Wind Over Bone

by E D Ebeling

  “Shall we go tonight?” said Savvel. His hair and clothes were wildly mussed. He looked wide awake.

  “No,” said Sarid. “I’m bone tired.”

  ***

  They woke early, when the sky was just starting to turn green. Savvel lit the charcoal in the samovar, saying he needed his morning tea if he wasn’t to be so lazy, and Sarid went out on the balcony. She put a hand in the air; there was a warm breeze that smelled of salt.

  “Good for practice,” she said.

  He gave them both a cup of tea, and pretended to read the dregs. “Truth will drop from the sky, crushing a nitwit. Very cryptic.” Then she said the words––again it looked as though shining milk dripped from his fingers––and he shrank to a bird. He opened his wings and gave them a few beats, which lifted and carried him almost to the balustrade.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll give it a go.” She put him up on the balustrade.

  He spread his wings, took a step, and fell off the balcony. She watched him drop like a stone, her heart hammering. Then he opened his wings, was flapping, flapping, gliding––and had soon risen high above her.

  A little while later he alighted on a lemon tree growing just before the balcony. She said, “I wondered if you’d come back.”

  “Let’s go. I would dearly like to do that again. Like riding a great, warm wave.”

  “They’re going to think I stole you away and delivered you to Yelse as a special gift.”

  “You think she goes hawking?” He lifted a leg and scratched beneath his wing. “I left a note. They’ll know I went willingly.”

  “I doubt that will make them less nervous. We’re going to Trulba, first, remember? In case we get separated.”

  “And then Merstig, Pengrava, and Meliona.”

  “See if we can make it in three days. I’ll be right beneath you.”

  He dove off the balcony and soared westward. She followed. The city passed under them and dwindled, and patches of green and brown spread out, speckled blue where clouds cast fast shadows.

  “Could you be a little warmer?” said Savvel. “I won’t have to flap so much.” She took gulps of sun-warmed air and spread them beneath him. “Very good,” he said. “You blow very well. Best blower I’ve ever met.”

  Some hours later he had a rest in a tree, and she told him he’d better find other things to talk about or he’d have icy blasts bruising his rump all the way to Meliona.

  They set off again, and the fields wrinkled into brown hills. The hills climbed higher, waves of deciduous forest dotted through with the dark of pine. Finally they spotted Trulba by a small, blue lake, and landed on the far shore. The light of the setting sun turned the water to fire.

  “Will you change me back?” said Savvel, “or shall I eat a bluetit for dinner?”

  “Do they know your face in Trulba?”

  “No.”

  “Did you bring your bow, or were you going to raid a rabbit hutch?”

  Savvel stayed a sparhawk. He caught a finch and wrung its neck with his thick talons; and afterwards Sarid looked politely away as he hacked bones into the grass.

  ***

  They continued like this for three days. They crossed a big river into Anefeln and came at last to Meliona, a city of brightly painted wood and carved gables. It was tucked between three low hills, surrounded by farmsteads and rivers and pine thickets. Savvel said the locals made a fete of repainting their houses every five years. He’d spent his childhood summers there, the city being the seat of one of his family’s largest holdings.

  The hall stood at the top of a hill, made all of wood, with fat, square towers, turnip-shaped roofs, and arched windows and doors.

  Sarid stood in the street under the hall, and said to Savvel, who was on her arm, “I suppose you could fly in easy enough. But if I went as a wind, people would wonder when the lamps went out.”

  “It’s a nice evening,” said Savvel. “With a breeze. Windows will be open.”

  “I don’t know––”

  “You wanted it over with. It’s after supper, we can corner him in his room.”

  So Sarid dissolved and followed Savvel up the hill, through a wooded area, over a moat coated with water lilies. They passed through a window. The sun had gone. Sarid snuffed out several lamps, carrying the smoke with her.

  Savvel fared little better, flitting from rafter to rafter, narrowly avoiding the heads of servants.

  They entered into a high hall with round windows. People were wiping down the tables; they looked about them when Sarid blew the lamps out.

  A man stood next to a window, dim light falling around him.

  Starlight.

  A girl dropped a rag. “My lord Savvel!”

  Savvel felt his face, then his chest and stomach. “What, what, what?” he said. It was the dark of the moon. Sarid had forgotten Oluindre’s rule.

  She rematerialized right in front of him. “Shadows,” she shouted. “Get in the shadows!”

  But it was too late: some of the servants were pointing, some running from the dining hall. Sarid pushed Savvel out of the starlight, and he was a sparhawk again, flapping wildly. She thought for a sickening moment he would attempt a window, turn human in the starlight, and fall to his death. But he flew upwards into a corner of the ceiling and alighted on a rafter. Sarid became a wind and blew out the window nearest him. She changed back and sat down on the big, round outside sill, looking in.

  And then her heart leapt into her mouth because a man inside was explaining, “It’s your brother up there. In the rafters.”

  “A bird?” His voice made her face go very hot. “How much wine did you drink, Mikal?”

  “Now it’s a bird, but I saw him, his own self.”

  “It’s a goshawk.” Sarid could barely make out his face, but it was him––his feet always stood wide apart like that, as though he were about to start into a run. “Probably escaped from the mews. Someone send Andrei with a ladder.”

  “It was him,” said the girl who had spoken first. “All of us saw him.”

  “Then we’ll coax him down,” said Rischa, “and ask him very nicely to change back to himself.”

  “No, Your Grace,” said a little girl. “Put him in the light.”

  Sarid forced herself to take a deep breath––just Rischa she could deal with, but not all of them. She looked toward Savvel, who was crouched on his rafter, picking up one foot and then the other in a sort of nervous dance––and saw a hole in the ceiling.

  Everyone on the ground was talking at once, and she whispered to Savvel, “Behind you––a hole.”

  She saw out the corner of her eye that Rischa had got very still.

  “Was he the only one you saw?” he asked the servants, and Savvel turned his head around, lifted off, and disappeared through the hole.

  “There was a girl with white hair,” said the little girl.

  Sarid turned to a wind and followed Savvel through the hole.

  Her feet thumped onto a floor. The attic they had come into had one round window set in the gable. It was barely light enough to see the record books and parchment stacked under the pitched roof.

  The sparhawk perched on a tower of books, out of the light. “It’s always good to be recognized in your own home.”

  “He knows,” said Sarid. She heard shoes drumming on wooden stairs, and turned round. “He’s coming.” The noise got very loud. The door banged open and Rischa burst through, knocking over a stack of parchment.

  He swatted it away. “Where’s my brother?” he said immediately.

  His jacket was white with dust. She started laughing. Her shoulders jerked, shook up her tightened gut, and when she thought how hysterical she must sound she only laughed harder.

  He stared at her, two angry red spots on his cheeks. She choked off the laughter.

  Savvel flew to the floor, landed among the scattered paper, and became human. He said to her, “I always thought you were remarkably capable at keeping your head, for a woman
.”

  Rischa gaped at his brother. “Did she force that on you?”

  “No,” said Savvel. “I wanted to come.”

  “She’s putting words in your mouth.”

  Savvel scratched his cheek. “How can I prove she’s not?”

  “You can’t,” said Rischa.

  “I can. Ask me something she wouldn’t know. Nothing embarrassing.”

  “All right.” He sneezed and wiped dust off his face. “What did you give me for my seventh birthday?”

  “A hammer. I dipped it in pig’s blood and said I used it in the Anturvy Rebellion.”

  “Scared me shitless.” Rischa put his hands in his hair and made a noise like he was being strangled. “All you do is scare me shitless. Where’d you go, Savya? I heard all sorts of mad things––”

  Savvel walked over to his brother and rubbed his hands as though Rischa were a little girl. “Calm down.” He pulled Rischa into a hug, and Rischa stood like a stone in his arms. Savvel said into his ear, “We’ve lots to discuss. Time to put away your toys.”

  Rischa pushed him away. “You haven’t changed a bit. Why is your hair short?”

  Savvel touched his hair. “Leva cut it off.”

  “Leva Haek?”

  “Pretty girl. You should give her a chance.”

  “Why did she come?” Rischa pointed toward Sarid.

  “Sarid’s here to negotiate,” Savvel said. “And a fine job she’s doing.”

  “Right now she’s wondering why she brought you,” said Sarid.

  “Negotiate?” said Rischa.

  “On behalf of eastern Lorila,” said Savvel. “Most of them want a war. I still like you, though. Leva, too, for all you think she’s a horrible nuisance.”

  Rischa stared at the floor. He looked up and said, “They’d supplant me with you?”

  “Yes,” said Savvel. “If you don’t do what they want.”

  “They’d have a hard time of it,” Rischa said matter-of-factly. “I’ve both the Felns behind me.”

  “Don’t be so certain. The Felns could just as likely decide I’d be the better Ravyir. I am older.”

  Rischa looked scornful. “They know you’re mad.”

  “I thought you two cared for each other,” said Sarid.

  “I love my brother,” said Rischa. He was talking to Savvel. “But Lorila can’t have a joker king.”

  Sarid was silent, waiting for Savvel to say something scathing. But he just said, “You’re right. And I have everyone in the east almost convinced of it. There’s a snag, though.”

  Rischa’s face changed; his mouth went tight. “No.”

  Sarid was reminded of a dog made unable by some natural law to let go of a bone.

  “Yelse’s evil,” said Savvel. “And if she weren’t, she’d still be a bad choice for a wife.”

  “You want to kill her,” said Rischa. He clenched his hands. “You all want to kill her, like that imbecile Vanli. Why do you hate her? She’s only ever been quiet and good and sweet.”

  “She’s evil,” said Sarid. “She tells you what you want to hear and shows you what you want to see. She’s a witch. A very bad witch.”

  He turned to her and snarled, “Why should I listen to you?”

  “Because you fell in love with me,” she said. She looked him straight in the eye, and was astonished by her lack of feeling. “And defended me, when all the while it was I who drove your brother mad. You’re too susceptible to a pretty face.”

  “And you’re eighteen and human,” said Savvel, “and you fall in love with everything that raises your little flag.”

  This proved too much for Rischa, who shoved Savvel hard into the wall. Parchment flew around. The sparhawk beat its wings and gave an indignant kleeee.

  “Enough,” said Sarid.

  Savvel stepped back into the starlight. “Or she’ll have to start blowing.”

  Rischa said in one angry breath: “Even if you’re right and I’m too busy whacking off to think straight, Yelse has nothing to do with it. They do her wrong––they do me wrong––they plan every bit of my life out and leave no room for what I want––”

  “You’re too young to do what you want,” said Savvel. “And you have too many people subject to you. The whole country depends on you for protection and stability and there’s no use crying about not getting what you want, because like it or not, you’re the grandson of old shaggy Ainya.”

  “Rochel was too,” said Rischa. “She eloped.”

  “You can’t,” said Savvel. “She’d a clearly delineated net beneath her that included her sister and you and me, and what do you have? A madman?”

  “There’s Olan––”

  “Caveira? And Grete Eianhurt. And Augol and Keldanst and a whole host of others. You see the problem? There’s no clear line of succession after us. If you stepped down, there’d be multiple Ravyirs, and petty kings, and gushing blood, and smashed heads. If you elope with the girl there’ll be blood; if make her Ravinya there’ll be blood. The only choice a decent man could make is to let her go.”

  “Decent?” said Rischa. “Unconscionable and cruel more like. I couldn’t live with myself. She has no one else to go to, and she saved my life.”

  “Horseshit,” said Savvel.

  “I saved your life,” said Sarid.

  Rischa almost sneered. “What a thing to tell me. Everyone saw her do it.”

  “They saw a blonde woman,” said Sarid.

  “She was soaking,” said Rischa.

  “Veles’ horns––We were all soaking.”

  “Because of you.” Rischa shook his head, and put his hands in his pockets. “I think you’re both mad, that’s what I think.”

  “Let’s go find Yelse,” said Savvel to Sarid. “I can see my brother will be unreasonable so long as she’s alive.”

  Rischa went pale. “I’ll kill you,” he said, “if you hurt her.” His teeth glinted. His gums were blood-red in his white face, and darkness seemed to spread out from him. “I’ll kill you. I swear it, I will.”

  It turned Sarid cold. “We’re going now,” she said, backing away. “To let you think it over.” And because she wasn’t sure she could stand more of him.

  Rischa diminished in size. He glanced toward the window, and back to them. “Savvel’s staying.”

  “After you whomped me?” said Savvel. “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re human in the light,” said Rischa, and moved toward the door. “I’m not stupid. You can’t fly out the window. I’m calling them up––”

  Sarid moved her hand and blew the door shut with a snap. Rischa ran up to it and yelled, “To me!” But he couldn’t continue, because something caught in his throat.

  “I’m sorry,” Sarid said. Rischa put a hand to his neck. “You can’t speak above a whisper.”

  His eyes moved frantically and his voice came out in a rasp. “What did you do?”

  “Don’t ruin your voice,” she said. “I’ll take it off when the sun rises and Savvel can leave.”

  Savvel looked unsympathetically at his brother. “What’ll we do in the meantime? Have a game of blind-the-traitor?” He clicked his tongue. “Wouldn’t be fair. When Rischa and I play there’s usually yelling.”

  “I hate you,” Rischa whispered.

  And he sat sullenly in the corner for the rest of the night while Sarid flipped through record books and corrected the arithmetic, and Savvel chased a mouse around the attic. He caught it and skewered it on a talon. He snapped off the tail and gave it to Rischa.

  By that time the stars had faded in the lightening sky. Savvel was everywhere a bird. He asked to be turned human again, so he could speak with his brother one last time.

  Sarid did so, and she lifted the spell from Rischa.

  “Do me a favor,” said Savvel. “Just one thing. I dare you.”

  “What?” Rischa didn’t move from his corner.

  “Don’t let Yelse kiss you on the mouth for a while.”

  Rischa rubbed his n
ose. “Why?”

  “Something to do with smicking.”

  “What’s smicking?”

  Savvel frowned. “Don’t remember. Think of it as training in fortitude.”

  Sarid turned Savvel back to a bird, and they jumped out the window.

  Twenty-One

  They sat on the branch of a beech some way outside the city. The morning sun burnished Savvel’s feathers. A ring dove cooed in a bush nearby, and Savvel turned his head toward the noise and shuffled along the branch, then stopped. His chest feathers plumped out. “I’m not hungry.” He looked at Sarid with a rolling eye. “Are we going to visit your sister?”

  The branch was big; Sarid tucked her feet under her. She sighed, wishing her unhappiness would drain out with her breath. “I’m taking you back to Dirlan, goosebrain. Then we’ll decide what to do.”

  “It’d save us a trip if we decided what to do here.”

  “Theoretically,” said Sarid, “it should only have taken me five minutes to go from Dirlan to Meliona. But I had you to think of.”

  Savvel turned around on his branch. “I’m baggage.”

  “Easily stolen. I’m not giving my sister the chance.” She leaned her head against the trunk. “We can’t have a war,” she said. “We can’t. There’s got to be an easier way to shake her loose of him.”

  “Kill her.”

  “Easier than that. If we could just get him to see what she is…” Sarid pulled a strip of bark from the tree, and thought, for some reason, of pressing a palm against Rischa’s mouth.

  ***

  They knew the lay of the land now, and made it back in two days to the city on the falls. They alighted on the girls’ balcony. A thin drizzle darkened the flagstones, and bent the plants over their pots in sad arcs, and Leva saw them first. She was sitting under an eve, sucking on a quill. A blank parchment lay on the table before her. Silently she stood up, walked over. She swung her fist back and slugged Sarid in the gut.

  Sarid bent over, wheezing like she’d climbed a tower. She put her hands on her stomach. “I suppose I deserved that.”

  Leva put her fingers at her temples as if to draw some of the anger out. “Did you swap brains with a squirrel?” She called into the room, “They’re back.”