she hadn't since — well — since ever. With a laugh, Arda backed away. 'Just one flight. That's all I ask.'
'Oh, gods,' murmured Nallo, as she realized she was well and truly hooked in. The rush went to her head, and then the raptor pushed so hard that Nallo thought her feet and her head were in two different places. Her feet slipped off the training bar, and she flailed, sure she was about to plunge to her death. Gripping the straps with knuckles gone white, she couldn't breathe. The powerful beat of Tumna's wings drowned out everything in the world except the plunge of the earth away from under her and, when she could see again, the many upturned faces staring as she rose. Air thrummed against her body. Tumna stopped beating her wings, simply held them out in that vast wingspan, and Nallo choked out a gulped cry, only they did not fall. They were rising as though in the hand of the gods, the earth dropping away to reveal the patterns of human handiwork below: the alluvial fan where the conduit had its exit; the holes marking the shafts; the gullies and hills. A pale berm, like rope, ran all around a hill where a brick palisade was also going up, plus many canvas tents and awnings to shelter the hundreds of folk now living and working here. The reeve hall was little more than canvas barracks for the reeves and fawkners, with massive perches set like skeletal trees rising off into the wilderness over a distance too broad for her to measure.
An eagle plunged past, the reeve in its harness whipping a flag signal at her that she did not understand. Tumna kept going, heading for the mountains. Off to her right the sea spread flat with the sun's light gilding the waters. Eihi! So beautiful!
The winds rumbled at crosscurrents as they rose over the foothills, heading straight into the black clouds. Thunder muttered above the mighty peaks. Lightning spiked.
'I don't-! I don't-!'
She had no cursed idea what to do; she was at the raptor's mercy, likely to get her head ripped off or-
She screamed as Tumna folded her wings and plunged down, down, down, wind shrieking in her ears. The wings unfurled, and they jerked up hard and Nallo began to laugh and sob together as the raptor found another rising stream of air and they sailed up along the face of the massive peaks of the thunderheads until the hair on her neck rose.
A dazzling form of blue light — not lightning — sizzled into being an arrow's shot away. It winked, and vanished.
Winked back, and vanished.
Winked back, and vanished.
All in the space of her taking in a shocked and heaving breath and letting it out.
The hells! It had eyes, of a kind, and it was looking at her.
It winked into being, and it boomed — like a laugh! — and vanished.
Tumna cut right, and they beat away from the face of the storm and glided down on the winds running before it. They dipped toward a valley cut deep into the foothills. Threads of light spun where a waterfall spilled over a cliff to cut a pool. A stream gushed through luxuriant vegetation. That same prickling feeling crawled on her skin, as though they were about to plunge back into the storm, but instead Tumna swept a wide turn and headed back toward the east. The sea glimmered in the distance. Nallo could not spot the settlement, but a strange web of light sparked to their left where two rocky hills joined in a saddle. Tumna swooped, and thumped down on the bare ground of the saddleback ridge.
Nallo was still laughing and crying as she wiped her eyes and looked around. Wind roared over the span of earth. A pattern carved into the rock glittered, tracing a labyrinth. Aui! Her skin went cold and she thought she would faint.
The eagle had brought her to a Guardian's altar.
'We can't stay here, Tumna! It's forbidden!'
On one side, an overhang offered shelter. Coals and ash smoldered in a fire pit, wood stacked neatly against one wall. Someone was living here, where all were forbidden to walk. All except Guardians.
'The hells! Move! Move!' She tugged on the uppermost jesses.
Tumna thrust, and they were up again, battered in the swirling currents, turning toward the sea. The winds fronting the storm buffeted them as they glided east, and once over the water the eagle had to beat her wings. It was getting dark, the setting sun occluded by the storm rolling out of the Spires. She banked, and ahead Nallo saw the flickering lights of watch fires and of scattered lamps and torches being lit against the gloom.
They sailed in over the settlement, and with a dainty dip Tumna landed by the reeve quarters. Nallo pulled her feet up out of reflex and, slowly, lowered herself within the angle of the harness to stand, legs shaking, on earth.
She swayed there, dazed, as folk called and Arda came out with a pair of fawkners to tend to the bird. They unhooked her and led her, unresisting and unable to speak, to a big tent covered in canvas, just in time, because rain began to fall, drumming on the taut canvas roof. Nallo hoped that everyone working in the conduit was out for the night but she didn't say so because she could not talk.
Arda sat her down on a bench and handed her a cup. The sharply spiced cordial scalded her throat. She coughed, blinking away tears.
Reeves — mostly young men and a few women and older men — came running in under cover. Out beyond the roped-back entrance a stocky black-haired young man who looked remarkably like one of the Qin soldiers — only he was dressed in reeve's leathers — was speaking with evident intensity to a pair of black-clad Qin soldiers. They shrugged and turned away, leaving him alone in the rain while everyone else laughed and talked around plank tables set up as an eating hall.
'You don't have to fly again if you choose not to.' Arda poured cordial from a pitcher into the empty cup and sipped.
'I–I — I saw-' She wiped rain from her brow and blinked as another pair of lamps flared. The gods! This place was lit like they had oil to spare, and surely they did. Thunder boomed. 'I saw a fireling, just like in the tales. It boomed, like thunder only so much smaller. Like it was laughing at me.'
Nallo hadn't thought she could say anything that would surprise that competent woman, but the trainer's face went blank as she blew out breath between pursed lips. 'Eihi!'
'You don't believe me!'
'Don't snap at me! I'm shaking my head because I do believe you. Here, now.' Her gaze slipped away and her eyes narrowed. 'What's he doing here?'
Nallo turned.
Volias sauntered up. 'Greetings of the day to you, too, my darling Arda.' He made a gesture of rudely passing a kiss before turning to Nallo. 'Listen, Nallo, 1 have a proposition.'
'Volias,' said Arda with a sour grimace, 'why you think she'd be interested in your ugly-'
'Neh, neh, not that kind of proposition. I'm not Joss, am I? Listen, Nallo.' With a bright grin, like Jerad when he'd caught a fish, he straddled the bench, grabbed the cup out of Arda's hand, and drained it in one go. 'Whew!' He screwed up his mouth, squinting. 'That's strong stuff!' He set down the cup. 'Listen, Nallo, I know you're angry about Joss and how he handled things, so I had a talk with the commander in Clan Hall. Plus in addition this trouble with Pil has got to be solved, so-'
'What are you doing here?' demanded Nallo.
He shut his mouth, ceased talking, and flushed.
Arda smirked. 'Heard we'd tracked Tumna, did you, Volias?' She looked at Nallo. 'He's been flying in and out of Argent Hall for weeks now, riding messages down from Clan Hall. He has become a pest, always asking if there's been any news of you and is anyone looking, like he thinks we're cursed fools who can't do a thing right. You followed me here!'
'I can't help worrying,' muttered Volias without looking up. 'Just like Joss to use too tight a rein. He must be honest in the very wrong way when maybe it would be better to let a person work things through with a bit of — I don't know-'
'A bit of dishonesty?' asked Arda with a laugh.
Nallo didn't know who to warm to, and who to snap at. 'You knew, didn't you?' she said to Arda. 'That once I flew, I would want to fly again.'
Volias let out a whistle of breath. 'So that's how you did it.'
Arda said, 'It does happen that way, often enough. How do you suppose I feel, Nallo? I'd have given anything to be chosen by an eagle. It's all I ever wanted. But it never happened. So I've dedicated my life to training those
