Black Wings Beating

by Alex London

  To solve the latter problem, he made it clear that true believers would have no festivals of any sort, not until the last stone was toppled from the Sky Castle’s tower and the blasphemers had been wiped from dirt and air alike.

  Then, and only then, would there be a festival for the ages.

  It was a convincing proclamation, although he really couldn’t have cared less if some run-down goat herder wanted to fête his son’s wedding to another run-down goat herder. Why should he involve himself in the people’s marriages? Neither his faith nor his power demanded it, but such was the way of the world. The daily desires of the foolish flock would always weigh on a triumphant conqueror. This was an inescapable symptom of success. The grander the salvation you offered, the pettier the salvation people sought from you.

  He finally appointed regents to stay behind and rule any territory under Kartami control as they saw fit. His regent pairs objected—they wanted to continue on with him to lay siege to the heart of Uztari power—but he urged them to be patient. Their true enemies would not fall as easily as a bunch of hunting parties and scattered grassland settlements.

  Uztar had armies of falconers prepared to fight back against the rolling kites; they had spies who’d reported on Kartami vulnerabilities; and, most ominously, they had their own hunting parties in the mountains, pursuing the ghost eagle. If they captured it, manned it, and cast it against Anon’s forces, it could put an end to them.

  He had to move with intelligence now. He did not mean to aim straight for the seat of their empire with his first thrust of attack. Instead of its showy crown, he had his eyes fixed firmly on what he considered the vulnerable roots of Uztar: the Six Villages.

  That was the center of their cult, and any chance they had at manning a ghost eagle would come from there. Their best trappers and trainers were born and raised there, and if they were wiped out, not only would the end of that cursed place be a blessing, but it would expose the fragility of Uztari tradition. Without the Six Villages, the people would begin to forget their old ways, and in time, those who lived would become obedient and faithful servants.

  “Cut out the roots, and the branches die,” Anon told his chiefs when they gathered that night beneath the shelter of all their kites. “The Council of Forty have had their eyes fixed on the sky so long, they’ve forgotten how life grows from the soil. That forgetting will be their death.”

  “But what if they capture the ghost eagle?” Visek asked, unafraid to show his fears.

  Anon had his own doubts about his plan’s success. It had long odds to begin with, and the complexity of the task was compounded by the fact that his twin trappers were terribly young and completely ignorant of whom they served.

  The twins had, on the other hand, the same advantage the Kartami forces had in battle, the advantage of fighting in pairs: The young falconers had gone into the mountains for love. Love, Anon knew, made the impossible possible, made the unimaginable into reality, and could drive even the gentlest soul to the heights of brutality. Love was a merciless master, and none who’d heard its song could resist it.

  “As the Uztari like to say, two feet hold a branch more firmly than one,” Anon told Visek.

  “But will Goryn Tamir do his part?” Visek asked. “What’s to stop him from keeping the ghost eagle himself?”

  Anon patted the boy’s cheek. The first whisper of a beard was beginning to grow, but his youth belied his ferocity. Anon had seen him fight harder than a dozen older men and women. “A ghost eagle will not be kept … by anyone. Not by Goryn Tamir, and not by me, either.”

  “You won’t keep it if you get it?” Visek frowned.

  “I have other plans for it.”

  From the corner of his eye, Anon saw Aylex the hawk master feeding his bird from the fist, but the look on his face was one of listening. He’d been their captive too long, grown too comfortable. When they first took him, he would not have dared feed the falcon in front of Anon. And now he dared to eavesdrop?

  Perhaps he’d outlived his usefulness.

  “If the brother and sister fail, or if Goryn Tamir tries to withhold the prize, he will not be spared when the Six Villages inevitably fall. He knows this.”

  “You intend to spare him if he complies?” Launa asked, full of contempt. “One who profits off birds battling each other for sport?”

  “I promised that he alone would rule the Six Villages, and I will keep my promise.” Anon smiled at the thought. Goryn Tamir imagined himself a rising eagle, but Anon would make a vulture of him, a carrion bird picking at the dead. All that would remain of the Six Villages when Anon was through was feather and ash. Let Goryn Tamir rule his wasteland. He assumed the world would be as it always was, the cast of men and women in power changing, but the laws of ruler and ruled remaining.

  The comfortable imagined themselves comfortable forever. Only the exiled could truly conceive a different world from their own, and only the merciless could create one.

  “Aylex,” Anon said quietly. “What do you think of Goryn Tamir?”

  The hawk master responded to his own name, although he should not have been able to hear it. He realized his mistake instantly, and his complexion went ashen.

  “Sorry, ser, were you addressing me?” He played like he hadn’t heard anything, but Anon beckoned him over. The hawk master hooded his falcon and shuffled to Anon, head bowed.

  “You call your bird Titi, yes?” Anon asked. The hawk master hesitated. Anon cocked his head, waited. At last, Aylex nodded, wise enough to remember Anon’s command that he never speak the name again. “Do you think it enjoys being your pet?”

  “Ser.” Aylex bowed his head deeper. “She is not my pet but a partner with different abilities than mine. She is free to fly away at any time.”

  “Unlike you.”

  “Yes, unlike me.”

  “But it returns to you, even in your current captivity,” Anon observed. “Why do you think that is?”

  Aylex didn’t answer. He had been beaten before for speaking of the falconer’s art as anything other than a disgusting perversion of nature, and he’d learned the lesson well, his lips as sealed as if they’d been sewn shut.

  “You may answer,” Anon said.

  “She returns because she—I mean, it—is accustomed to returning,” he said, as neutral a statement as he could make.

  “It has a habit, you might say?”

  Aylex nodded.

  “But you love this bird. Don’t deny it. I have seen it in your eyes. You love it, but it cannot feel the same about you.”

  Aylex nodded again.

  Anon pulled a knife from his belt and presented it, hilt first, to the hawk master. Visek and Launa watched, their faces as blank as the bird’s hood.

  “Take it,” Anon ordered, and Aylex obeyed. “You love your hawk, and it does not love you. So you must make a choice that spurned lovers often make: Your life, or hers?”

  Aylex was puzzled.

  Anon rubbed his chin. “Your time with us is over. You have served well, and so I will free one of you. Slit your bird’s throat and hold it until it expires, and you may go. Or slit your own, and it will have no one to whom it has a habit of returning. It will fly free, wild again. Your choice.”

  Aylex’s eyes widened. He looked at the blade, at the bird, and back at Anon. His hand shook.

  “Choose.”

  He raised the blade, turned it in the moonlight. Edged it toward his hooded falcon’s neck. Then he lunged for Anon.

  The hawk master was not a warrior, and Anon dodged easily, spun the blade, and sliced across the side of Aylex’s neck, severing the pulsing artery and dropping the falconer to the dirt.

  His bird felt the fall and flapped free of the fist but, still hooded and tethered, was helpless and slow. Anon caught it by the foot and pulled it down in front of its gasping master.

  “That was not one of your options,” said Anon. “Now you both are forfeit.”

  As the falconer’s blood pooled at his feet,
Anon snapped the lovely falcon’s neck, removed its hood, and tossed its body onto the falconer’s chest.

  “You’ll be past pain soon,” Anon told him. “And this falcon is past disgrace. Rejoice that you will not see the fall of Uztar. You could have suffered far worse than this.”

  Aylex’s mouth moved, his voice a whisper. Anon had to kneel down to hear his final words. “You will fail,” he choked out. “You slaughter … travelers and herders … but … the armies of Uztar … will crush you…”

  Anon smiled at him, patted his head. “Believe what you must,” he said.

  As the falconer died with his dead bird on his chest, Anon rose again. He looked across the grasslands to the foothills of the mountains and the dark purple peaks beyond. He marveled at the wonder of the new world he was making, how so much of it turned on a few young people, the love they felt for one another, and the power they had without knowing why.

  He closed his eyes and wished them success, even a measure of happiness, before he pulled the sky down around them.

  KYLEE

  SHADOWS

  33

  All those seasons ago when their father left, it was the start of the ice-wind, when the rivers first freeze. The ground in the Villages made a satisfying crunch underfoot. It was a good time for the birds to rest, a good time for people to prepare for the cold months ahead by stocking fuel and food, mending their mews, and secreting away pleasant surprises for each other so that there’d be moments of light in the dark, indoor days. These “cold kindnesses” made a small house feel bigger and were as vital to surviving Six Villages ice-winds as firecakes were for burning. They were a tradition Kylee loved.

  Even their mother got into the spirit of cold kindnesses when the time came. She surprised them with a song or a story and a rich meal. Kylee had hidden some candied ginger she planned to give Brysen after the first snow fell and a new hood with a pretty plume for Shara, and she’d found the colorful beads he’d hidden for her along with a piece of candied ginger, though she wondered if he would be able to make the candy last until it was time to share. In spite of his intentions, Brysen didn’t have much self-control when something sweet was involved. The beads were nice, though. Altari desert glass. Never mind that she’d never shown any interest in beadwork before and wouldn’t know what to do with them; it was more about the gesture. What she really hoped for were new boots for climbing, and she’d dropped so many hints that there wasn’t a soul in the Villages who didn’t know.

  She didn’t have her hopes up that the boots would appear, expensive as they were, but her old ones were fine for most seasons, anyway, and she wouldn’t let unfulfilled desire ruin her morning climbs.

  On one morning early in the season, Kylee was on a route called the Hunter’s Tooth, a narrow cut in a smooth rock face that was easy for solo climbing without a rope—as long as you didn’t mind navigating a few outcroppings by hanging upside down. It was one of the more fun climbs and would soon be impossibly covered in snow. This was her last chance to see how fast she could do it before the ice-wind came.

  She was dangling two-handed from one of the outcroppings that jutted out over the Necklace, searching for a foothold, when she glanced toward home and saw Brysen high up the northern slope above their house, climbing, but not like she was. Not for fun. His gray hair made him easy to spot, and oddly, he didn’t have Shara with him. He did, however, have a large pack with ropes and blankets, like he was going on an expedition. It was too big for him. What was he doing trekking into the Upper Jaw when the ice-wind season was starting?

  Kylee’s heart quivered when she thought he might have finally done it, finally decided to run away without her—and he hadn’t even told her.

  But then she remembered that their father had gone into the mountains that same way. She and Brysen thought that was the greatest cold kindness present they’d ever received. Their father had gone to trap the ghost eagle—in spite of their mother’s objections—and he’d be gone for no one knew how long. They could all breathe easier with him out of the way. Brysen’s latest bruises would heal. The most recent one his father had given him across his jaw had started to brown and purple like rotten fruit.

  A few days earlier, Brysen had overfed a brown-winged rat catcher. Because it’d eaten well already, the hawk wouldn’t hunt when their father had taken it out to show a client, and it had cost both a sale and the humiliation of being a dealer who couldn’t manage a working bird’s weight. He’d made Brysen eat in the mews with the birds that night and eat what they ate: raw chicks and rotten seeds.

  “You’re so generous with the bird’s feed, maybe you should eat it yourself!” he’d thundered. When Brysen had tried to sneak into the house to grab some fresh bread, he got a swift punch in the jaw and was sent back to the mews.

  Their mother snuck him bread anyway. She had Kylee deliver it.

  “He hates me,” Brysen had said.

  “Who cares?” she’d told him. “He hates everyone.”

  “Not you.”

  Kylee had snorted. How could she explain that their father hated her worse, hated her so much that he hurt Brysen to spite her? But she and Brysen hadn’t really spoken the same language since the day she’d refused to run away with him. “Maybe he won’t come back from the mountain,” she’d said. “He’ll never catch the ghost eagle on his own.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because no one ever has,” Kylee had said, and Brysen had reacted strangely.

  He didn’t agree with her, but he also didn’t argue. Instead, he’d straightened up and rubbed his jaw, and a twinkle had appeared in his eye.

  She thought he’d been fantasizing about a life without their monstrous father, but she now realized what he’d really been thinking: He thought he was going to help. He was following their father up the mountain to show how useful he could be, like he could impress their father so much that Yzzat wouldn’t hate him anymore. Kylee already knew at that age that love wasn’t something you could earn. It was a gift some people gave and some people hoarded and some people ruined rather than share.

  Their father was a ruiner.

  Kylee didn’t even have to convince herself to help Brysen. She immediately descended the Hunter’s Tooth, threw what she needed into a roll, tied it up with a strap, and headed out. Their mother was down in the Villages bartering for ice-wind supplies. When she came home to find the house empty and her children gone, she’d be upset, but Kylee figured that all would be forgiven when they got back safely. If she didn’t follow Brysen now, she was pretty sure he wouldn’t come back at all.

  Still, she left a note. Her mother knew where she’d gone and why. In all the seasons that followed, they never spoke of that note.

  She climbed after Brysen for days, rationing her dried meats and handfuls of nuts so that she’d have enough for the way back down, too. Brysen had climbed fast despite the difficulty of the Cardinal’s Crest, but he was clumsy and left an easy path to follow. His campsites were a mess, and Kylee was worried, by the size of his meager campfires, that he wasn’t eating enough. He surely hadn’t packed dried food, and she found almost no bones, which meant he either wasn’t hunting, or he wasn’t catching anything. Either way, he wouldn’t make it much longer on an empty stomach.

  It was late at night on the fourth day when she saw him. He was on a ridge just above the Nameless Gap, and she watched him descend. Forced to follow, she climbed up the hard side of the Demon’s Beak with the wind slashing at her back, but at least she had a clear view down.

  Brysen was scrunched in the scraggly brush along the slope, poorly concealed. She scanned the area for their father but couldn’t make him out. He was, no doubt, invisible in a hunting blind somewhere.

  She looked to the high crags above, all the way toward the highest peak. How many ghost eagles lived up there, no one could say, but at least one brought back its quarry to a nest in the Nameless Gap. You could sometimes hear the eagle’s shrieks all the way down in the vill
ages. Kylee had read fragments of Ymal’s Guide, along with the tales of Valyry and the Stych sisters, so she knew that juvenile eagles hunted lower in the mountains where there was more variety of prey and less competition from others of their kind. It was their father’s foolishness to think a juvenile would be a safer target for his hunt.

  Of course Da would go after a young eagle, Kylee thought. He’d never risk the harder climb or the fairer fight against a full-fledged adult.

  Looking down into the Gap, Kylee saw an injured corral hawk not far below Brysen’s shrub. Kylee studied its ankles, followed the line to a lump of stone and snow. That must be her father, waiting.

  She shuddered at the memory of his quick hands flashing out in rage to cuff Brysen on the ear, to slap him on the cheek, to knock him into the dirt. Were those vicious hands quick enough to catch the ghost eagle?

  Suddenly, their father stood from his hiding spot, and Kylee’s breath caught in her throat. He was looking straight up at Brysen’s shrub, and he’d drawn his knife, crouched into fighting stance. He’d seen Brysen. He was about to strike.

  Kylee could picture what might come next as clear as living it: Brysen lifted by the hair, their father enraged, driving the knife into Brysen’s gut, tossing him facedown beside the corral hawk, laughing. Brysen’s bleeding body would become fresher bait for the ghost eagle, and their father would return to the village victorious. A hero who’d lost his son in the hunt but gained fame and fortune in return.

  And Kylee and their mother would be rich. Their father would grow gentle with wealth and treat Kylee with all the kindness she’d lacked before. She’d have no reason to hold back her skill, and she would one day be celebrated as a great falconer. Her mother would embrace Uztari faith, and their family would find harmony. All that held them back was Brysen. All she had to do to be free of him was … nothing.