Sparrow Rising

by Jessica Khoury

  Ellie gaped at her. “Why? And why would you lie to me, bring me into it?”

  “Because I need this job to succeed,” Nox said, in a tone as hard as granite. “I need it more than anything in the world, and there was no way we could pull it off without a third person to help carry the box.”

  “Pull what off? What job?” Ellie, exasperated, considered slamming him against the tree again.

  But just then, Twig emerged from the forest, flushed and grinning. “We got it!” he whooped, and he tossed something at Nox. Lirri sprang onto his shoulder and licked his ear.

  Nox held up the thing Twig had thrown. It was a small blue gem set in an iron band with a long, thin chain attached.

  Ellie stared.

  Something about it pulled at her mind, like a dream she’d forgotten. The way it had flashed when Twig had tossed it through the air …

  Nox laughed. “Properly done, crew! We got it!”

  The three of them exchanged high fives and congratulated one another for their cleverness while Ellie looked on in disbelief.

  “You’re thieves,” she realized aloud. “You’re nothing but a band of common burglars.”

  “Common?” retorted Nox. “Excuse me, but after pulling off a job like that, we are anything but common.”

  “That’s the truth,” added Twig. “You should have seen Nox three nights ago!”

  “The fortress was crawling with soldiers,” explained Gussie. “So this lunatic flies in, pinches one of their swords right out of its sheath, and flies off again—with practically the entire garrison on his tail!”

  “Shame about the sword,” sighed Nox. “I had to dump it in order to outfly them. And even still, they got me with an arrow.”

  “And to think they’re still out there, searching for you,” laughed Gussie. “Wait till they find out it was all just a trick to lure away the guards! The Talon’s going to love this.”

  “The Talon?” asked Ellie.

  “Our boss,” Gussie explained. “The Talon. The Lord of Thieves. The Scourge of Thelantis.”

  “Told you we work for a lord,” said Nox, smirking.

  “That’s it!” said Ellie. “You are all truly horrible. I’m leaving.”

  She started to turn away, intending to get as far from them as possible. Her stomach churned with guilt and fury.

  But then Gussie said, “Clouds!”

  They all looked up as the patches of sky visible through the trees began to grow dark. Ellie cursed inwardly.

  “There’s some old abandoned building to the east,” said Gussie. “I saw it on my way back.”

  Nox nodded and hung the gemstone around his neck. It dropped out of sight under his shirt. “Let’s go. Quickly. We’ll have to be off again as soon as the sky clears. These woods’ll be crawling with soldiers soon.”

  They tramped away, three in a line, while Ellie stood on the mossy bank and wavered. She felt a fool for being taken in by them, and her face still burned with anger.

  But the sky was clouding over. Soon, gargols would be hunting.

  So she clenched her fists, swallowed hard, and followed.

  Nox was exhausted, his shoulder burned, and he suspected he was mildly feverish, but he clenched his teeth and said nothing as Gussie led them down a slippery ravine. They half ran, half slid through thickets of glistening ferns and sharp briars as the sky darkened with quick-moving clouds. It was barely past noon, he reckoned, but soon it was so dark it felt like late evening.

  By the time they reached the building Gussie had spotted, rain had begun to fall, dripping from leaf to leaf until it reached the forest floor. A droplet slipped down the back of Nox’s neck, and he shivered.

  “What is this place?” Twig wondered, running his hand over a stone wall.

  “It’s some kind of tower,” said Gussie. “Fallen on its side.”

  Now that she said it, Nox could see the shape of the tower—curved walls of ancient, crumbling stone. It lay on its side along the bottom of the ravine, almost entirely buried. Trees, moss, and ferns had taken root over it, until only a few surfaces were visible at all. The stones were dappled with silver-and-green lichen. It must have been there for hundreds of years.

  He glanced at the Sparrow girl, who hadn’t said a word, but he could tell she was intrigued by the old ruin. When she caught him looking, she wrinkled her nose and turned away, her shoulders tense.

  Nox rolled his eyes. “See a way in?”

  “There’s an opening,” said Gussie. “Looks like an old window.”

  Nox went first, easing himself into the dark, damp interior of the fallen tower, suppressing a cry of pain when the movement jerked his wound. He dropped to land on the opposite wall—now the floor.

  The others followed, with Ellie last in, after taking a moment to draw an ashmark over the casement. She used a piece of charred wood she must have salvaged from the remains of last night’s fire. Nox admitted to himself, somewhat begrudgingly, that even the Talon would approve of the girl’s attention to detail.

  With barely any light filtering in, they were left to shiver in the dark until Gussie got her flinter out and lit the small lantern she kept tied to her knapsack.

  “Whoa,” said Twig as light washed over the walls. “This thing is huge.”

  They stood in a long, empty cylinder of stone, like the belly of a giant snake. Up and down its length, trees had dug their roots through, breaking apart the walls. Sheets of moss hung from the ceiling-wall, dripping with moisture. Mushrooms grew everywhere, in every shape, size, and color. Twig happily began picking them.

  “Best hiding place ever, Gus!” he exclaimed, chewing the mushrooms raw.

  “It’ll keep the rain off anyway,” said Gussie.

  “Don’t you wonder what this place is?” asked the Sparrow girl. “Or how old it is? I never heard of a city being here, or anything that would explain this tower.”

  Gussie tilted her head, eyes narrowing with interest. “Not to mention the style of architecture … it’s not like anything I’ve seen or read about before. This type of stone isn’t even found in the Clandoms.” She brushed her hand over the wall, pulling away some of the moss clinging to the stone. “Hey, come look at this.”

  Gussie held up the lantern to the cleared wall. Set into the stone was a faded mosaic made of hundreds of tiny colored tiles and pieces of glass.

  “It’s just some old picture.” Twig shrugged, chewing a mouthful of mushroom that Nox desperately hoped was not poisonous. Usually, Lirri sniffed the mushrooms first and deemed them safe for eating, but there had been that one time … He shuddered, remembering the wretched time all three of them had spent puking in the bushes, just two days into their trip from Thelantis. He still wasn’t convinced Lirri hadn’t done it on purpose. Sometimes the little horned creature could be more spiteful than any highborn.

  Nox squinted at the mural, unsure what Gussie was so excited about. “It shows people flying around with dopey smiles. So?”

  “Look again,” said Gussie. “Tell me if there’s something strange about it.”

  “There are clouds,” said Ellie softly.

  They all turned to look at her, her eyes wide and reverent as she studied the old mural.

  “They’re flying in the clouds,” she said again. “And they’re happy.”

  Gussie nodded, pressing her hand against the tiles. Nox saw it now. The people in the mosaic soared carelessly amid towering cumulus clouds, piles of them.

  “It’s just a picture,” he said, wondering why it made him so uneasy. “It’s not supposed to be real. Like the stories in your book, Sparrow. It’s meant to show a happy lie instead of an ugly reality.”

  She scowled at the jab but didn’t rise to the bait. She joined Gussie, running her fingers over the tiles. “This place is so old … Could it be from a time before the gargols?”

  “There was no time before the gargols,” Nox said with a snort.

  “You don’t know that. Haven’t you heard the story? A thousand
years ago, Aron the Fool pierced the moon with his spear, thinking to steal it out of the sky—only to release the monsters that had been sleeping inside it. Those were the gargols, which means there was a before, and we once flew freely.” Ellie’s voice rose, betraying her excitement. “And if we could do it then, why not—”

  “That’s not how the story goes at all,” interrupted Twig. “The gargols had always been up there, but they ignored us so long as we left them alone. Then Aron tried to steal their magic, so they got angry and from then on, they killed anyone they saw.”

  Gussie shook her head. “The way the Falcons tell it, the gargols were once a clan like any other, and Aron was their chief. But when he led them on a flight that took them too near the sun, its fires burned so hot it turned them to stone. They attack us now out of jealousy, because we represent everything they lost.” Cocking her head, she added, “Grant you, the story doesn’t quite add up with actual science.”

  “Exactly!” snorted Nox. There were as many legends about the gargols as there were clans, each one dumber than the last. “There’s no such thing as magic, and anyway, those old stories are just made up to scare little kids who don’t know better. The gargols are no different from any other animal.”

  “They’re made of stone,” said Ellie. “And yet they can fly. That’s not normal.”

  Nox groaned loudly and flopped down by the fire. “Sparrow girl, you make my head hurt.”

  “I’m just saying,” she grouched. “It’s not an impossible idea that the world could change. It gives me hope.”

  “Hope?” he replied. “Can you eat hope? Can you wrap it around yourself to stay warm, or hide under it when the sky is full of gargols? Hope is empty. Hope is waiting for other people to solve your problems instead of doing it yourself.” Those were the Talon’s words; it was one of many hard lessons he’d taught Nox over the years.

  “Oh, stop fighting,” groaned Gussie. “Twig, Ellie, get firewood, will you?”

  Giving Nox a dirty look, Ellie fluttered after Twig, deeper into the tower where sticks and logs had slid inside and piled up over the years. When they had a proper stack, Nox began breaking them up and piling them for Gussie to light. While keeping a safe distance away, of course.

  The flames leaped up hungrily. Nox averted his eyes, shifting farther away until he couldn’t feel the fire’s heat on his skin.

  He knew Ellie had seen the panic in his eyes last night, and he hated that she knew … she’d camped with them, and he hated that she knew his weakness. It was bad enough that Gussie and Twig knew. It had been years since he’d struck a match, held a candle, lit a lantern. And no matter how he tried to overcome it, the fear that spiked in his chest when he got near an open flame never got smaller. Fire, it turned out, was simply too good at carrying memories. And if he looked at one too long, the flames would carry him straight back into the past, to a house full of screams, to his mother’s tearstained face.

  He suppressed a shudder and tossed the last stick into the pile. Twig had speared some mushrooms and was roasting them with wild garlic and onion bulbs he’d dug up earlier in the day. The smell was making Nox’s mouth water.

  “This weather is going to last a while,” Gussie said, tapping her storm glass. The liquid in the glass swirled angrily, as if she’d bottled a piece of the storm itself. “Probably through morning.”

  Everyone groaned.

  “I guess you’re stuck with us a while longer,” Nox said to Ellie.

  She had taken out her Goldwing book and was staring at it so intently, Nox half expected her heated glare to set the pages ablaze.

  “Silent treatment, huh?” he asked. “Suits me just fine.”

  He leaned back as much as the cramped space would allow and shut his eyes, his lips never losing their permanent smirk.

  Even the Sparrow girl’s constant glowering couldn’t dampen his mood. He’d stolen the unstealable; he’d finished the job no one else in the Talon’s crew would dare attempt. The pure satisfaction of the heist was almost a reward in and of itself—but he couldn’t forget about the real prize, the payment that waited in Thelantis once he handed the gemstone to the Talon.

  The prize that would change his life.

  But deep down, he felt a twinge of guilt. Ellidee Meadows hadn’t just bailed him out on his all-important mission, helping Gussie and Twig carry the box to the fortress. She had also saved his life. He was indebted to her. And what had he repaid her with but lies, using her in a heist she hadn’t agreed to?

  But guilt wasn’t a burden Nox could afford to bear. There were plenty of times when doing the right thing would have gotten him imprisoned or even killed. If the Sparrow girl couldn’t stop looking down her nose long enough to see why he did what he did, well, he wouldn’t go out of his way to explain it to her.

  “Do you think they’ll look for us in this storm?” asked Gussie.

  “Depends how bad they want this back,” Nox said, holding up the blue gemstone.

  It sparkled like no stone he’d ever seen—and he’d pulled off more than a few jewel heists. It looked almost like a sapphire but was a lighter shade of blue, and its facets each flashed white when he turned it. In a way, it was like a bit of … well, crystallized summer sky. The heavy iron band seemed an odd setting for such a prized stone. He wondered why it wasn’t encased in silver or gold. Or for that matter, why it wasn’t gleaming atop the Eagle King Garion’s crown. Not that Nox was any sort of expert on crowns, but this gem seemed like it might be exactly the sort of thing a fancy royal would want on their big fancy head.

  “Well,” burst out Ellie, “I hope it’s worth it, whatever that thing is. I hope it’s worth lying, cheating, and attacking our own soldiers.”

  “Hey, easy!” Nox raised a hand in defense. “We didn’t attack anybody. And stop acting so high and mighty. If you were starving to death, you’d steal bread from a baker without thinking twice.”

  “Wouldn’t.”

  “Would.”

  “I would not. I would ask politely, and the baker would just give me some bread. Good people help other people.”

  “See, there it is,” said Nox, spreading his hands. “The difference between you and me. You think this baker would just hand some over because you asked nicely, while I know for a fact he wouldn’t. People don’t work that way. At least, not where I’m from.”

  “Do you really think other people’s bad behavior excuses your own?”

  Nox threw his hands in the air. “Of course it does! Exactly! Thank you for finally understanding!”

  The Sparrow girl was just like all the people back in Thelantis who’d sneered at him, shaken their heads, and called him street scum because his clothes were torn and his feathers a bit tattered. He thought of the innkeepers who’d taken one look at him, then refused to rent him a room though he had the coin to pay. The shopkeeps who called the city watch when he walked in, even when he had no plans of stealing anything. The guards who scowled at him when he simply strolled down the street, then muttered that he’d best keep his hands in his own pockets. He’d been only a fledgling then, and hadn’t stolen a single coin off anyone … yet.

  It was like the Talon had told him years ago, when he’d taken Nox under his wing: When the world treats you like a criminal, what else can you be?

  Not that he would say all that to Ellie. It would seem like he was making excuses or, worse, apologies. And he wasn’t about to make either.

  So he only added, “When you live on the streets, you gotta look out for yourself. We can’t all live in some rosy-cozy country clan like you Sparrows.”

  “My life has not been rosy-cozy,” Ellie growled. “You don’t know anything about me. And you’re wrong, anyway. If you’re on your own, that’s your choice. Why didn’t you just go live with the other Crows? That’s why we have clans—to take care of one another so no one has to be alone.”

  Nox’s face went cold as the mood in the tower shifted. Twig coughed, while Gussie shook her head at Ellie i
n warning.

  The Sparrow girl glanced at each of them uncertainly. “Uh … Why are you all looking at me like that? What did I say?”

  “The Crows are a shattered clan,” said Gussie quietly. “They can’t do anything to help Nox, or any other Crow kid.”

  “Shattered?” Ellie echoed. “What’s that mean?”

  Nox sighed heavily. “You really are from the back of nowhere, huh?”

  He turned away, wings ruffled, while Gussie explained softly, “A clan can be shattered if they do something really terrible, like start a rebellion against the Eagle king or queen, or like when the Magpies burned down an entire Robin village over a land dispute.”

  “They did that?” gasped Ellie.

  Gussie nodded. “It was over a hundred years ago, and the Magpies still haven’t been given their clanhood back. When a clan is shattered, the king takes away everything that held them together—their chief, their clan seat, their crest and motto and lands. And they aren’t allowed to own businesses or run organizations, like the orphan home you ran away from. They can’t become Goldwings or officers, or enter universities, or hold any important jobs. It’s the reason so many Magpies are beggars or cutthroats, and why so many Crows are thieves, bandits, or mercenaries.”

  “What did the Crows do to get shattered?” Ellie whispered.

  “Well, there’s a stupid rumor—”

  “Stupid is the right word for it.” Nox spoke up, his voice hollow. “The rumors are ridiculous, made up to give people reasons to hate us. The truth is, no one knows. We’ve been shattered longer than any other clan, over three hundred years. The reason why is either a secret only the Eagles know, or it’s lost to history.”

  Whatever his ancestors had done to earn the wrath of the Eagle clan, he wondered if it had been worth the punishment that now clung to every Crow. Most clans passed down land, riches, and wisdom to their descendants. All Crows got was scorn and empty pockets.