It was considered bad form to kill your opponent when you had the option of cutting the line, but it wasn’t against the rules. It wasn’t murder if it happened in the pit. The rules did, however, say you had to offer a chance to yield three times.
“Do you yield?” the long-hauler hissed into Brysen’s ear, so loud that everyone could hear.
Brysen struggled to break free.
“Yield, little bird, or I’ll give you your first shave with this blade.”
Brysen struggled. His eyes scanned for Shara in the sky.
Five melting seasons ago, their eleventh, he’d rescued Shara from the battle pits after she’d lost their father a full moon’s fortune. She was wounded, and Brysen hand-fed her for weeks, snuggling her to his chest at night to keep her warm and training her in the few hours he could snatch in the meadow whenever their father was away.
“Shara’s got potential,” he always said. “She’ll show she’s a great hawk when she’s given the chance.”
The hawk had yet to show greatness, but Brysen still had the scars from protecting her from their father’s rage.
“Hawks aren’t your pets!” their father had grunted as he whipped Brysen with a dog-leather leash the night Brysen brought Shara back home. He’d cradled her under himself to protect her. Crack! The leather had struck his skin. Crack! “I’ll teach you what loving one will cost you!”
Crack! Crack!
Later, Kylee had helped Brysen scrub his own blood from the floor, but he cleaned it from the bird’s feathers himself one by one in a cold bucket. The bird had let him do it and never made so much as a chirp. They’d been a pair ever since.
Brysen returned to the battle pits with Shara, match after match, chasing a victory so high and wild, it would blow away the past. He hadn’t found one yet, and he lost far more matches than he won. There was no convincing him that only a fool chased the approval of a dead man.
“Yield!” Kylee shouted. She looked for his friends, the ragtag gang of battle boys, and saw Dymian. He was maybe the only person whose advice Brysen would heed. Maybe. “Dymian, tell him to yield!”
Dymian locked eyes with Kylee, frowned, and opened his palms up to the sky. He couldn’t make Brysen yield any more than she could. Her stupid brother would rather die than fail. He slammed his lips shut and clenched his jaw.
The long-hauler grinned. “Last chance, little chick. Do you yield?”
Their hawks screeched above. Shara had bitten the other bird’s wing and forced them apart. The creak of the clasps straining against the leather gloves sounded like a body being stretched on a torturer’s slab.
Kylee’s heart screamed for her brother. In his face, she saw their father’s brutal stubbornness. She hated to see it in Brysen, hated the part of her brother that hated himself so much.
As her heart screamed, she felt it reach out to him, like an invisible tether that looped between her chest and his, an endless figure eight. Her pulse quickened, and a strange wind rushed through her, like the sky bursting from her lungs. She felt she would explode if she didn’t exhale. It hurt to hold it in.
In her mind, she saw her father towering over Brysen, his thin back a loose nest of bright red lines cut by the whip. She saw herself cowering with her mother, no one coming to save Brysen, no one offering to protect him. She’d felt that burning breath then, too, but had fought it back, had been afraid to let it out. Had sworn she would never let it out. Even now, she was still afraid of it. But she could not hold it in.
“Shyehnaah,” she exhaled, and the strange word burned her mouth as she spoke it.
Shara shrieked.
The goshawk broke from the battle above and dove, furious, at the Orphan Maker’s face. She hit him with enough force to break his nose. Kylee felt the impact in her own bones. He yelled and lost his grip on Brysen, who wasted no time spinning away and diving for his knife. Shara dug a talon into the long-hauler’s cheek and the other into his scalp.
“Argh!” the man screamed as the blood from his forehead blinded him. Brysen used the moment to lunge forward, blade up. Shara took off from the man’s face as Brysen sliced the big man’s leather leash clean through.
Above, the Orphan Master’s kestrel flew free, flapping away toward the horizon.
“Match!” the battle boys around the pit called out. “That’s the match! Brysen wins!”
Brysen looked up at the cheering throng, breathless and grinning. Shara swooped down to land on his extended fist and he gave her a morsel from his vest pocket, praising her, although it was the meat she liked, not the praise.
He met Kylee’s eyes and winked, as if she’d had nothing to worry about, as if he’d been in control during the whole match, when, of course, it’d been her who’d saved him. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he chose not to know. It had been such a long time, maybe he’d forgotten.
Next to Kylee, Vyvian stood, not watching Brysen celebrate but watching her.
“What?” Kylee asked, her cheeks feeling hot. “What are you looking at?”
Vyvian cocked her head. “Nothing,” she said, curiosity tugging the corners of her mouth. “Wild fight. Surprising end.”
“Yeah,” Kylee told her. “Good thing Shara’s so loyal to my brother.”
“Good thing,” Vyvian replied, the weight of what neither of them was saying perched between them. Kylee looked back at her brother.
He’d turned to find Dymian, and his face had sunk. She followed her brother’s gaze to the trainer. He wasn’t cheering like the rest of the battle boys, and he wasn’t running into the pit to embrace Brysen—which was what Brysen really wanted. Instead, Dymian had sidled up to Nyck, counting out bronze to pay for his … loss?
Of all the grub-sucking finch-faced mud-eaters! He’d bet against her brother. He’d bet Brysen would lose.
And Brysen saw. Brysen knew. All the joy of the victory drained away from her brother’s body, and his shoulders slumped. Even the gray of his hair seemed to grow more ashen. Leave it to Brysen to win a miraculous match and break his own heart at the same time.
Her brother was so fixated on Dymian in the crowd, and Kylee was so fixated on him, and Vyvian so fixated on her that none of them saw the bloodied Orphan Maker step behind Brysen until it was too late.
In the long-hauler’s shadow, Brysen turned just in time to get a fist in the face that knocked him straight back into the dirt. Shara launched herself as he fell, but the long-hauler slapped the bird down midflap, knocking her back into Brysen. Then he grabbed up his knife and cut the slack battle line attaching Brysen to Shara. He squinted through his blood-streaked eyes.
“I’m gonna slice the skin off your skull, boy!” he roared as he came at Brysen, knife up. Shara, startled, used Brysen’s chest to launch herself away, untethered.
“Shara!” Brysen groaned.
“Stop!” Nyck shouted, his voice breaking. “The match is called!”
But the long-hauler didn’t heed that rule. Wounded and enraged, he kicked Brysen in the side and slashed at him.
Then the battle boys rushed the pit.