Sparrow Rising

by Jessica Khoury

  Nox’s stomach twisted. Inwardly, he cursed Gussie for voicing the very questions he’d been trying so hard to avoid asking himself. “It’s like the Talon says. Listen to your wings, not your heart. Your heart’ll get you killed.” The way his father’s heart had killed him, when he’d run into that fire. “Your wings help you survive.”

  She shook her head, still looking torn.

  “Look,” said Nox, “there’s got to be other you-know-whats out there in the world. This can’t be the only one. Someone else will figure out what they can do and use them to help people. Why do we have to be the ones who save the world? We’re just thieves from Knock Street.”

  “Until tonight,” she pointed out. “When we officially retire. Then what do we become?”

  “Something new. Fresh start. Clean slate. Nothing that happened before will matter.” Angrily, Nox slurped down the rest of his soup and then stood up. “I’m going to change clothes and catch a nap. Meet you tonight.”

  Nox had entered the tavern feeling hopeful and excited, but when he left, his stomach was in knots. He looked up to see confetti bombs bursting over the wealthier section of the city—no celebrations for Knock Street, of course.

  “Stupid race,” he growled. “Stupid Sparrow.”

  “The wild card draw will now begin,” announced the Goldwing captain, framed by the great front doors of Honorhall. “Please stay quiet and orderly. I know you’re all excited, but remember, you must represent the best of the Clandoms.”

  Ellie nearly fell over in shock.

  The knight who’d spoken, and who now surveyed the hopeful kids with a firm eye, was the same knight who had saved Ellie years ago. She’d never forget her face or her gleaming gold hair.

  The captain indulged them with a tight smile. “I know you’ve all journeyed far for this opportunity to enter the Race of Ascension, but only twenty will be admitted.”

  A hundred kids cried out to be chosen, hands raised eagerly, some fluttering into the air in an effort to be seen.

  Ellie stepped forward. “I wish to race.”

  The Goldwing looked down at her, eyebrows lifting in surprise. At first, Ellie thought the woman might recognize her too, but she only said, “You’re far from home, Sparrow.”

  The other kids, noticing Ellie had the Goldwing’s attention, began calling out angrily.

  “She can’t race! She’s a flappin’ Sparrow!”

  “She’s smaller than my dog back home!”

  “This is ridiculous! Get out of the way, low clanner!”

  The Goldwing put a hand on Ellie’s shoulder. “All are permitted to enter the Race of Ascension,” she said. “Go on in, child, and good luck.”

  The roar of protest from the crowd nearly knocked Ellie over. A red-faced Falcon man alighted hard on the steps, spitting with anger.

  “My son is the strongest lad in our town!” he fumed. “How dare you let this—this embarrassment race instead of him?”

  “Sir,” said the Goldwing, her hand going to the short sword on her belt, “back up now.”

  The other Goldwings stepped threateningly toward him, and in a huff, the man flew off again.

  Shaking, Ellie marched up the steps and into Honorhall, fists clenched.

  But weariness dragged at her feet. She was tired of having to constantly prove herself worthy of things these high clanners expected to get, simply by virtue of birth. Raw determination had brought her this far, but when would she be allowed to rest? To take for granted what everyone else did? When would people stop saying prove you can do it and instead say of course you can?

  Inside Honorhall, Ellie’s spirits lifted when she saw the famous statues of Goldwings past. She knew all their names: Sir Rusviel, Sir Saryn, Sir Roth … Set into alcoves in the walls, they looked down fiercely as she strode past. Feeling dwarfed by their height, and by the cavernous ceiling arching above, she decided to spread her wings and fly instead.

  She soared down the length of the hall and landed at last before another set of doors, these ones already open. Beyond them, a Goldwing waited with an inkpot, quill, and open book. He had porcelain skin, a black warrior’s topknot, and the unmistakable dark wings of the Eagle clan. He might even have been of royal blood. Ellie was too intimidated to ask.

  He looked a little surprised to see a Sparrow standing before him, but he handed over the quill and told her to sign her name.

  She did so, hand trembling slightly.

  “And mark down your chosen weapon,” he added, pointing at her staff.

  “My weapon?”

  “Everyone enters the race armed.” He tilted his head, looking at her as if she had wandered in by mistake. “Did you not know? There’s still time to back out.”

  “No way,” Ellie said. She wrote down lockstave next to her name, then returned the quill.

  “Congratulations,” said the Eagle. “You’re now an official contestant in the Race of Ascension. Skies be with you, little warrior.”

  Dizzy with euphoria and nervousness, Ellie let the Goldwings shuffle her through Honorhall to the barracks where all the contestants would sleep before the big race. It all passed in a blur—tapestries of battles between Goldwings and gargols, busts of Eagle kings and queens of the past, racks of fabled weapons, displays of Goldwing uniforms as they had changed over the generations, maps of the Clandoms and the lands beyond …

  She told herself she didn’t have to take it all in now. When she entered the Goldwing Academy, she’d train here every day. This would be her home, her family.

  If she entered the academy.

  She couldn’t let herself get carried away just yet. She still had the hardest race of her life ahead of her, and as more contestants began to arrive—other wild cards as well as trial winners—her nervousness expanded until it felt like a great black shadow crouched behind her, its claws on her shoulders.

  She sat on a narrow bed in the barracks, a round tower that reminded her of the seed silos back at Sparrow Farms. Circular platforms set into the walls added nearly twenty floors for beds, accommodating the four hundred or so racers.

  Tucked onto a bed on the bottom floor of the tower, Ellie had a good view of all the contestants as they arrived. Many seemed to already know one another—they were clanmates, or had trained at high clan schools together. There was a lot of shouting, high fives, and comparing wingspans. No one seemed to notice Ellie at all. She preferred that to hearing their jibes and insults, so she tried to make her small self even smaller.

  But then a group of contestants arrived from whom Ellie couldn’t hide.

  Zain, Tauna, and Laida strutted in with huge grins, carrying sheathed swords.

  “Ellie Meadows?” Zain cried out.

  He stared at her with a mixture of apprehension and amazement. Tauna and Laida looked shocked as well, but decidedly not pleased to see her.

  “What in the skies is she doing here?” Tauna said.

  Ellie bristled. “I have as much right to be here as anyone.”

  The girls rolled their eyes and fluttered to the higher platforms in search of bunks.

  Zain sat on Ellie’s bed, and she perched carefully beside him, her body rigid.

  The awkward silence reminded Ellie of how much their friendship had changed in the last few weeks. She wondered if they could ever really be best friends again.

  “Well,” she said at last. “I did tell you I’d see you in Thelantis.”

  “What happened to you? You look like you got trampled by a bear.”

  She laughed. “Actually …”

  “I just don’t want you get hurt,” he blurted. “You’re one of the bravest people I know, for a Sparrow—”

  “See?” Ellie said. “That’s the problem right there. For a Sparrow. Why do high clans think they’re the only ones who are brave and strong? I’m no braver than any other Sparrow. More stubborn, maybe. Definitely more reckless, as Mother Rosemarie always said. But being a Sparrow isn’t something I have to leave behind or overcome, Zain. It’
s a part of me, and I’m proud to be what I am. And guess what? Being a Sparrow is exactly what’s going to help me win tomorrow.”

  Zain raised his hands defensively. “I didn’t mean—”

  “And that’s the other problem. You don’t mean anything you say, do you?” All the things she’d wanted to say to Zain now came pouring out, a hundred pent-up speeches that had played out endlessly in her head. “I know you don’t want me getting hurt; maybe that’s true. But you also don’t want me in the same sky as you, because you think that’ll make you look weak. How embarrassing to see a Sparrow outfly a Hawk, huh? I’m allowed to be your friend, but only so long as I don’t outshine you. Isn’t that right?”

  Zain’s face turned red. He tried to stammer a response but clamped his teeth shut when Ellie laid her hand on his arm.

  “You’ve been my best friend for years,” Ellie said. “And I care about you. But I’m not giving up, no matter what you or anyone else says.”

  “If you lose,” he said quietly, “they’ll drag you to that terrible Moorly House and clip your wings. You won’t fly again for years.”

  “I know.” Ellie looked down at her hands. “That’s why I cannot lose.”

  The Lord of Thieves was a tall man, bald and paunchy, with one blue eye. There were many stories about how the Talon had lost the other eye, each one wilder than the last. Nox’s favorite was that he’d lost it wrestling the same crocodile whose skin he now wore as an eye patch.

  His wings marked him an Osprey, but Nox had heard he’d been formally expelled from his clan as a young man. So he’d built his own clan of misfits, reprobates, and criminals. The Talon had been the one to find Nox that awful day he’d run from the Goldwings.

  The day of his father’s execution.

  “C’mere, kid,” the one-eyed man had said. “I can keep you hidden from the big bad knights. Just do this one thing for me …”

  That was the first time Nox had ever stolen something—an apple from a cart, to prove to the Talon that he could. Neither of them had their own clans, and Nox had always felt a kind of kinship with the man because of it. Not that he loved the Talon or saw him as a father—quite the opposite; Nox feared him as much as he respected him—but the Talon always upheld his deals. He repaid every deed fairly, whether it was coin for a job well done or a beating for a thief who dared cross him. Besides, he’d been there for Nox when no one else in the world had. The Talon’s rules were the only ones Nox bothered to keep.

  Now, as Nox approached the cellar beneath the Chivalrous Toad, he felt a twinge of sorrow. This would be his last job for the Lord of Thieves. Tomorrow, he and his mother would leave Thelantis behind forever.

  “Nox Hatcher,” said the Talon, reclined in his high wooden chair at the head of a long table. “My prized protégé, back at last. Come closer, lad.”

  His inner circle sat with him, the best of his thieves—or worst, as the Sparrow girl might say. They were all savage, ruthless individuals who eyed Nox like he was about to steal their wallets. Which, to be fair, he had done on one or two occasions.

  “There are rumors of a certain angry general combing the countryside for a trio of thieves.” The Talon grinned. “You pulled it off.”

  “We did,” Nox said. “I’ve brought you the skystone.”

  He took the gem from his pocket and set it on the table before his master.

  “Well done, my boy. Oh, well done, indeed!” The Talon picked up the stone, his eye shining. “Behold, friends, the rarest jewel in the world: the eye of a gargol. There are collectors who would sell their own mothers for it. Once I put it up for auction, prepare to become disgustingly rich.”

  The inner circle looked impressed. They leaned in, eyes greedy, but the Talon flicked his hand, and the stone vanished into one of his many hidden pockets.

  “Right,” he said. “You’ll want to be paid, then. You, the feral one.”

  Twig stepped forward nervously, his hand clutching Lirri in his pocket.

  “An Albatross ship sails for the south in two days,” said the Talon. “You’ll have berth aboard it, as promised, with an ample allowance in your pocket besides.”

  Twig’s eyes widened, and he nodded mutely.

  “And for the brainy one,” the Talon sighed, flicking a finger at Gussie, “it’s a little more complicated, but by next week, you’ll be admitted into Thelantis University.”

  “Thank you,” Gussie whispered, looking dazed. “Thank you.”

  “And for my protégé.” The Talon took a coin purse from his pocket and tossed it. The loud thunk it made when it landed elicited gasps from his inner circle, who looked at him as if he were crazy. “Ten thousand aquilas.”

  Silence.

  It was a small fortune, more than anyone Nox knew had ever made from a single job. It could easily buy passage on a ship anywhere in the world, and then a house and land when he got there.

  But he ignored the purse and looked into the Talon’s glittering eye.

  “That wasn’t the deal,” he said.

  “Are you mad, boy?” burst out a brawny man seated to the Talon’s right. “It’s more than your sorry skin’s worth. Take it and—”

  “I said I’d deliver the skystone in exchange for a prisoner from the Crag,” said Nox. “That was our deal, Talon.”

  The inner circle laughed.

  “The Crag!” sputtered a woman with a blue-dyed mohawk. “The boy is mad. No one escapes the Crag.”

  The thief lord leaned forward, elbows resting on the table, hands laced beneath his chin. “I remember no such bargain, boy.”

  Nox blinked, struck speechless with confusion.

  The Talon was lying?

  He never lied to his crew, especially not about deals. If word got out he’d broken a deal with one of his own … But then Nox remembered the night they’d struck their bargain. They’d been alone, walking the rooftops, with no one to hear their conversation. It was his word against the Talon’s. And against the Lord of Thieves, Nox’s word was nothing.

  “I don’t want your money,” he said, with a good deal less confidence. “I want what you promised me.”

  “As our lovely Melinde pointed out, no one escapes the Crag. Not even I have the power to pluck someone out of the king’s prison.”

  “But …” Nox’s throat thickened. His wings tightened as if bracing against a storm. “You promised. You promised. Everything I’ve done for you, everything I’ve risked and stolen and …”

  “Take the money,” said the Talon in a low, edged voice. “Take it, Crow, and tread lightly out of my presence while you still have your wings attached to your spine.”

  “C’mon, Nox,” whispered Gussie, tugging his sleeve. “It’s over, all right?”

  Twig was already backing away, toward the door.

  But an image flashed in Nox’s mind: his mother’s haggard frame trembling in chains, her face suddenly clearer in his memory than it had been in years. Her eyes dark like his, sunken into shadow, her lips murmuring his name as the Goldwings dragged her away.

  Nox shook Gussie off and stepped forward. “You’re a liar! You’re a washed-up old crook, and I could steal the patch off your eye if I wanted.”

  In a flash, the Talon lunged out of his chair and grabbed Nox by the throat. Nox struggled to breathe as the man lifted him right off the ground. He spread his wings instinctively, but there was nowhere to fly.

  “For that,” grated the Talon, “you forfeit your pay and your friends’. You leave with nothing, Crow.”

  “The day you found me,” Nox whispered, his voice hoarse under the Talon’s grip, “you promised me one thing. That if I did whatever you told me to, and did it well, you’d pay me fairly what I was owed. You swore you’d never break a deal with me. I thought … I thought we were clan.”

  The words surprised even Nox. He’d never dared to think them, even to himself, until now. He felt weak and stupid in front of the only person he’d ever truly wanted to impress.

  Shame burned on h
is skin.

  “Then you’re a worse fool than I thought. I’m not your father, boy. And this is no clan.” He threw Nox onto the ground, then brushed off his hands. “Leave, the three of you, before I decide to have you thrown out of this city for good.”

  Gussie pulled Nox up and dragged him out of the room. The inner circle laughed as they slammed the door, shutting them in the cold corridor.

  “That was stupid,” Gussie said. “Stupid, stupid, stupid, Nox! Now Twig won’t get his ship. I won’t get my admission to university. And all because you had to—”

  “He promised me, Gussie!” Nox looked at her, tears of fury in his eyes. “My mother will die in there!”

  She bit her lip. “I … I’m sorry. Nox. I really am. But that was stupid.”

  He hung his head.

  She was right, of course, but he didn’t care.

  All those times he’d accused Ellie Meadows of being naive, of trusting the wrong people, of chasing moonmoths … and here he stood, guilty of the same things. He had one goal he’d sacrificed everything for, one promise to keep, one person in the world depending on him …

  And he had failed.

  Ellie closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, letting the chilled mountain air wash over her hammering heart. She stood on the rippling slopes of Mount Garond, with the city of Thelantis shining below. Flapping pennants anchored into the stone sported the colors of the Goldwings and the king.

  All around her, the noise of the contestants and the crowd of spectators threatened to pull her apart. Taunts whispered in her ear: “Stupid little Sparrow, you’re going to get killed up there.” If she lost focus even a little, their words would wash her away entirely.

  I am wind.

  I am sky.

  I am speed.

  A hush fell over the crowd at last, as the royal envoy arrived.

  Ellie turned to watch as trumpets rang out in fanfare. The reigning Eagles descended from the sky on dark gold wings—King Garion, Queen Corella, and the prince and princess, Corion and Diantha. Each of the royal family members wore the Eagle crest on their clothing, and they were flanked by a contingent of guards in blue-and-gold livery. Their wide wingspans cast flickering shadows over the hushed crowd.