The Sky Castle had begun as a fort, built by the early Uztari who crossed the mountains from the frozen steppes on the other side. After they fought off the Altari, they established the stronghold on high ground to watch over the plateau and to maintain control over the sky above it. Kylee ran her fingers over the oldest stones. The chips and gashes made by war had been smoothed by time. The castle had grown out from the central fortress, the defensive walls transformed to inner courtyards. The halls that had once heard the screams of wounded warriors were now pens for livestock or mews for hawks. From this high castle, Uztari power grew and settlements expanded.
Over the generations, the castle had expanded from the central ring to accommodate more and more people. New circular walls traced the contours of the mountain, up and down and sideways, struggling to burst free from the limits of the landscape but bound by the relentless force of gravity. Any great plan laid by the founders of the first citadel had long been abandoned by the growth of the city, and its layout was like the pattern of drifting clouds.
High towers at the upper and lower central gates and on the two far sides gave a near-infinite view across the plateau and down into the castle, which was itself a series of structures built around pens and mews and courtyards. The older parts of the castle were more organized than the newer ones, but all were in a state of constant repair. An army of craftspeople and artisans worked tirelessly to keep the castle from crumbling down the mountain. The fact that it still stood was a triumph of stubbornness and wealth over wind and rain and war.
Hammering and clattering were the constant song of the city, with the shrieks and cries of birds punctuating the creative cursing of the artisans. The cacophony made Kylee tense as she walked the lamplit streets. She’d thought the Six Villages during the Hawkers’ Market were loud, but the noise of the great city above the clouds made even the loudest festival she’d known as a girl seem soft as a chick’s chirping.
The lamps that lit the street burned compressed bricks of mountain grass and elk dung, and the fuel gave every street and walkway an odor of the wilderness, something feral and hunting. In finer homes, the fuel was perfumed, but the cost was too great for the public lamps, and so the direction of the mountain winds defined the odor of the city. Rich people were known to keep several homes within walking distance so they could decamp to sweeter smells depending on which way the evening breezes blew.
A warm, melting wind had blown off the miasma of dung in the air. The way from the garrison to Kyrg Ryven’s residence was nearly the whole length of the city, and it was a pleasant night for a walk. Cloaked Uztari with hawks on their fists strolled around the curved lanes, wandering aimlessly. Their chattering was even more aimless; it was necessary in order to stay awake on the long vigils it took to accustom a new falcon to the fist. Wealthier people had valets to do this task for them, carrying new birds around for days without sleep until the hawk became completely used to being held and completely dependent on the one holding it for food and rest and companionship.
The whole process made Kylee think of breaking a prisoner. Behind all the gentleness in a falconer’s care for her birds, there was a kind of brutality. Dominance through dependency. A falconer’s kindness to a bird was the kindness of bait on a hook. It was power disguised as kindness.
She wondered if the invitation to Kyrg Ryven’s party was the same sort of kindness.
All the kyrgs who made up the Council of Forty had chambers somewhere near the central citadel, where the business of administering Uztar took place, but few besides Kyrg Bardu actually lived there. The old buildings were cold and drafty and lacked modern comforts like hot-spring water and wide staircases. Every kyrg kept at least one secondary home in the newer districts to the east and west of the citadel. Kyrg Ryven had his palatial home in the southwest quarter of the city, high over the neighborhood the locals called the Peacock, because of the way colorful mountain flowers thrived in window boxes. Thanks to the abundant botanicals, perfumeries and herbalists had sprouted up, and the city’s sprawling flower market thrived there, paying, of course, a tax to the kyrg who presided over the neighborhood, Ryven himself. His bronze was the product of beauty, bought and sold.
Kylee saw the house from a distance, long before she reached its gate. It perched above the neighborhood, a central oval of stone with two wings of smooth stone flanking it, terraces off each wing arrayed in a pattern like flight feathers, so the home suggested a falcon roused, about to fly. The home was grand, grander than Kylee could’ve imagined for someone so young, and she wondered if it belonged to his parents. Were they the reason he was on the Council of Forty? A kyrg’s seat could be passed down to anyone the current holder chose. In most cases that was a child or spouse or lover, but some kyrgs offered up their seats for sale upon their death, to ensure their family’s future wealth if not their power. Had Kyrg Ryven been given his seat, or had he bought his way to it?
A bitter taste of resentment tingled her teeth when she thought of someone who would never be buffeted by the winds of other people’s expectations just because they had wealth. The things Kylee and her brother had to do just to survive were totally unknown to a man like Kyrg Ryven, who could invite a stranger to his home for a party and know that she would have to attend. In that moment, she could understand Grazim a little more. Whatever gifts or achievements you thought you had, there was someone soaring above them, casting a shadow down. Jealousy was a simple predator, but it hunted everyone—even Kylee.
Maybe that’s why everyone fears the ghost eagle, she thought. It doesn’t look up with longing at anyone. Everything alive is below it. Kylee’d have liked to know what that kind of freedom felt like, to be above it all, at the apex, longing for nothing and having your back scratched by the stars.
Ryven’s house was as close as any Kylee had seen to starlight. It was higher even than the outer wall Üku had dangled her off earlier, higher than the city’s watchtowers. Its roof rose almost to the height of the nearest mountain peak.
At the entrance, there were over a hundred steps whirling up in a wide turn from the end of the street to the front gate. The iron bars were draped with long vines of sparrow’s ivy, which was just beginning to bud with orange flowers. Two spotted wood owls perched on either side of the gate. They were tethered in place but unhooded, watching Kylee’s approach with black eyes in bright orange faces.
The owls match the flowers, she thought with astonishment.
When she stood in front of them, she checked the length of the leather leashes that bound the owls and saw that, indeed, she was within range if they chose to dive at her. Instead, one of them hooted, and the other swiveled its head to look off to the side, at a view over the silver clouds below. From the gate, she could look back over much of the city. She saw the curved streets like meltwater streams, the flickering lights of the dung-lamps shifting the scuttling shadows as people moved about their evening business. Around the tall towers that watched over every district, clouds of bats flew, feasting on the insects that were drawn to the lights from the windows. The bats told of warming weather, of the rushing of rivers and growing of crops on the grasslands. With the warmth came the fighting season and the certainty that Kartami attacks would grow more aggressive and faster and would soon reach the Six Villages.
She looked past the outer wall, across the ragged mountain range, tracing the moonlit river as far as she could, hoping to see even a flicker of light from the distant Villages, but they were too far and the clouds hung too low, concealing the settlements from view. The Sky Castle might’ve been an island in a sea of stone and cloud, sitting so far above the rest of Uztar.
If Kylee was a sort of prisoner in the Sky Castle, it wasn’t so bad a place to be. Kylee loved heights—another trait she shared with the ghost eagle. And the sooner she mastered that bird, the sooner she’d be free to leave.
But first she had to get into the party, and she had no idea how to get past the front gate. She looked at the impassive owls. Was this a test of her skill with the Hollow Tongue? Was she supposed to ask them for entry? She did want to go inside, wanted to see the view from the house and find out what the kyrg wanted from her, so maybe asking would work. She didn’t know the Hollow Tongue for “open,” so she tried asking in her own words.
“Uh … could you open?”
The owls blinked at her.
“If you please, dear madams?” she tried, thinking perhaps a kyrg’s owls might stand on formality. She used a female honorific out of respect for the owls’ nobility and the dominance of females of the species.
One of the owls shifted on its feet, but otherwise, nothing happened. She could feel the eyes of curious people on the street looking up at her. It wasn’t like she was unknown in the Sky Castle: the girl the ghost eagle follows. She wished she’d worn a cloak. With a hood.
“Waiting for someone?” a girl called, making her way up the stairs behind Kylee.
“I…” Kylee wasn’t sure how to explain that she couldn’t figure out the way in. “Kyrg Ryven invited me,” she said.
“I should hope so,” the girl answered, climbing the last steps, paying no attention to the owls. “I’d hate to be at this kind of party without my best friend.” When she lowered the hood of her cloak, Kylee felt like her heart had just caught a gliding breeze.
“Vy!” she cried. Vyvian was her closest friend in the Six Villages, aside from Nyall and her brother, and her presence on the steps of a kyrg’s palace inside the Sky Castle was as surprising as it was welcome. “What are you doing here?”
“My mother dispatched me not long after you left,” her friend told her. “Albyon was supposed to go, but he broke his leg dancing at the Broken Jess, so it was finally my turn to ply the family trade where it matters.”
Kylee itched to hug her friend, but she stopped herself at the mention of “the family trade.” Vyvian’s family trade was spying, and it couldn’t be a coincidence that her first visit to the Sky Castle happened to be at the same time as Kylee’s. When they were kids, she used to talk about it like it was a nest of bone-sucking vultures, but she’d probably just been parroting her parents. Spying was big business in the Six Villages, and any spy who wanted to rise wanted to work at the Sky Castle.
If Vyvian had found her way to the very same party as Kylee, it was not by accident—broken leg or otherwise. Back when Kylee was just some Six Villages girl, Vyvian’s work hadn’t mattered much. But now that Kylee was in the center of Uztari power, Vyvian’s friendship was a lot more complicated. A spy would want something from her, and it might not be clear what it was or what it would cost until after she’d gotten it.
All these hidden agendas made Kylee so tired. Why couldn’t anything just be straightforward, like it was before the ghost eagle?
“I’m glad to see you,” Kylee offered simply, which was true, if far from simple.
“And not just because I know how to get inside the gates?” Vyvian smiled and reached between a few strands of dangling ivy beside one of the owls. She revealed a thick cord of rope and pulled it. Somewhere above, a bell rang.
“I wonder how long it would have taken me to figure that out,” Kylee laughed.
Vyvian laughed, too, sweet as song. “I’m sure someone would have come looking for you eventually. You are the guest of honor—you know that, right?”
Kylee shook her head. “I haven’t done anything worth honoring.”
“You’ve already done more than most of these finch-faced nobles could dream,” Vyvian said. “You should hear the rumors about you back home. Everyone thinks you’ll be the savior of Uztar. Some folks think you’ve already saved us.”
“What about Brysen?” Kylee asked. The glide her heart had felt a moment ago turned to a nervous flapping, trying desperately to stay aloft. “How’s he doing?”
Vyvian put her hand on Kylee’s shoulder. “He’s totally fine,” she assured her. “He spends most days with the pale-skinned owl boy who followed you down the mountain. He claims they’re just friends, but Albyon’s been inconsolable about it. I think that’s how he hurt himself, trying to get your brother’s attention.”
“And is Brysen … safe?” she asked.
“There are spies watching him,” Vyvian whispered, “but I promise, it’s no one from my family. We wouldn’t do that.”
Silent as a snow owl, the knowledge hovered in the air between them that her family would absolutely do that, that they might be the very ones doing that. Kylee supposed it was better her brother was being watched by people who knew him than by some strangers the Sky Castle had sent. Still, she wondered, if it came to it, if Kylee failed or if she displeased the Council, would it fall to Vyvian’s family to assassinate her brother? Would they do that, too?
“So how do you know about this party?” she asked, pivoting away from the fraught topic of her brother’s fate. He was the reason Kylee was here, but she’d rather not spend all their time talking about him.
“It’s what I do,” Vyvian said, flipping her dark hair back behind her neck.
“Do you know anything about the host, Kyrg Ryven?”
Just as Vyvian was about to answer her question, the gate opened, and Vyvian charged forward, the two owls rotating their heads to watch the girls pass through and resume their winding way up to the front door. The stairs were lined with all manner of birds of prey carved from pink, black, gray, and white salt rock, which glowed from within, lighting the path. Two human guards stood beside the entrance, with large curved swords on their belts and tall, unhooded falcons on their left fists.
“He’s the youngest kyrg ever seated,” Vyvian whispered as they approached. “And there were kyrgs who didn’t want him seated at all.”
“Why not?”
“That’s what I’m supposed to find out. He was an orphan taken in by a kyrg who died mysteriously while out hunting. So far, all the information our clients have is mere mutterings and rumors. They want to know facts.”
“Who are your clients?” Kyle asked.
Vyvian held up a finger and cocked her head. “Come on, Ky, you know I can’t tell you that.”
“So you aren’t here because of me?” Kylee found herself both relieved and disappointed.
“You’ve heard the one about two birds and one stone, right?”
“Yeah,” Kylee said. “I don’t think I want to be one of those birds.”
“Don’t worry,” Vyvian told her. “In this case, the stone thrower’s on your side, and she has excellent aim. Just do me a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Introduce me to our host.”
“Oh.” Kylee smiled. “The spy needs help with her spying. I see how it is!”
“It’s not that.” Vyvian laughed. “Well, not just that. You have seen him, right? I could definitely rest awhile on his perch.”
At that Kylee rolled her eyes. Her friend was incorrigible. Vyvian had never seen a beautiful creature whose feathers she didn’t want to ruffle, metaphorically speaking. And Kyrg Ryven had the sort of feathers that girls like Vyvian very much enjoyed ruffling.
“I’m sure he’ll introduce himself to you.” Kylee took Vyvian’s arm and leaned her head close to her friend’s as they stepped up to the guards like a pair of swans. “You are with me after all, the savior of Uztar.”
It felt good to laugh about it with a friend, even if that friend was a spy and a liar. When you got this close to power, Kylee realized, everyone was a spy and a liar, so it was important to keep close the liars you could trust and hope the knives they hid ended up in someone else’s back.