by Kate Elliott
He shook his head with an expression of offended scorn, and gave a curt command. The boat slewed around and headed back for the ship.
“You’ve made an enemy of that one,” remarked Fo.
Blood dripped from the abrasion on Lifka’s fingers. It hurt so much it made her dizzy. “He’s not my enemy. He’s just a man with a rude nose. These Tandi already knew about me, Fo. How could they have known? Do you think Treya told them?”
“No! Even she’s not that stupid.” Fohiono shaded her eyes, examining the ship. The shadow wings had vanished, but wisps of darkness chased along the ropes as the spirit awaited a new command to fly. “When there’s coin involved, people’s ears grow wings.”
“Queen Dia and her people knew all about this vanished Phoenix Lineage. She must have sent out word. I can’t trust anyone in the palace, can I?”
Fo gave her a long look, then whistled a signal. The paddlers dug to get the canoe up and moving. Lifka huddled with legs drawn up to her chest and her back pressed against Fo’s knees. She couldn’t help but notice that all the paddlers had weapons, and all wore a wolf’s head ring.
When they reached the rest of the canoes the other boats turned to form up around them. In this comforting pack they headed back to shore.
“Do you want to go with the Tandi?” Fo asked in a low voice. “Lots of people would love to discover they are lost heirs to a legendary fortune.”
Lifka thought of Ailia, pregnant and with her young man bewildered by the trouble into which he had fallen. She could still see Mum with gashes in her side and Denas’s crushed hand and the gaping wound on Nanni’s thigh. The normally rambunctious children had been scared into muteness. The dogs hadn’t barked and through the night the mules had pulled eagerly at the wagon as if they knew perfectly well they would be slaughtered to assuage a prince’s pride.
“The Gull Clan only wants me because I will bring them coin and prestige. Do you know how I came into my family? Thirteen years ago my father hired out to haul supplies for the army to High Haldia. He finished the job and got paid two leya for two weeks’ work.”
“Two leya? That’s all?”
“You take what you can get when your clan only has enough rice for a week to feed itself. He was still in High Haldia when a company marched in from Ithik Eldim with several hundred captives, all children. People were eager to buy labor for so cheap. Only one leya for the runt!”
Fo gasped but said nothing.
“But no one wanted to buy the runt. A silver leya was too much for a worthless, starving, half-dead child not more than five years old. Yet the moment he saw me he knew I needed to come home where I belonged. He spent half the coin he’d earned, when the whole clan was counting on that coin to buy food. They are my family, Fo. This Phoenix Lineage means nothing to me. Nothing.”
Yet when she looked back at the ship growing smaller behind them, she wondered if a fortune could keep her family safe against a prince’s prideful wrath.
“What are you going to do now?” Fo asked. “Prince Tavahosh seems to have it in for you and your clan.”
“I don’t know.”
The canoe carved through the water, paddles flashing in and out with trails of spray, salt heavy in the air. The wind was glorious as they flew along the water, but her heart sank like stone.
Fo changed her steering paddle over to the other side, angled against the hull to slightly alter the canoe’s path. “We can shelter your family. It won’t be easy to move them without being caught, but with your cooperation we can do it. But you will have to leave the reeve halls and join us.”
47
Drums beat pum-put-a-pum-put-a-pum like an army on the march.
What in the hells Tavahosh was thinking to bring drums to the convocation at Horn Hall Dannarah could not imagine, riling up eagles and disturbing everyone’s peace. Yet here she was with a shrine steward on either side of her as if the Beltak priests now commanded Horn Hall. The men escorted her toward a tier of benches. A self-congratulating assembly of about two hundred reeves, palace officials, courtiers, and exalted priests looked over the parade ground of Horn Hall in exactly the way people sat on terraced seats in a Bell Quarter theater awaiting a troupe of Hasibal’s players putting on a show. Wind rumbled over the high ridge, tearing at everyone’s clothes and hair.
She caught sight of Reyad standing with a clump of other Horn Hall reeves, watching as she was directed to the seats. Thank Beltak he was safe! She’d begun to think it a mistake to send him south. When she caught his eye he dipped his chin in acknowledgment, nothing showy. Her other loyal people marked her with nods as well, but she could not help but notice how they were made to stand in the back.
“This way, Marshal.” A steward had the effrontery to attempt to direct her toward the back where she wouldn’t be able to see.
She shoved past him and climbed to where Marshal Goard of Gold Hall sat.
“I don’t like what’s going on at all,” he muttered as she plopped down beside him.
She was about to ask him what he meant when those cursed drums banged more loudly. Everyone jolted upright.
Prince Tavahosh processed in, accompanied by a cohort of red-and-white-clothed soldiers. A beautifully embroidered eagle decorated the silver cape he wore, wings wrapping his torso; a gold sash bound his robes. A horn whistle dangled from a copper chain, and he carried a bronze baton. His spiky headdress of iron-gray silk folded into intricate patterns, its scaffolding hung with bells. The drummers ceased—thank every god in existence!—but only so that four of his attendants could sing an imperial hymn to Beltak’s magnificence. The loud wind mostly drowned out the words but she could hear those cursed tinkling bells nagging at the edge of her hearing.
“Very impressive for a company of fledgling actors,” she remarked to Marshal Goard. They were seated at the back of a section where marshals and notable reeves took a place of honor while the last of the old guard—she and Goard and a few other aged men—were separated out from the younger men like the outcasts they now were. “I see Ivo and his loyal reeves from Iron Hall haven’t bothered to show up. Maybe he keeled over dead in disgust when he heard. What is this nonsense?”
“I wouldn’t joke if I were you, Dannarah.” Popular among his reeves at Gold Hall, Goard was a solid, responsible, and competent reeve a few years younger than she was. After their affair he had married an intelligent woman from a clan that made salves, balms, and medicinal oils, had sired numerous children, and both he and his wife had become her friends. There were few people she trusted more.
“Why not?”
“See that slope-browed fellow there? The young one? They are calling him marshal of Iron Hall. When I asked where Ivo was, they said he had retired and left the command to a younger, fitter man. They said Ivo’s eagle has taken a new reeve.”
She hissed in an inhalation as a tremor of foreboding passed through her chest. “The hells!”
The tedious hymn came to an end. Following the Sirni tradition the prince sang a short, poetic aria in a surprisingly tuneful and strong voice. After he finished praising the Shining One as “the vigorous Sun of our hearts” and “the spear of righteous anger wielded in a just Hand,” he and his retinue filed up onto the terraced seats and took their places at the front.
“Do you think they’ve taken Auri’s death and Lifka’s unexpectedly swift jessing of Slip as an excuse to start murdering reeves they want to be rid of?” she muttered.
“Best not spoken of now,” he said, so agitated his voice came out louder than a whisper.
From lower down, two young men wearing marshals’ regalia glanced over their shoulders with rebuking looks as if to scold their elders into silence. Puppies!
Eiya! The drummers rum-pum-pummed back to life, the rhythm making everyone sit up even straighter for it was certain something new was about to happen.
Every reeve hall had lofts to house its eagles. Of course there was a complicated scheme by which some eagles were on patrol, some hunting
, others resting or injured, and a few flown away to breed in the mountains, so no reeve hall was ever “full.” Besides that, generations of being jessed to people and living in proximity in the reeve halls had instilled a high degree of sociability among the raptors. Nevertheless every reeve hall kept isolated lofts for visiting eagles and for any individual eagles who needed separation and solitude.
The ridgetop here at Horn Hall had garden plots at one end and visiting lofts at the other. Today’s tiered seats had been raised to face the most solitary of these lofts, one erected close to the prow of the ridge. The loft doors were closed; netting strung from its roof had been stretched out to fasten onto perches, thus making a rope cage. Net cages were sometimes used to confine young eagles new to the halls, and in the rare cases she had authorized such a netting cage she had kept it well away from the bustle and flow of the hall.
She glanced around to the area, off to the left, where her Horn Hall reeves, fawkners, and stewards clustered to watch. Steward Nesard was scanning the benches, and he raised a hand to indicate he’d seen her. He had the worst expression on his face; she couldn’t imagine what would make him frown like that except news of an untimely death, probably Ivo’s. Clearly he wanted to speak to her. She stood, meaning to climb back down and go over to him.
Goard grabbed her knee. “Sit down. Don’t make any move now with Prince Tavahosh watching everything you do. Didn’t it occur to you he’s holding the convocation here at Horn Hall specifically to taunt you?”
“The hells.” She should have seen it. Every lineament of this cursed day was clearly determined to remind her of how badly she had lost the battle for control of the reeve halls.
The drums roared into a loud whump whump whump whump whose emphatic clap made everyone crane their necks. Two columns of young men marched into view, shoulder-to-shoulder in perfect matched step. Although all wore reeve leathers, not one had a bone whistle on a leather cord around his neck as every reeve must. It was as if Tavahosh was mocking the reeves he now commanded by parading pretend reeves as an honor guard.
Each young man carried a reeve baton. With flash and precision they raised and lowered the batons, twirled them, tapped them on thighs and forearms, on each shoulder, in the kind of martial dance practiced in the old temples dedicated to Kotaru the Thunderer. They were very good, batons dancing to the beat of the drums. In fact, they were a pleasure to watch, very stirring and handsome in the way young men can carry strength and poise without thinking about it.
“Sit down! I can’t see!” hissed a man behind her.
She had forgotten she was still standing. With a thump she sat, and leaned into Goard. “Is this some new style of reeve training?”
“Never seen it before,” he whispered. “None of them have whistles, though.”
The two columns peeled away from each other and the men lined up on either side of the netting cage. She had a good memory for faces, not that she’d seen any of these men before. There were twenty-four. Half looked Sirni to her, curly hair instead of straight, a tendency to bigger noses, complexion of a more reddish-than golden-brown shade. Eagerness quivered through them. It quite caught her up; she could feel their excitement and thus so could everyone else in the same way children anticipate a promised platter of sweet rice cakes at festival time.
The prince rose, arms stretched to either side so the drape of his clothing made him seem larger. The silver cape rippled as the air tore at it, fluttering the amber-threaded wings of the embroidered eagle. Dannarah admired the way his sonorous voice penetrated the wind.
“Let the candidates be praised! Let these young men be acclaimed as talons, for they have undergone tests of courage and endurance. They have proven themselves worthy for the honor of risking their lives today. But only one can claim the prize! Only one will walk away as a reeve.”
“Talons?” Dannarah looked at Goard, but he shrugged.
Four stewards wearing Argent Hall green ran forward and rolled back the big doors of the loft to reveal a hooded eagle on an interior perch. Its feathers were ruffled, its talons opening and closing restlessly even though it was hooded and should thus be settled and calm.
Dannarah’s hand closed on Goard’s knee. “Isn’t that Bright?”
His reply was drowned out by a rumbling gust of wind.
A masked fawkner used a pole to hook the hood off the raptor and then dashed into the safety of a tack room.
“The hells!” Her hand tightened until Goard grunted in discomfort. “Bright is Feder’s eagle. You remember him. He trains all my fledglings … What in the hells?”
She stood despite the yelps of protest from the men whose view she blocked.
The young man at the head of the talon line ducked under the netting and stepped into the caged area. So proud he was, shoulders back, his long hair bound up in a soldier’s looped topknot. Fledgling reeves began by learning the basic baton signals and whistles to control their eagles.
He slapped the baton diagonally across his chest: Come to me.
Bright launched.
Dannarah braced herself; she didn’t bother to yell a warning.
Bright landed half on top of the young man, bowling him over. Then she hopped back. A sociable bird, she was trying to warn him off, and indeed, bleeding and with a dislocated shoulder, he took the hint and crawled out like a defeated marmot, looking ashamed. Unsettled, Bright fluttered at the netting, dropped back, flapped her wings, dipped her head. She wanted to fly.
Where was Feder?
Dannarah cast around and spotted Nesard signaling her. He gestured a cut across his own throat: Dead.
Feder was dead!
No wonder Bright was trying to leave. When their reeves died, eagles flew away and did not return for months or even years but always at a time of their choosing and always with a new young reeve already jessed to them.
Yet instead of pulling the netting aside to let Bright go, the stewards and fawkners stayed fixed in place. Drums rolled like distant thunder, then quieted. A second young man ducked under the netting to face the eagle. Bright hopped threateningly toward him and in response he thumped his chest with the baton.
Goard stood beside her, voice rising in anger. “What are they playing at? This is obscene.”
She tapped his elbow. “Sit down, play along, and keep your distance from me, my friend. Don’t be seen as my ally. You need to stay in command of Gold Hall.”
Without waiting for a reply she shoved her way down the benches, whacking people’s shoulders with her baton to get them to make room, treading on toes and clipping knees and hands. She ignored the furious words thrown at her. The little dance of Bright warning off that poor duped youth and the next lad trying to capture Bright’s interest fixed Dannarah’s attention far more than the bleats of asslickers who couldn’t be bothered to call a halt to a crime.
She called, “Prince Tavahosh! End this now! I don’t know what in the hells you think you are doing with this ridiculous display…”
Half the reeves leaped to their feet, but it was long since too late.
Goaded and trapped, unable to get peace, the eagle struck. Wickedly sharp talons punctured the man’s torso. Yet the fellow did not scream, only shut his eyes, lips moving as in prayer. Bright squeezed, and mercifully the body went limp. Blood streaked the ground as the eagle dragged the limp body around before finally shaking it off her claws.
The drums rolled, and quieted.
As she reached him, Tavahosh pulled himself to his full height to try and make her feel small. “This is a proper ceremony. This is a true test of manhood.”
“What in the hells are you talking about?”
“We must seek worthy candidates to become reeves. This is not a duty and an honor to be granted to your random farmer’s child out weeding in the garden patch and chosen by chance as the wind blows a frantic eagle that way! Deserving men must be allowed to stand forth, ones we have raised up through discipline and training. If the Shining One rests His blessing upo
n a man, then he will be chosen as a reeve to serve at Beltak’s will.”
A third man crawled under the net. Folk murmured admiring words at the new talon’s willingness to enter where the last had died.
“Bad enough to see men’s lives thrown away because you’ve convinced them it’s worth risking death as a mark of bravado. I cannot stand here and watch you people ruin a fine eagle!”
“You do not have my permission to intervene.”
“I don’t need your permission. The only way to put a stop to this travesty is to hood the eagle, settle her, and then let her go as has been the tradition since the beginning of the reeve halls.”
“You believe in the old superstitions. There is nothing spiritual about reeves. The eagles want to be jessed. It is their obligation and duty as beasts to be hooded before their masters.”
“We are not their masters. We are their partners.”
“The eagles are animals, Lady Dannarah, not creatures of spirit as men are.”
Bright flapped back to the perch, so disturbed that her confusion made Dannarah ache. The third young talon had the sense to approach the eagle at a creep while stewards got hold of the dead man’s feet and dragged him out of the netting cage.
She grabbed the prince’s arm. “This won’t work. Eagles choose, not men.”
“It has worked in Argent Hall for three years now,” he crowed. “Of course a few men die during the Talon Ceremony. Not all of us are worthy! But in the end the eagles submit, according to the will of the Shining One. Eagles want to be jessed.”
“Three years you’ve been doing this? You cage unjessed eagles and don’t let them fly until they’ve chosen a new reeve…” The implication of the words hit as she realized that Feder had been alive and healthy the last time she had seen him. “How do you have unjessed eagles in cages?”
“Their reeves are dead. Now take your hand off my arm.”
She abruptly recalled the conversation between Reyad and Hetta that night in the Suvash Hills. She had thought they were talking about women being mishandled and assaulted, and maybe they were, too, but a far more ominous explanation presented itself. “These talons you’ve trained up. You only allow men to become candidates.”