by Travis Perry
“Yes, sir,” the boy admitted. His defiance drained away, and now he looked ill. “For the past six months.”
He looked away when his father smiled and said, “Very well. She will be useful before this ends.”
The crowd screamed in elation, hands clattering in musical applause when the scarlet-clad pilot waved one last time and disappeared. Around the table, the silence could be cut with a knife.
• • •
Mangalia’s Phoenix woke to find a strange, mottled brown pattern before her eyes and an uncomfortable pressure on her nose, cheekbones, and brow. It took her a long, puzzled moment to realize it was the wood of her kitchen table.
“Euerrugh,” she said, prying her forehead from it with a tacky smack. She looked around the kitchen, disoriented. Pale sunlight from the open door fell upon heaps of food-crusted dishes piled for washing and scattered papers of figures and receipts that were meaningless to her.
Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, but she couldn’t fathom how she had gotten there. Her hand knocked a bowl before her, and she peered into it in case it proved elucidating. Stewed grain, never entirely pleasant but even less so when it had congealed to a brownish lump, met her gaze.
Of course. She had come back from the race with the vague idea of sneaking in and eating before bed, but it had been late, and she must’ve fallen asleep. Luckily, her mother—
Her mother.
Her mother would kill her if she knew.
Leaping into action, she knocked the stacks of dishes into the sink. It was, mercifully, still filled with water from the night before, now cold and tepid but usable. In a whirl of motion, she scraped the dried food into the slop bucket from which it would be fed to Mangal swine. She had to hop up on the stool to reach the sink, but the distance seemed easier than last time she’d had to do it. Was she growing? She couldn’t grow, not yet. Hastily, she dunked the dishes into the water.
Not a moment too soon. Light footsteps brushed across the wooden floor as a pretty woman, still young, stepped into the kitchen.
“Good morning, Tala,” her mother, Belen, said. “I see you’re already hard at work.”
“You know me, Mama.” Tala scrubbed with vigor and smothered a yawn. “I like getting up early.”
“You certainly like going to bed early. I still can’t believe you didn’t come to the race.” Excitement bubbled in Belen’s voice. “The Phoenix won.”
Tala’s stomach wrenched unpleasantly. “What, again?” she said, feigning surprise. “That’s fourteen times in a row, isn’t it?”
“Sixteen,” Belen said eagerly. “And she’s still going strong. People say she’ll make it to the end of the year without losing.”
“I doubt it,” Tala said, staring into the mucky water. “Everyone loses sometimes.”
“Not the Phoenix.” Belen nudged her daughter away from the sink and took over the task. Her rough hands moved efficiently over the dishes. “And she’s racing again tonight.” At last, she noticed Tala’s exhaustion and frowned. Her damp hand smoothed her daughter’s golden-orange hair, so common in Mangalia. “Are you sick? You look half-dead, Tala.”
Her mother’s words brought tears rising to Tala’s eyes, and she fought them down. She was sick. Sick and tired of dividing her life between the aeries and the shop, lying to her parents, and feigning ignorance about the Phoenix. She wanted to lean her head in the hollow of her mother’s shoulder and cry out her troubles.
“I’m fine, Mama,” she said. “You worry too much.”
A fine line creased Belen’s brow, but she said nothing, padding to the larder to spoon out more barley to stew for breakfast. Tala heard her muttered complaint when the scoop scraped the bottom of the barrel, and she tensed as the jar of coins clicked beneath Belen’s searching fingers. But if Belen found anything odd about the surplus of gold coins, she kept her silence. It never occurred to her to wonder how a struggling shop might produce such prosperity. Well, Tala didn’t plan on enlightening her.
Belen flicked the coin to Tala, who barely caught it.
“If you’re not tired, you can buy more barley,” she said with a dimpled smile. “Then you can help Malia and Paloma in the shop.”
At least Tala needn’t disguise her groan. All of Belen’s numerous children loathed working in the shop.
“But Mom! I’m tired of slaving away so Olympians can sneer at me. If they think our spices and wines are so dreadful, why do they keep coming back?”
“Maybe they enjoy insulting us and whittling down our prices,” Belen said idly, cleaning the dishes. “Or maybe our wares are better than they think.” She raised an eyebrow at Tala. “The barley?”
Tala sighed. “Right away, Mom.” At least the bazaar was on the way to the aerie. She could bring Arene a treat before the race tonight.
• • •
Dust rose in thick clouds over the streets of Mangalia. Workers in the bazaar waved broad fans of discarded feathers to waft it away from their wares and keep the elegant Olympians comfortably cool as they perused silks that glistened like water, aromatic perfumes, and fragile plastic bottles worth ten times as much as mere skins of water.
“Why so expensive?” Tala heard a thin, unhealthy-looking Olympian complain.
The shopkeeper smiled and bowed and chattered about the lack of water in the desert, but Tala recognized that for the lie it was. If water were scarce, beautiful, gem-like fountains wouldn’t blossom in the heart of the bazaar. The bottles were costly because whatever art created their thin, resilient plastic had been long lost, and shopkeepers knew they could charge through the teeth for it.
Tala slipped through the squawking crowd gathered about the shops. Even if they sold barley here, she couldn’t afford it, and the shopkeepers would hardly welcome her. She waited until the buildings dwindled to more humble abodes before trading her flashing gold for a sack of barley, along with Arene’s treat. She grunted as she hefted the sack and knew that she had gotten good value for her coin.
Dark specks against the sky caught her attention, and she leaned her head back to admire the birds overhead and to wonder what made Mangalia so perfect for flying. The air was heavier in the lowlands, the near-mythical scholars from the Time of Magic had explained. That was how such large birds could fly, and why they crashed if they came too close to the Mons Olympus.
Tala didn’t half believe them. The way she saw it, God made the birds that way to keep the Olympians out of racing. Her eyes fell on the shining gold canopies that crowned the bazaar. Sadly, she thought that it hadn’t worked.
But the birds’ strange reaction to the highlands did limit the grand sport. Only women rode now to lessen the weight on more distant rides, and suicide races went high into the uplands, pushing the edge of avian mobility. Tala didn’t race in those. Even gold wasn’t worth losing a bird and being crippled and stranded far from Mangalia.
By the time she reached the aerie, the crowd had dwindled to dregs. She glanced surreptitiously from side to side before slipping into the cool, quiet building. Only soft breathing and gentle ruffling filled the shadowy darkness as Tala picked her way to the private stalls, stepping over sacks of feed and broad pools for the birds to bathe in. She didn’t release her held breath until the door to Arene’s stall closed behind her; then she turned, blinking in the sudden sunlight.
The wide slats that roofed Arene’s stall had been drawn back, so the gentle sounds and fragrances of Mangalia streamed in with the sunlight. Arene raised her head and wings from her precarious perch, and her plumage gleamed like the wealth of Mons Olympus. She opened her glistening topaz eyes when she heard the door snap shut.
“Good day, Arene,” Tala said pleasantly, keeping her eyes on the bird. “You raced well last night, so I brought you something.”
She stood lightly, ready to dodge, as she pulled a mottled hunk of unidentifiable meat from the sacking. Arene’s beak clicked with interest, and she angled her head. Carefully, Tala tossed it, and the razor-sharp beak snapped it
up.
It was unwise and unhealthy to overestimate the bond between pilot and bird. True, they shared the unique experience of the races, but the birds were first and foremost wild creatures of the desert. It was said the best mounts were the ones least tamed, and Tala believed that: she knew a champion racer forced to retire when his mount took a chunk from his thigh. And his wasn’t the worst story.
The latch on the door worked free behind Tala, and she startled as it sprang open, clipping her. Arene shrieked and raised her wings warningly.
“Who—Lee!” Tala exclaimed, trying to see the intruder without turning her back on the bird. “Hush, Arene. Calm down, girl.”
“Sorry,” Lee said, closing the door behind him. “I thought I would find you here. We need to talk.”
“Yes, we do,” Tala said crossly, picking from her clothes the specks of down that had swirled in the gust of Arene’s wings. “Why did you book me for a race tonight? I told you I need a break.”
She waited for the smile, and she wasn’t disappointed. Lee’s trademark grin danced across his face: charming, friendly, and flattering, like she was the only girl who’d ever made him smile. It lost some of its appeal after she’d seen it dozens of times.
But something was wrong today. It kept sliding off one edge, like a frown longed to replace it.
“We can talk about that later, Tala,” he said. “There’s something more important. My father.”
Tala paused from where she checked Arene’s trough of water, skimming off discarded feathers as long as her arm.
“Don’t tell me Lee the Liar is finally going to talk about his family,” she said. “I had begun to think you sprang fully formed from the unholy union of a bookie and an etiquette mistress.”
“I’m being serious, Tala!” He scrambled after her as she vaulted up the ladder to the loft. “My father is a dangerous man, and he’s interested in the Phoenix. I’m afraid he’s going to ask me who you are.”
“I’m a pilot.” Tala slit open a sack and allowed the seed to spill in a percussive waterfall to Arene’s trough below. “I’m used to danger. And if he asks you who I am, just don’t tell him.”
Lee said nothing. Tala glanced up at him suspiciously.
“You do plan on telling him nothing when he asks about me?” she asked. “Leandro?”
“You don’t know my father. He always gets what he wants.”
“Clearly, if you always give it to him!” Tala retorted. “I’ll race tonight, but then I’m taking a nice, long, permanent vacation.”
“What?” He stared at her, aghast. “Tala, you’re golden! Your family’s fortune is assured for the rest of their lives! Why stop now?”
“Um…because their fortune is assured for the rest of their lives?” She stopped, slumping against the ladder. Lee didn’t deserve to be snapped at. She owed him a great deal, even if it didn’t feel like it anymore. “Lee…When you first decided to sponsor an underage pilot for the races, did you ever dream it would get this big?” She waved her hand around, gesturing to the spacious aerie, the elaborate racing grounds, the whole of Mars. “I think it’s time to duck out. My luck will turn someday, and I don’t want to be there to see it.”
“It’s not luck, Tala,” Lee said earnestly. “You have a gift. I knew it from the moment I saw you fly. It’s why I gave you Arene.”
Tala glanced mutinously at her mount. She didn’t like to be reminded of that.
“So it’s not luck,” she admitted. “But I’m not going to be young forever. Soon I’ll be able to race without breaking any rules, but I’ll grow. I’ll be an adult. I’ll weigh as much as the other pilots. No more unusual speed or distance. Just another pilot in a whole city of them.”
Lee didn’t argue, but Tala knew he hadn’t given up. She sighed and slid down the ladder, back into the distrustful circle of her falcon’s wings. Giving up racing was a bitter pill to swallow. To end the lack of sleep, lying to her family, and the fear of being caught and punished—that sounded lovely.
But…to lose that breathless moment when the golden flags flashed, and her falcon’s wings carved the air into screams of elation…The biting, wrenching wind sought to tear her from her mount, but she never gave in, clinging firmly to the warm, soft feathers while the world whipped by in a blur of crimson and pink and, above all, the shining gold of the Mangal Desert. To lose the farthest leg of the race, when Arene strained to stay aloft and the sea flashed beneath them and she saw the barest, faintest smudge on the horizon that might be Mons Olympus…the end of the world…
She didn’t know if she could give it up. And she wouldn’t until she stepped out of the aerie for the last time. That day was approaching, but it wasn’t here yet.
Unwillingly, her hand twitched to her pocket and drew out the Phoenix’s mask. It only seemed to be solid gold; although that appealed to Lee’s sense of drama, he acknowledged the impracticality of it. It was only stiffened canvas painted to look gold.
“Just…be careful, Tala,” Lee said. “I sponsored you as a way to annoy my sister, but after all the money I’ve blown on you, I’d hate to see you splatter against some faraway mountain.”
“Please,” Tala said. “You spent your money well.” She leaned up to kiss his cheek, because she knew Lee cared much more than he let on.
“You owe me,” he grumbled. “I have to dine with my father now, and I’ll spend it plotting ways for you to repay your debt.”
Tala, tending to Arene’s feathers, heard the door shut and knew he’d left. She was alone with the birds now. She breathed in their curious, musty scent as she brushed the dust from Arene’s feathers, letting them shine. Then, regretfully, she stood up, shouldered the sack of barley, and set off for home.
• • •
Something had changed on the streets. Something so subtle and indefinable that at first Tala didn’t notice. Not until she reached the bazaar did it become apparent. Where the shoppers had chatted loudly, now they whispered. The city was draped in silence.
Was someone racing? Tala glanced to the sky, but it was a clear blue, so deep and vivid it almost hurt. The crowd didn’t look worried, exactly. She couldn’t place the emotion on their faces.
Her walking steps turned into a trot, then a run. The sack’s weight dragged her off balance, and she stumbled, falling into the street before a stream of Olympians. A man shouted at her as she scrambled to her feet, dodging the traffic of carts. His voice sounded high and shrill against the silence.
The sound sparked panic in Tala’s chest. Her steps increased as the homely, sloped shop came into view, the place where she’d grown up. A cool gust of air, scented with the sweet spices of her childhood, washed over her when she pushed open the door.
A circle of gleaming gold heads surrounded the counter; they turned to look at Tala in surprise. Her chest uncoiled with relief when she saw her mother, along with a handful of Tala’s younger siblings.
“What’s going on?” Tala demanded. She wended her way past the children fluttering and playing on the shop floor. “Something happened. What did I miss?”
Her family regarded her with solemn eyes. Belen said, “There’s a pilot here from Mons Olympus. He says he’s come to challenge the Phoenix.”
• • •
“Your son, sir,” said the valet.
“Tell him I’m not in.”
Lee shifted, barely a pace away from where his father sat watching the races. The remains of a meal sat before him, demolished by now-absent diners. Briefly, Lee wondered with whom his father had been meeting.
The valet made a helpless gesture, and Lee nodded, understanding. He turned to go.
“Hold a moment,” his father said. “Actually, send him in. There’s something we need to discuss.”
Impossibly, Lee’s heart sank lower as he took the chair across from his father. His father returned to perusing papers, leaving Lee to shift uncomfortably in his seat. His eyes strayed to the starting line, where two pilots finished negotiating the terms of the
ir race. Idly, he glanced up to the flag towers to read what had been decided.
His gut wrenched. It was a suicide race.
Wherever Olympians and their gold gathered, there were people willing to die for it. Only pilots in dire need of money took on the most dangerous races—called suicide races because that was what they were. They almost always ended in fatal crashes.
One of the grooms passed a small bundle to the pilot, and it took a single, heartbreaking moment for Lee to realize it was a baby. The woman held it with her eyes closed. Then, squaring her shoulders, she handed it back to the groom and mounted her bird.
Lee thought he would be sick. He felt his father’s gaze and knew that he had seen.
“What do you wish to speak of, sir?” he asked numbly, ready to leave the racing grounds. He didn’t want to see this.
His father’s smile was unpleasant when he said, “The Phoenix.”
• • •
The sun had reached its zenith and faded to one side by the time Tala came to the racing grounds. Already the crowd of Olympians swarmed like flies, but a gracefully tied rope held them back from where the small figure in scarlet paced, muttering furiously.
“Mons Olympus, of all places! Who ever heard of a pilot born somewhere you can’t fly? He’ll be terrible.” Her hands shook when she poured herself a cup of water. “Absolute garbage.”
In the distance, an escort of riders led Arene to the field. Tala would’ve liked to be with her, but the new Olympian codes for racing dictated that the pilot not approach her mount until the start of the race, in case she…what? Sabotaged her own bird? All she had to do was hold back in the race to spoil her own chances. Like all the Olympian rules, it added only another layer of complexity to the already dangerous sport.
Tala surveyed the angle of the sun with a practiced eye. She had another half hour before she needed to meet with the Olympian pilot and discuss terms. The golden mask fit snugly against her nose. She could sit in the sun and doze, safe and secure. Anyone who might recognize her was a quarter of a mile away, trapped behind the Olympians.