BOOK ONE: HATCHING
Though wind should blow,
We fly, we fly,
Though death shall loom,
We fly, we fly,
Though hunger grip,
We fly, we fly,
Though fate shall snare,
We fly, we fly.
- Songs of the Winged Ones
Elsewhere in the Winged Empire ...
“Launch on my mark!” Azur bellowed, his throat raw from what felt like hours of calling the battle. In truth, it had only been minutes. They’d been taken by surprise, their merchant ship coming around the southern point of the island only to be set upon by Rajadeer triremes. His heart leapt the moment he saw them and it was still stuck in his throat. “Launch!”
The arrows flew, but there were few trained archers on a merchant ship – even when there was spare money to hire protection – and most of the flight fell short into the water. Azur clenched his jaw and tried not to think of how few were left.
On the other side, their foes readied grapples for boarding. They wore the scarlet hoods and face coverings of Rajadeer – as if there was any doubt.
Azur looked up to the skua bird decorating his sails and made the sign of the bird across his chest. One tap to each shoulder and one to the forehead. A bee buzzed irritatingly around his head.
This was it.
They had minutes left.
Rajadeer boarding parties left no survivors.
“Prepare for melee!” He bellowed down the line as coshes and knives were pulled from belts.
No hope, then. Just the chance to fight until death. He bit his tongue and tasted blood.
He felt his lips forming the world of the old Invocation, “Fly us to the great beyond on the wings of the dawn. Shelter us under your wings.”
The enemy ship crashed into theirs, grappling hooks already in the air.
“Cut them loose,” he cried.
He reached for his axe but a gust of wind lifted him from his feet and sent him flying into the mast. He wrenched himself up from the deck as it careened from side to side. What in all the Storms and Seas was this?
In the chaos of his crewmates finding their feet, it was hard to see anything, but he rushed to the ship rail, eager eyes searching for any answer.
He clung to the rail as beside them, the Rajadeer trireme rose into the air, inch by inch. On its deck, the captain of the ship – noticable by the gold band in the red cloth wrapped around the lower half of his face – met Azur’s eyes in shock.
For a moment they were one, both terrified and confused.
Azur looked up, and up, past the ship and the mast to the great purplish-white spirit bird holding the ship – a bird both there and not there – mostly invisible in the bright of the noon sun but with flames of white picking it out against the azure sky.
The trireme was completely out of the water, the barnacle-encrusted hull held fast by translucent purple-white talons larger than Azur was. Water poured in streams from the hull, casting up a spray of brine.
Azur’s mouth fell open as the great wings flapped – once – and his merchant ship spun in the grasping green waves, shoved into their embrace by the force of the wind.
By the time they’d righted themselves – their ship bobbing back to the surface – the purplish-white osprey had flown so far away that the little ship in its grip was the size of the one neatly constructed within a bottle back at the Winged Empire Shipping Administration.
They were going to live another day. Relief made him feel light on his feet as he spun to see a Winged Empire tern sailing across the waves to lend them aid. White sails billowed as they harnessed the wind and the masthead bore a majestically carved tern with a beak sharp enough to split the hull of an unlucky merchantman. It had been lacquered white and polished to gleaming so that the light reflecting off it hurt Azur’s eyes.
And standing on the hull – arms outstretched, hair and clothing rippling in the wind – rode an Imperial Wing, his eyes far away as he directed his bright spirit bird.
Behind him, a smaller man stood majestically, the white swans of the Imperial House decorating his blue coat and a golden band around his brow. Le Majest. The crown prince of the Winged Empire was here at the edges of the Empire instead of dancing in the halls of Paradise City like he should be. It was like a strange dream.
Azur blinked twice and then tore his eyes away from one wonder to watch the other. He looked back at the osprey just in time to see it snap the Rajadeer ship in half, dropping the wreckage and the tumbling red-veiled raiders into the sea. The bee shot out from its orbit around Azur’s head toward the wreckage.
No one challenged the Winged Empire. Not if they had any sense.
Chapter One
I slashed out with my sword, hacking at the tendril of Forbidding that whipped out at me from the tangled green tree. Yesterday, this oak had been healthy and thick with vibrant leaves the size of my palm. Today, it smelled of rot and something that looked like a snake slid under the bark and seemed to bulge out from its trunk as it clawed toward me.
One of the branches unfurled, waving in the air toward me. I severed the snatching branch with one blow, pivoting on my left foot and whirling into a crouch to hack a second branch right before it caught the back of Alect’s cloak.
“You’ll have to be faster than that,” I warned my younger brother as I slid my foot back from where a root arched out of the ground, hungrily pawing at my foot.
We were getting close to the heart. One more good blow and we’d be able to plant a flame within the tree. Something buzzed in my ear and I swatted at a fluffy bee.
“I only have to be faster than you,” Alect teased, striking with his axe and hacking an opening into the oak about the size of my palm. I shook my head in resignation. Whoever didn’t open the heart had to set the fire. That was our rule for fighting Forbidding-taken trees.
“I’ve got your back,” he said solidly, for all the world like a grown man instead of a gangly fourteen-year-old.
Fighting the Forbidding, like many things in life, had a lot to do with trust.
You had to trust your fighting partner. You had to trust your sword. And you had to trust your own good judgment and intuition. Mine was telling me that something was off today. Something was about to go wrong. I sure hoped it wasn’t this Forbidding fight.
I clenched my jaw, sheathed my sword, and dove under the darting strands of Forbidding that sliced out from the tree. I shoved a tiny nest of dry grass into the heart of the tree and eased my flint out of my belt pouch. That was one thing I couldn’t afford to drop at a time like this. I was striking it with my belt knife before most people could have arranged the grass. But we learned to light fires quickly on the frontier edge of the Winged Empire.
You learned or you died.
I struck again, shifting my angle.
Success.
A spark took in the clump of grass and I blew gently on it, refusing to look over my shoulder and let anxiety distract me. The spark flared into flame.
Behind me, I heard a grunt and barely turned in time to deflect the root rising up and shooting toward me.
I rolled across the grass and came up clutching the root as it snaked toward my throat. It was too slippery. It was too strong.
It slid around my neck and I gasped, dropping my knife in my desperate attempt to open a space to breathe.