Warbirds | Rebecca Thorne
WARBIRDS
By
REBECCA THORNE
It was fucking freezing up north.
Cera should have expected that. According to her research, Dalet was an icy utopia, where coin fell like snowflakes, the native attire was heavy cloth lined with fur, and they replaced bison and potatoes with reindeer and… shavings of ice, probably.
(Admittedly, her research wasn’t entirely meticulous.)
(Okay, according to Tasi, her research was a “tragedy of errors,” where Cera “opened a reference book, read sixteen words, and promptly succumbed to narcoleptic boredom,” which resulted in the master librarian evicting them for “drooling on the pages.” It didn’t seem like such an offense to Cera, but Tasi had been mortified and furious.)
(She still was, considering her bitter silence.)
“It’s cold,” Cera yelled. As always when flying on Korvi, the wind whipped her words away, snarling them until they vanished into the open sky.
Still gripping Cera’s stomach, Tasi stayed silent.
For an onlooker, this might seem intimately close – but it was a position of necessity right now.
No one, not even Tasi, fucked with heights when riding a warbird, especially one without a saddle.
The safest place was the ground. The second-safest was clinging to the warbird rider for dear life.
Korvi was focused on their destination, and didn’t care for human trials regardless, even those of his chosen rider. He flew smoothly, tilting his body unpredictably to capture currents they couldn’t see or fathom. His scruffy black feathers looked iridescent in the high-up sunshine.
“You’re ignoring me,” Cera said.
Tasi stared at the clouds far below them and didn’t reply. “See, you’re proving my point.” Cera shifted, which made Tasi tighten her grip. At the subtle motion, Cera smirked. “Ah, you do love me.”
“I love not dying,” Tasi replied through gritted teeth.
Progress. Cera patted Tasi’s gloved hand. “You can’t still be upset about that librarian.”
“That was my favorite library,” Tasi hissed, almost inaudible over the howling wind.
“There are one hundred and sixty-seven libraries on the continent. I’m sure Dalet has at least seventeen. The duke may even have one inside his palace.” When Tasi didn’t respond, Cera attempted to cover her bases. “It seems a little silly that a librarian would label ‘falling asleep’ a crime.”
Wrong thing to say.
“By the Shining Eagle and every warbird in the skies,” Tasi said with a snarl. “Don’t talk to me until we land.”
Twenty-three minutes passed, which felt like decades considering Cera spent the entire time humming under her breath and watching the dark storm clouds below them.
It got colder. Her fur-lined gloves and a thick scarf were usually sufficient for riding Korvi, but this far north they felt comically thin.
She started shivering.
Tasi moved closer, offering body heat.
“Do you forgive—”
“No,” Tasi said flatly.
Welp.
Thirty-seven more minutes passed. Cera knew, because she kept staring at the timekeeping device mounted on her bag, watching the smooth pebbles slide through a mechanism that seemed both absurdly simple and ridiculously complex.
Cera had tried to decipher it multiple times; after she broke the third one, Tasi told her to leave it alone.
“These are expensive, Cera! It’s one clink for one minute,” she’d said, “and that’s all you need to know. ”
So, one clink for every minute Tasi was mad at her.
Cera finally muttered, “In my defense, the book was boring.”
Tasi huffed, but her response was overridden by Korvi’s deep squawk.
Korvi didn’t squawk for nothing.
Cera muttered, “Okay. Let’s do this,” and Tasi pressed her lips together, scanning the horizon. Sure enough, a single white mound was rising out of the dark clouds.
No, not a mound. A warbird.
An owl.
“Why does royalty always go for the birds of prey?” Cera grumbled.
“I can think of a few reasons,” Tasi drawled.
The massive snowy owl drew alongside Korvi.
Its rider was strapped to a heavy-duty saddle that appeared to be tufted with bear fur and lined with gold.
(Considering how heavy gold was, that was A Choice.) The Duke of Dalet – the only rider in the region, at least according to Cera’s admittedly bad research – wore heavy cloth, a fur cloak, and had shiny golden medals pinned on his left arm and shoulder.
A thick cowl draped over his head, with a flap covering his nose and mouth, likely for the cold.
He had to tug the flap down to lift some thing to his lips.
A sharp, almost musical whistle cut through the air.
Korvi physically cringed, his wingbeats faltering briefly. One of those, then. Cera narrowed her eyes as the snowy owl drew closer, staying in perfect alignment as they flew.
The duke called, “Greetings, Cera Windswift, Duchess of the Forest of Raliana, birthplace of the Shining Eagle and its children. Welcome to Dalet.”
Cera straightened on hearing her title. It sounded so unnecessarily fancy, coming from him. Tasi’s arms tightened around her stomach, a warning, but Cera was well in her element now.
“I assume you are our escort?” Her voice now was nothing short of regal.
“If you’ll allow it.” The duke pulled down the front part of his cowl again, just long enough to offer a dashing smile. Even from here, Cera could see that reports of his stunning appearance were not exaggerated.
Feeling warm, perceived, Cera offered a pretty smile in response. “Well, I’d certainly hate to stay up here all day. It’s freezing.”
The duke laughed – a charming sound. He signaled with two fingers, then lifted a small whistle from his neck and blew it again.
Once more, that sharp, musical sound echoed through the sky – and again, Korvi cringed.
Cera gritted her teeth.
The duke replaced the covering over his nose and mouth as the snowy owl seamlessly took the lead.
Korvi was a big warbird – ravens were big regardless – but this owl was bigger.
It moved with powerful grace, its feathers stunningly white apart from the occasional brown.
It swiveled its head to make sure its rider was in place, and that Korvi was following, before diving into the storm below them.
The duke and his bird disappeared into the clouds.
“Slow and steady, Korvi,” Cera murmured.
The raven cawed, but dutifully dipped after the owl.
If Cera had thought it was cold beforehand, it was absolutely miserable inside the storm.
At least high up, the sun was warm. Here, moisture clung to the clouds, soaking through Cera’s already pathetic gloves and freezing her fingers.
She shuddered again as darkness surrounded them, but Korvi could sense other warbirds and followed the duke’s owl effortlessly.
Tasi had fallen silent, as always.
Or maybe she was still mad.
Difficult to say.
It took several minutes to descend, and Cera popped her ears a few times as Korvi adjusted for the turbulence. The precipitation thinned and vanished as they slid below the cloud line, the storm a thick carpet above them while the icy landscape of Dalet unfolded below.
Cera distinctly remembered that book calling this region a ‘utopia’ – at least before she fell asleep and drooled over it. Now, she questioned how accurate that descriptor was, because this didn’t look like her version of utopia.
Dramatic, inhospitable mountains jutted from the landscape, and someone had thought it was a good idea to build a fucking city between them.
A single road emerged from a tunnel in one of the mountains, because there literally wasn’t a spot to build a road through any natural pass.
Dalet’s central valley was framed with dozens of greenhouses, and a thick forest edged the gleaming stone metropolis coated in snow that somehow looked as unwelcoming as the mountains.
“It’s pretty,” Cera remarked.
“Liar,” Tasi drawled.
The duke’s owl soared over the city’s streets, and citizens below stopped to point.
Cera barely saw them, because Korvi’s body language had shifted. It was subtle, so subtle that no one else would notice. But the raven had identified some thing on the horizon and didn’t want to approach it, based on the way his speed slowed, the way he began scoping avenues of escape.
And Cera couldn’t blame him.
“An aviary,” Cera said. “That’s a surprise.”
“Is it?” Tasi muttered.
No. Not anymore.
The duke’s palace had been built in the shadow of the massive cage, a stone monstrosity that jutted from one of the mountainsides.
Through tall stone pillars, Cera could see it was adorned with everything a snowy owl warbird could want – room to fly, huge stone perches, captured reindeer herds as prey.
It was still a cage.
“You won’t have to stay there, Korvi,” she reassured him. The raven cawed, casting her a knowing look. Cera understood, and smirked. “If they try, show them what an uninhibited warbird can accomplish.”
Korvi clacked his beak in approval.
The duke’s palace was almost as impressive as the aviary. It was built with that same white stone, each brick tower laid carefully and adorned with iron accents. The owl landed in a courtyard framed by three massive buildings and a stunning garden. Korvi followed, far less graceful.
Another whistle from the duke’s instrument, and his owl bent over to allow him easier disembarkation. As he dusted himself off on the ground, a few servants hustled over to remove the saddle. The snowy owl stared at them with wide, unblinking eyes, and they hesitated.
“Aciet,” the duke said in a language Cera didn’t recognize, and the owl reluctantly spread its wings to allow the servants access.
“She prefers me,” the duke said, removing his hooded cowl and unhooking his cloak. Another servant whisked those away, and he offered a hand to Cera.
Korvi bent forward and extended his wing, allowing her a slide, of sorts, to the ground. As Cera’s boots thumped on the stone, the duke raised an eyebrow, but stayed silent. He retracted his hand, standing amicably as Tasi followed with their bags.