'Best get that arm tended to, Rena,' said the small fawkner, taking charge. 'Aras, can you run and get the salve? I'll need the imping needle and — Eiya! — just bring the lot of it. What's your name again?'
When no one answered, Nallo realized he was talking to her. 'I'm called Nallo.'
'Well done. Tumna's famous for having an uncertain temper at the best of times, but you handled her well. Better than Horas ever did.'
'Who is Horas?'
'Her last reeve.'
'What happened to him?'
Tumna dipped her head, huge beak probing the air as the marshal and Volias walked over.
'Keep talking,' said the small fawkner. 'She likes the sound of your voice.'
'Tumna, don't fret, they're coming although I must say they're slow about it and why all these staring fools have to stand here and stare so rudely is beyond my understanding. How badly is her wing injured?'
The fawkner was grinning, although she couldn't figure what he thought was so funny. 'She can fly on it, so that's one thing. But we've got bleeding even after this long because she's not resting
properly. As you can see, she's still in pain and not healing as she ought.'
'Volias,' Nallo said, 'can't you just chase these people off? Don't they have anything better to do?'
He said, to the marshal, 'You're a hard man, Joss. I didn't know you had it in you. I thought sure the cursed bird was going to rip-'
'Shut up, Volias,' said the marshal in a flat voice.
'I'll take it from here, Marshal,' said the small fawkner in the manner of a man rushing to fill a gap.
'What was he going to say?' Nallo demanded.
'Rip off the hood,' said the marshal. 'They're trained to accept the hood when they first come to the hall. An eagle like Tumna or my Scar is accustomed to it. It eases them, helps them settle if they're injured or exhausted. An eagle tumbles quick from keen-set to frail-set.'
'If you don't mind,' said the fawkner, 'we'll get her settled.'
Thus dismissed, she had no choice except to walk with the marshal out of the parade ground and down an alley between storehouses. The reeve hall was a prosperous place, with plenty of impressive buildings to house its reeves, fawkners, assistants, hirelings, slaves, and eagles, and to store the provisions necessary to maintaining the hall.
'What happened to her other reeve?' she asked as her feet kicked up chalky dirt.
Volias coughed.
The marshal said, 'Dead in the recent battle.'
'Do eagles mourn their reeves when they go?'
'Hard to say. We like to think so.'
'Do reeves mourn their eagles?'
He sighed as he looked at her. 'Reeves don't survive the death of their eagles.'
'You can't mean it. How old can an eagle get?'
'Hall records show that the longest known life span of an eagle encompassed six reeves, although only one of those reeves lived to old age.'
'Do you mean if I agree to become a reeve and that eagle dies, that I'll die?'
'You already are a reeve.'
'Is this how you force people to agree to become reeves? Because they think they have to? We're no better than slaves. I'd have better luck walking to Olossi and trying to get a husband from those foreigners. At least I'd be my own mistress, able to do what I wanted.'
'Who knows what disgusting customs those outlanders have,' said Volias with a smirk. 'You're better off with; us. Not that you have a choice.'
They walked into a garden so fancy that Nallo gawked. It had its own pool, with fruit and nut trees along either side, reflected in the still water. Aui! There was even a fountain of burbling water, just like in the tales! Avisha would have gushed over the many herbs and other flowering plants burgeoning out of troughs and terraces. A pavilion overlooked the far end of the pool. That pest Siras was seated on the steps leading up to the covered porch, and when he saw them he leaped up and brushed his hands on his trousers as if he'd been eating.
'I guess Tumna didn't rip your head off, then, eh?' said Siras with a big grin as they reached the porch. 'Not like she did to Horas. Not that he didn't deserve it, mind you. He was rotten all the way through.'
'The hells!' said Volias. 'Siras, you're a bigger horse's ass than even I thought.'
Nallo halted with a foot on the porch and one on the step below. The marshal turned, balancing on one foot with a sandal half pried off the other. He grunted with irritation, a man who has just been caught out in a lie.
Rain spat through the pretty garden. In the distance, thunder rolled and faded.
Rip your head off.
They had all known that the eagle was a killer who had murdered its own reeve.
When she got really mad, her tongue lit and she couldn't stop herself. 'That's why everyone came to watch. Was it a good show? Or is everyone disappointed she didn't rip my head off, too? Does it happen often? Because if I were an'eagle, you three would all be in little pieces by now, but I wouldn't eat a single scrap of bloody flesh because your foul taste would make me cast it all back up.'
Her heart was sucked dry, and her blood was raging. She walked away.
Volias called, 'Here, now, Nallo-'
The marshal interrupted him in that smoothly dishonest voice she should have distrusted from the first. 'We didn't say anything because we didn't want you to fear her before you had a chance to understand eagles. And Tumna in particular.'
'No one told her?' yapped the young one in a tone that couldn't have made him sound stupider if he'd been a novice entertainer acting a part.
Ignoring every soul who tried to talk to her, she strode through the compound until she found the cot she'd been assigned. She grabbed her bundle of useless odds and ends, the worthless rubbish of her life, and walked out the gates of Argent Hall, never to return.
20
The arrival of the seventh Guardian, wearing the cloak of death, forced his hand.
He and the girl flew west across the Olo'o Sea, heading for the isolated western Barrens and its mountainous desert high country where few folk traveled and fewer lived. With Argent Hall no longer under the hand of one of his enemies, they might be able to walk an isolated labyrinth without falling into the custody of the others.
After that burst of speech, while shaping the bow, the girl again ceased talking. It wasn't fear that closed her mouth, he thought. She liked to fly. She enjoyed the wind and wide waters below. Nothing frightened her.
They flew a night and a day and into the next night, a steady pace that would eventually exhaust the horses, but he had no more time to wait. At length, in the glimmering twilight before dawn, they flew into the swirl of currents that marked the western shore. South of them a pair of campfires burned, so far away they appeared like candle flames. But the salty air and fine grit on the wind told him no sour tales of the folk camping in this wilderness. He would have to take his chances that they were no threat.
They crossed over briny pools and streaks of dried salt and minerals that marked the shoreline, and beat crosswise up tableland that rose in stair steps to rugged highlands beyond, the massive foothills of the Spires. Peaks glittered as the first edge of sun out of the east caught on their icy crowns. Antelopes and gazelles nibbled on grass on broad terraces. Wild goats bounded alongside coursing streams as dawn's light scattered them from their night's stupor. The sun pushed into the sky. The horses labored, but they struggled on. They knew where they were going.
This altar was hard to find if you didn't know where to look. Unlike many of the others, carved into cliff faces or sited atop granite pinnacles or bare peaks or breathtaking spires of rock, this altar had a humbler position nestled in a rocky saddle between two forested peaks. A homely place lacking magnificence, but one where he felt sheltered because of its immense isolation.
