Tears of gratitude meant as much to Anon as cries of pain. Less, even.
The tears of his victims he could understand, but those who wept, grateful for their liberation from the sky cultists of Uztar, simply baffled him. Why should they weep to him in gratitude when they should have been apologizing? They could have taken steps toward their own liberation at any time, but only now, in tears amidst the flaming ruins of their camps, did they make a show of their long-buried hopes.
In short, Anon hated those who had refused to help themselves more than he hated the enemies he slaughtered. As the Kartami kite warriors stormed across the desert and the grasslands, wiping out any trace of Uztar on their way to the foothills and the heart of false civilization, he found himself reluctantly in control of an ever-growing population. He had no desire to rule; his service was to the dust itself, a return to the mountains and a clearing of the sky. He hadn’t the time or the desire to devise taxation plans or to enforce water and grazing rights, to settle disputes or regulate the provision of festivals.
To solve the latter problem, he made it clear that true believers would have no festivals of any sort, not until the last stone was toppled from the Sky Castle’s tower and the blasphemers had been wiped from dirt and air alike.
Then, and only then, would there be a festival for the ages.
It was a convincing proclamation, although he really couldn’t have cared less if some run-down goat herder wanted to fête his son’s wedding to another run-down goat herder. Why should he involve himself in the people’s marriages? Neither his faith nor his power demanded it, but such was the way of the world. The daily desires of the foolish flock would always weigh on a triumphant conqueror. This was an inescapable symptom of success. The grander the salvation you offered, the pettier the salvation people sought from you.
He finally appointed regents to stay behind and rule any territory under Kartami control as they saw fit. His regent pairs objected—they wanted to continue on with him to lay siege to the heart of Uztari power—but he urged them to be patient. Their true enemies would not fall as easily as a bunch of hunting parties and scattered grassland settlements.
Uztar had armies of falconers prepared to fight back against the rolling kites; they had spies who’d reported on Kartami vulnerabilities; and, most ominously, they had their own hunting parties in the mountains, pursuing the ghost eagle. If they captured it, manned it, and cast it against Anon’s forces, it could put an end to them.
He had to move with intelligence now. He did not mean to aim straight for the seat of their empire with his first thrust of attack. Instead of its showy crown, he had his eyes fixed firmly on what he considered the vulnerable roots of Uztar: the Six Villages.
That was the center of their cult, and any chance they had at manning a ghost eagle would come from there. Their best trappers and trainers were born and raised there, and if they were wiped out, not only would the end of that cursed place be a blessing, but it would expose the fragility of Uztari tradition. Without the Six Villages, the people would begin to forget their old ways, and in time, those who lived would become obedient and faithful servants.
“Cut out the roots, and the branches die,” Anon told his chiefs when they gathered that night beneath the shelter of all their kites. “The Council of Forty have had their eyes fixed on the sky so long, they’ve forgotten how life grows from the soil. That forgetting will be their death.”
“But what if they capture the ghost eagle?” Visek asked, unafraid to show his fears.
Anon had his own doubts about his plan’s success. It had long odds to begin with, and the complexity of the task was compounded by the fact that his twin trappers were terribly young and completely ignorant of whom they served.
The twins had, on the other hand, the same advantage the Kartami forces had in battle, the advantage of fighting in pairs: The young falconers had gone into the mountains for love. Love, Anon knew, made the impossible possible, made the unimaginable into reality, and could drive even the gentlest soul to the heights of brutality. Love was a merciless master, and none who’d heard its song could resist it.
“As the Uztari like to say, two feet hold a branch more firmly than one,” Anon told Visek.
“But will Goryn Tamir do his part?” Visek asked. “What’s to stop him from keeping the ghost eagle himself?”
Anon patted the boy’s cheek. The first whisper of a beard was beginning to grow, but his youth belied his ferocity. Anon had seen him fight harder than a dozen older men and women. “A ghost eagle will not be kept … by anyone. Not by Goryn Tamir, and not by me, either.”
“You won’t keep it if you get it?” Visek frowned.
“I have other plans for it.”
From the corner of his eye, Anon saw Aylex the hawk master feeding his bird from the fist, but the look on his face was one of listening. He’d been their captive too long, grown too comfortable. When they first took him, he would not have dared feed the falcon in front of Anon. And now he dared to eavesdrop?
Perhaps he’d outlived his usefulness.
“If the brother and sister fail, or if Goryn Tamir tries to withhold the prize, he will not be spared when the Six Villages inevitably fall. He knows this.”
“You intend to spare him if he complies?” Launa asked, full of contempt. “One who profits off birds battling each other for sport?”
“I promised that he alone would rule the Six Villages, and I will keep my promise.” Anon smiled at the thought. Goryn Tamir imagined himself a rising eagle, but Anon would make a vulture of him, a carrion bird picking at the dead. All that would remain of the Six Villages when Anon was through was feather and ash. Let Goryn Tamir rule his wasteland. He assumed the world would be as it always was, the cast of men and women in power changing, but the laws of ruler and ruled remaining.
The comfortable imagined themselves comfortable forever. Only the exiled could truly conceive a different world from their own, and only the merciless could create one.
“Aylex,” Anon said quietly. “What do you think of Goryn Tamir?”
The hawk master responded to his own name, although he should not have been able to hear it. He realized his mistake instantly, and his complexion went ashen.
“Sorry, ser, were you addressing me?” He played like he hadn’t heard anything, but Anon beckoned him over. The hawk master hooded his falcon and shuffled to Anon, head bowed.
“You call your bird Titi, yes?” Anon asked. The hawk master hesitated. Anon cocked his head, waited. At last, Aylex nodded, wise enough to remember Anon’s command that he never speak the name again. “Do you think it enjoys being your pet?”
“Ser.” Aylex bowed his head deeper. “She is not my pet but a partner with different abilities than mine. She is free to fly away at any time.”
“Unlike you.”
“Yes, unlike me.”
“But it returns to you, even in your current captivity,” Anon observed. “Why do you think that is?”
Aylex didn’t answer. He had been beaten before for speaking of the falconer’s art as anything other than a disgusting perversion of nature, and he’d learned the lesson well, his lips as sealed as if they’d been sewn shut.
“You may answer,” Anon said.
“She returns because she—I mean, it—is accustomed to returning,” he said, as neutral a statement as he could make.
“It has a habit, you might say?”
Aylex nodded.
“But you love this bird. Don’t deny it. I have seen it in your eyes. You love it, but it cannot feel the same about you.”
Aylex nodded again.
Anon pulled a knife from his belt and presented it, hilt first, to the hawk master. Visek and Launa watched, their faces as blank as the bird’s hood.
“Take it,” Anon ordered, and Aylex obeyed. “You love your hawk, and it does not love you. So you must make a choice that spurned lovers often make: Your life, or hers?”
Aylex was puzzled.
Anon rubbed his chin. “Your time with us is over. You have served well, and so I will free one of you. Slit your bird’s throat and hold it until it expires, and you may go. Or slit your own, and it will have no one to whom it has a habit of returning. It will fly free, wild again. Your choice.”
Aylex’s eyes widened. He looked at the blade, at the bird, and back at Anon. His hand shook.
“Choose.”
He raised the blade, turned it in the moonlight. Edged it toward his hooded falcon’s neck. Then he lunged for Anon.
The hawk master was not a warrior, and Anon dodged easily, spun the blade, and sliced across the side of Aylex’s neck, severing the pulsing artery and dropping the falconer to the dirt.
His bird felt the fall and flapped free of the fist but, still hooded and tethered, was helpless and slow. Anon caught it by the foot and pulled it down in front of its gasping master.
“That was not one of your options,” said Anon. “Now you both are forfeit.”
As the falconer’s blood pooled at his feet, Anon snapped the lovely falcon’s neck, removed its hood, and tossed its body onto the falconer’s chest.
“You’ll be past pain soon,” Anon told him. “And this falcon is past disgrace. Rejoice that you will not see the fall of Uztar. You could have suffered far worse than this.”
Aylex’s mouth moved, his voice a whisper. Anon had to kneel down to hear his final words. “You will fail,” he choked out. “You slaughter … travelers and herders … but … the armies of Uztar … will crush you…”
Anon smiled at him, patted his head. “Believe what you must,” he said.
As the falconer died with his dead bird on his chest, Anon rose again. He looked across the grasslands to the foothills of the mountains and the dark purple peaks beyond. He marveled at the wonder of the new world he was making, how so much of it turned on a few young people, the love they felt for one another, and the power they had without knowing why.
He closed his eyes and wished them success, even a measure of happiness, before he pulled the sky down around them.