Black Wings Beating

by Alex London

  “Yum! Eat up!” He charged spoon-first.

  “Ah!” She ducked, but he followed. “Gross!”

  She faked left, went right, but he dropped the plate and grabbed her arm, pulled her to him, a move just like the long-hauler’s that had nearly killed him. She was trapped in his grip. He raised the spoon high, aiming it toward her face. “Market day’s tomorrow! You’ll need your energy. Yum yum yum!”

  “Ew!” She squirmed and pushed, laughing. His smile was wide, and she even dared a glance back at his eyes, which were lit with a kind of giddiness.

  “Bry, stop!” she yelled, but he didn’t stop. He was still grinning. “Stop it!” She pushed again, harder, and his shirt popped open.

  He leaped back from her as if he’d been stabbed, the smile vanishing from his face. She saw the tangle of smooth scarring on his skin, a tight weave of burns that stretched from the waistband of his pants, up his entire left side, and across his chest to just below his collarbone.

  He dropped the spoon and buttoned his shirt nimbly.

  “Why’d you—? I wasn’t really gonna…” His voice choked off, and the joy in his eyes disappeared.

  “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry,” she apologized, reaching out to take his hand, to touch him kindly and show him she hadn’t meant any harm. He pulled away from her.

  “I gotta go,” he snapped. His voice was cold. His eyes were once more like a wind off the high steppes. “I’ll ask Nyall about the boxes.”

  “Should I keep some food warm for you?”

  He turned his back on her and left without an answer. Beside her, the sausage cooked in the pan, and the sound of meat sizzling made her shudder.

  Click click. Click click. Click click.

  He was gone.

  Her mother’s door creaked open. “You made a lot of noise,” she said.

  “Sorry, Ma,” Kylee answered without looking back. “We were just playing around.”

  “I don’t mean now,” her mother said, hoarse. “I mean today. You, Kylee, made a lot of noise. Too much.”

  Kylee turned, but her mother had shut the door to her room again, and Kylee was alone. Her mother wouldn’t come out for hours, and she wouldn’t see her brother again until morning.

  At least, she hoped she would see him in the morning. A hawk you’d had for a dozen seasons could fly away from you at any moment. When you released the tether and let fly, you trusted the hawk to the world and hoped that the world would return it unharmed. People weren’t so different. Sometimes they left and never came back.

  GLASS GRINDERS

  The sun had just peeked over the horizon on the Parsh Desert when the dancing started.

  The dancers were a mirage, an illusion of hot air rising off the sand—one of the many curses of the desert. Altari folktales told of men and women who longed for these morning dancers with such passion that they left their camps and watering holes and raced toward the horizon after them. The stories all ended the same way: dry bones in the desert and the dead’s desires unfulfilled.

  Anon would not have his followers chase morning dancers. He had promised them things with as much substance as a mirage—justice and vengeance and righteousness—but he would make those things real. He would deliver.

  Beside him, a half-starved hawk master shivered in the morning cold.

  “Stay focused, Aylex. When this is done, you’ll get a blanket, some ale, breakfast.”

  The skin-and-bones bird man stood up straighter, eager to please. Or at least eager to be warmed and fed. The chains around his ankles had rubbed him red and raw, and the bronze collar around his neck had been even less gentle. His bare chest was burned an angry red and still bled where they had scraped the offensive falconry tattoos from his skin.

  Anon would have words with the hawk master’s guards. Though he was their prisoner, he should not be abused. Were they not all prisoners of the earth, and would they not be confined again to dirt one day?

  The Altari faith was the oldest on the plateau; the Altari people had been in the mountains before the Uztari had come and expelled them past the plains, into the wind-blasted desert. Generations of Altari had crawled so long through the sand that they ground it to glass beneath them. That was the slur the Uztari used against them: glass grinders.

  Over time, many Altari had abandoned their faith, joined the Uztari bird cults, pledged themselves to the Sky Castle. They took falcons on their fists and hauled goods and equipment across the plains for the Uztari kyrgs in exchange for the briefest of earthly powers. They trapped hawks and traded in eagles. Even the Crawling Priests, who claimed to follow the old ways and cursed Uztari falconry, gladly lived beneath the protection of Uztar. They let the blasphemers feed them like baby birds in the nest. They were all complicit.

  But there were other ways. Purer ways. Anon would not be a glass grinder. Anon would be the sharpened shard of glass that sliced the sin from the world. He was Kartami, the shard, who cut down the self-proclaimed rulers of the sky. Kartami faith was unshakable and Kartami power was unstoppable. They would roll like a sandstorm straight to the heart of Uztar and they would seize the skies. They would be purified, emptied, and sinless. When the sky was empty, they would be saved. They were almost ready.

  But for now, victory demanded sin. Until their victory, Anon needed this hawk master at his side.

  “Will it fly to you?” he demanded of his captive.

  The man nodded. He raised his leather-cuffed arm, and though it shook, he held it out to the morning.

  They’d raided a merchant convoy during the rising-wind season and had captured this master, Aylex. They’d slaughtered everyone but him. Even the ones who pleaded that they, too, were of his people—Anon cut out their lying tongues first. They thought that to be an Altari was a birthright, a bloodline, because they knew no history. Altari and Uztari were identities as changing as the winds, and to serve Uztar, to live like an Uztari on stolen land with eyes bent up into the blue, was to be Uztari.

  Besides, if he wanted the defended towns and cities to fall, he needed fear to fly ahead of him. Word of his brutality might lead later foes to surrender without a fight. When facing a much larger army, terrorizing them in advance was his best hope of beating them.

  After the executions, they took the silks for their kites and the wood and metal for their war barrows, anything precious they could find, but they left all the hawking furniture—the bird boxes, perches, leashes, bells, and jesses. The finely wrought hoods and anklets. The birds themselves, all save one, they ransomed back to the kyrgs or gave the mercy of death, one clean cut across the throat. The ransom was needed to fund the conquest, but the bloodshed was a holy act. Sacred carnage.

  The hawk master didn’t speak for a week after the slaughter. He sunburned the way Anon used to as a boy, until his skin had hardened against the desert sun. It had taken some time to make the hawk master useful again, to accustom him to desert life, for which he was ill-suited. Had not so many Altari exiles been ill-suited to it as well? They had adapted. So would he. The Kartami spared this man’s personal hawk and let him care for it until it was sent to the Six Villages.

  And this morning, it returned.

  The bird flew away from the rising red sun, passing through the mirage of dancers like an arrow through smoke, and time seemed to slow as it bent back its wings, stretched out its talons, and caught its master by the fist. The small leash from the glove was quickly attached to the hawk’s anklet, so that master and bird were tied together again.

  A tear trickled down the hawk master’s cheek.

  “You are happy your bird is returned to you?”

  Aylex nodded. “Yes. I am.”

  Anon took a deep breath. He was offended by the sight of the hawk on the man’s arm. He hated the man for taming the bird, and he hated the bird for allowing itself to be tamed. “Give me the message.”

  Aylex untied the small box from the bird’s anklet and handed it to Anon, who used the ring on his index finger as the key
to open it. He unrolled the parchment inside and read the words his spy reported, his lips half-parted and his heart pounding in his chest.

  “Visek! Launa!” he shouted, which made the hawk and hawk master jump where they stood. Two of Anon’s squad leaders came running from their tents to stand before him.

  Visek and Launa were echoes of each other in appearance, the younger man with skin as dark as the older woman’s, like the black soil of the mountains to which all Altari longed to return. They had been with Anon since the start of his campaign, when he rose up against an elevated Altari ruler of a grassland village, his false title given to him by the occupiers of the Sky Castle. He was a traitor and a fool and he’d disgraced the community by holding pigeon games, a stupid sport where gamblers tried to lure each other’s flocks. A local novice, a boy studying to be a Crawling Priest, had arrived to denounce the sport and had, in his zeal, poisoned some of the bird feed. When caught, he was to be whipped.

  Anon, who did not call himself Anon at the time, intervened. He took the whip from that foolish ruler’s hand and choked him to death with it. Then he declared that all who would restore the greatness of their people and free the skies of sin should rise up with him as the last shards of the true Altari civilization. That was the moment the Kartami were born. Only the novice boy and his young mother followed. They were Visek and Launa.

  Kartami numbers grew as they attacked Altari collaborators and slaughtered traveling Uztari. Anon saw the power of the pair of fighters who loved each other as mother and son. So he devised that all his warriors would be paired by bonds of love. Parents, lovers, siblings. To be a warrior of the Kartami was to love so greatly that you would tie your life to another in battle, and the life of your pair to the fate of your faith. The brave went into battle for their own beliefs, but the victorious went into battle for their beloved’s belief in them. Only Anon fought alone. His love was for all of them.

  His warrior pairs had never lost a battle.

  “Tell the commanders,” he ordered them. “We will break camp and ride ready. Four lines, eight squads across, eight barrows per squad.”

  They each looked to the earth once sharply, then turned to inform the commanders. It would not take long. Anon had devised a system of command that could mobilize all 512 of his warriors as suddenly as a storm, and he could command them with flags and calls while they rolled across the desert without slowing.

  “May I have that blanket now?” the hawk master pleaded, his eyes cast down at his blackened feet.

  “First we must send our reply,” said Anon.

  The hawk master let a whine escape his mouth with a quick glance at his hawk. “You’ll send Titi away again so soon?”

  Anon slapped the master across the face with the back of his hand, the heavy ring he wore cutting the skinny man’s cheek. “Your bird has no name!” he shouted. “If I ever hear you name it again, I will feed it your organs while you still live, understood?”

  Aylex nodded, chastened. If only all Uztari were as easy to break as this one.

  Behind him, pairs of Kartami rolled their war barrows into line, tents and blankets tightly packed inside, battle kites mounted to the fronts. The flyers strapped themselves into the kites while the drivers checked their spears and bows.

  Anon had no doubt that his Kartami would soon rule the skies alone, and from their vast emptiness, a new civilization could be born. Then they would break their kites and leave the sky pure and unsullied. But before that time could come, he had more compromises to make with the falconers and a deal to strike with the worst of them. He studied the parchment once again, composing his message.

  “Tell them that if their report is true, I will not miss this chance,” he said to the hawk master. “Tell them to do what they must to make the girl comply, but tell them that I will have this ghost eagle.”

  BRYSEN

  THE WIDENING GYRE

  6

  Kylee had been acting strange all morning. Brysen had been pretty sure she’d yell at him the moment he staggered into their market tent after she’d set the whole thing up by herself. Instead, she’d hugged him.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Uh, yeah,” he said, although her face told him pretty clearly how very not okay he looked.

  “Great,” she said, with a cheerfulness that made him nervous. “I’ve got the birds down here in the cart, and if you got the boxes from Nyall…?”

  She raised her voice at the end of the sentence like she was apologizing for even bringing it up. Why was she treating him so gently?

  “Sorry,” he said. “I had a long night at the Broken Jess.” Her face tightened, like she was about to scold him, but then she relaxed again.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I’ll go do it now. We’ve got some time before anybody gets here. Why don’t you … uh … clean up a little?”

  He nodded, and she slipped through the front tent flaps, letting in a brief streak of piercing, early morning light. It cut into his headache sharper than a hawk’s screech. He braced himself. There’d be a lot more screeches and a lot more light when the market began.

  Aside from the Six Villages merchants, there’d be tentless hawkers in the road with perch carts and a falcon or two on the fist, and there’d be pigeon peddlers and bait dealers, minor sellers of pet birds and songbirds and show birds, and more equipment makers than there could possibly be buyers for. Then the customers would arrive, kyrgs and peasants and hawk masters and long-haulers and spies and gawkers and Crawling Priests underfoot shouting up curses at all of it, and the haggling would be louder than the shouting and the squawking, and the screeching would pierce it all with bloodcurdling regularity.

  Brysen’s head ached just thinking about it.

  Alone in the tent, he sniffed at his armpit, and it was like punching himself in the face. How had his sister survived hugging him?

  He changed into the clothes Kylee had brought: red leather pants, a bright blue tunic—his nicest one, reserved for market days, festivals, and funerals—and his long striped robe. She’d known he wouldn’t be home before morning, and she’d known he’d need to change.

  He didn’t deserve a sister like Kylee. He wanted to be kinder, though. He really did. At least, after these next few days, she wouldn’t have to work in this business she hated anymore. They’d have enough money to pay off the Tamirs. She could be free.

  Kylee hadn’t said so, but he knew that was what she wanted. He knew her so much better than she thought he did. He wasn’t going to object. He didn’t care about the business anyway. He had his own plans for what he’d do when this market was done and all their debts were paid.

  He was going to leave the Six Villages.

  He knew how everyone saw him here: the pitiable son of a pitiful dead man. The battle pits couldn’t erase that idea of him, and neither could their business. But on the road, seeing the world the way he and Kylee used to dream about, he could be anyone he wanted. He and Dymian could reinvent themselves at every oasis; neither the scorn of nobles nor the pity of neighbors could touch them. They’d be wild hunters, untethered and untamed, having adventures hand in hand. He wondered how Kylee would take the news that he planned to leave. Would she try to stop him? Would she be relieved?

  He had, however, done one nice thing for her this morning, even though she wouldn’t see it that way.

  He’d decided not to ask Nyall about the bird boxes last night so that Kylee would have a reason to talk to him this morning. His sister might not think it, but she deserved a little happiness, and Nyall was dying to provide her with some. If only she’d give him a chance. It was like she had no romantic feeling in her at all. If they didn’t look so much alike, Brysen would swear sometimes that they weren’t related.

  “How can you love someone who so obviously doesn’t love you back?” Brysen had asked his friend last night. Nyall had given him a bemused look, like he thought Brysen was joking, but then he got serious when he saw Brysen wasn’t joking at all. />
  “It’s like this,” Nyall said. “You love the moon—”

  “I do?” Brysen wondered.

  “People do,” Nyall said. “People love the moon. But the moon doesn’t love them back. It just is. Our love for it doesn’t require it to love us in return. I’d rather live in a world where I get to love the moon than in one where I don’t, even if the moon won’t return the feeling.”

  “You want the moon? I’ll give it to ya!” Nyck shouted at them, then jumped up and dropped the back of his pants, waved his pale cheeks right in their faces.

  “To the moon in all its shapes, smooth and hairy alike!” Brysen toasted.

  “Your sister’s got a hairy moon?” Nyall looked worried.

  “What’s in a person’s pants is no one’s business but the sky’s,” Nyck scolded, hitching up the back of his own again.

  “But still I’d love her with a hairy moon!” Nyall cried out. “There’s always a waxing moon, after all!” He raised his glass, laughing, and they all toasted to love and to the phases of the moon.

  That was the last clear memory Brysen had. He’d woken up alone on a bench in the Broken Jess. There’d been a string of falcon droppings dangling from a perch just over his head, an effective alarm. He’d bolted up before it fell into his eye.

  Now he took a stroll around their tent, making sure the hawks were in good form. They all sat calmly on the perch in the back, tethered in place. They had iron bands wrapped around their ankles just below the leather anklets that held their bells and jesses. The iron bands said SKYBREAKER FALCONRY—the name their father had given the business. Kylee had wanted to change it when they took over, but Brysen said they should keep it.

  “With every sale we make that he wouldn’t have, we pile earth on Da’s memory,” he told her. “We take the name he made and make it ours.”

  She didn’t argue with him. She never argued with Brysen when it came to their father. Sometimes he wished she would. That was when he’d known she had no plan to stay in the business after their debts were paid. And that was when he knew he had no future in the Villages. He couldn’t run things alone. Rather, he didn’t want to do it without Kylee.