Magonia(61)

Like me.
“I don’t want trouble,” Jik says. “I want justice. You’ve heard Caru screaming as long as I have.”
“Caru is a ghost,” Wedda says, her tone tense.
“We all know he is not,” Jik retorts. “The captain says he is, and we follow her orders and call him dead, but that bird lives in torment.”
Jik turns to me again.
“You can help the captain. Or you can help us. You’re stronger than she ever was—”
Wedda grabs her by the wing and hisses into her ear.
“Enough! Leave her. Leave now.”
Jik spins and goes.
When she is sure Jik is gone, Wedda looks at me. “Do not,” she says. “Whatever you’re considering, nestling. It won’t end well for you, nor will it end well for that bird. The captain’s canwr isn’t sane.”
“But it isn’t dead either,” I say. I’m completely dressed— prepared, for what reason I’m not totally willing to consider, to go out into the cold.
I march past her, and Wedda reaches out. She clenches my hair into her fingers.
“You can’t stop me, I—”
I realize she’s not trying to hurt me. She’s knotting my hair in a way that feels unfamiliar.
“What’s that you’re doing?” I ask. “It’s not the captain’s knot?”
“No. It is your own,” she says.
When I look in the mirror, my hair is twisted up into tight plaits, close to my skull, twirling and swooping nautilus shells.
“This belongs to you,” she says softly. “Just as your mind, and your will belong to you.”
I stare at my reflection, and Wedda behind me. I hear what she’s telling me. I start to give her my thanks, but she cuts me off before I can even begin.
“If anyone asks, you chose this yourself, nestling. I’m a steward, not a revolutionary.”
And so I go hunting a ghost.
I sidle my way down the ladder and into the galley, where I steal a piece of bread and a small piece of salted meat left from the pig.
I listen hard for the sound of Milekt’s tone. The cote up there has only bitter things to say.
Some of them are hatchlings, as yet untrained to sing with their Magonian hosts, and thus far unbonded to them. Milekt and Svilken are teaching them. The little birds resist. They strain against their chains. When Magonians die, the canwr that are bonded to them die as well, but not automatically. They’re killed. They can’t link with another Magonian. Once the bond is made, it’s permanent.
Oh god, like a wife burned with her husband’s body.
Restraint, trills Milekt. I hear him say it to the hatchlings, training them. He’s a drill sergeant. The same way he trains me. I hear Zal on deck, too, giving orders to the ship’s crew.
I wonder, at times, if she ever sleeps.
I hear a quiet whirring from Zal’s quarters. Knowing Zal’s above, I don’t even hesitate. No one would dare come in here without permission. No one but me.
I push on Zal’s door. Inside, a large bed with red-and-gold bedcovers, an ancient, worn-smooth wooden desk, and rolled-up maps on parchment. There are tons of maps. But they’re not what I’m here for.
In the corner is a screen, and behind it is a cage covered with a dark cloth. Inside it I can feel Caru moving, spinning, stretching his wings out.
I’ve never been in here before.
This is why.
This canwr is contraband. He should be dead.
Aza, the bird says. I jump at my name.
Kill me, he says, voice quieter than it was. He’s talking only to me, to himself.
No, I say. Feed, I tell him, in the Magonian I can manage.
Feed, Caru repeats. There’s a darkness in that voice, a rawness. I take off the cage cover, gently, quietly.
I meet his dark, shining eye. He’s a falcon.
Gleaming black on the top, each shining feather flecked with gold. His breast is creamy with dark markings all over it, and the undersides of his wings are fire red. Enormous. His body is as long as my arm.
I see him, and he’s what I’ve been searching for since I came aboard.
I’m not sure what you want, I say, no longer in Magonian, but in my own language. Eat, I say.
I put my hand through the bars. Caru shuffles forward. I don’t let myself recoil, even though I can feel the despair and longing that are driving him insane. Even though it all makes my heart hurt. He takes the bread from my fingers. He tears loose a bite of meat.

His sleek head turns to me, and he stares at my chest, making a low and dangerous noise, but Milekt’s not with me. The falcon rocks on his perch, his eyes wild and nervous.
I look around. The key is there, hanging on the wall (just in sight of the bird, what a torture). So I open the cage. I hold out my arm, bare, trusting him.
He steps onto my forearm. Talons touching. They dig into my flesh, but don’t break my skin. They feel as though they sink into me, fit me. I feel his weight.
Broken string, Caru sings, looking at me. Heart battered home burned. Bound, broken, knots undone. Ocean, island, talons, feathers, nests. Fall, fall from the stars.
Caru’s wings spread slowly, and then he beats them and starts to rise into the air, just enough to scare me. I step back.
He looks at my heart, like he wants to tear it out of my chest. But when he stares, I stare back. I watch his eyes widen, clear bright gold, and totally insane.
Aza, the falcon whirrs, quietly.
His voice is different now, less scared, less rageful.
Sing, he whirrs, the sharpness of his beak close enough to savage me. He ruffles up his feathers and shakes himself. His talons are as long as my fingers.
Sky, Caru says. Take me.