Black Wings Beating

by Alex London

  Taking a moment to stretch, she looked out over the vast landscape, the sun rising to the left and casting the long shadow of the mountain range over the Six Villages far below. The skies were clear, and not even the birds were awake yet. It was her favorite time of day in the Villages. Even the Crawling Priests hadn’t begun their daily harangues.

  At this height, no sound could reach her from the Villages, but she could see the clearing where their house sat and the steep path down to the Necklace. The Necklace rolled through the town and the high road ran alongside it, both disappearing around the mountain range on their long and winding way from the Sky Castle to the Talon Fortress. The trees and grasses and irrigated fields that ringed the valley edge where the Necklace ran soon gave way to the dry rock of the central flats, picked bare before the first ancestors by massive herds of goat and lamb and camel, and then to the vast desert beyond. Now only Altari nomads and long-hauler convoys crossed it. She could see their scattered fires burning, smoky lines rising into the sky like banners all the way from the pale-green edge to the empty red dirt and golden dunes of the Parsh Desert. Somewhere in that desert, the Kartami were building their war barrows, stringing their battle kites, and saying their prayers for an empty sky.

  From this height, people’s wants and wars seemed totally insignificant. The only thing real was the landscape: rock, snow, grass, and sand. It was a view like the one she and Brysen used to daydream.

  Over the desert, she could just make out the purple outlines of the eastern mountain range—the Lower Jaw, they called it. They lived at the base of the Upper Jaw. There were older names for the mountains that ringed the high steppe and sheltered them from the killing winds off the surrounding steppes, but Kylee always liked the idea that Uztar was a great open mouth on the face of the world, and their entire lives were spent between two massive sets of teeth. Every day held the possibility that the jaw would slam shut on them and their entire civilization, so every day was an act of mercy. With every sunrise, the world gave them another chance instead of swallowing them whole.

  She liked the idea of another chance. She could do things right this time.

  She crept back to her burrow beneath the boulder, rolling her supplies up in her rug and cinching the bundle with a leather nomad’s strap. The people of the Villages owed so much to those they’d expelled to the deserts, yet most Uztari loathed them. Her father, though he’d married one, loathed them with a special fury. He never missed a chance to call anyone he didn’t like a glass grinder within their mother’s hearing, whether they were Altari or not. Often it got him a punch in the jaw, but that didn’t stop him from slinging the slurs. He was the sort of man who’d rather take a punch than let go of his hate. The provocations only made her mother pray harder for his business to fail and the skies to fall empty around him. He’d then accuse her of birthing Brysen on purpose, as if Kylee’s twin was a curse on the family.

  Some people lose a family member and permanent clouds descend on them. For Kylee, when their father died, it was as if the clouds had finally parted and she could see all the vastness of the world he’d hidden from their view. Was it a sin that she’d never felt the slightest need to mourn him? Her fondest memories were of the daily flocks of mourners’ crows, whose somber songs promised the arrival of cakes and sweets and countless gifts her mother wouldn’t touch. She and Brysen could eat their fill and then some.

  Her thoughts were suddenly cut short when a shadow passed over the opening of her sleeping cave. A shadow in the shape of a person.

  She scurried out the opposite side of her shelter and swung around the boulder, but saw no one. She moved around the other way … still no one. Then she crouched, creeping along the edge until she found a handhold and, with one thrust of her legs, sprang up to the top of the boulders and tackled the hooded stalker from behind. As he fell, she drew her hunting knife and pressed it against the side of his smooth throat, right along the big artery. She jammed her knee between his thighs, slamming him forward and flat onto his belly.

  “Ah! Kylee! It’s me! Please! It’s me!” he cried out. The figure held his hands open at his sides, his body rigid and still beneath her, and she yanked the hood from his head, freeing a mop of tight curls.

  Nyall.

  She pulled the knife from his neck and got off his back.

  “Shhh!” she said. “Be quiet and get down here.”

  She dropped back to the ground and waited for him in between the boulders. It took him a second to recover—more from the knee in the crotch than the knife to his throat, she figured—but he dropped down eventually and squeezed himself into the small space.

  “What in the flaming sky are you doing here?” She forced herself to whisper.

  “I heard what Brysen was doing,” Nyall said. “It’s all anyone is talking about.”

  Of course, Kylee thought. Anyone who wanted to steal Brysen’s catch—in the unlikely event that he actually succeeded—would have plenty of time to prepare an ambush.

  “Everyone said you’d be on the Blue Sheep Pass,” Nyall told her. “So I knew you wouldn’t be. The more people know a thing, the less likely it’s true.”

  “How did you find us? It’s a big mountain.”

  “Vyvian told me the real route you planned to take.”

  “She just told you? For nothing?”

  “No.” Nyall looked away from her. “Not for nothing.”

  “Oh, you peacock!” Kylee shoved him playfully. He smiled, his dimples explaining Vyvian’s fee. “So you followed me up here to … what? Warn me that Vyvian’s a spy? I knew that already.”

  “I followed you to watch your back,” Nyall said. “When I saw you leaving the Six, I knew you’d come up here to look out for Brysen, but no one would be looking out for you.”

  “I’d be looking out for me,” she replied.

  “So you don’t want my help?” Nyall looked hurt, but what was he expecting? That he’d show up uninvited and she’d thank him for it? She didn’t need a hero or want a lover. “You can’t go up against the world alone,” he added.

  Kylee wanted to tell him that she absolutely could, but she stopped herself short. Only chicken-brains like her brother looked at kindness and called it a curse. Accepting help wasn’t a sin, and having the company of a friend wouldn’t be the end of the world.

  Nyall opened his arms, waiting. Unlike the other battle boys, he had only one tattoo: just a few lines of illuminated poetry that wrapped around his wrist and forearm like a coiled rope: The starling sings love’s agony, the dove sings its humanity, but one and all will fall the same when pinioned by love’s gravity. He was an unrelenting romantic, like her brother, but he was loyal and kind and good in a tough spot—also like her brother. The hunt for a ghost eagle was sure to have more than its share of tough spots.

  “Fine,” she said. “Stick with me. That way we can sleep in shifts … but do not give us away on the hike like you just gave yourself away to me, okay? I don’t want Brysen to know we’re following him.”

  “Because he’d never accept help?” Nyall grinned widely, brushed the hair from his eyes, and let his dimples linger.

  “I’m aware of the irony, finch-face.” She shoved his shoulder again, and he lost his balance, falling out of the space between the boulders and landing on his back, where he looked straight up at the sky. His smile collapsed and his dimples vanished. He raised his hands, palms open.

  Kylee shook her head. “You don’t have to surrender. I’m not gonna hurt you again. I swear … knee a guy between the legs just once and he becomes jumpy as a chickadee. I should tell the village girls; we’d start a revolution.”

  Nyall didn’t look at her, though. He was still looking up, unmoving, unsmiling.

  A shadow fell behind Kylee, blocking the other way out of the hollow beneath the boulders. “Come out now,” the shadow commanded. “And watch where you put your knees, or your brother and your boyfriend die right here.”

  16

  Kylee pre
ssed her hand into the dirt and cursed, but she crawled from between the boulders and pushed herself up to standing. The Orphan Maker, backed by his two friends, sucked his teeth in front of her, spat on the ground between her feet. His brown-striped kestrel once more perched on his fist.

  “Took all night to find my little one,” he grumbled, then looked from the kestrel to Kylee. “Move too fast, and she’ll dig a talon in your eye.”

  One of the other long-haulers had a bow pulled tight with an arrow pointing straight at Nyall’s face. It was so close, he could’ve licked the arrowhead. The other long-hauler had Brysen kneeling in front of him with an ax blade against his neck. Shara was pinned down in a net snare, which was staked hard into the rocky slope. She struggled and tried to flap her wings but couldn’t escape, and she called incessantly.

  “Ki! Ki! Ki!” she shrieked. “Ki! Ki! Ki!”

  “Nyall?” Brysen said, puzzled, then slumped on seeing her. “Kylee?”

  Her brother actually had the nerve to be disappointed that she was there. He should have been more disappointed about the wooden block that the copper-haired long-hauler threw down at his knees, because they clearly meant to behead him on it. Brysen never was good at keeping his priorities straight.

  “Ki! Ki! Ki!”

  Kylee stared at Brysen as the executioner grabbed his neck and shoved it down to rest in the groove of the chopping block. This wasn’t a block used for livestock, stained from the viscera of a thousand meals. This was an ornately carved executioner’s block, covered in scenes of crime and punishment with channels to flow the blood away and deep gauges in the slot where other unfortunate necks had rested before. There was a rough and brutal justice among long-hauler convoys, and Kylee had no way to know if these men just meant to frighten them or if they truly planned to kill. The ax blade gleamed, well sharpened. Brysen’s hands were bound behind his back.

  “Ki! Ki! Ki!” Shara screamed and flapped frantically under the net.

  Kylee couldn’t find the wind to burn a word through her body. She searched her breath, her heartbeat; she focused on her fear … nothing. An exhausted quiet had overtaken her.

  “Ki! Ki! Ki!”

  The long-haulers turned Nyall toward Brysen with the arrow pointed at his back. They wanted him to watch his friend’s head come off.

  “You Six Villagers think you’re so much better than us,” the Orphan Maker said. “Life on the mountainside has made you weak. We risk Kartami attacks when we cross the desert to bring you the grains you glut yourselves and grow soft on, but we who cross the valley know what it is to go days without water, weeks without food. One drop of our blood is worth ten of your lives.”

  “Then I guess your face is priceless now,” Brysen replied.

  The Orphan Maker touched the wound that Shara had given him, then bent down in front of Brysen, nudged his hawk off his fist and onto the ground, so she stood just in front of Brysen’s nose. “She’s keen,” he said. “Maybe keen enough to take a bite out of your face.”

  “What’s the point of killing us?” Kylee shouted, trying to divert the attention away from Brysen and whatever smart-ass comment was forming in his mind. “Have you no honor?”

  “Honor,” the Orphan Maker sneered, leaving his hawk on the ground in front of Brysen as he turned on her. “A pretty word for a pretty village girl. Let honor sleep indoors. When his soul can’t see its way to sky, then I’ll think about honor.”

  There was no crueler punishment than to separate a head from its body and keep them apart in death. When the vultures came to devour the dead in sky burial, the head of a corpse had to “see” the sky, or the soul would rot instead of rising into the blue. This was as true in the Villages and mountains as it was in the plains and the desert, in her mother’s faith and her late father’s. Kylee didn’t care much about superstitions, but Brysen was a believer.

  A sound escaped Brysen’s lips, involuntary. A whimper. The long-hauler licked his lips, nearly panting with excitement.

  “Ki! Ki! Ki!” Shara cried.

  Brysen’s eyes still met Kylee’s, but the anger had left them and the momentary flash of fear had turned to something else. It was a look she hadn’t seen from him in a long time but one that she would always understand: the look of her twin in cahoots. She nodded slightly in return, and he blinked once, breaking the stare, accepting her help.

  Nyall was ready. She was ready. They had no weapons to hand, and she couldn’t count on her mind to conjure up the right words on purpose. They had only each other’s speed and guts. The chances were good that not all three of them would survive this.

  “Hey, Kylee—one question for you?” Nyall said. His voice was calm and casual, as if they were still back down in the market tent, haggling over how many cups of tea she had to drink with him to get one of the bird boxes.

  “What is it?” she replied.

  “Did I stand a chance with you?”

  She had to laugh. “I don’t know, Nyall. I’m not a game of chance you can win or lose. But I do like spending time around you.”

  Nyall smiled his dimpled grin. “I guess that’s better than nothi—”

  “Enough!” the Orphan Maker cut him off. “Word is the girl’s got some talent … might make her worth keeping around. You.” He pointed his knife at Nyall. “I’m selling you to the slavers. You’re pretty enough to be a catamite. But first, we’ll take off this little bird’s head.”

  He wasn’t talking about Shara.

  The executioner tapped his ax once on Brysen’s neck to get his aim, then raised it high. Brysen kicked his bound legs out, tripping the would-be executioner, and rolled off the chopping block. The sudden movement spooked the kestrel, which jumped back crying, opening her wings and launching herself off the ground.

  At the same instant, Nyall bent his knees, arched his back, and flung his arms forward as he jumped into a backflip, hitting the archer’s arm. The arrow fired just under him and snapped harmlessly into the dirt. As he landed, he lashed out with a fist and knocked the archer sideways.

  He was a battle boy through and through.

  Kylee aimed her first kick at the fateful point between the Orphan Maker’s legs, but he blocked her before it connected, which drew his focus down, so she could chop hard at his throat, a much more vulnerable spot. He gasped but caught her with a jab in the teeth that knocked her onto her back. She scrambled away, but he charged at her, wheezing, as he pulled his blade and found the breath to whistle for his hawk.

  The bird dove at Kylee, harrying her face, blocking her view, and forcing her to shield her eyes from the flurry of talon and feather. As Kylee backed up, she bumped into Brysen, who was trying to free his wrists, while backing away from the executioner.

  “Ki! Ki! Ki!” Shara flapped and twisted against the net.

  “Ya! Ya! Ya!” the little brown kestrel screeched. Kylee tried to knock her away, but she kept coming. A talon cut the back of Kylee’s wrist, and she felt the bird’s beak nip at her hair.

  Nyall wasn’t faring so well, either. The archer had recovered from the punch, and though he’d lost his bow, he still had an arrow and over a hundred pounds on Nyall. He had Nyall’s hair in one hand and was about to slam an arrow through his eye with the other.

  Except, with a flash of white, the arrow was snatched from the archer’s grip and carried aloft by a massive, snow-white owl, gliding silently. The archer still clutched Nyall with his free hand but stood utterly still, his mouth hanging open.

  “Ki!” the small kestrel shrieked, and then whirled, racing away for safety. From just over the snowy ridge above them, a second owl shot up, just a shadow against the rising sun. It intercepted the kestrel in midair, snatching her in its talons and dragging her, crying, back down behind the other side of the ridge. It was gone nearly as soon as it had appeared.

  A third owl, a great gray with bright yellow eyes alight, glided over the Orphan Maker and appeared almost to hover above him, then dropped, snatching his blade hand in its talons wit
h such force that it knocked the knife free.

  Then the great gray owl flapped away without a sound.

  Shara had fallen still below her net, huddled against the ground with her head tucked back. She looked more like a shuddering stone than a bird of prey. It was clear that she was desperate to avoid the same fate as the little brown kestrel.

  Brysen had sawed his wrists free on a stone, but the executioner had him leaping and diving away from the ax. He’d have been split in two if the snow-white owl had not come between them, slipping around the ax blade like its feathers were fog, and pushing the executioner back.

  The whistling arrow made the first loud noise since the owls’ arrival, and it appeared so fast, it didn’t look like it had been fired at all. But there it was, sprouting from the executioner’s chest. The black feather fletching gave him the look of a molting bird with but one plume left. And, like a bird’s broken pinfeather, the wound began to squirt blood.

  The long-hauler fell.

  “I think I found the Owl Mothers,” Brysen announced as if it had been his plan all along.

  17

  The two remaining long-haulers looked around to see where the arrow and the owls had come from, but the brush and stones were silent as morning.

  And then a voice spoke with the thunderous melody of the earth herself: “Kneel.”

  “Who’s there?” the Orphan Maker called.

  The archer dropped Nyall and drew an arrow, bending in the same moment to pick up his bow. He didn’t stand again. An arrow passed through his throat without slowing.

  So Kylee knelt.

  Brysen knelt.

  Nyall knelt.

  The scab-faced Orphan Maker hesitated. An arrow seemed to sprout from his thigh, and it forced him down with a scream. No sooner had his knees hit the ground than five women appeared from beneath cloaks of earth and stone, not spitting distance from where they all knelt. How long they had been there, perfectly camouflaged, was impossible to know.