Kestrel

In Zahreth, a letter is sacred. Every child who joins the Falconers swears the same oath on the first day: You do not read the letter you carry. You do not break the seal. What you keep hidden keeps you hidden. Kestrel swore it at eleven. She stood under the wind chimes of the Tel-Azra Eyrie. She broke the oath for the first time at twenty-three.

That year was 1233 AS. AS means After Stillness; it is how Devran counts its years. Her mother Sirel was on a post run across the northern ridges. Sirel was one of the fastest couriers in the guild. No one could catch her. But it was not a person that found her. A wolf found her. Its teeth were bone and its eyes were pale. Its shadow did not touch the ground. Kestrel followed the tracks for three days. At last, on a rock ledge, she found the spot where the tracks suddenly ended. The trail went nowhere. It was as if the wolf had flowed back into the air, into an hourglass.

The old Falconers told her the name of these creatures: runaways. The Caught are creatures trapped inside the Arena's loop. Some of them were somehow leaking out. No one knew how. The House of Count did not answer questions either. The House of Count is a group of neutral clerks who record the Arena's matches and oaths. That day Kestrel became a hunter. She built a light wooden crossbow. She cast her bolts with her own hands. Then she began to hunt the runaways. The bone-white ribs of the first runaway she killed are now the limbs of her crossbow.

The guild did not like it. Falconers carry; they do not hunt. A courier does not stray from the road. Kestrel did not stray from the road; she only changed it. Now she asks for the letters going to places where runaway tracks cross. She picks her post runs by the hunt. The elders see this but keep silent. The number of runaways grows every year. And no one else can stop them.

That was also the day she broke her oath. Her mother's satchel still held a sealed letter. It was from the House of Count to the Storm Council. Kestrel broke the seal. Inside was a single line: «The leaks are growing. Do not reveal the count.» Since then she reads letters. Not all of them, only the ones that name the Arena.

Kehri, her amber-feathered hawk, has sat on her left shoulder since that year. When Kestrel first entered the Arena, Kehri came with her. Falconers are never parted from their birds. In one Swing, a match in the Arena, a Menhir burned Kehri out of the sky. Menhirs are the stone towers that guard the lanes. When Kestrel woke at the fountain, the hawk was on her shoulder again. His feathers were whole and his eyes were bright. A champion who dies in the Arena is rewound to the fountain. The Arena had rewound Kehri too. The second time, he died in Ossara's pit. Again he came back.

But now Kehri does not know some of the whistles. Kestrel learned a three-note return whistle from her mother. When Kehri hears it, he tilts his head and waits. At night Kestrel watches him sleep and asks herself: When the Arena rewinds something, is what comes back the same thing? Or is a Skarn sitting in Kehri's place? Skarns are beings the Arena stamps out of memory. Perhaps this is a Skarn stamped from the memory of Kehri.

She earns her living by selling the carcasses of runaways. She does not tell the guild. Ravel, a beak-masked physician from Olumre, pays well for every carcass. He asks no questions. Kestrel asks him none either. Their deal is simple: no one asks where the carcasses come from. No one asks where they go either.

Kestrel also carried Azrieth's letter of exile. She was the first to read that her childhood friend had been exiled. She had opened that letter too. She never told Azrieth. She only showed her the shortest road to Gurhal.

On the night of the Skip, Kestrel lay in wait at the rim of Kadrun, where the Arena stands. The Skip is the moment the whole world stopped for a single heartbeat. In that moment, the only thing that moved was Kehri. The hawk took off and circled the Arena three times. The Sleeping Face is a giant stone face buried beneath the Arena. That night it opened its eyes. Kehri screamed toward those eyes. The scream was a flawless copy of her mother's three-note whistle. Kestrel had never taught him that whistle.