Black Wings Beating

by Alex London

  The eagle looked in the direction of Goryn Tamir and his attendants, who were cowering behind a too-small stone. Goryn’s white gyrfalcon panicked, screeching and flapping and clawing at his face, trying to escape its tether. In one quick move, Goryn pulled the bird from his face and snapped its fragile neck.

  Kylee remembered a fragment of Ymal the Cask-Breaker’s Guide to the Sighting and Capture of the Ghost Eagle:… take care of your own birds, for the ghost eagle sees the respect you show all her avian sisters and counts offenses against them double.

  The ghost eagle charged at them, and the three attendants screamed, running for the slope, while Goryn, crying out, dove flat into the dirt. The eagle, however, didn’t strike. Instead, it launched over his head and flew up, flapping its mighty wings to catch a wind and glide, circling so high, they couldn’t see it anymore.

  “REEEEE!” Its screech told them it hadn’t gone away, only above.

  Brysen looked up at his sister from the ground, tears in his eyes. “I flew,” he said.

  “I know,” she said, half crying with him, half laughing with relief. “You dirt-biter, how did you know the eagle would catch you?”

  “I didn’t,” he said, his blue eyes the pale of a still lake with just a glimmer of mischief—the kind of half-planned mischief that always led him to trouble. “But I knew you would.”

  He hugged her for a long time, and she helped him up before Nyall broke the silence.

  “So … what do we do about him?” he asked, pointing to Goryn, who was still cowering on the ground. He tried to pull himself to his feet when he saw them all looking at him and realized that he was now alone. His face was scratched and bloody, and he’d wet himself.

  “I did what I thought I had to do to save the Villages,” he told them. “The Kartami are coming, and if you think you can stop them…” He shook his head. “And Brysen … Brysen … Dymian was a loser; everyone knew it. You are better off without him.”

  Kylee agreed with Goryn on this one point but let Brysen answer. It wasn’t her place to tell him what to feel or how to grieve.

  “Are you asking for forgiveness?” Brysen scoffed. “Are you begging for it?”

  The man dropped to his knees, held his hands across his chest in the winged salute, and begged.

  “It’s up to you.” Brysen turned to Jowyn. “He’s your brother.”

  At that, Goryn’s head snapped toward Jowyn, his forehead crinkling. He studied the strange pale boy with the illustrated skin. Goryn shook his head. “It’s not you. Jo didn’t look like…”

  “It’s me, Gor,” Jowyn said. “I lived. I grew.”

  Realization dawned. Goryn saw through the changes wrought by the sap, and time, and sorrow. He recognized his family. Jowyn nodded. It was then that Kylee saw the boy was clutching a rock.

  “No one would blame you if you wanted to bash his head in,” Brysen said. “Although I thought you’d sworn off violence.”

  “Can’t take a life if you can’t give one,” Jowyn quoted the Owl Mothers’ mantra. “But I gave you yours.” He lifted the rock up, arm muscles flexed. “I’ve earned the right to take his.”

  “Jo…,” Goryn muttered. “Jo … Jo … Jo…”

  “But that’s not who you are,” Brysen offered gently, stepping up beside Jowyn, placing a hand on his wrist.

  Jowyn looked at him. “I’m not sure who I am down here.”

  “Well, there’s time to find out,” Brysen suggested.

  “Just hold on there, owl boy. If you don’t break his head open, there’s a reward in it.” Vyvian pulled herself up over the last ledge to the top of the cliff, sweating and dusty. “From my actual employer.” Vyvian now had two pouches of bronze on her belt, the one with the Tamir emblem and another that bore a kyrg’s seal.

  Kylee narrowed her eyes at her friend, then looked to the yard of the Broken Jess below and saw a retinue of soldiers filing in. When she turned back to Vyvian, Yval Birgund, defense counselor for the Sky Castle, was hauling himself up over the ledge onto the cliff top, with six soldiers huffing up in single file behind him. The last to pull herself up, but the least winded of all of them, was Üku, the Owl Mother.

  The defense counselor looked into the deep-blue sky, shielding his eyes as he scanned for the ghost eagle’s shadow.

  “It’s still here.” Üku said. She had no owl with her, but her eyes watched Kylee, not the sky. “Waiting on,” she added.

  “You’re not welcome here,” Kylee told her, wondering if she could call the eagle back and send Yval’s people scattering like she had Goryn’s.

  “You’ve intrigued it, Kylee,” Üku said. “That’s more than most can manage. But don’t think for a moment that you’ve earned its obedience or tamed it in any way. Yet, in spite of what you did on the mountain, I remain willing to teach you what I can.”

  “You have my answer,” Kylee said.

  “Yes.” Üku nodded as she frowned. “And it cost us dearly. We hoped you’d reconsider.”

  At that, Yval’s soldiers turned and hauled one last person up from the drop-off behind a shrub. Her ankles and wrists were tied, to make climbing on her own impossible, but Kylee and her brother both tensed when they saw who it was: their mother, bound and gagged and a bit scraped up from being dragged up the rocky cliff.

  “Apologies for the rough treatment,” Yval Birgund offered, “but her ranting grew tedious.”

  “Let her go,” Kylee snapped at him. With the slightest tilt of his head, his expression changed, reminding her that he was a high kyrg of Uztar, and she was a village girl whose usefulness was the only thing keeping her and everyone she loved alive. “Ser,” she added, saluting across her chest.

  “She is lucky I didn’t cut her head off,” he replied. “When we arrived, her prayers sounded a lot like Kartami oaths.”

  “She’s just committed to the old religion,” Brysen said. “She wouldn’t ever do anything about it.”

  “Your loyalty to your family is very admirable,” Yval told them both. “I wonder how far it extends?”

  “Don’t hurt her,” Kylee said. “She’s harmless.” Their mother was trouble and troubled, but she was the only mother Kylee and Brysen had.

  Yval sucked his teeth. “It hardly matters what I do to her. She is in danger, as are your brother, your boyfriend”—from the corner of her eye, Kylee could have sworn she saw Nyall smirk—“and everyone else you’ve ever known. The Kartami are making for the Six Villages. It will not take them long. Our Council has been slow to see the threat and organize a response. We would like you to be a part of that response now. Come with us, train at the Sky Castle to lead a new battalion unlike anything our enemies have ever seen, and you and your mother and your brother and your village will all be protected.”

  “And when I refuse?” Kylee asked.

  One of Yval’s retinue set down a rug and a sack. He looked up at Brysen for an instant with pure scorn before he began removing the sack’s contents and placing each item delicately in a row on the rug.

  Skulls.

  One by one, he removed the gleaming skulls of hawks and falcons and set them in a row. Kylee’s mother groaned. The sight of a sack of bird’s skulls must have been deeply offensive to her. The dead birds had elicited a larger response than the sight of her own children in the battered and bloody state they were surely in. In a way, just like Vyvian with her spying, Kylee’s mother stayed true to herself and her faith. No surprises in that woman, however much Kylee sometimes wished there were.

  “The Kartami will empty the sky,” Yval warned. “That’s the goal they claim, but they do not limit themselves to the sky alone.”

  The servant began removing larger skulls from the sack. Human skulls. He placed them in a line, five of them, and then ten. He ran out of room on the rug and began to stack them in a pyramid. Fifteen now and they kept coming.

  “The Kartami attacked a hunting convoy taking a leisurely route to the market,” Yval explained. “They spared no one, not even one of
our kyrgs.” Twenty-five skulls. Thirty. “They did not even spare his son.” Then a small human skull—a child’s. “By the time our cohort arrived, vultures had picked the bones clean.”

  She could feel Nyall tense at her side. Brysen, she noticed, had not let go of Jowyn’s wrist.

  “They will continue their massacres until we stop them,” Yval said. “And your reluctance to kill will not spare you.”

  “REEEEE!” the eagle screeched from its invisible height, and everyone flinched.

  Either they will kill you, or the ghost eagle will, Kylee thought. She couldn’t imagine the creature obeying her, couldn’t imagine willingly calling it to her side or sending it out to tear her enemies apart. She could very easily imagine its talons turning on her the moment she lost control.

  I can’t do this, she wanted to say, and though she knew the eagle was in her head, the thought felt no less true.

  But the grim faces arrayed behind the pile of skulls were looking to her with hope. They were serious women and men, set on their mission, but they were all afraid. She looked at Vyvian, her sometimes friend, and she, too, looked frightened. In the village below, the battle boys were huddled in the doorway of the Broken Jess. Others had fled the yard to hide in their market tents or take shelter in their homes.

  They were as afraid of the ghost eagle as she was, and they didn’t understand what Kylee could do or how she could do it—she didn’t, either—but, nonetheless, they were looking to her for help.

  She wanted to say no. She was good at “no.” She’d spent her whole life saying no, trying to protect her brother, pushing away Nyall, rolling her eyes at Vyvian’s latest affair or Nyck’s latest outrageous hijinks. She didn’t want to leave this place, her home. She loved the way the cooking fires smelled and how the foothills turned pink at sunset. How she could walk out her door, click along the stone path, and soon be free-climbing up a vertical rock, looking out over the flowing Necklace to the grasslands and the desert.

  She didn’t want to leave.

  “Time is short, and it’s many days’ travel to the Sky Castle,” Yval said. “We must go.”

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” Kylee said, and she expected Yval to argue, but it was Brysen who responded from behind her.

  “You can,” he told her. “And we need you to. I need you to.”

  37

  Brysen took her hand. “Like you said, it’s your fate that’s bound to the ghost eagle’s, not mine.”

  “I don’t believe in fate,” she said.

  “Well, I do,” he told her. “And maybe mine isn’t to be some great hero. Maybe mine is to kick your butt until you are.”

  She shook her head.

  “Look, Ky,” he continued. “You followed me into the mountains to protect me. Twice. This is no different. Every skull in that pile was a person who needed protection. They weren’t lucky enough to have you looking out for them, but I was. I think I should share my luck. I think you should do this. I think you can save everyone.”

  “I’ll make this easy,” Yval grunted, interrupting them. He ordered an exchange. Their ma, still bound and gagged, was shoved toward them as a cluster of soldiers surrounded Goryn Tamir. They pulled a hood over his head and bound his arms to his sides like a captive hawk before hauling him up. “Kylee will come with us now.”

  Two of Yval’s soldiers moved to grab Kylee just as roughly, but Brysen stepped to her side.

  “He stays,” Üku commanded, pointing a strong finger at her brother. “Kylee must learn to control her words without him.”

  “I won’t leave my family,” Kylee barked. “Now back off, or I’ll call down the eagle.”

  “If you knew how, you would have already,” Yval said, although he cast a nervous look at Üku. She nodded slightly; he was right. She didn’t have that kind of control.

  “I won’t go without my brother.” She looked over at her mother, sighed. “Or her,” she added.

  “No,” Üku replied.

  “Be reasonable,” Yval said, but not to Kylee.

  “Reasonable?” Üku grunted, and then shoved one of the soldiers toward Brysen. “Attack him,” she ordered.

  “Stop it,” said Kylee.

  “Do it,” said Üku. The soldier looked at Yval, who nodded his permission.

  “Don’t,” said Kylee, as Brysen braced himself for another fight and the soldier moved toward him.

  “Stop!” Kylee ordered.

  “REEEE!” the ghost eagle shrieked in the sky. Kylee hadn’t spoken, hadn’t even begun to form a thought or a word to command the eagle, but at its shriek, the soldier froze, his face confused. He shook his head, started to back away.

  “No,” he said. “No no no no no no…” And then, he tripped.

  The soldier fell from the cliff’s edge, screaming, to his death before Yval could help him. The defense counselor’s shoulders sagged as he stared down into the pits.

  He cares about his soldiers, Kylee thought. That’s good to know.

  “I didn’t tell it to do that,” she said.

  “The eagle knows what her brother means to her,” Üku said. “As long as they are together, she—and therefore it—will be tethered to their passions. It won’t be safe.”

  “Wars are never safe,” Yval pointed out.

  “It won’t be effective,” Üku said.

  “It won’t be effective if she refuses to come,” Yval replied. “You’re telling me you can’t train someone who cares about her family? Sorry excuse for what you call wisdom among the Owl Mothers.”

  “What we call wisdom is the only hope you have for survival, so if I were you, I would not question my methods or their requirements!”

  “I question whoever I want under my command.”

  “I am not under your command, Kyrg Yval Birgund, and you should remember that.”

  As Üku and the kyrg argued, Brysen turned to Kylee. “I think you should go without me,” he said. “Learn what your words can do.”

  “What?” Kylee balked. “No.”

  “You saw what just happened,” he said. “Maybe the owl mother is right. Maybe I’m…” He looked away from her. “Maybe I’m in your way.”

  “You’re not,” she said. “I’ve only ever done what I can do for you. I need you with me for this.”

  “But maybe you shouldn’t,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to figure it out on your own.”

  “But what about you?” Her voice cracked; her throat was dry as desert wind.

  “At least I’ll be somewhere Shara can find me.” Brysen shrugged, but she could see that his heart was breaking all over again. He was telling her to go, but he didn’t want her to go. How could she leave him now, when he’d lost everything that he thought was dear to him? How could he ask her to?

  “Do it,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

  He was a liar, but he was also right.

  Kylee still didn’t know how to speak the Hollow Tongue, not well enough to fight off an army, not well enough to protect the Six Villages. Not well enough to bend these kyrgs and tyrants to her will.

  But she could learn.

  And once she’d learned, no Tamir or kyrg or Owl Mother or Kartami kite warrior would be able to order her around. She could protect the ones she loved and destroy anyone who threatened them. She would be the one with power, and it would be hers alone to wield. A woman who’d mastered a ghost eagle would be revered. She could command armies and decide the fate of dynasties. She could crush a rebellion or ignite one. If she wanted, she could rule.

  Whether these were her thoughts or the ghost eagle’s, she didn’t care. The beak and talon cut for their reasons, the rabbit runs for its own. The kyrgs in the Sky Castle didn’t need to understand why she would go with them, but once she had, she would be the one to decide her own destiny.

  She would return to Brysen, and she would return with power. Enough for both of them.

  She nodded and Brysen smiled through his tears.

  “You’ll be doomed!”
their ma cursed, finally having worked her way out of her gag. “No human should have congress with a raptor like the ghost eagle, and you have too much of your father in you to succeed. It will find a way to destroy you, like it does everyone. Its loyalty’s to the sky, and if you try to pull it down, it’ll punish you.”

  “What do you know about punishment?” Kylee barked back at her. “You looked away whenever it came into our house. Never once protected Brysen from it. Why try now? Or are you trying to protect the eagle, not your own children?”

  “You’re too much like your father,” she repeated, her eyes red-rimmed and furious.

  “I am not,” Kylee said.

  “The violence you’ve unleashed says different,” their ma sneered. “You’ve shed more blood than he ever did.”

  “Shut up,” said Kylee.

  “You’ll become him. You’ll relish the pain of those who can’t stand up to you, and the more power you think you have, the more like him you’ll be. You’ll never escape his shadow. You will become—”

  “Shut up!” Brysen silenced her with a raised fist in front of her face, his other hand grabbing her neck. She froze, shocked, and he did, too. Though his fist was raised, he looked more afraid than she did, and his hand quivered in the air. All he’d ever known of love was wounds, and no one could’ve blamed him for punching her, but some other part of him, the tender part that no violence could touch, reached up in him and stayed his hand. All things were bound to their opposites. The hawk didn’t always win against the mouse, and brutality didn’t always conquer gentleness. It was rarely celebrated, but sometimes gentleness won. Sometimes predators flew away hungry.

  Brysen let go of their ma’s neck. He lowered his fist. His face softened and he spoke in almost a whisper. “You don’t get to talk to Kylee like that,” he told her. “You never get to speak to her like that again.”

  Their mother tried to form words, but her mouth just hung open. All she’d ever known of love was wounding, too. Brysen had managed to surprise her. He’d surprised himself.