Sparrow Rising

by Jessica Khoury

  With more grace than Ellie could ever muster in such heavy, fine clothing, the Eagles landed on a roped-off dais. Attendants rushed forward to drape fur-lined cloaks on their shoulders, and from a jeweled box, four crowns were taken and placed on their heads.

  King Garion looked young for his age, with black oiled curls and piercing blue eyes. The queen and the royal children all had gleaming golden hair and brown eyes; they reminded Ellie of sunbathed statues, they looked so perfect. The crown prince, Corion, was Ellie’s age, and he sighed as he looked at the contestants, as if wishing he could be one of them. His gaze briefly met Ellie’s, and she saw his surprise at finding a Sparrow among the racers.

  The king gave a speech about how being a Goldwing was the highest honor in the Clandoms, and how the contestants represented the finest of their clans, on and on. But the wind rushing over the mountainside made it hard for Ellie to hear much of it, and her attention wandered.

  She matched gazes with Zain, who stood a short distance away, holding a tall spear. He gave her a weak smile. She returned it, hoping after all this they could still somehow remain friends.

  Finally, the king’s speech ended, and all eyes turned to the captain of the Goldwings—the woman who’d saved Ellie’s life years ago. She’d since learned the knight’s name was Aglassine.

  Sir Aglassine shouted out the rules of the race: They could use their weapons but were to refrain from killing. The first fifty to reach the mountain’s summit would find flags planted there. Bringing back a flag would mean securing one’s place among the Goldwings. Other than that, there were no real rules. It would be a total free-for-all, nothing like the milder Trials most of the contestants had already won.

  Ellie’s hand tightened around her staff. She stared hard at the looming mountain, its shadow leaning on her as if to pin her to the ground.

  Finally, Sir Aglassine called out, “Contestants, take your marks!”

  As one, all five hundred of the fliers planted hands on the ground, ready to blast upward. Ellie’s muscles quivered with anticipation.

  “Wings out!” called the captain.

  With a whoomph that echoed off the mountain, five hundred pairs of wings lifted and spread. Ellie was surrounded by a sea of feathers ranging from dark to light, flecked with black, gold, and gray, some striped, some spotted, some nearly as tawny red as her own. She stared at the ground, breathing in deeply through her nose and out again in short, strong breaths to loosen and expand her lungs in preparation.

  Then a single trumpet rang out, and chaos exploded across the mountain slope.

  Ellie shot upward, using her lighter body and quicker wings to her full advantage as she briefly rose head and shoulders above the rest. Then the swarm overtook her, and she flew like a bee in a hurricane, bouncing off the others, fighting to find space in the crowded air.

  Hearing rasps of weaponry all around her, followed by wild cries of pain, she realized many of the racers were already skirmishing. A wounded Falcon screamed as he hurtled downward, and Ellie rolled to avoid being crushed beneath his fall. She saw with relief that the Goldwings were ready. They caught the boy in a net and carried him to the ground, his wing trailing blood. But no one stopped the race or yelled at them to play fair.

  In the Race of Ascension, bloodshed was fair.

  Ellie had never seen such savagery. It was as if the instant the trumpet sounded, kids who’d been friends all their lives suddenly turned into vicious enemies intent on winning at any cost. She flew in desperation, simply trying to avoid being hacked in two. Kids clashed in the air, swords clanging or spears cracking. They grabbed one another’s wings and yanked out feathers. Screams of pain mingled with roars of rage. For the most part, the Goldwings hung back, only intervening to rescue the constants who fell.

  Determined not to be one of them, Ellie ignored the battles raging across the sky and focused on one thing only: reaching the top of that mountain. Let the others fight, wasting time. It didn’t matter who they knocked out of the sky if they didn’t claim one of the flags at the summit.

  But she wouldn’t escape that easily.

  Hearing a bellow to her left, Ellie turned to see a massive Eagle clanner hurtling toward her, swinging a sword. Ellie instinctively raised her lockstave to block his weapon.

  The blade slammed into the staff with such force her entire body vibrated. She was surprised the blow didn’t cleave the shaft in two. The Eagle boy struck again, and she blocked his blows desperately, her arms jarred by the impacts.

  “Stupid little low clanner!” he hissed. “My father says you being here dishonors the race!”

  “Honor?” echoed Ellie. “Look around you, musclehead. Do these kids look like they’re fighting with honor?”

  A Shrike girl fell by them, screaming, her wing broken.

  “You won’t make it to the top,” the Eagle said. “Every kid here would rather die than lose to a Sparrow. Rule or no rule, you’ll be dead before you reach the halfway point.”

  The Eagle kid pulled back, yanking his sword and swinging it again at Ellie’s head. She gritted her teeth and once more blocked the blade. This time, instead of rebounding off the staff, it landed in the cross section of the smaller hook. Instinctively, Ellie twisted the staff, and the hook pulled the sword out of the boy’s hand and sent it spinning downward.

  “Watch out!” Ellie yelled, her stomach flipping as the sword hurtled to the ground, narrowly missing a Falcon girl below.

  The Eagle boy gasped. “You—you cheat!”

  He reached for her wing, but she swung her staff hard, rapping his ear. As he yowled and tumbled backward, Ellie shot upward, desperate to make up for the time he’d cost her.

  The mountain seemed to rise forever. The higher she flew, the more the pack of racers thinned. The sounds of fighting faded below. Several fliers passed her, wordless, their eyes focused on the sky. Each would mean one fewer spot among the champions.

  But those kinds of thoughts would only bring her down, and right now, Ellie needed to go up. Her wings clawed at the air until her shoulders screamed. She panted, finding it more difficult to breathe the higher she flew, as the air thinned and the temperature dropped. She had never been this high off the ground before. When she glanced down, she couldn’t even see the crowd of spectators, only the gray slope of the mountain and the hazy blur of the city. Ellie had never been afraid of heights, but that view made her dizzy.

  “Almost there,” she panted. “Have to be … almost there … right?”

  For several minutes, she flew without seeing anyone else. The distance between the racers had stretched so far, she didn’t think anyone would even hear her if she screamed.

  Then a Hawk boy fluttered up beside her.

  “Zain!” Ellie noticed a red stain on his sleeve. “You’re hurt!”

  He smiled grimly. “The other guy’s much worse, believe me.”

  “This race is …” Her voice trailed away.

  He nodded. “When my dad warned me it wouldn’t be like the Trial back home, I didn’t believe him. He said the Race of Ascension is all about winnowing the weak. I guess they mean it literally.”

  “You’re still here,” Ellie pointed out.

  “So are you.”

  “Surprised?”

  Zain shook his head. “I don’t think there’s anything you could do, Ellie Meadows, that would surprise me now.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” said Ellie, and she swung her staff at him.

  It wasn’t meant to strike him, but it did force him to throw himself out of the way, buying her a few seconds. She put on an extra burst of speed, calling on reserves of strength she wasn’t entirely sure she had.

  “Nice one, Sparrow!” Zain called out below her.

  “See you at the summit, Hawk!”

  After a few minutes, Ellie’s second wind began to flag. She found herself fighting for every wing beat, dragging every scrap of energy she could find from her exhausted body. Never had she felt this tired or beaten. Never h
ad she had to fight against such powerful gusts of wind. They slammed into her, nearly throwing her into the mountain itself.

  Her pace slowed to a near crawl. Flecks of ice and snow pelted her skin. Frost laced her eyelashes. When Zain finally overtook her, she saw he was struggling as much as she was, his lips blue, his breathing ragged. His wings flapped erratically.

  She couldn’t even spare the breath to speak to him. For a while, they flew close together, rolling when waves of wind rushed over them, fluttering to regain balance.

  Then Zain gradually pulled away and disappeared into the hazy blue above.

  Ellie flew into a cloud of snow and ice and wind, the cold overwhelming her senses. It was hard to see with ice shards pelting her face, blown off the frozen mountain. Muscles stiffening from the chill, she found herself fighting twice as hard for every thrust of her wings. The tips of her feathers turned white with frost.

  And then, all at once, she shot into open sky, the mountain dropping away as she spun over the summit.

  “Yes!” she cried out. Immediately, she dove toward the jagged pinnacle.

  But where were the flags?

  She flew in desperate circles, searching for any sign of them. Her stomach sank more with each passing second. Had they all been claimed already?

  Zain was nowhere to be seen, nor were there any other contestants. Those who’d reached the summit must have already dived back toward the ground, prizes in hand, destinies sealed. Maybe Zain had reached the peak to find no flag either. Maybe they’d both lost.

  Ellie flew to the flattest rock on the summit, landing softly in the snow. A clutter of footprints told her this must have been where the flags had been planted, but all that remained was a muddy mess. The sky around her was crystal clear, the view in all directions hazy and indistinct, a blur of brown, green, and gray.

  She sank to her knees, heart thumping, lungs aching. This is it. It’s over.

  She’d be taken back to Linden. Her wings would be clipped and she’d be sent to Moorly House, where she’d only glimpse the sky through barred windows for years to come.

  Ellie felt numb in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. Her entire future was like that sky around her—empty and bleak and fading into hazy uncertainty.

  This was as high as she would ever fly.

  Then she saw a glint of red in the snow.

  It was as if someone had dropped a piece of jewelry. She crawled toward it, thinking perhaps she could return it to its owner.

  But it wasn’t jewelry. It was a shred of cloth. A torn sleeve, perhaps?

  Ellie tugged it, and to her surprise, the cloth kept coming—and coming. A whole square of red silk had been buried in the snow, likely trampled down by a thoughtless contestant.

  A flag.

  The very last one.

  Ellie’s heart shot into the sky and burst like one of the confetti bombs. She gasped and forgot all about her shivering limbs and frosted feathers.

  She had won.

  “Well, Nox?” asked Gussie. “How the sky am I supposed to get into university now? How’s Twig supposed to see his elephants?”

  Twig sniffed, his eyes red from crying. He held Lirri to his chest. The creature glared at Nox as if she knew this was his fault and was contemplating stabbing him with her horns.

  “What’s your plan here, Nox?” Gussie pressed. “To be thieves the rest of our lives? Because I did not leave home to—”

  “I’m working on it!” Nox snapped. “If you’d just be quiet for three blasted minutes I could think!”

  They were perched on the eaves of a schoolhouse they might have been attending had they been normal kids. It was Nox’s hope that anyone looking for them would think they were students upon first glance.

  “How long do you think the boss’ll stay mad at us?” Twig asked.

  Nox flinched at the mention of the Talon. He could still feel the man’s hand on his throat and hear his own pathetic words echoing in his skull. I thought we were clan.

  Skies, what a stupid weakling Nox must have sounded. Of course they weren’t clan. They’d never been clan. That was the man’s own blasted motto—listen to your wings, not your heart. He’d only ever cared about Nox until it might cost him something.

  “Don’t worry,” snorted Gussie. “He’ll think of a new job pretty quick. He can’t stand for any of his twisted little clan to sit idle for long.”

  Nox scowled. “You’re starting to sound like that Sparrow.”

  “What if I am? She was right about a lot of things, Nox. I’m sick of being a thief. I’m supposed to invent things, not steal them.”

  “Well, lucky for you, that won’t be a problem anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean …” His wings tensed as a shifty-looking Magpie boy flew by. The kid didn’t look familiar, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t one of the Talon’s many spies. He was always recruiting new wings. “I mean, the Talon isn’t going to give us any more jobs.”

  “He didn’t say we were kicked out,” said Twig. “Anyhow, the Talon doesn’t kick people out. He …”

  “Disappears them,” murmured Gussie.

  The Talon couldn’t risk angry ex-thieves turning on him. Instead, he made them take a big leap off a tall cliff … with their wings tied behind their backs. Gussie gave Nox a narrow look. “What do you mean the Talon isn’t going to give us more jobs?”

  He looked down at his hands, suddenly very interested in the small scar on his left thumb. It was a souvenir from the day he’d accidentally pickpocketed a bare knife from a merchant’s pouch.

  “Nox. Answer me.”

  Slowly, he raised his eyes to meet hers, knowing his guilt was written all over his face.

  “Oh no.” Gussie’s voice deepened with dread. “What did you do?”

  He spread his hands defensively. “Why do you assume it’s something I did? Why is it never something anybody else did?”

  “Because it’s always you!”

  He sighed and reached into his pocket … to pull out a familiar blue stone.

  Gussie clapped her hand over her mouth, but not fast enough to stifle her shriek.

  “It was only fair,” he said stubbornly. “He refused to pay for it. Therefore, it’s still ours.”

  “Nox! You’ve as good as killed us! You know what the Talon does to people who cross him!”

  “That’s why you’ve been jumpy all morning,” Twig said in a horrified tone. “You knew the Talon’s looking for us.”

  “He’ll cut off our wings,” whispered Gussie. “He’ll nail them around Knock Street as a warning to others. He’s done it before!”

  Nox knew very well how much trouble they were in due to his impulsive decision. But he didn’t regret it. The Talon had betrayed Nox, and Nox couldn’t just let him get away with that.

  “We’ll sell the stone somewhere else,” Nox said. “I’ll use my money to bribe some guards at the Crag to smuggle my mother out. You two can use your shares to buy new lives. It’ll all work out. Just trust me.”

  “Trust you?” cried Gussie. “Ellie was right, Nox! You’re nothing but a selfish liar!”

  She spread her wings.

  “Where are you going?” Nox asked. “We need to lie low—”

  “I’m leaving,” she said coldly. “It’s over. We’re not selling the stone. We’re not bringing any more attention to ourselves. I’m leaving Thelantis before it’s too late. Maybe if I go home, my family will take me back. I’ll be a …” She choked on the words. “I’ll be what they want me to be. Maybe they were right. A Falcon has no business being an inventor.”

  “Gussie!”

  With a flap of her long wings, she was gone, swooping into the city. Giving Nox an apologetic look, Twig also spread his feathers.

  “Twig, wait—” Nox reached for the boy, but too slow. Twig swept away after Gussie, Lirri peeping out of the back of his collar.

  Leaving Nox alone.

  He crumpled his hands into fists. It
was better this way, he decided. He’d always been strongest alone. People slowed him down, argued with his plans, looked down their noses at him …

  People like Ellie Meadows.

  You’re nothing but a selfish liar.

  “No,” he muttered. “I’m more than that. You’ll see! You’ll all see!”

  He just needed to save his mother, and then … Well, he’d figure it out.

  He’d never been one for big, grandiose plans like Ellie or Gussie. The only thing he’d ever truly wanted was for the world to go back to the way it was before his family had been torn apart.

  Though with the way things were looking right now, that seemed like the most impossible plan of all.

  “Oi!” shouted a voice. Nox looked up to see a face hanging down from the roof—the Magpie kid he’d seen earlier. “The Talon’s gonna rip you into pieces for stealing from him, traitor Crow!”

  “Yeah?” said Nox. “Tell him he has to catch me first.”

  Nox pushed off the beam and let himself drop, wings spreading at the last minute to avoid slamming into the ground. Then he soared upward and winged over the city. Nobody knew Thelantis like Nox did. He wasn’t going to let some snot-nosed new kid collect whatever bounty the Talon had promised for his capture. Nox Hatcher had a reputation to uphold, after all. It only took him seconds to lose the Mapgie.

  But Nox wasn’t safe yet. He had to find someplace to lie low, somewhere unexpected.

  At once, he thought of just the spot.

  Fifteen minutes later, Nox was feeling pretty pleased with his plan. There was no way the Talon would find him amid the throng gathered at the foot of Mount Garond. He was just one pair of wings among thousands.

  He told himself that coming here had nothing to do with watching to see if Ellie Meadows won the Race of Ascension. But his eyes kept wandering upward anyway.

  The sky teemed with battling contestants. A large group of wounded high clan kids was gathered beneath a canvas tent off to the side, nursing egos as injured as their bodies, no doubt, but he didn’t see Ellie among them. She must have still been in the air.