Black Wings Beating

by Alex London

  These were not her thoughts. She didn’t recognize them at all.

  Their father was about to lunge with his black-talon blade just as Kylee had imagined, but she felt that terrific heat inside her, the shuddering flame that burned blue-hot within her lungs.

  That was hers. The burning urge to shout belonged to her, and she knew well the pain of holding it back. She’d held it back for Brysen’s sake for so long. Now, for his sake, she let it out. She opened her mouth and let the strange sound escape her lips, no louder than a whisper.

  She couldn’t remember the word she’d said, but the moment her father slashed forward for Brysen, a shadow dropped from the sky above and dove with the silent speed of a teardrop falling. The ghost eagle snatched their father from the ground and carried him away, aloft, alone.

  She watched him go. Watched Brysen step from his hiding place to look up at their father’s disappearing silhouette. The man screamed as Brysen picked up their father’s blade and freed the corral hawk with it. The bird cocked its head at him, shook out its feathers, and took off in the opposite direction, up and over the mountain. Brysen watched it go, then looked around. Kylee flattened herself against a nearby boulder.

  And then Brysen, thinking himself alone, sat in the dirt and wept. Kylee could hear his sobs, but she also saw the flash of his white teeth and it looked to her as if, through his tears, he was laughing.

  34

  Now, on the cliff above the Broken Jess, Brysen stood in front of Kylee with the ghost eagle tied to his back, and he was not laughing.

  “You” was all he said.

  “Me,” she replied.

  He nodded and looked around, eyes glassy and distant. Jowyn and Nyall had frozen in place, and both looked like they wished they could fly away right then, a dove and a raven side by side. It wasn’t clear Brysen could even see them. He might as well have been back on the mountain, watching their father get carried off. He was rethinking everything he thought he knew about that night.

  Then he grabbed the rope that tied the large black eagle to his back and swung it around, dropping the bird roughly on the ground in front him. He fell into a squat over it and rubbed his face with his hands. He studied the bird for a long time in silence, his pale blue eyes locked on its abysmal black stare.

  She feared it had gotten into his head even with its beak tied shut, but then he looked up at her. “I lost two birds on this journey,” he said. “And both were all I’ve ever wanted.”

  “I’m sorry, Bry.” Kylee moved toward him, knelt by his side, rubbed his back. His lips trembled and she so badly wanted to make it okay. Ever since they were small, just being in the world was often a wound for Brysen. She had never meant to make it worse, but a breeze can’t blow through a tree without shaking leaves. She’d saved his life; she hadn’t meant to hurt him by doing it.

  “It’s yours.” He didn’t look at Kylee, just down at the big eagle, its chest rising and falling with every rapid breath. “It’s always been yours … but…” Now he turned to her, now he looked at her. “Please don’t let them take Dymian from me, too…”

  She took his hand, searched herself for the right words to reassure him. She’d done everything for Brysen, spent every day since their father died trying to protect him—but could she do this? Could she turn over this kind of power to a monster like Goryn Tamir? “I can’t,” she told Brysen. “This is bigger than us.”

  “If we give it to him, he’ll probably never master it. It might even kill him,” Brysen pleaded. “But if we don’t give it to him, he’ll definitely kill Dymian. We have to turn it over, Ky.”

  Kylee squeezed Brysen’s fingers. She felt for him and was tempted to agree. In the absurd algebra of Brysen’s broken heart, saving one boy was worth risking the world … but that wasn’t a chance she could take.

  “I can’t just let Goryn Tamir have the eagle,” she said. “We don’t know what he’ll do if he—”

  “If!” Brysen pulled his hand away so fast, it was like he’d been burned. “I won’t trade Dymian’s life away on if.” He looked at Kylee now like he’d looked at her the day he’d asked her to run away and she’d said no. This time, however, he didn’t give in quietly.

  “Up here!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Goryn Tamir! I’m up here, and I have your prize!”

  He reached for the eagle’s ropes, but Kylee knocked him back, threw herself over the bird’s prone body. She could feel its rapid breath against her; its whole body was shaking. Brysen popped to his feet and drew his black-talon blade.

  Kylee didn’t have to look down to know that every head in the yard of the Broken Jess had snapped up to the top of the cliff, over the ancient painted mural. Whatever happened next would happen for all to see.

  35

  Vyvian reached the top of the cliff first. Her eyes went from Kylee to Brysen to the heap of black feathers tied up below her.

  “Kylee … you did it!” She smiled. “You really did it!”

  Kylee didn’t take her eyes off her brother. His face had turned hard, his jaw was set, and the black blade was pointed her way.

  “I did it!” he yelled.

  “Brysen, calm down,” Nyall tried to soothe him. “You don’t want to do this. It’s just that thing messing with your mind.”

  “No,” Jowyn said. “This is him. This is Brysen’s choosing, his choice to make.”

  Her brother looked between the boys and Kylee. The knife shook in his hands and then he turned, startled, just as Goryn Tamir himself arrived, white-and-silver gyrfalcon on his fist and three burly attendants on his heels. Two of them held Dymian up between them, while the third, Yasha, held her six-talon whip ready.

  Goryn pulled Vyvian back and dropped one of his pouches of bronze into her hand. “I am grateful you sold my sister the wrong route up the mountain. Thanks for that. Now get out of here.” Vyvian mouthed an apology at Kylee, although for what Kylee wasn’t sure. Her friend had done exactly as Kylee had expected her to do. Consistency was a virtue Kylee valued, and Vyvian, as duplicitous as she could be, never pretended to be anything other than what she was: a spy for hire. As she left, she glanced back at Kylee once more, signaling something with her eyes, but Kylee didn’t know what and didn’t have the mental space to figure it out at the moment. She had more pressing concerns.

  Goryn directed his attention to Brysen. “Well done, little nestling. Very well done.”

  “Let Dymian go,” Brysen said. “And the eagle’s yours.”

  “Brysen, don’t,” Kylee pleaded.

  “Your sister had a change of heart?” Goryn raised an eyebrow. “Seems like I should negotiate with her then, huh?”

  Kylee ignored him, spoke only to her brother. “Imagine what Goryn will do. His own sister doesn’t want him to have it. The kyrgs are trying to stop him. No one will be safe.”

  Goryn clucked his tongue. “Oh, Kylee, child, no one is safe now. The Kartami are coming. The kyrgs can’t stop them. Uztar will fall. But thanks to me, the Six Villages will be spared. Things will go on here like they always have. With one small exception. I will be in charge.”

  “You already are,” Kylee said.

  “My mother and sisters have different ideas,” Goryn replied. “The Kartami, however, see my value. And I see theirs. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement, and one that shouldn’t concern you terribly … if you cooperate right now.”

  Kylee shook her head.

  “Please, Kylee,” Dymian called to her. “Don’t let them kill me. I know we haven’t always gotten along, but I care for your family. I care for your brother just as much as you do. Please.”

  “I, for one, am moved to tears. Look at the good faith I’m showing,” Goryn said. He nodded at his attendants to let Dymian go. “Bring me the eagle, and you’re free. All debts forgiven.” The scruffy hawk master hobbled over immediately. He didn’t go to Brysen, however; he went to Kylee and bent painfully down in front of her.

  “Please,” he said, reaching out, placin
g a hand on the eagle’s black feathers. “Let Goryn take it.”

  “Dymian…” She looked at him and frowned. “I can’t.”

  And with one quick motion, she broke the knot that kept the ghost eagle’s wings bound. Her brother could make a tangle of anything, but every knot he’d ever tied had flaws.

  In a burst of black, the eagle launched from underneath her and into the air, knocking Kylee and Dymian off their feet.

  “Scuzzard!” Dymian yelled, and in a flash he’d slapped a backhand across her face, cracking his knuckles on her cheek.

  The ghost eagle flew silently overhead in a wide circle, but it didn’t flee, nor did it screech. Kylee had left its beak tied shut. In the yard of the Broken Jess below, everyone screamed and scrambled for cover. Even Goryn and his attendants ducked. Goryn’s beautiful, silvery, snow-white gyrfalcon shrieked and tried to flee his wrist, where it was leashed. In a panic, it clawed madly at its master’s face, and his attendants scrambled to save him while still keeping themselves under what paltry cover there was atop the cliff.

  “Call it back!” Dymian raised his fist over Kylee. “Call it back now!”

  “Dymian, don’t!” Brysen ran over, dove to Dymian, and wrapped his arms around him. “Look! You’re free! Let’s go! Let’s go together now!”

  Dymian turned his head to Brysen and met his eyes, put a hand on the back of his neck, and pulled him close. For an instant Kylee thought they’d kiss and embrace and everything would be forgiven—and together, they would all break free.

  Instead, Dymian spun Brysen around and snatched the black-talon blade from his hand, pressing it against his neck in exactly the same move the long-hauler had caught Brysen with in the battle pit.

  “Call it back now!” Dymian barked at Kylee. “Or I slit his throat.”

  “Dy?” Brysen whimpered, the shock knocking the wind from him.

  “Sorry, Brysen,” Dymian said. “But we need that eagle.”

  “We?” Brysen tried to squirm free of Dymian’s grip, but the same arms he used to wake up in now held him tight as talons. “You and—?”

  “I’m sorry,” Dymian repeated. “But if your sister will just do this one thing, I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  “You’re working with Goryn?” Brysen asked.

  Brysen didn’t sound like himself. He sounded like an injured animal. It filled Kylee with rage. It filled her with a burning inside, the first stirrings of a word forming, but she fought it back. She knew that a slip of Dymian’s blade was all it would take to steal her brother away, and she couldn’t risk it.

  “Goryn’s going to get me my titles back,” Dymian explained, like it was the clearest thing, like surely Brysen would forgive the lies and the threats once he knew the reason for them. “All my family property will pass to me once the Kartami wipes them out. I know it hurts, Brysen, but you don’t understand what it’s like to be disinherited. I can’t live like this anymore: in the Villages, in debt, practically a peasant. It’ll be okay once it’s over, though. You can come live on my estate. Look after my hawks. I’ll be able to pay you from now on.”

  “But,” Brysen whined, “we were going to travel together … just us … sharing everything…”

  Dymian looked up, a wary eye on the circling eagle, whose wide black wings cast a swirling afternoon shadow over all of them. “We had fun together, Bry,” he said gently, “but I’m meant for wealth and power, not rolling around in the dirt with a kid from the Villages. I know you understand that. That’s what I’ve always liked about you. You’ve never pretended to be more than you are.”

  Kylee saw the moment Brysen’s fragile heart broke. She saw it pass across his face like the eagle’s shadow. He looked from Dymian to her and back again, and his lips turned down. He closed his eyes and the wind ruffled his gray hair. He might’ve collapsed right then.

  But then his eyes opened, and they were hard as ice. His jaw set like stone. Love and hate weren’t that different, and one could become the other with amazing ease. Brysen wasn’t broken. He wouldn’t break.

  And when he looked at her, he was her brother again.

  “I’ve always been more than you think I am,” he snarled at Dymian. As the eagle’s shadow crossed over them again, and with Dymian’s attention divided, Brysen stomped his foot, rolled sideways and forward so that the blade sliced his chin but not his throat, and broke away. He charged and tackled Dymian around the waist, knocking him back toward the edge of the cliff, driving a knee into the side of his broken leg. “I would’ve died for you!” he yelled.

  “You still can!” Dymian yelled back, punching Brysen in the side. They tore at each other and were on their feet again, grappling. Dymian had lost the blade, but he was stronger than Brysen, was using Brysen’s body as support to stay standing. He had Brysen in a headlock and was dragging him in hopping steps to the cliff’s edge.

  “I’ll throw him over!” Dymian yelled. “Call the eagle!”

  Nyall and Jowyn both rushed from cover to help Brysen, and Kylee ran with them. But the ghost eagle dropped between them, spreading its wings wide, blocking Dymian and Brysen from view. The whole blue sky beyond was blotted out by its black feathers.

  “Beautiful,” Goryn whispered from where he was crouched and cowering behind his attendants.

  “Call it off!” Dymian screamed, panic rising in his voice.

  “I didn’t call it in the first place,” Kylee said, and felt something odd stir in her, a kind of elation at the terror in Dymian’s voice.

  Among all the animals of the world, humans have the strangest appetites. A falcon’s cruelty stretches only as far as its hunger demands. There is no hatred there—just need. Only people can thrill at another’s suffering.

  Kylee smiled. She thought about her brother and Dymian, remembered the days they’d laugh at some joke from which she was excluded, the way the secret of their laughter had puffed her brother up, because he hadn’t seen the hollowness inside Dymian.

  She remembered the tears Brysen had cried when Dymian ran off for days at a time to hunt with Nyck or Vyvian or passing wealthy strangers. Dymian seemed to choose anyone and everyone but Brysen. She recalled how he’d return, all gifts and sweetness, and Brysen would become docile again. Dymian was a hawk master, and he’d managed her brother like he managed hawks: keeping him just barely fed, hungry enough so that he’d always come back for more.

  At that moment, the ghost eagle swiveled its massive head toward her. The only evidence of a face in its deep-black feathers was the malevolent glint off its black eyes and the bright strip of white, feathered fabric that clamped its beak shut.

  Then the eagle shuddered, and she watched the fabric fall. For a fleeting moment, the ghost eagle’s eyes looked ice-melt blue.

  “REEEEE!” it cried, and the burning words swelled inside her. If she spoke the truth of what she felt right now, the eagle’s wrath would be terrible. Dymian, Goryn, his attendants—all of them would be ripped to shreds. She could unleash hell.

  But she could never control it.

  Kylee hesitated. Brysen’s and Dymian’s feet were at the cliff’s edge. Nyall and Jowyn stood next to her, trying to inch their way forward, but they’d never get past the eagle, never be able to save Brysen. The eagle looked at all three of them like it was daring them to act, like it wanted Kylee to call out the death within her.

  She tried not to speak, and from behind the eagle, still locked in Dymian’s grip, Brysen spoke.

  “I know you,” he said.

  Was he talking to Dymian or the ghost eagle? The giant bird’s head whipped back around to him. It took a step forward, pushed the pair back so that Dymian’s heels hung over the cliff’s edge.

  “I know you,” Brysen said again, and new scenes flashed through Kylee’s mind.

  There was the ash tree in the yard, her brother’s fingers woven in between her own, their stories weaving, too.

  That’s the kingdom of Brrrr, he was saying, where it’s always frozen.


  And here are the hot springs of Ahhh, she responded, where the warm water bubbles from below the world.

  Bubbles from a giant’s farts! Brysen added, giggling, and she was giggling, and then they heard the click click of their father’s approach through the yard.

  Click click. Click click.

  She’d held his hand tighter, and he’d held hers, tried not to look scared, tried to show her he wasn’t scared, whatever happened, as long as they had each other. She hadn’t been able to help him then. She’d longed to help him then.

  “I know you,” Brysen told the eagle, but he wasn’t telling the eagle. He was telling Kylee. The words were for her. These thoughts were her thoughts.

  “Do it!” Brysen yelled, and the eagle lunged at them. Brysen leaned back as Dymian tried to shove him forward, then dive out of the way. But Brysen clutched his clothing, held tight, didn’t let go.

  They went over the cliff together.

  “No!” Nyall yelled as the ghost eagle dove after them.

  Kylee yelled, too. “Vaas!”

  It was a simple word in the Hollow Tongue, with a simple meaning, one she knew without knowing how or why she knew it: “us.” She yelled it and she meant it as truly as she could: “us.” Her brother and her, the ash tree, the fire in the mews, the six-talon whip, the stink of hunter’s leaf and overcooked stew. His first kiss. Her first free-climb. Every skinned knee and broken heart. The mourners’ crows and the cold kindnesses. The truth of both of them. All of it.

  And the ghost eagle obeyed.

  36

  From the yard below, the crowd screamed. Kylee rushed to the edge of the cliff, peered down past the painted mural, and saw one broken body bent and twisted at the bottom of a battle pit. And she looked up against the pale blue sky and saw in silhouette a wide-winged shadow circling and the shadow of the boy it held. It swept wide over the Six Villages, Brysen’s hands holding its ankles, its talons gripping his shoulders. It arced around and glided down, straight for the cliff, straight for her. Then the ghost eagle set Brysen on the ground, bruised and disheveled but whole and alive, at her feet.