I found Dawn waiting on the Daughter of Wintergreen, along with a half-blind bird with a pink head and a face like he was perpetually smelling sour milk.
“You’re the faulty hatchling, eh?” he said, before even Dawn could greet me. He jerked forward, pulling out a gnarled stick and smacking one of my wings.
I jumped, backing away. “Hey!”
He ignored me. “What, you gonna fly away? Oh wait, you can’t.” He jerked forward again, smacking my other wing just as hard. “Flightless hatchlings like you are supposed to die. Who pretended they didn’t see you climbing down from the aerie?”
“Contrail, I want you to meet Grimsley. He’s one of my father’s oldest monks. Trained… lots of big important war heroes you probably know about.”
“And she doesn’t, because she’s got a brain half pony mush,” he said, still advancing on me. I could guess where he’d come by so many scars if he talked to everypony like that. “Frankly half-breed I’m not sure if there’s much point. Shove him off the side of the ship and call it good.”
I glared past him, meeting her eyes. There was no need to say anything, I was sure she would get my meaning.
“I’m afraid that’s a crime in Equestria,” she said, winking at me from behind him. “You’re going to have to train him instead. I’m sure he’ll need to fly before too long.”
“Considering how you smell, I bucking guess so,” he said. “Assassins, or imperial guard, or just your own stupidity. Hard to say what comes first.” He spun on me again, waving the stick threateningly with one claw. “Can’t be sure I won’t kill him, half-breed. Ponies are softer than down when the gale’s a blowing. He’ll be vulture food in a week.”
I almost wanted to shove him off the ship. Except that his claws were still sharper than knives, and his hooked beak could probably peck out my eyes. He swung that stick like a soldier, and clearly age hadn’t worn him down the way it did to some others. This bird was a survivor.
“You can do it,” Dawn said gently. “We made it through the Ashlands together. You were born to fly. And once you can, we can fly together.
If that wasn’t motivation, I didn’t know what could be. “I’m completing a thesis,” I said, backing away from his stick before he could swing it again. “I’m not going to give it up to study under you, I don’t care how bucking important you are. I only have a few hours a day.”
He did swing at me. But then he stopped chasing. “So there’s a spine in there somewhere after all? Didn’t think I’d find it.” He rapped his stick on the deck. “So be it, half-breed. You’ve got me. Until he flies, or I’m bored of trying, or he’s dead. Whichever comes first.”
I could see the way it wore her down. As soon as we were in our quarters, I embraced her, leaning in close to her ear. “Why do you put up with that from him? You’re a princess! He shouldn’t… talk to you like that.”
“I’m nothing,” she said flatly. At least she didn’t try to push me away. “It’s not… proper… to try and stop a bird from saying something true. And he’s speaking the truth. I am a half-breed. Being a pony does make me soft. Telling birds to stop saying so won’t make me one of them.”
“I wouldn’t want you to be,” I told her. “You’re perfect, Dawn. You don’t have to be like them. You don’t have to be like me, either. You’re supposed to be you. Not just a pony or just a griffon. Something else.”
She chirped in response, a cheerful avian sound I rarely heard from her. “And I wouldn’t want you to put your scrolls away, scholar. Even if they’re feminine.”
“Want to trade? You finish my book, and I’ll, uh… fight with swords?”
“Fight with swords,” she repeated, shoving me playfully. “How would you even swing it, in your dumb mouth?”
Isn’t that how you use a sword? Pointing that out now felt incredibly stupid, so instead of doing that, I did something else with my mouth. She didn’t seem to mind.
We didn’t leave Griffonstone right away. I feared that sticking around would hasten the chance that Twilight or someone else would discover me here, and exact their just vengeance for my crimes. But we didn’t leave right away.
But there were no assassins, and no news stories about war being declared between our two nations. I got my hooves on a copy of the Canterlot Times, and was surprised to hear no mention at all of the missing princess, or my visit, or any diplomatic outrage. The closest I could find was a story on the bottom of the international page about “More outrageous stories of undead monsters from Accipio.” Yeah, outrageous. Too bad I didn’t get a picture of that dragon-thing. Or… any of what we saw under the ash.
There was the flying lessons, which I couldn’t avoid even if Grimsley made it very difficult to want to fly. Only my love for Dawn was enough to return to him on the second day for another few hours of torture. To a bird, flying is about exercise and technique. Since I couldn’t use instinct, he was going to work me until I had the right muscles. Or at least, that was what I assumed. I didn’t think it was a good idea to point out the important role magic plays in flight.
But right before we would’ve left, I received an invitation from the queen of the city. Bit of a pretentious title, given the castle was thousands of years old and Griffonstone was far from rich, but I wasn’t about to say no. In particular, when I saw her signature.
Gilda had turned the palace into everything that the administrator’s office wasn’t. Rich treasures were arranged on prominent displays, along with incredible creations of hoof and hammer. A few murals had been painted on the walls, depicting what was clearly meant to be the former clan that had become Griffonstone, fighting valiantly against ancient ponies. Neither side was depicted as losing, or particularly villainous. Two glorious battle-lines assembled, and clashing. And for every treasure, there was an armed griffon guard, apparently ready to die to protect it. There were so many soldiers packed in that some of them were running out of room to stand.
Gilda herself even had a throne room, and a throne, though she didn’t sit or act much like a queen. She did wear a crown, a band of iron around her head. If anything, the bird in the fancy dress seemed more like royalty. She had Gilda’s eyes, but sandy feathers. The colors of house Vengeance.
“I heard you were writing a book,” she said, from the other side of a feast-table. “I don’t care much about books and that—pony stuff. But I wanted to make sure you weren’t going to lie about my city. Griffonstone is bucking great, yeah? No trash talk in no pony book.”
“I…” I had brought my supplies of course, though I wasn’t wearing my saddlebags or holding a pen at the table. “I would never tell a lie about Griffonstone, Queen Gilda.”
“We love it!” Dawn added, much more enthusiastically. “Before we got here, Contrail said there wouldn’t be much to do. But he was so wrong! It’s way bigger than he said! I could stay another month!”
She didn’t look like she even realized what she’d just done. But Gilda smiled, relaxing back into her oversized chair. “That’s the pony way. Unless they’ve been here, they don’t realize. They still think we’re… broken. Still think we’re small and pathetic. They see our team at the Equestria Games, and they think it’s so brave of us to make it. We’ve really achieved something to overcome our disadvantages.”
She stabbed something on her plate with a fork. There was a little fish here, but nothing… harder for me. Griffonstone birds had been conforming to pony sensibilities for so long that they hadn’t wanted bovine or any of the other prey species any more than we did.
“We’re not a buckin’ charity. We’re not a village. We’re not desperate and struggling, and we don’t need ponies to take care of us. You get all of that in your book, scholar.”
“I will,” I said hastily. “I already did, actually. It’s amazing how well you endured the Migration War.”
“Amazing is right,” Gilda said, cleaning off her plate. “Amazing that Santiago could stick a bloody egg in me and think that’s all it took to get every bird in the city to fight for him. More amazing that it worked.”
The bird on the other side of the table looked away, covering her mouth. From her scent, it seemed she was so embarrassed she was trying to magic herself out of existence. She was the egg, then. Egg of…
No wonder the castle had so many guards. I wasn’t writing my book about individuals too much, so it probably wasn’t worth an interview. I could see how it had happened anyway just from her single response. Santiago had seduced his way into Griffonstone, where he’d made his illegal weapons. The weapons he’d used to invade the rest of the world.
The city didn’t need a reminder of that beyond what was already going into the book. And from the look of her, this bird might tear my throat out if I tried, nevermind growing up in pony territory.
“You had a lot to rebuild after the war,” I said instead, as close to the subject as I dared to get. The ashamed griffon looked visibly relieved that I’d moved on without asking about her. I started to think she was pretty cute too—but banished that thought quickly. What the hell are you doing, Contrail? Don’t even think about it. I didn’t think about it again. “Were you here for all that?”
“Was I here he says?” she muttered, rolling her eyes. “Was I bucking here. I dunno, you tell me. Would Santiago let his bucking bargaining chip out of his sight? I was too young to understand what was going on—but I know now. He didn’t think his marriage to me mattered. He thought he could get away with a political union, probably with house Victory. He couldn’t kill me, or Griffonstone would turn on him. But I couldn’t leave, or his stupid house of cards would come crumbling down.”
“That sounds… like a monumentally stupid plan,” I said, before I could stop myself. “If you were how he got Griffonstone’s loyalty, then thousands of birds knew about you. Word would make it back to Accipio eventually.”
She smiled at me, the first time she’d done anything remotely friendly since we walked in. “Monumentally stupid. I’ll remember that one. Too bad he had to get himself bucking killed so soon, though. I wouldn’t have minded another egg first.”
The princess rose from her seat, swaying on her claws. “May I be excused?” She didn’t wait for an answer, storming off down the hall with an embarrassment thick enough to leave a trail in the air.
“Bah.” Gilda shrugged one wing. “She’s going to be queen someday, she has to learn these things. And you all… you best be learning too, scholar. If I see one lie in your book about my city, I’m going to burn it. And maybe you, we’ll see.”
She smiled when she said it, but she was also eating a fish, so I couldn’t be sure if she was serious. “I’ll send you a draft of the relevant chapter before we go to print,” I said. “You can check it for errors yourself. But I won’t make any, I assure you.”
She laughed, a little louder this time. “Send it to the administrator. Do I look like I care about books?”