hung from the high branches of the ancient trees around the pile of stone and wood that had been Pierce's father's house. And his father's before him, and his father's father's, back to some distant past long before the watchtower that had guarded the headlands had been torn down to add a wing to the family hall.