Black Wings Beating
Page 26
“Bry?” Kylee said.
“I’m fine,” he replied, still staring at his shocked mother with a kind of serene anger. “I think she and I are going to be just fine.”
Their mother looked down at the earth and murmured her prayers. Brysen’s sky-blue eyes were clear as a cloudless day.
“Whoever comes, whoever stays, the time to go is now,” Yval commanded. He ordered his troops to move, and his servants motioned for Kylee to join them.
“I’ll come with you, Ky,” Nyall volunteered. “Someone’s gotta watch your back while you’re saving our skins. And besides, I’ve always wanted to see the Sky Castle.”
“It’s a den of assassins and thieves,” Vyvian interjected. “They’ll eat you alive.”
“Or maybe they’ll fall head over heels for an honest guy.” He let loose a dimpled grin, and Üku grunted.
“Objections?” Yval Birgund asked.
“Not to him,” Üku said. “He’s harmless.”
Nyall bit his tongue. He wasn’t volunteering to come along because he wanted to see the Sky Castle, but Kylee was glad to have a friend coming with her anyway. It was selfish to leave Brysen without his best friend, but the honest truth was that she was scared and didn’t want to leave alone. Besides, she knew that Nyall could be far from harmless. It never hurt to have a battle boy at your side.
Brysen nodded at her that he was okay, that he’d be fine. She really hoped he was right.
Brysen and Nyall saluted each other across their chests, which was the closest they’d get to a tearful parting, although she caught Nyall giving Brysen a mischievous look, glancing toward Jowyn. Brysen shook his head but let his eyes linger on the phantom white Tamir boy a moment longer.
Maybe he’ll be fine here after all. Kylee tried to let her heart believe it. She embraced her brother then. With their hearts close and heads together, Brysen whispered a warning: “Be careful … and not just with the eagle.” He looked at the defense counselor and at Üku, rubbed the crusted scab on his wrist. “They’re tyrants.”
Kylee felt her throat tighten. Her mouth tasted suddenly of sawdust. She’d never imagined that she’d be the one to leave the Villages, certainly not without him. Brysen had been ready to fly off since the moment he could walk, while she had wanted nothing more than a safe place to call home.
“You be careful, too,” she warned Brysen. She tapped him on the breastbone, over his heart. “You’ve got your own tyrant to guard against.”
He laughed and looked at her through damp eyes. She had so much that she wanted to tell him: warnings and advice and apologies and questions.
“REEEEE!” came a shriek from the sky. This time, when everyone else flinched, Kylee and Brysen stood completely still, like there was no one else in the world.
“You’ve got the eagle’s attention,” he said. “Think it’ll really follow you all the way to the Sky Castle?”
“Part of me hopes not,” she said. “So I’m sure it will.”
“Make me a promise?” Brysen asked her. “No matter what happens, just come back to me.”
“I will,” she told him. “Until I do, you stay safe. Don’t do anything reckless.”
“I’ll stay safe,” he promised her, leaving off the last part, because who was he without a little recklessness? But the heart of this promise, they both knew, was unbreakable. There was an invisible tether that bound them to each other. Each of them was the falcon, each the falconer.
She turned and joined the departing soldiers, picking their way single file down the narrow path from the cliff top until they were marching with the rest of the battalion through the yard of the Broken Jess. She looked back over her shoulder as they left, saw her brother standing on the ledge just above the painted mural of the falcons locked in battle. Across his chest, he made the winged salute. She returned the gesture and then the line turned down the road through the market.
They had a hard march ahead that would lead her beyond all she’d ever known, and Kylee had no idea what she could expect to find when it ended. The wind of the world was wild, and it mocked human expectations. But it wasn’t the wind that carried you. It was the flex of the wing and the spread of the feathers. It was up to you how far to fly and how to come home again.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The most egregious lie a novel tells is the author’s name appearing alone on the cover. This book would not exist without the hard work, intelligence, energy, and generosity of a flock of professionals, artists, friends, and family lending their considerable gifts to the world I created.
First among equals, editor Grace Kendall encouraged this project from the start, fought for it, and then shoved me out of the nest—hard—to make the manuscript soar. I promise, most anything that works in this story is due to her intense and bighearted editorial interrogation, while anything that falls flat is entirely mine. Thanks for the unflagging assistance of Nicholas Henderson, who helped get this manuscript into shape and on time, while the eagle-eyed copy editing of Kayla Overbey brought order to the chaos of this world and clarified my thinking immeasurably. Seriously. We should all be so lucky to have a copy editor with her skills. Meanwhile, designer Elizabeth H. Clark’s gorgeous cover makes me look way cooler than any author deserves.
The rest of the team at FSG/Macmillan Children’s Books—the publishers and publicists, production staff, school and library marketing and conference planning teams, and the sales reps and warehouse crew—all work long hours with little fanfare to help readers connect with the right book at the right time, and I’m grateful for their efforts on behalf of mine.
I never would have been able to maintain this career without the advice and support of my agent for over a decade of publishing now, Robert Guinsler. He’s held together far more than my contracts, and I’m grateful to have a friend and ally in him. Also, he kept me from being eaten by a hawk in rural Pennsylvania, which is above and beyond an agent’s job description.
To create a plausible falconry tale, I had the expert advice of Master Falconer Mike Dupuy, who took the time to introduce me to some wonderful birds of prey and to answer my endless questions about everything from hawk food to hawk furniture. I also got advice (and a field trip!) from bookseller Emily Hall, who now owns Main Street Books in St. Charles, Missouri, but used to work at the World Bird Sanctuary. If you ever need an independent bookseller who knows raptors, she is your go-to resource and I’m glad to know her.
Thank you to some writers who still surprise me whenever they answer my emails and who gave me key manuscript advice and support when I needed it: Brendan Reichs, Marie Lu, Veronica Roth, Kendare Blake, Fran Wilde, Mackenzi Lee, Dhonielle Clayton, Katherine Locke, and Adam Silvera. For more vast and varied reasons than I can name, I’m grateful. Also their books are wonderful.
I’m also grateful to the teachers, librarians, and booksellers who’ve supported me more than I deserve and more than I can thank them for. They are too numerous to list here, a fact which is a delight and an honor to me.
I want to thank my parents, on whom none of the parents in this book are based, whose kindness to me and faith in me have made most of the good things in my life possible.
Lastly, thanks to my husband, Tim, the best thing in my life. (Maybe the second best by the time this comes out…) Ironically, he hates birds. I’d be nowhere without him and can’t imagine a better friend or partner to fly with on this wild wind. As our flock gets bigger, I’m so grateful he’s my wingman and that I’m his. Always.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alex London is the beloved author of the middle-grade series, Tides of War, Dog Tags, and The Wild Ones. His young-adult novel Proxy, was an ALA Top Ten Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers and was included in their 2014 Best Fiction for Young Adults List, the Texas Lone Star Reading List, and the TAYSHAS Reading List selection, among many other state reading lists. He lives in Philadelphia. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Map
Epigraphs
An Impossible Bird
Kylee: Tethers
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Glass Grinders
Brysen: The Widening Gyre
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
All Things True
Kylee: Fistbound
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
The Dirt’s Mercy
Brysen: Different Veins
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Mud Between
Kylee: The Hollow Tongue
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
The Sapling Forest
Brysen: Winds and Wounds
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Feather and Ash
Kylee: Shadows
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Text copyright © 2018 by Charles London
Excerpt from “Tamer and Hawk” from Collected Poems by Thom Gunn. Copyright © 1994 by Thom Gunn. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Excerpt from “Tamer and Hawk” taken from Fighting Terms by Thom Gunn (Faber & Faber, 2007). Copyright © 1954 by Thom Gunn. Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber.
All rights reserved
First hardcover edition, 2018
eBook edition, September 2018
fiercereads.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: London, Alex, author.
Title: Black wings beating / Alex London.
Description: First edition. | New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2018. | Series: Skybound saga; book 1 | Summary: Twins Kylee and Brysen must fight for survival in a remote valley called Six Villages as war approaches, she by rejecting her ancient gifts for falconry and Brysen by striving to find greatness.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018001439 | ISBN 9780374306823 (hardcover)
Subjects: | CYAC: Falconry—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Twins—Fiction. | Fantasy.
Classification: LCC PZ7.L84188 Bl 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018001439
eISBN 9780374306830
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