Black Wings Beating

by Alex London

  His goons spread out, flanking Brysen and Dymian.

  “My mother trusted me with great responsibility over the finances of her business,” Goryn Tamir said. The dirty fingers of his free hand rubbed the thick black stubble on his chin and brushed the silk collar of his long jacket. No matter how finely the Tamir children dressed, their fingers always stayed dirty. It was a sign of pride. The Tamirs did their own work.

  “When I study the ledgers,” Goryn continued, “as I do regularly, I see a very large outstanding payment due … a payment from you, Dymian, that’s preventing me from balancing the books. This bothers me. I like my numbers balanced. An unbalanced ledger is like an itch I can’t scratch right at that spot on the small of my back. You know that spot, Dymian? That spot where, right now, you’ve got a trickle of ice-cold sweat?”

  Suddenly and without the slightest signal, one of the men behind Dymian lashed out, striking him in the lower back with a club.

  “Ahh!” Dymian cried, and dropped to his knees, gasping.

  Brysen rushed for him but found himself tripped with a blow across the shins from another goon’s baton. He fell forward but had spent enough time in the pits to turn the fall into a roll. The hit was hard enough to make him limp later, but for now he didn’t feel a thing. Even his headache had vanished. Nothing like sudden brutality to sharpen your senses first thing in the morning.

  He sprang back to his feet just in front of the bait boxes. He snapped one open and a pigeon burst out, racing for freedom, which caused the unhooded gyrfalcon on Goryn’s glove to rouse and launch herself, still tethered.

  The noise was enough to make the five hooded hawks on their perches bate, leaping to the end of their own tethers before being yanked back, scrambling, screeching, and blind.

  In the chaos of shouts and feathers, Brysen delivered a high kick into the chest of the man who’d tripped him, grabbed the baton, and smacked it across his head. At the same moment, he drew his black-talon fighting blade and whirled around, a weapon in each hand.

  He needn’t have bothered.

  The other two had Dymian held up, his arms pinned behind his back, and the stiletto point of an assassin’s dagger against the soft underside of his throat, already drawing a bead of blood.

  “You’ve got heart, little bird,” Goryn said to Brysen, smoothing his hawk’s feathers as if he were petting some domesticated chicken. “More than your old man did, anyway. But you’ve got your mother’s glass-grinder blood in you, and you’re letting it get the best of your brains. What did you plan to do? Beat me and my men into submission and then … what? Ransom me back to my mother one finger at a time?”

  Goryn looked giddy at the thought. Brysen kept his weapons up. He had simply wanted to keep them from beating Dymian. He turned as the man he’d knocked down stood up.

  Goryn clucked. “You know we would make meat of you and your sister out there and then we’d send some of our friends to visit your mother. I’d burn your home to ash and bury your picked-over bones beneath it.”

  Brysen’s eyes darted around the dim tent, plotting his next attack.

  “Put your weapons away, kid,” Goryn sighed. “Our problem’s not with you. You’ve got your blood up, and I can forgive that at your age. Put your weapons away, and you and your family get to live. We won’t even take Dymian’s private parts off as punishment.”

  Dymian whimpered.

  “But make me wait another breath,” Goryn hissed, “and you’ll suffer beyond the limits of imagining.”

  There was no suffering Brysen couldn’t imagine, but Goryn didn’t make idle threats, and he didn’t want Kylee punished for his fights. He dropped the club and sheathed his knife.

  Goryn nodded, and the goons let go of Dymian, shoving him hard to the ground.

  “You made a deal with me, Dymian,” Goryn told him. “Honor that deal, or you die.”

  “I’m going to kick your teeth out one day,” Dymian threatened, and Goryn closed his eyes and smiled. Then he crossed over to Dymian, raised his foot over the back of Dymian’s shin, and stomped.

  “Ahh!” Dymian yelled, his lower leg cracking. “Ahh!”

  “I’ve never understood why you make life so hard for yourself, Dymian,” Goryn said, then looked right at Brysen. “Some people just don’t know their limits.”

  He smiled, then left the tent with his men as suddenly as he had arrived. The settling tent flap narrowed the streak of light across the ground to the size of a blade, then a needle. It yawned wide and bright again when Kylee and Nyall burst in. Nyall was hauling five large bird boxes.

  “That was Goryn Tamir himself!” he exclaimed.

  “What in the flaming sky was that about?” Kylee demanded.

  Brysen rushed to his trainer, who was writhing on the ground. When Dymian finally looked up at him, his eyes were damp and darting. “I’m in trouble,” he said, half-breathless, clutching his broken leg. “Sky-high trouble.”

  Brysen felt an odd sensation course through him right then. It wasn’t pity or love or fright.

  It was pride.

  A strange and miserable time for it, he knew, but he couldn’t help standing a little straighter. Dymian was asking him for help. Anything for you, he wanted to say, but instead his sister spoke.

  “Tell me what you did to bring Goryn Tamir into our tent, or I swear he won’t even be able to find your corpse to spit it into mud.”

  “I made him a promise,” Dymian groaned. “I promised him a ghost eagle.”

  8

  The air felt heavy as stone, and Brysen thought the ground might give out from under him. Outside, the market bustled, indifferent. Homing pigeons with bamboo whistles attached to their tail feathers circled above, creating a mournful orchestra in the sky.

  “Seeds and nuts! Get your seeds and nuts here!” a barrel pusher called, rolling past the tent where Brysen, Nyall, and Kylee were staring down at Dymian. His shadow swelled to devour the entire canvas, then shrank again as he disappeared along the road.

  “Seeds and nuts, seeds and nuts!” his parrot echoed.

  Behind the shifting shadows, Kylee closed in on Dymian, who was still on the ground, grimacing and trying not to look at his leg.

  “You did what?” she scolded, as if Dymian were her servant and not a respected young hawk master who’d fallen on hard times.

  Okay, Brysen thought, maybe respected is an exaggeration … But still, she didn’t need to treat him like a slug on a fruit tree. The man had always been good to them. Better than good. He made Brysen happy. Why couldn’t Kylee at least be grateful for that?

  “It’s okay,” Brysen reassured him, taking on the new role of apprentice consoler. He gave Dymian some hunter’s leaf to ease the pain. He’d cried on Dymian’s shoulder enough times. He let Dymian lie to him about his scars being “beautiful.” Now it was his turn to lie to Dymian, to comfort him even if the comfort was false. “It’ll be okay.”

  A ghost eagle. What kind of fool promises a ghost eagle? No one had caught a ghost eagle in generations. There were ancient tales, like Ymal the Cask-Breaker, who got the eagle drunk on wine mixed with his own blood; Valyry the Gloveless; and the Stych sisters, who took no epithet. But no one in living memory had done it. Their father had died trying, and Dymian knew that. What was he thinking?

  “What were you thinking?” Kylee demanded.

  “Nyall!” Old Dupuy shouted from across the way. His voice turned up at the end like a screech. “Nyall! Get over here! I’ve got fifty jesses that need rubbing with oil, and we’re short five hawk boxes. They better not be where I think they are! Someone’s paying for them, and you know it won’t be those two! Nyall!”

  “I … uh … I have to go…,” Nyall apologized. “Don’t worry, Ky. I’ve got you covered on the boxes.”

  “We’ll pay for them,” she said.

  “Sure. Sure,” Nyall said, giving Dymian a pitying look before he ducked outside. “Just not today.”

  He pressed his hands as wings against his c
hest. This time, Kylee returned the gesture, and Nyall smiled. At least someone was having a good day.

  Brysen knelt down next to Dymian and helped him up, guided him to the only chair they had in the tent. Dymian winced with every step and leaned all his weight on Brysen as he lowered him.

  “I can’t put this burden on you, Bry,” he said. “On either of you.”

  “You won’t,” Kylee said. “Because this is not our problem. Our debts are nearly paid.”

  Brysen shot her a look, but she shot one right back, invisible arrows that both met their marks. They looked away from each other again.

  “I was in deep with Goryn,” Dymian explained, his voice weak. He shoved another wad of hunter’s leaf into his mouth. “You know how it is with me … Once I get betting, I know a good run is just over the next hill. So I bet I could bag ten jackrabbits with any hawk of his choosing. He gave me a little sharp-shinned dwarf hawk. A tiny male. It was an insult! Goryn’s idea of humor. But a bet’s a bet … I bagged six jackrabbits. Six, can you believe it? Even one would’ve been a miracle with a bug-eating bird like that. But I still had to pay. I couldn’t. So we went double or nothing on a day at the pits. I was doing well early—”

  “We know how well you did,” Kylee grunted.

  Dymian looked at his feet. “I didn’t want to bet against you, Bry, but that long-hauler was huge. I couldn’t imagine you’d pull off a win. I’m so sorry…” Dymian’s lip quivered. A stream of tears fell down his cheeks. Brysen wiped them with his thumb, held Dymian’s hand. “When you won, I was happy for you, really … but I have to pay my rent. Months back, plus food, and a drink every now and then. Chicks for my little Sabi, and you know the Tamirs bought out all my debt from the feed dealers. They called it all due. All of it, can you believe that? Stupid Goryn’s trying to prove he’s a businessman so his mother will let him rule over his sisters. I couldn’t pay. It was a fortune. They were gonna sell me to a slaver’s caravan.”

  “You should’ve let them,” Kylee muttered. “Least you’d be alive.”

  “I’d die in a cage,” Dymian objected. “I had to find another way.”

  “So … was it your idea?” Brysen asked, terrified that this had been going on so long and he hadn’t noticed, hadn’t even sensed any trouble. Did Dymian really keep so much from Brysen when Brysen’s soul was wide open to him? He tried not to make Dymian’s pain all about himself, but it stung anyway.

  Dymian took a deep breath. “It was Goryn’s,” he said. “Last night, he made an offer. Told me that all would be forgiven if I trapped him a ghost eagle.” Dymian looked at his leg. “Some good I’ll be at that now.”

  Brysen felt his own knees wobble. They didn’t speak of that bird. Whenever its shriek echoed down from the mountains, they acted as if they couldn’t hear it.

  No one spoke of the ghost eagle around them, either. That was Six Villages custom. When a trapper was lost to the ghost eagle, you didn’t mention it in front of the family. It was a tradition of silence honored for generations, and in a breath, Dymian had broken it. Twice.

  It took just as little time for Brysen to say the next words, words he’d never have said if he took any longer to think about them: “I’ll get it for you.”

  “Brysen, no,” his sister gasped, or maybe she’d just thought so loud that he heard her voice in his own head.

  But he knew this was what he was meant to do. This was what his father never could. He’d gone into the mountain filled with rage, and it had been his death. Brysen would go as an act of love, and he’d survive.

  He grabbed Dymian’s face in his hands, lifted it to meet his eyes. “I will do this for you. I swear it, Dymian. I will save you. I will pull down the sky itself to save you.”

  And he would have to do just that.

  9

  He was on his feet and out of the tent before his sister could stop him, but she was on his tail faster than a grouse flushed from the brush.

  “You can’t do this,” she called after him. “You know you can’t.”

  “Who’s looking after the tent?” he asked her without glancing back, weaving his way through the crowded market.

  “Dymian can handle it.”

  “Dymian’s leg is broken.”

  “Right, so shouldn’t you be with him?”

  “Don’t do that,” Brysen warned her. “Don’t try to play me.”

  She knew him well enough not to reply.

  “Peregrine eggs!” a birdnester shouted as they passed him. “Buy as they are. Some may hatch, some may not. Try your luck and get the deal of the season. Three bronze for one, eight for three!”

  “Go back, Kylee. You won’t talk me out of this,” Brysen warned her.

  “You’re leaving?” Kylee had to jog to catch up to him. “Just like that. You’re running off to play trapper in the mountains?”

  “What?” Brysen stopped and turned on her. How dumb did his sister think he was? “Of course I’m not running off to the mountains right now! I have to get supplies, pack, and prepare. Right now I’m going to see Goryn to tell him to leave Dymian alone until I get back.”

  “He could kill you as easily as a … as a … a … ghost eagle could.” She stumbled on the words. They sounded unnatural coming out of her mouth. Still, Brysen couldn’t bring himself to say them at all.

  “I’m not afraid of danger,” he said instead, which sounded childish, but his sister was treating him like a child. “You won’t stop me this time.”

  “This time? What do you mean by—?” But then recognition spread across her face. “Oh,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said back, squaring his shoulders and pretending to be unmoved by the memory he’d just conjured for both of them. He marched through the gate and up the path to the front door of the Broken Jess, Kylee just behind him.

  * * *

  The air inside was thick with the smoke of dozens of scented water pipes. The long tables were packed. People of all colors, shapes, and sizes were squeezed side by side on the knobby benches, puffing away at the hoses on the end of the central pipes and exhaling the sickly sweet stench. Behind them were their hawks and falcons, all hooded and tethered to their perches. The variety of birds matched the variety of people. Brysen couldn’t tell which had the brighter plumage. Everyone wore their finest for market day, and they all glanced up at him when he walked in. Then they glanced away.

  Up above, in one of the private areas, the three long-haulers from the day before looked down at him with the scowls of men who weren’t used to losing. The Orphan Maker had a scabby crimson crag running from his hairline to his beard. Shara’s parting gift. Brysen gave the men a winged salute across his chest and a sarcastic smile.

  “I hope it gets infected,” he mumbled through his smile as the long-haulers turned away. He shoved a fresh wad of hunter’s leaf into his mouth. The leaf tasted bitter on his tongue, and Kylee’s judgmental glare was hardly sweet, either.

  “For my nerves,” he told her as they strolled through the pub. Bits of conversation at the tables chirped around them.

  “… went up into the mountains with a fake parchment and twenty guides and trappers. Not one came down again.”

  “Ghost eagle got ’em?”

  “Eagle or Kartami.”

  “There’s no Kartami this far in.”

  “They hit the bronze pits at Rishl last week.”

  “That was bandits.”

  “I know what I know. Kartami are marching. The kyrg herself couldn’t pay enough for me to work out beyond the…”

  Brysen lost the rest of the conversation through the noise. At the base of the stairs, a woman with long, braided black hair and bread-kneading knuckles blocked his way. Those hands could crush the eyes right out of his sockets if she wanted them to, but he was more worried about the six-talon whip she wore on the belt that cinched her cloak closed. He spat into the big brass spittoon next to her.

  “I need to see Goryn, Mem Yasha,” he said, hooking his thumbs and giving her t
he winged salute.

  “He’s busy,” Yasha grunted. Her lower lip came over her upper lip, which gave her face the look of a wild boar. “The market’s on.”

  “Is it?” Brysen mocked. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  She grunted, and Kylee elbowed him in the side.

  “Look, Yasha, he’ll want to see me,” Brysen explained. “Tell him it’s Brysen from Skybreaker Falconry. Dymian’s … friend.”

  “I know who you are, Brysen. Since you were born.” She jerked her chin at Kylee. “And I know she’s no friend of Dymian’s.”

  “I’m coming with him,” Kylee said firmly. “We’re seeing Goryn together.”

  “You’re seeing Goryn if I say you’re seeing Goryn.” Yasha looked up the steps to a pair of narrow double doors. The stairs were original stonework from the temple that had stood in this spot before the pub’s existence. One of Goryn’s attendants—the Tamirs would never call them bodyguards—looked down at Brysen. It was the same one he’d kicked in the chest not a hare’s nap ago.

  Brysen felt suddenly how a rabbit must feel, shuddering in the brush when a hawk is overhead. He couldn’t stay still, but if he ran, he’d run right into danger.

  The man nodded, and Yasha stepped aside to let them pass.

  “What do you think you can do by coming here with me?” he whispered to Kylee as they climbed the steps.

  “Keep you from getting killed, maybe,” she whispered back.

  “I’ve kept myself alive so far,” he replied.

  “Barely.”

  “You can still go home,” the guard at the top of the stairs told them. “Nothing’s done that can’t be undone.”