Black Wings Beating

by Alex London

  Kylee felt her heart slow down again. At least the bird hadn’t escaped.

  “So I came up to him and whistled,” he said. “But Silva panicked.” Brysen bit his lip. He was fighting tears again. “He bated straight off his perch and then flew at me, like he was gonna attack. I ducked, and he dove for me … and … and…”

  “What?” Kylee grabbed him by the shoulders. “What happened?”

  “When he dove, I dropped the leash. He … he flew off with it still attached. Right out of the mews! He’s gone! With his leash on!” He was sobbing now.

  “It’s okay,” Kylee comforted him. “It’s okay. We can find him. I’ll help you. You know what to do: Listen. Listen for the crows.”

  Brysen shook his head. He was crying so hard, he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t stop. Kylee told him to wait, to calm down while she got the eagle back for him. She ran down to the mews, click-clicking along the stones. Click click. Click click.

  She stood at the door and looked out, tried to imagine where the eagle would go. She listened for the sound of frightened crows. That was the trick. When a bird of prey was around, crows and ravens got frantic, calling out warnings to one another in shrill, agitated tones. Brysen was bawling too hard to hear from where she’d left him under the ash tree, but just up the hill, the crows were screaming. Kylee ran up and saw the mob around a juniper tree, screeching and flapping their black wings wildly.

  An eagle could certainly defend itself, even against a small murder of crows. The situation couldn’t be that bad.

  As she drew closer, Kylee saw it was that bad. Worse.

  Bright feathers littered the ground below the tree, and through the riot of crows, she saw the eagle itself hung upside down in a spiderweb of leather. The leash had tangled in the gnarly branches, and in trying to fly off, the eagle had wrapped its legs and tangled its wings. As it tried to escape, it made the tangle worse, breaking its feathers and choking itself on its own leash. The eagle hung like a cutpurse from an executioner’s tree.

  It was dead.

  Their father’s hundred-bronze eagle was dead.

  And now the crows were tearing it apart.

  Kylee’s hands shook, and she felt the burning wind grow inside her. Her whole body tingled and her heart raced. She knew what was coming, could feel it, but couldn’t stop it. The air scorched her lungs, and she had to let it out. She opened her mouth.

  “Shyehnaah,” she whispered. Suddenly, a mature male peregrine screeched down from the pure-blue sky. The crows scattered. The wild falcon flew through the flock like demon’s lightning, striking one crow instantly dead with the impact and swooping up as the others gave chase. The enraged birds followed the falcon higher and higher and away over the jagged ridge line, seeking vengeance. Crows are quick to scatter but quick, too, to regroup. Resilient birds, far more than falcons. I’d gladly join a murder of crows, she thought, frightening herself with her brief blasphemy. The devilish mob had left the eagle hanging alone in the juniper tree, mutilated, with one dead crow lying beneath.

  Kylee leaned against the trunk and wept. She wept for fear of the word she’d spoken without knowing why, without knowing how, and she wept for her brother and the suffering that was sure to come. From her pocket, she pulled the expertly tied knots and tossed them away, disgusted with herself. If she’d been with Brysen, he’d never have gotten Silva tangled up. He’d never have been playing in the mews in the first place. She should’ve been protecting him instead of playing with knots.

  When Kylee came back to the old ash tree, her brother wasn’t there. She found him at the hearth shoving candied ginger into a sack, along with a child’s blade, a fire-starting stone, and the moth-eaten blanket he slept under.

  Shara watched him pack, perched on a dangling frying pan. Her eyes followed his finger, mouth open, ready to play their little pecking game.

  “Prrpt,” she said.

  “Not now,” Brysen told her.

  “Prrpt.”

  “Not. Now.” He glared at her, wiped his eyes, and then went back to shoving things into his bag.

  “What are you doing?” Kylee asked.

  “I’m going,” he said. “I’m running away.”

  “You can’t run away! Where will you go? The ice-wind’s starting any day now. You’ll freeze. You’ll starve.”

  “I’ll make a fire. I’ll hunt. Shara will help me.”

  “You don’t know how to do any of that! You’ve never even flown her free.”

  “You’re good at that stuff,” he said. “Come with me.”

  “What?” Kylee swallowed.

  “I can’t stay here. Da’s gonna—” His voice cracked. “I can’t stay. Come with me. We’ll cross the mountains and join a hauling convoy. See all the places we’ve talked about: the Sky Castle, the crimson sands of Parsh, the bronze pits at Rishl!”

  He’d stopped crying and he smiled, like he was already watching the great Parade of Masters along the Sky Castle’s battlements or stargazing from the back of a three-humped camel strutting over a dune in the Parsh Desert. Like he was already gone. Already safe.

  But he wasn’t safe.

  Kylee loved the stories they dreamed together, but she knew the real stories, too, the stories Ma told them, about when she came to the Six Villages, before she met their da. About slavers who prowled the oases on the edge of Parsh, looking for thirsty Uztari runaways and snapping them up like a kestrel eating gnats. About the Tamir orphan houses, where poor children were sent to earn their keep at the mercy of twisted adults, or the convoys of children sent up into the mountains never to be seen again. About hunger and rot foot and scorpionflies. About desert winds that stole your fingers and snapped off your ears. Not only would Brysen’s beloved bird not survive—he wouldn’t, either. None of them would. Their mother had fled that life for a reason!

  No. Kylee couldn’t run away. She couldn’t run to unknown terrors when at least the hurt they knew kept them fed, kept them warm.

  “Beg for mercy,” she told her brother. “Maybe Da had a good day at the pits. Maybe he’ll forgive you. Or just … just give you…” She couldn’t believe what she was suggesting. “Just a little whipping.”

  “I can’t go alone,” her brother whispered, holding his bag in his little rope-burned hands.

  Kylee felt another burning inside her, but it wasn’t the swell of a mysterious word in her lungs; it was the cry of a word she knew too well, the same as Shara’s plaintive prrpt.

  Please, she wanted to beg. Please don’t go.

  She thrust her arms out and hugged him. She didn’t want to run away. She didn’t want him to run away, either. He was her best friend. She didn’t need to say it. The hug told him.

  As she pressed her chest to his, she felt their hearts beat together, like one heart right in the middle, a heart they shared. But Brysen broke the hug. He pulled away.

  Some falconers love their raptors so much and feed them so often from the fist that the birds forget they can fly away. On the hunt, such birds will see prey in front of them and will rouse, flapping their wings, eyes fixed to attack, but they won’t fly. They won’t leave the fist. Although the jesses are loosed and they are free, the birds remain, by a kind of broken love for their bondage, fistbound.

  Brysen looked at Kylee the way a hunter looks at a fistbound falcon. Then he dropped his runaway bag right in the middle of the floor and, without a word, walked from the house.

  Click click. Click click. Click click.

  He crossed the yard, climbed the hill, and returned with the eagle’s body in his arms. He sat with it in front of the eagle’s empty cage in the mews to wait for their father to get home. The sun set bloodred behind the mountains.

  Their father arrived home soon after dark, carrying a torch to light his way. He went straight to the mews.

  Click click. Click click. Click click.

  The shouting started within half a heartbeat.

  Ma stood by the hearth, looking in the direction of the mews th
rough the open door.

  “Ma?” Kylee asked her, hoping she’d go down and calm their father.

  Her mother shook her head, clucked sadly, and sat in the chair by the fire. When Brysen’s screaming started, she held her arms out to Kylee.

  “Not Shara!” Brysen shouted. “She didn’t do anything! It was me!”

  Kylee rushed for the door, thinking to take the blame herself, but her mother moved faster than she thought possible, grabbed her tight, and pulled her back.

  “Seeing you will make it worse,” she warned. Kylee struggled against her grip but couldn’t break free. “Shhh, shhh.” Her mother tried to soothe her, covered her ears, muffled the screams.

  “Lay la li, lay la lu, never old and never new, lay la li, lay la lu…” her mother sang. Through the cracks between the mismatched wooden slats, Kylee saw the torch light, dim at first, then flaring brighter. Even through her mother’s fingers and over her mother’s song, she could hear Brysen scream as their father burned him.

  “I’m sorry,” Kylee whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  After Brysen healed, the pink scars covered half his body, and his black hair grew back ash-gray. Shara survived the fire unscathed. He hadn’t let a single spark touch her, which was more than Kylee had done for him.

  * * *

  The memory released her.

  She opened her eyes and saw Brysen’s silhouette hiking up the path above their house and into the wilderness, toward the Cardinal’s Crest Ridge and the high pass above. She watched him until he disappeared around a boulder and then she watched the sky beyond. A swirling flock of blackbirds whirled and pulsed in the air, like a living cloud.

  Kylee knew she was going to follow her brother, even though it meant their debts wouldn’t be paid and their business would have to stay open for several seasons to come. She knew she was going to follow him, even though it meant saving that scuzzard Dymian at the cost of her own freedom, and she knew she was going to follow him whether he wanted her help or not. This time, she would not let Brysen down. Some journeys no one should have to take alone.

  And besides, she’d been in those mountains before.

  13

  Brysen would have a head start on her, but she couldn’t just run off unprepared. She’d have to get her own supplies for the climb. She’d have to convince Dymian to look after their business as much as he could, despite how little she trusted him. She’d also have to ask someone to check in on her mother.

  This was how her dreams of freedom fell apart—not in some dark debtor’s dungeon but in a flurry of errands. As she returned to the market, the thought of the seasons to come landed heavy on her, and she had to lean on a fence post for a moment, take a deep breath, and stop herself from screaming. It’s not Brysen’s fault, she told herself. She wanted to believe it.

  The sun had already peaked by the time she got back down to the market. Dymian, his leg wrapped in a splint, had just finished flying the dovehawk and, Kylee noticed with some surprise, had already sold the pair of kestrels.

  “Nyall helped me out.” Dymian pointed at his leg. “He’s a good one, that kid. He also told me what Brysen is doing for me…”

  “Mm-hmm,” Kylee said without comment. “How’d you get those kestrels to fly?” She changed the subject. Both kestrels were overweight—no matter what nonsense Brysen had written in the log—and if they’d flown at all, they probably wouldn’t have come back. They’d have no reason to. They weren’t the least bit hungry.

  Dymian grinned. “Folks are nervous to get back on the road fast. Buyer never even saw them off my glove. Just offered me ten bronze apiece. I got her to thirty for the pair.” He gestured at the receipt book. “All accounted for.”

  “Good,” she told him. “That’s the least you could do.”

  “I know.” Dymian hobbled closer to her, leaning heavily on a stick he’d turned into a crutch. Well, more likely that Nyall had. No way Dymian was that good a craftsman at his best, and he was currently far from his best. He was pale as an ice-wind sky and his hands shook as he popped another wad of hunter’s leaf into his mouth. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am. I don’t deserve what your brother is doing for me.”

  “No,” Kylee agreed. “You don’t.”

  “I care about him a lot,” Dymian said. “I really do.”

  “If you cared about him, you wouldn’t have let him do this. You wouldn’t have risked our future for your own.”

  “You know no one can stop Brysen when he’s got some heroic notion,” Dymian said. “It’s one of the great things about him. Like Renyard wrote, ‘A bird is safe in the nest, but birds are born with wings. Better to risk flying than miss out on everything.’”

  “Do not recite poetry at me right now,” she snapped. “Thanks to you, I have to go up after him, and I need you to look after our tent and our ma. Make sure she eats. And keep her from giving what we earn here away to the Crawling Priests.”

  “I’ll do right by you,” Dymian promised. “I’m really grateful that you’re looking out for him up there. He needs you. Everyone knows he can’t do this without you.”

  “‘Everyone knows’?” Kylee frowned.

  “I’ll look out for Skybreaker and for your ma,” Dymian assured her, and did not address her question. “They’ll be in better shape than when you left them. I owe you that.”

  “You owe us so much more than that.” She left him in the tent with their entire livelihood. Her brother’s recklessness, it seemed, was contagious.

  Nyall had frowned at her as she’d passed by, but he was busy with a crowd of customers, and she didn’t feel the need to stick around to tell him what she was up to. He’d try to talk her out of it, just like she’d tried to talk Brysen out of it. But the events had become an avalanche, and there was no stopping them now that they’d picked up speed. She had to let them carry her on and hope she could ride them without being crushed beneath.

  “So you’re really going after him?” Vyvian said, striding up beside her on the road as she made her way back toward home.

  “Who said anyone was going anywhere?” Kylee responded. Vy was her friend, but that didn’t mean she was trustworthy. She had her own family business, too.

  “Come on, Kylee, the deal Brysen made with Goryn Tamir is a secret, which means everyone’s placing bets on whether or not you’re going to follow him, and I’d like to increase my odds.”

  “You don’t gamble.”

  “Well, maybe I plan to start.”

  “When you send your report back to your family’s masters, you can tell them I’m going, too,” Kylee said. “We’re taking the Blue Sheep Pass up to the Nameless Gap.”

  “And which route are you really taking?”

  Kylee hesitated.

  “Come on,” her friend said. “This one’s between us. I won’t put it in the letter.”

  “I really have no idea,” Kylee said. “Brysen’s leading the way. I’m just following.”

  “He’ll take the Cardinal’s Crest Ridge,” Vyvian suggested. Kylee shrugged. It was the most likely because it was the most difficult climb, and that was just the sort of challenge Brysen would add to an already impossible task, but Kylee wasn’t going to give Vyvian more information than she needed.

  “Like I said, I’m just gonna follow. The rest is up to him.”

  “So you won’t help catch it?” Vyvian cocked her head. “He’ll never be able to do it without you.”

  “He’s a good trapper,” she said.

  “But you’ve got the—”

  Kylee cut her off. “I’d prefer if we got nowhere near this eagle.”

  Vyvian sighed. “Not really an option anymore.”

  “No,” Kylee sighed. “It’s not.”

  “Bry’s already got a pretty good head start on you. Some herders said they saw him halfway up the Sunrise Slope. You better get going, or you’ll never catch up.”

  “I’m on my way now,” Kylee told her. “Just … Vy, could you do
me a favor?”

  “I’m yours.”

  “Make sure Dymian doesn’t do anything stupid while we’re gone? If we survive, I’d love to have something to come back to.”

  “Of course I will.” Vyvian made the winged salute across her chest. “You’ll survive, by the way. I’ve—” She leaned in close, whispered in Kylee’s ear, “I’ve seen what you can do.”

  Kylee tensed, pulled back, and looked her friend in the eyes. Shook her head. “Don’t. Please. Don’t say … anything about that.”

  Vyvian frowned. “I’d never betray your secret like that.”

  Kylee looked at her carefully. They both knew she was lying, that she’d certainly betray Kylee just like that. It was her livelihood and her family’s tradition to betray Kylee’s secrets like that. The only question was whether she had already or was about to.

  “I’m not the only one who was at the battle pits, though, Kylee,” Vyvian warned. “You won’t be alone on that mountain. The prize you’re after is too big to go uncontested. Look out for yourself, too, okay?”

  “I always do,” Kylee said, and left her friend in the road, picking up the pace for home so she could pack and say good-bye to her ma.

  * * *

  “You’re going after it then, just like your father?” Her mother was sitting in her chair in the center room, by the low-burning fire in the hearth. Her dark hair hung in long, loose coils, framing the sharp features of her face, her dark eyes blazing in the stillness of the rest of her, like twin flames dancing against a black sky. She wouldn’t dare say the words ghost eagle aloud, not even before one had killed her husband. That made Kylee want to say the words even more.

  “I don’t give a scuzz about the ghost eagle,” Kylee said, but didn’t look at her. “I’m going after Brysen. I’m going to keep him safe.”

  Her mother leaned forward and stood slowly from her chair, letting her hair fall in front of her face. She placed the cup of mint-grass tea she’d been sipping onto the table, then pulled her long hair back over her shoulders. Kylee went rigid as her ma crossed the room and grabbed Kylee’s biceps. Their eyes locked. “He’ll never be safe with this longing for what he should not have. Nor will you. As long as you are bound to this creature, you are bound to death. When the Kartami come, this whole cult of sky lust will be wiped away. Repent it now, my daughter. Denounce it and be saved.”