891 ASF

One breath. This was all I possessed before the dusty man from the crossroads captured me. I used this to scramble up and boot the cauldron with my foot. It stung. It burned. But it did what I wanted: send sparks flying and embers rolling everywhere. Small flames caught on dry grass and leaves and began to spread.

This didn’t stop the dusty man from cracking his fist against my jaw, and I crumpled like a wet scroll. The next thing I knew, I was tied against a tree with Arlisse. Both our mouths had been gagged. The men, I saw, were trying to put out the flames. It had now spread everywhere, from the herb-drying rack to the chest of tools, smoke trailing into the sky. When the flames licked up the river hut, the men abandoned any attempt of control and turned towards us.

The dusty man was one step from me when an arrow skewered him in the chest.

More arrows whistled out the trees, striking the men in the knee and gut and throat. Then a group of people came charging onto the scene. The townsfolk, I recognized, the baker and the blacksmith and the weaver and many more, drawn by the plumes of smoke curling into the sky. I flinched as they cut down the men with a maddened and primal savagery only mobs can possess.

They unbound us, brought us away from the burning river hut. Arlisse didn’t even watch her home go up in flames. She put my face in her hands and held me tight, asking if I was alright. I tried to apologize, but she shushed me, praising me instead for my quick thinking. Her nest was of the riverlands. She would rebuild it.

The only thing in question is whether or not I would help her. And to decide that, she said, I needed to hear how a story ended. We went to town with the baker, who opened his home to us without question. When we had recovered and settled in, she finished her tale of the Riverbird Traitor.

We rejoined Sarsha as she scrambled across the Rivonan wilds, fleeing from the assassin that had murdered the old crone.

Sarsha dared not return to her village, or anywhere another innocent could be hurt. She soldiered on through the wilds, using all she’d learned to find her way. Spaces between willows and nettles. Dry ground across hazy mires. Hidden shallows in the rivers. Normally this pathfinding meant she travelled far swifter than most—but not the assassin. They kept up. How? And how had they surprised her and the old crone?

Sarsha soon guessed the truth. There was knowledge in the assassin’s path, an experienced ease in their movements across the land. Then Sarsha spotted the face of a woman beneath the assassin’s cloak, and she knew. And when she was certain, she crossed a river and dislodged the natural bridge of sticks and trunks behind her, so that the assassin could not follow. Then, turning to gaze at the opposite riverbank, she called out to her hunter.

“Stop! We are flock!”

The assassin laughed, a cold and shrill sound. Maybe once, she said, but not now, so it was better to come willingly. Why cling to the rivers and ravens, anyway? They did not protect riverbirds from slander, from suspicion, from the pointing finger. Nor did the realm, which benefitted most but offered no thanks in return. The assassin grinned. Love it or hate it, but life was simply better within the circle of the King.

The circle of the King, Sarsha declared, was a prison. She turned from the river and fled into the wilds, this time with a clear destination in mind. Over the eastern border of Rivona, into the forests of Faela. She did not know that land, but she would take her chances in losing the assassin amongst the thorny woods.

She never arrived. The assassin cornered her on a cliff in the dead of night. Sarsha had nowhere to go but down—down into the river, into its moonless waters, coiling like a black snake far below. She might’ve jumped anyway, but the assassin shot her in the leg with an arrow. As the former riverbird closed in, Sarsha struck a torch. Then, with a desperate cry, she pulled out her family necklace and held both it and flame to the night sky. Its silver and gems glinted like a beacon in the darkness.

What came next did not announce its presence. In the trees nearby, a patch of gloom became something more. A great, flying shadow, springing forth from the branches and flaring its wings wide, blending with the abyss above. It soared so fast Sarsha could not discern its features. Only that it circled and dove right at her.

She flung herself to the ground as the beast swooped by overhead. The assassin, however, was not so fortunate. The creature caught her in its enormous talons, and the riverlands echoed with her horrendous, gurgling scream. When Sarsha looked up, the assassin had been tossed aside, ripped to bleeding ribbons.

It was the unmistakable work of a corvil: the great blackbirds of legend, elusive and secretive; dark creatures of terrible intelligence and fury. The corvil was gone now, vanished into the night. And so was Sarsha’s silver family necklace, somehow plucked from her grip in the chaos.

After removing the arrow and treating the wound, Sarsha came down the cliff and crossed the river at a shallow point. She was one step from the opposite bank—one step across the border and into Faela—when she stopped. She hesitated. She thought awhile. Then she turned around, and went home.

A home she had chosen. Not one she had fled to. A home that had saved her in her most dire moment. A home that needed her protection and care just as well, even if it thankless, dirty, and could risk her very life. A home where the King would know her as the Riverbird Traitor. A home that needed her as much as she needed it.

This, Arlisse explained, was the way of the riverbird. She knew my answer—we both did—even before the end of the story. I could have done the work, but I couldn’t live the life. The brutality of Boulderbridge—how those townsfolk butchered those men—scared the hundred hells out of me, and still does. But most importantly of all, the riverlands were not my home. Nor could I give it the sacred duty and bond it deserved.

But this didn’t have to be the end. I’d learned at least that much as a hatchling. There was not a way forward for me in the riverlands, true. But there was a way out of it and this mess I’d created of my life.

And I would find it.