Black Wings Beating

by Alex London

  “If Goryn Tamir has tethered his hopes to these nestlings in the mountains, then he has reason to believe they’ll succeed.” She wrote some instructions for Lywen to distribute, sealed with her signet: a dove clutching a falcon in its talons. She’d designed it herself upon her ascension to proctorship of the Council of Forty. The design had been quite a scandal at the time, but all scandals lose their sting with the balm of familiarity. The other thirty-nine kyrgs of the Council would tolerate her eccentricities as long as they prospered, and for now, they prospered. As long as their prosperity continued, so would her power. “If my spies are to be believed, the girl has a gift from which we might benefit.”

  “As I understand, only the boy is going on this expedition,” the hawk master said. “Something to do with the estranged Avestri boy … their youngest, Dymian.”

  “The boy?” Kyrg Bardu looked back down at the parchment she’d received from the Six Villages. “My note doesn’t say anything about the boy.”

  “Perhaps your spy is mistaken?”

  The kyrg shook her head. “The girl is the key. We must make sure she takes this journey.”

  “The Tamirs won’t like us meddling in their business.”

  “The Tamirs have no title. They can choose not to like whatever they wish. If young Goryn Tamir wants to complain, he can come see me and explain himself. I should like to hear his explanation, in fact. I wonder if his sisters or mother approve of this little expedition?”

  “You know he won’t come to you.” Lywen stroked the bottom feathers of the falcon’s tail.

  “If I end up with the eagle he’s after, he’ll have no choice, will he? Now, I don’t want to discuss this anymore.”

  “It’s not merely an eagle—”

  “I said no more,” Kyrg Bardu cut him off. She’d had enough talk of the Tamirs and their schemes for the morning. “Send a message to Yval Birgund. I’d like to speak with him about the Kartami’s movements. I want to know where they’re going before the shadows of their kites fall on the castle itself.”

  “Yval is in the Six Villages,” Lywen said. “For the market. Purchasing birds for the eastern battalion. As you commanded.”

  “He went himself?”

  “You did tell him to make the new battalion a priority. He takes your instruction to heart. He’s a keen and loyal counselor.”

  Kyrg Bardu pinched the bridge of her nose. “Loyal counselor? That’s an oxymoron. Does anyone else know what his business at the market is?”

  “He has kept it a secret, although I do fear that, like all things in the Villages, it is an open secret.”

  “Another one. You’re fond of them today.”

  “When a hawk master studies to earn his seal, he learns that all things are bound to and by their opposites,” Lywen replied. “Truth and falsehood, predator and prey, hunter and hunted, light and shadow, good and evil.”

  “And power?” Kyrg Bardu asked.

  “Especially power,” said Lywen. “Power is, and will forever be, tethered to its own weakness.”

  Kyrg Bardu looked at the falcon on her hawk master’s fist. It was a great killing bird. The power of its speed in flight required bones so light that she could snap its neck with one hand. It would be a crime, of course, and a cruel sin, too, but there was in her always that temptation to push the limits of her own power and therefore find those limits in others.

  She wondered about the ghost eagle, if it was, like they said, a creature of power without weakness, untethered to its own destruction, the exception that proved the rule. What could someone like Goryn Tamir do with one? What could she herself do?

  And why should two country nestlings be trusted to capture it?

  She began to write another letter. Perhaps it was good that her defense counselor had gone off to the Six Villages after all. If those children failed, it hardly mattered, but he would be perfectly positioned to take action on the chance they succeeded. If the accounts of the girl’s gifts were true, she could prove as valuable to the defense of Uztar as a hundred falconers in the field.

  And surely the kyrg’s enemies knew it, too. Kyrg Bardu had many more pigeons to dispatch before the day was done.

  KYLEE

  FISTBOUND

  11

  Brysen packed like a little boy: all snares and ropes and treats. Packets of candied ginger and hunter’s leaf, but no bandages or herbal medicines or hard sausage. Not even a change of underclothes.

  “I’ll be on the mountain alone,” he said. “So what if I stink?”

  “You’ll need layers,” Kylee suggested, pulling down their heaviest cloak, a full boar pelt. “It gets cold in the Gap, even in full sunlight.”

  “I know it gets cold in the Gap,” Brysen snapped at her, pushing the cloak away. He’d rather freeze than admit he was wrong. “Stop staring at me. You’re making that face of yours.”

  “It’s my normal face.”

  “You ever think maybe that’s a problem?”

  Kylee sat down on the edge of his feather mattress. It was lumpy from his tossing and turning. The mattress had been a lavish purchase after the first market they’d run together without their father. She and Brysen had never had beds or mattresses before, always sleeping on the floor under moth-eaten blankets. The mattresses cost most of what they’d earned from selling the poorly bred and barely manned hawks left over from their father’s last real trapping expedition. It wasn’t enough for the ice-wind season, and their mother had never been able to save so much as a bronze chip from their father’s appetites. They would’ve starved without their father that first season if the town hadn’t been so charitable. Meat, vegetables, beans, grains … they showed up in baskets every week, brought up the hill by flocks of crows with finely carved whistles on their tails. The small wood instruments trilled and moaned as they approached. The tail whistles on mourners’ crows were all the same, so no one would know who had sent the charity and there would be no reason to refuse it.

  Not that they would have refused it.

  Only Yves Tamir—Goryn’s oldest sister—came in person to deliver her charity, and only once. She dropped eighteen bronze into Kylee’s open palms, as heavy as a human head, and held her finger to her lips. “Tell no one,” she said, so Kylee told her brother the moment she’d left.

  The mourners’ crows and their lonely songs came until the Necklace flowed again and then the charity stopped. By then, Goryn Tamir had begun to demand repayment of their father’s debts, and they were forced to use the rest of his sister’s gift to hire Dymian.

  What a mistake that had been! If only life could be lived backward, we’d know the mistakes not to make, Kylee thought, and instead of losing all we knew peck by merciless peck, time would return things to us every day, bringing back everything we didn’t yet know we’d lost.

  “You’re taking Shara with you?” Kylee asked, noticing as her brother packed his hawk furniture—extra jesses and leashes and swivels and the tools to repair them. A hood, a small folding perch.

  “She’ll hunt for me in the mountains,” he explained. “That way I don’t have to pack any of that delicious sausage you’re so excited about. I’ll eat fresh game. Maybe jackrabbit. She’s a natural at catching it. Hardly needs coaxing at all.”

  The jackrabbit bit was definitely a snap at Kylee. She hadn’t meant to embarrass him yesterday. When the wind came up in her, she felt as if all the air in her body and all the blood in her veins were calling out. It wasn’t her speaking … not on purpose.

  Since she was small, she’d run from the burning words inside her. They divided her from her brother, who could not speak them and who wanted to be great so badly that to fling this talent in his face, this talent he lacked, was too cruel to imagine. She didn’t want to be different from him. She didn’t want either of them to be different.

  The words drove her father to jealousy. He couldn’t master them himself, and he couldn’t get his daughter to use them. The more she resisted the burning words, the angrie
r her father grew at Brysen for being the one who made her hold back. He didn’t take his rage out on Kylee, because he hoped she might one day be great and, in her greatness, shine glory onto him.

  But Brysen, he could blame. Brysen he could beat. It was Kylee’s fault; she knew it, had always known it. These burning words were the weapon with which she caused her brother so much pain. It was a stupid mistake yesterday to let them out in public, a stupid mistake she feared that she had not yet begun to pay for. Everyone had seen, and Vyvian had even heard.

  You can be careful your whole life, Kylee thought, but mess up just once and you threaten it all.

  But now she was only trying to help. She wasn’t the one who’d made bad bets with the Tamir family. She wasn’t the one who’d made an impossible promise to Goryn, and she wasn’t the one running off in the middle of the market. Brysen had no right to be mad at her. With one impulsive gesture, he’d thrown their entire future into doubt, all their plans, all their hopes. She wondered, unkindly, if he’d done it on purpose. Knowing she wanted to leave falconry behind, he was tethering her to it.

  Of course, that wasn’t his way. He’d never deliberately try to hurt her. He just didn’t think that far ahead, for himself or anyone else. He was a dreamer, not a schemer.

  He shoved the last of his supplies into the bag, hung his falconer’s glove from his belt, checked the black-talon blade and resheathed it, then threw on his long goatskin jacket. He walked from his room, past the central hearth, and didn’t even look at the chair where their mother sat watching the fire, mouthing a prayer for forgiveness. Or destruction. It was hard to tell the difference with her.

  He headed for the mews to grab Shara, and Kylee followed him. She felt stupid chasing her brother around like a duckling, but what choice did she have?

  Their feet clicked on the stones.

  The mews were quiet, reminding her that she’d left Dymian with five raptors, a shattered leg, and a head dulled by hunter’s leaf down in the market, looking after their future while Brysen tried to save his life. Maybe he’d have the good sense to open for business. Maybe he wouldn’t steal the money he got if he did. Wishful thinking.

  “Don’t take Shara,” she warned Brysen. “You know a bird on the fist will only enrage the ghost eagle. Either she flies away before you get close, or she snatches Shara before you even hear her coming.”

  She loathes companionship in herself and others and will tear the head from any raptor that dares to find its solace on the fist, wrote Ymal in his ancient Guide to the Sighting and Capture of the Ghost Eagle. Only fragments of the book survived, and some were contradictory, but they were invaluable for any who would dare approach the eagle on its mountain. Another fragment warned, Take care of your own birds, for the ghost eagle sees the respect you show all her avian sisters and counts offenses against them double.

  Kylee was certain Brysen hadn’t read the book. He wasn’t really a reader.

  “I can protect Shara,” he told her, unhooding his hawk and unhooking her leash from the perch to attach it to a longer cord on his belt. “I always have.”

  He rested his finger on a spot at his wrist and Shara playfully nipped at it, then followed it with her head as he moved it around, curious eyes eager, her little tongue nearly hanging out like a dog’s. The moment his finger stopped she nipped again, not enough to hurt him, just enough to show she knew where she stopped and he began. It was a little game they played. Kylee wondered why he’d teach her to play a game that could so easily end with him bleeding, but the boy and the bird both seemed to enjoy it. Maybe he liked that she could hurt him and chose not to. Almost everyone else in his life made a different choice when they had the chance.

  Brysen touched Shara on the back of her leg, and she stepped onto his fist. With another nudge and short whistle, she flew to his shoulder. His jacket was made for a traveling falconer, with thick padding on the arms, a special bar under the cloth on the left side, and loops below it to tie the leash to, so the bird could be perched while he walked and he wouldn’t have to rely on her to follow free the entire journey.

  Shara preened and looked over Brysen’s head. When she tried to nip at his hair, one quick whistle warned her to stop. Brysen had mastered her well, but the thought was not a comfort to Kylee. Shara had taken him years to train, and she was as much like a ghost eagle as she was like a handsaw. Brysen was hardly great with a handsaw, either.

  A vein in her brother’s tight jaw was pulsing, and Kylee felt the rhythm of his heartbeat in her own. How could they be so far apart when they were so close together? How could she, in moments of fear and anger, speak unknown words to birds of prey but couldn’t find the right words to say to her own twin?

  “I said stop looking at me like that,” he told her. “I’m not an idiot. I’ve got a plan.”

  He started assembling a second pack with iron stakes for the snare lines and a net, each strand inscribed with words in the Hollow Tongue, whose presence on a trap was supposed to bring luck.

  Kylee couldn’t take it anymore. He’d rely on dead languages and half-mad birds, but wasn’t going to ask her for help? His stupid pride.

  “I’ll come with you,” she offered. “I can help you. I can at least watch your back.”

  He stopped packing and froze, a coil of spider-silk binding rope halfway into the sack.

  “I’ll come with you to the mountain,” she said. “I can get someone else to look after Ma. That Crawling Priest will check in on her.”

  Brysen took a deep breath. “You’ll come with me,” he repeated.

  Kylee nodded, but Brysen wasn’t looking at her. “Yes,” she said.

  “What about the business?” he said. “What about making enough bronze to shut down for good?”

  “Dymian can look after the business. He owes us that much. And—” She cleared her throat. “If we have to stay open longer, then we will. What’s another season or two?”

  “You don’t want to do that.” Brysen dropped the rope into the bag and cinched it shut. He moved for the door, but she stepped in front of him, forcing him to look at her. Brysen’s ice-blue eyes made her flinch when they met hers, filled with a too-familiar fury.

  She did not look away. “You’re right,” she said. “But I want to come with you more. I want to help you.”

  He clenched his jaw. The muscles bulged all the way down his neck, and he took a deep breath in, held it a moment. “You’re too late,” he said at last. “Way too late.”

  He left her there, letting the door of the mews slam behind him as he stomped away without a good-bye. Kylee felt herself reeling. The invisible tether that bound them to each other snapped back, and she felt the strain on her heart, the pull as she was tossed, like a falcon from the glove, back in time, back to before, back and back and back, and the brutal magic of memory left her no escape.

  The past pinned her in its talons, mantled its wings over her mind, and would not release her until she lived it all again, that one night, two seasons before their father went up the mountain and didn’t come back, the memory as fresh and brutal as it was the first time, as it was every single time.

  12

  Brysen was crying when he ran across the yard to Kylee, stones clicking under his feet until he hit the grass and sprinted.

  She’d been practicing her knots under the shade of the wide ash tree behind the house. Valyry the Gloveless had written that there was no greater magic than the knot. With a simple twist of hand and rope, one could bind any creature to oneself at will and unbind them again just as easily. To the unmastered, a strong knot was as impenetrable as the most ancient Hollow Tongue incantation.

  Kylee could secure the jesses on a hawk’s ankle to her glove one-handed without even looking now, and she could’ve even tied the thick leather anklet on an eagle, if only her fingers were bigger. She could dream the whole world and more, but her hands were too small to hold it.

  As her brother ran to her, she shoved the knots into her pocket. Brysen str
uggled with his knots and often got a smack in the ears for making them so sloppy that one finger could loosen them. He could dream the whole world, too, but couldn’t wait to grab it. More often than not, all he got was a handful of air and a fresh welt on his back.

  Their father still had him spending days and days making tiny slits around the edges of leather anklets so they didn’t rub the birds’ skin raw, while Kylee got to learn birdcalls and hunting techniques. She didn’t want Brysen to feel dumb by seeing how much further along she was than him.

  He dropped to his knees in front of her, tears streaking his dirty cheeks. “I messed up bad,” he cried. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. His black hair was disheveled, twigs and leaves tangled in it. “Really, really bad.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I was playing in the mews—”

  “Oh, Bry, why? You know Da doesn’t like—”

  “Shh, okay? I know. It’s just, I wanted to see if I could make Silva jump to my arm the way Da does. I practiced the whistle the same way he does it. Exactly the same. I didn’t try with Silva until I was ready. I swear.”

  Kylee’s heart sank. Silva was their father’s newest catch, a male painter’s eagle, brightly colored and extremely rare. He planned to sell to a special client, a convoy master willing to pay a hundred bronze for such a find. It had taken Yzzat the better part of three weeks just to get the bird to jump to his arm without bating from the perch, shrieking, or plucking its own feathers out. Painter’s eagles were notoriously difficult to train. They’d often die rather than submit.

  “I wanted to show Da I could do it,” Brysen said. “He always tells me I’m a good-for-nothing scuzz-guzzler, but I was sure I could do this. I can make Shara jump whenever I want. I put the big glove on and everything, but I left Silva on his leash. I didn’t want him to escape.”