Magonia (27 page)

Did I miss a watch or something? That would be Dai after me, not Jik. Jik has no authority.

“You should know something,” Jik says after a moment.

I sit up, eager to listen.

“I feed him,” she whispers.

“Who?”

“The captain’s bird. It’s part of my duties.”

“But Wedda says—” I say.

Jik shows me her hand, each finger surrounded by a metal ring, and shakes it in the air.

“None of us can be trusted,” she says. “Wedda? And Dai? Have they made you think there’s nothing wrong in Magonia? Magonians are at war with one another, and we, the feathered classes, are at their mercy. Don’t you ever wonder—”

“What?”

“Which of the Rostrae and canwr who serve you do it unwillingly?”

I stare at her as the implications of what she’s saying fasten into my brain.

“Your Milekt is a lungbird, and loyal to the captain. The captain was granted a heartbird, and when she lost her bond to him, she was unwilling to let him go.”

“What are you trying to say?” I ask. “Just say it.”

“Caru betrayed Zal. Her
own canwr
refused to sing her song with her. Are you sure you understand your mother? Are you certain you trust her?”

A few things are falling into place in my head.

“I’m not asking you to free the Rostrae,” Jik says. “There is a time for rebellion, and it is coming. Some of us work toward those ends. Some of us work from the inside.”

She looks at me, her gaze a challenge.

“Aza. There are places on the ground that will be lost to us all if Zal has her way.”

“She only wants the airplants,” I say defensively, hearing myself and feeling suspicious of what I’m saying.

Jik looks at me.

“Did you see what she did tonight? She broke her word. Denial of deathsong? That is against all Magonian laws,” Jik whispers in the harshest, sharpest tones. Like I’m a fool. Like I know nothing.

“Do you trust a woman who would deny a deathsong? Your mother, Aza Ray, is a criminal. She has no honor.”

It’s too much.

“Do you presume to question the captain’s judgment,
Rostrae
?” I interrupt, and I hear it coming out of my mouth, this wrongness, this not fairness.

Jik bristles. Looks at me icily.

“Her canwr rose against her. Now he’s mad and broken. How will
you
fare if something goes
wrong with her plan?”

A moment and I’m up and moving.

I shove a little knife into my boot. I wrap a rope around my arm. I put on my warm uniform. If Jik is right and Caru’s alive, then what he’s been calling for is saving. He’s been calling for me.

If he betrayed Zal, she’ll kill him. I can’t let that happen.

Not after

Ley

I just can’t.

Something moves in the doorway. I look up and see Wedda there, her eyes glowing.

“Nestling,” she says. “Jik wants trouble. Don’t listen to her.”

Jik’s shoulder feathers spike up as though she’s wearing a motorcycle jacket. Her eyes are wider than they were a moment ago, and her blue crest stands up, too, sharp and brittle. She looks small next to Wedda, though, and like a kid.

Like me.

“I don’t want trouble,” Jik says. “I want justice. You’ve heard Caru screaming as long as I have.”

“Caru is a
ghost
,” Wedda says, her tone tense.

“We all know he is not,” Jik retorts. “The captain says he is, and we follow her orders and call him dead, but that bird lives in torment.”

Jik turns to me again.

“You can help the captain. Or you can help us. You’re stronger than she ever was—”

Wedda grabs her by the wing and hisses into her ear.

“Enough! Leave her. Leave
now.
”

Jik spins and goes.

When she is sure Jik is gone, Wedda looks at me. “Do not,” she says. “Whatever you’re considering, nestling. It won’t end well for you, nor will it end well for that bird. The captain’s canwr isn’t sane.”

“But it isn’t dead either,” I say. I’m completely dressed— prepared, for what reason I’m not totally willing to consider, to go out into the cold.

I march past her, and Wedda reaches out. She clenches my hair into her fingers.

“You can’t stop me, I—”

I realize she’s not trying to hurt me. She’s knotting my hair in a way that feels unfamiliar.

“What’s that you’re doing?” I ask. “It’s not the captain’s knot?”

“No. It is your own,” she says.

When I look in the mirror, my hair is twisted up into tight plaits, close to my skull, twirling and swooping nautilus shells.

“This belongs to you,” she says softly. “Just as your mind, and your will belong to you.”

I stare at my reflection, and Wedda behind me. I hear what she’s telling me. I start to give her my thanks, but she cuts me off before I can even begin.

“If anyone asks, you chose this yourself, nestling. I’m a steward, not a revolutionary.”

And so I go hunting a ghost.

I sidle my way down the ladder and into the galley, where I steal a piece of bread and a small piece of salted meat left from the pig.

I listen hard for the sound of Milekt’s tone. The cote up there has only bitter things to say.

Some of them are hatchlings, as yet untrained to sing with their Magonian hosts, and thus far unbonded to them. Milekt and Svilken are teaching them. The little birds resist. They strain against their chains. When Magonians die, the canwr that are bonded to them die as well, but not automatically. They’re killed. They can’t link with another Magonian. Once the bond is made, it’s permanent.

Oh god,
like a wife burned with her husband’s body.

Restraint
, trills Milekt. I hear him say it to the hatchlings, training them. He’s a drill sergeant. The same way he trains me. I hear Zal on deck, too, giving orders to the ship’s crew.

I wonder, at times, if she ever sleeps.

I hear a quiet whirring from Zal’s quarters. Knowing Zal’s above, I don’t even hesitate. No one would dare come in here without permission. No one but me.

I push on Zal’s door. Inside, a large bed with red-and-gold bedcovers, an ancient, worn-smooth wooden desk, and rolled-up maps on parchment. There are tons of maps. But they’re not what I’m here for.

In the corner is a screen, and behind it is a cage covered with a dark cloth. Inside it I can feel Caru moving, spinning, stretching his wings out.

I’ve never been in here before.

This is why.

This canwr is contraband. He should be dead.

Aza
, the bird says. I jump at my name.

Kill me
, he says, voice quieter than it was. He’s talking only to me, to himself.

No
, I say
. Feed
, I tell him, in the Magonian I can manage.

Feed
, Caru repeats. There’s a darkness in that voice, a rawness. I take off the cage cover, gently, quietly.

I meet his dark, shining eye. He’s a falcon.

Gleaming black on the top, each shining feather flecked with gold. His breast is creamy with dark markings all over it, and the undersides of his wings are fire red. Enormous. His body is as long as my arm.

I see him, and he’s what I’ve been searching for since I came aboard.

I’m not sure what you want
, I say, no longer in Magonian, but in my own language.
Eat
, I say.

I put my hand through the bars. Caru shuffles forward. I don’t let myself recoil, even though I can feel the despair and longing that are driving him insane. Even though it all makes my heart hurt. He takes the bread from my fingers. He tears loose a bite of meat.

His sleek head turns to me, and he stares at my chest, making a low and dangerous noise, but Milekt’s not with me. The falcon rocks on his perch, his eyes wild and nervous.

I look around. The key is there, hanging on the wall (just in sight of the bird, what a torture). So I open the cage. I hold out my arm, bare, trusting him.

He steps onto my forearm. Talons touching. They dig into my flesh, but don’t break my skin. They feel as though they sink into me, fit me. I feel his weight.

Broken string,
Caru sings, looking at me.
Heart battered home burned. Bound, broken, knots undone. Ocean, island, talons, feathers, nests. Fall, fall from the stars.

Caru’s wings spread slowly, and then he beats them and starts to rise into the air, just enough to scare me. I step back.

He looks at my heart, like he wants to tear it out of my chest. But when he stares, I stare back. I watch his eyes widen, clear bright gold, and totally insane.

Aza
, the falcon whirrs, quietly.

His voice is different now, less scared, less rageful.

Sing
, he whirrs, the sharpness of his beak close enough to savage me. He ruffles up his feathers and shakes himself. His talons are as long as my fingers.

Sky
, Caru says.
Take me.

He moves his head forward and uses his beak to pluck something from his ankle.

I look at it. It’s a ring. A gold ring, similar to the rings I’ve seen on the Rostrae, but this one is without any chains.

Caru drops it into my hand, and then looks at me. I don’t know what to do. I could throw it off the ship. Would that release him?

Sky
, says Caru again.

I keep my arm extended. I take a roll of charts from the desk and push them into my belt.

Caru looks at me. I put my cloak over his head, and wrap him in it. I hold him in my arms, and we go up in the dark. Caru croons into my ear—

A terrifying soft song and the song sounds like mine. It hurts my head, bruises my eardrums. I shake my head to clear it, and Caru moves against my chest.

Sky
, he sings in the smallest voice.

I walk to the launches pretending I’m not doing what I’m about to do. I see Jik lingering on deck, and then walking toward Dai with purpose. He looks barely awake, and she’s distracting him.

I’m casual. Slow. I consider one of the launches, big enough to be stable in high wind, big enough to not capsize if something comes up beneath us.

The batsail looks down at me and makes a soft sound, high and quiet. A squallwhale passes close to me singing a delicate light rain.

Caru is still in my arms, but I can feel his heart pounding; it shakes his entire body. I step into the launch, and put Caru down inside it. He’s not chained to anything, not captive.

I unspool the rope that holds us to the ship. I unknot the knots. I don’t even remotely know what
I’m doing. Stealing the captain’s canwr? The captain I swore an oath to?

An oath. Aza, who are you? What life is this in which you’re swearing blood oaths?

And who are you swearing them to?

I look up at the sails, and at the ship, at the night all around us. The batsail flexes its wings, pushing
Amina Pennarum
away from us, and with Caru in my boat, I push off from the side, and into the sky.

I start to row.

After a moment, Caru shudders beneath my cloak, and shakes it off his head, an elegant pool of fabric slipping from his shining feathers.

He makes a low ruffling noise, deep in his chest, a hum. I push us out from the ship, out, out.

I look out at the scip steorra, and aim myself toward it. I can hardly see the navigation lights of
Amina Pennarum
now. We just need to get far enough away that they won’t see him take flight.

Caru tilts his head and rattles out a little cry.

“What?” I ask.

Prison
, Caru says.
Torn from rain and sky.

Who took you?
I ask. I notice that I’m singing, suddenly, notice that I’m not speaking any language but the one I share with Caru.

Magonia
, says the falcon.
Thieves! Home
, he sings, more quietly now.
Home.

The pitch of the bird’s voice goes into my heart, and my heartbeat aligns to it. A beat, and the bird cries out, another, and the bird cries out again, a metronome.

Slavebirds. Songbirds. Songgirl.

Caru stares into my eyes and his head weaves.

He stops singing, and stares at the sky, opens his wings wide, and then folds them again.

A breeze, and I realize my cheeks are wet. Tears are streaming down my face. Caru yearns for home. For [({ })].

Maybe he, at least, can have it.

It’s quiet out here. There’s no one, no other ship, no Milekt. All I have is the roll of maps I took from Zal’s cabin, and this huge, mad bird, who could kill me and everything around me, simply by screaming an alarm. I think about Zal’s plans, the ones she’s told me about. I’m only supposed to steal the plants. She swore it.

Do I trust her? I just watched her break her word.

How can I trust her?

Caru’s talons and my arm are one now, and I row. Caru’s wings open, and together we push into the night.

Caru sings a string of jangling syllables. In front of us, stars begin to blaze brighter, one by one. A trail. Very carefully, hesitantly, I add my voice to Caru’s and I start seeing before us a gleaming silver path, straight into the night. A mist rises up around us, a storm of soft sand, and hides us from the moonlight. We move forward in darkness.

But I look down, off the boat, toward the world, and for a moment, I lose myself. I imagine Jason seeing my rowboat making its way across a dark and highly trafficked sky. I imagine how much he’d love it. Part of me is drawn to the earth’s surface, while another part reaches through the night for Dai. I ache a little more with each push of my boat.
Partner.

My chest is hollow without Milekt, but the song of Caru has made its way inside me too. I feel something rattling in my heart, not a living being, but a want. To sing with Caru. To meld my voice to his. His voice is so strong—

But no.

He gets a choice.

“Go,” I tell him. “You’re free. Go. Fly!”

Caru rises from my arm.

Go
, I sing.
You’re not mine. You belong to yourself.