After they’d been rescued from the long-haulers and separated from each other, the Owl Mothers led Kylee to their settlement, a flat patch of the mountain that butted up against a sheer cliffside. There were a number of caves cut into the cliff face, each of which commanded a view down over the blood birch forest, across the lower peaks of the starlit mountain range, out across the foothills, and into the valley. Not much happening below would escape their notice, Kylee thought. The Owl Mothers seemed all-knowing, but really what they knew was how to command a good view. A life in the mountains had taught her that perspective was just as good as wisdom.
Their cave openings were hung with heavy rugs to keep out the elements and there was a large circle dug into the ground in the center of the settlement, its sides sloping up just like the largest battle pit back at the Broken Jess, but this one had steps carved into its sloping edge.
After a hearty but silent meal around a stone oven, the Mothers assembled on those steps and directed Kylee to stand with Üku in the center. To her left was a tall wooden pole with a small hook on top, perhaps some kind of a perch. She felt like she was in a battle pit, but she had no falcon and no blade. She’d never wanted either before, but she felt helpless and exposed in front of them, lit by a too-bright moon.
“Kylee’s come to us,” Üku announced to the gathered women, “with some reluctance.”
The Mothers laughed. Word traveled on the wind up here, and just as in the Six Villages, secrets were rare birds indeed, hardly seen and never kept long. “It is no accident, Kylee, that you are here. The wind that blew you to us has been buffeting you our way for a while.”
“You know me?” She was stunned. Knowing about a ghost eagle expedition was one thing—the Owl Mothers could easily have seen her, her brother, and Nyall coming—but knowing her, expecting her … that was a different story.
“You’ve spoken in the Hollow Tongue since you were a child, have you not?” Üku asked.
Kylee didn’t answer. Let them know what they know and nothing more.
“You’ve also resisted it for just as long, have you not?”
Again, she gave them nothing. She had a purpose here, and it wasn’t this. “My brother and I are on a trapping expedition,” she said. “With your blessing, we’d like to climb for the Nameless Gap.”
“To capture the ghost eagle?”
She nodded.
“And you think you’ll do it without our help?”
“We would appreciate your help,” Kylee said. She was careful to say we, careful to show it was not her quest but her brother’s and that he was essential to her. She would not accept any harm coming to him, wherever they’d taken him and Nyall. They would ascend together or not at all.
“And we will help you, Kylee.” Üku put a hand on her shoulder. “We found you in order to help you. But for us to help you, you must learn to speak. You mustn’t be afraid of the Hollow Tongue. You must master it, as birds of prey are masters of the hunt. They deal life and death as their appetites demand it, but unlike them, we choose. We—and only we—can choose when to create life and when to take it away. We can harm, and we can heal. We alone beneath this sky have the power to make those choices with reason and with care. Why should we fear it?”
Kylee crossed her arms. “Teach my brother. He’s the one who dreams of commanding raptors from the sky. He’s the one who wants to catch the ghost eagle.”
“He doesn’t have the words.”
“You can teach him.”
The Owl Mother swatted the air dismissively. “We can teach anyone the sounds. But making the sounds and speaking the language are not the same. Words have weight, wrought by history and memory. The weight of a word can only be held by the living of it. Your brother speaks many unspoken languages, and he will have to learn his own in time, but you carry the words for the Hollow Tongue, those that have not been entirely lost to time.”
“I don’t want them,” she said. The Hollow Tongue was poison. It had only led her to trouble all her life, and not just because her brother couldn’t speak it. She’d learned what believing life and death belonged to you could do, how thinking you could command the rulers of the sky curdled your heart like sour milk. “The Hollow Tongue is a dead language that should be left dead.”
“The Hollow Tongue is a living language,” Üku countered. “It is like a flame that must be tended. Each generation must preserve the language of their mothers, or it will be lost, and each generation must invent the language for themselves, or it will have no meaning. The language grows with all who speak it.”
“Let someone else learn.” Kylee looked around at the weather-worn women who’d taken her prisoner. “I can do enough damage with the language I speak already.”
The skin around Üku’s eyes crinkled with her smile. “Oh, we do teach others.”
She opened her palms and gestured for a girl Kylee’s age to come forward. She was dressed like an Altari merchant’s apprentice, her long blond hair pulled back into a braid and wearing thick leather leggings under a colorful blouse, but over that she wore a padded leather vest and had thick cloth wrapped from her knuckles to her elbow for a falcon to perch on or to soften a punch. By the power in her shoulders and thighs, Kylee wasn’t sure whether the former or the latter was more likely. She didn’t love the thought of either.
“This is Grazim,” the Owl Mother said. “She, like you, has some instinct for the Hollow Tongue and, like you, must learn to wield it. You will compete tonight.”
Üku whistled and threw a small piece of meat on the ground between Kylee and the other girl. A haggard red-tail, a small, wild, male hawk, flew up the slope from below and landed on the ground between Kylee and Grazim, snapping up the meat in its beak. It stood still equidistant from them both, and Üku backed away toward the edge of the circle.
Grazim widened her stance and wet her lips, eyes fixed on the hawk. The owls around the circle on their masters’ fists shifted from foot to foot but otherwise did not move. The hawk, sensing the moonlight predators all around it, sank into itself, flattened its feathers against its body, afraid.
Kylee’s first impression of this place had been correct. They were in a kind of battle pit, but there were no ropes, no knives, and only one bird. Grazim knew the rules already, but Kylee could only guess. Were they meant to command the bird to attack each other?
Üku waved and three Owl Mothers emerged from one of the carpet-covered caves above them. They hauled a limp figure, a man who could hardly keep himself standing. His hands were bound and he had a rough hood over his head. The women dragged him to the wooden post at the edge of the circle and hung him by the binding of his hands on the hook at the top. Then they tied his legs to the pole with a thick rope and swiped the hood from his head.
Kylee gasped. She’d known Petyr Otak her whole life. He and his brother were spies for one of the kyrgs. They claimed it was Bardu, but most people thought they were paid by a lesser member of the Forty. They’d never had the devious talent necessary to rise up in the ranks, not like Vyvian and her family. Either way, the Otaks had always been fairly harmless, but they had seen her at the pits when she’d called Shara from the sky in the Hollow Tongue.
“He followed you into the mountains,” Üku said. “He and his brother meant to rob you.”
“Where is Lyl?” Kylee asked.
“Dead.” Üku showed no emotion.
“Kylee…,” Petyr murmured, looking at her through bruised, swollen eyes. His nose was broken, his face bloodied. “Kylee…,” he repeated.
“There were traditions in the ancient sky cults from which we all come—your people and Grazim’s, and ours as well,” Üku said, beginning a lesson Kylee did not want to hear. “They involved sacrifice to the raptors. Human sacrifice. We honor those traditions. Grazim will command the attack; you, Kylee, will control the defense. You may not touch each other or the sacrifice directly but act only through the bird. It’s that simple.”
She stepped farther back, out of the circle. “You believe the Hollow Tongue is good for only destruction. Perhaps you’re right, perhaps not. Now is the time to find out.”
“Shyehnaah,” the other girl said, and the hawk launched itself at Petyr.