I couldn’t help it. I found my questions spilling out at the sight of them.
“What do they care if we have weapons? They’ll probably never see us again.”
“People see other people’s freedom as a threat to them,” the old man said in a low voice. Today, his white curls were tucked carefully under his leather head strap. He looked as tidy and precise as I’d ever seen him with his shrike-feather belt strapped around his thick long-coat. “They think that if you have something – even if that’s just air to breathe – that you owe it to them. That they have the right to take it from you and if you resist, they have the right to crush you. People will put more work into taking the results of your work from you than they will into working for that same thing themselves. It’s human nature. That’s why we stick together as a family. That’s why we watch out for our own. We can help each other be a little more free and a little more able if we all work together.”
He ruffled my hair and I smiled.
One more Hatching. One more feast. Then we’d go home and find a way to keep our homestead and our family safe.
“What if someone Hatches today?” Alect asked, looking nervous.
“No one will Hatch,” my father said grimly. “Poor Amalia was the only one to ever have that honor in Far Reach. And before we came here, I only saw one other person Hatch in all my life on the main continent. It’s rarer than you might think. You have to be born with the magic in you.”
“Like you get it from your parents?” Alect asked. “Neither you nor mother had it.”
“They say it’s a gift from above.” The old man sounded like he didn’t believe what he was saying. “I say it’s a mystery.”
By the time we stepped past the first thatched roofs of Far Reach I was deep in thought about Amalia. What had her life been like since she Hatched? Did she serve in the Winged Court? Or on a ship? Or at an outpost somewhere?
I’d never really thought about what Imperial Wings did. They just were. Like Le Majest.
If one of us were a Wing, would we be able to stop what was happening all across the Far Stones? That Imperial Wing who had accompanied the crown prince could have stopped him last night. Those Claws wouldn’t have been able to stand up to that massive bird. Of course, he’d been with them, helping with their dirty work.
He was just as to blame for taking our defenses from us as Juste Montpetit was.
But that wasn’t the kind of Wing I would be if I Hatched. Not at all. I would find a way to defend my home and family. I would find a way to stop the injustices of the world. I’d use my power for good.
Was that possible?
I felt a flutter in my belly at the thought, but I pushed it down.
Today was not the day for nerves. Not with so much at risk. Besides, it wasn’t going to happen.
We entered town with grave faces and watchful eyes.
Children too young to be tested to see if magic could Hatch in them waved down from the roofs as the scent of cinnamon rolls and candied nuts wafted up in the air. The streets were filled with adults, waiting as the young people of our town assembled on the green. You only needed to be tested once after you turned twelve. If you didn’t Hatch a manifestation then, you wouldn’t Hatch one at all.
But Wings didn’t come to Far Reach very often, so people from twelve to nineteen would be tested this year.
Alect, Raquella and I were the only ones in my family who hadn’t been put in the ring for the Hatching yet. I reached out to squeeze Raquella’s hand with my uninjured one as she shot me a worried gaze.
It wasn’t fair that the Winged Empire could make my sister feel like that. There had to be some path for us other than just going along with what they wanted all the time. Almost, I wished I could Hatch. Almost, I wished I had the power to save them all.
Frustration bubbled in me, like a pot at a slow boil. And I didn’t know how to calm the pot or end the boil. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.
My father was distracted as we forced our way through the crowd, and I followed his gaze to see him exchanging worried looks with other men we knew. Old Aylmer looked like he was going to have a stroke with the vein in his neck throbbing like that. His hands never left the finch design on his belt buckle. He’d even tied a feather to the leather thong wrapped around his forehead. He waved urgently to my father but my father gave a tight shake of his head and made the sign of the bird respectfully, his clawed finger touching first one shoulder and then the other before tapping his forehead right where the leather band wrapped around it.
I saw men from nearby homesteads catching his eyes with tight expressions and angry shakes or nods of heads. He gave them all the same sign of respect.
He was waiting.
We were all waiting.
Bunting was hung from house to house over the street and the smell of roasting chickens made my mouth water, but under all the preparations for the feast was a feeling of tension, of worry. Like a bunched fist at your side. I felt my own fists forming and I flinched at the pain in my injured one. It would be fine. Tonight, I would bathe it in herb water and rewrap it.
When it healed, the scar would remind me not to trust the Winged Empire or the spoiled princes who made edicts for other people while hiding behind the protection of their Claws and Wings.
We pushed through the crowds of people, dodging laughing children, and avoiding knots of red-faced, tight-jawed men and women to find the village green. I stopped, frozen in place when we reached it.
The green was completely ringed by Swan Claws. There must have been two hundred of them or more. They wore their blue embroidered jackets and carried marked swords at their sides. Their chests swelled out, a look of smugness in their eyes that made my skin crawl.
Across the village green, Juste Montpetit stood – wearing a blue coat today with slashes of gold across the breast and heavy white embroidery depicting a pair of stylized swans across the shoulders of his coat, their wings meeting across his back and their tails dipping down his coat sleeves. His dark hair had been teased to curl and then waxed in place and a gold silk scarf was tied around his neck, under the high collar of his jacket. His glittering blue eyes found mine across the village green. I looked away hurriedly.
His smugness set my teeth on edge.
I watched as the villagers of Far Reach tried to press away from him and the Swan Claws as if Imperialness was an infection you could catch. As if he hadn’t already done enough damage to our home and future.
Beside him, in a tight knot, were four Wings.
Four of them in one place.
I barely looked at them – only enough to notice their uniforms which were tight dark breeches, short colorful coats cut in sharp lines with emblems embroidered across the breast, feather-trimmed cloaks, and long leather bracers.
My attention was on the other-worldly birds they were manifesting. They were the reason we honored birds in the Empire – even here at the very farthest reaches of it. They were the reason for our house associations, for the talismans, for the sign of the bird. We were all born of the sky and would return to the sky one day. From the sky, we received the warmth of the sun and the blessing of rain. From the sky, came the stars to navigate and the moon to light the darkness.
As much as I despised the Empire, I felt drawn to those heavenly spirit birds and the mysteries they represented.
The tales we heard of them were unbelievable. Birds that ended wars with a single burst of their wings. Birds that flew all the way across the Great Emerald Sea. Birds that sang a song so sweet that people froze in place like statues, listening forever to the song until their bodies wasted away. Birds that plucked your sanity right from your mind and never returned it. Birds that imitated your words so that your nearest friend couldn’t tell the difference. So many stories. Could any of them be true?