But if not an arrow, what? A stone from a sling? But I didn’t see a stone either. A predator? But a Valsprey was large, with a five-foot wingspan. To take one down, the predator would have to be far larger, something like a racaa. There had been none.
We both eased up a bit on our elbows, looking for someone to emerge from a hole dug in the plain, but no one emerged. We finally stood, back to back, both of us nocking arrows, synchronizing our turns as we searched and waited to see something. The only thing that greeted us was the quiet hush of a gentle breeze sweeping the plain.
We went to where the bird had fallen, a white twisted splotch on the crimson landscape. One of its broken wings angled skyward as if hoping for a second chance. There was no flopping or lingering last movements. The bird was dead, which was no surprise. But as we neared and got a closer look, something about it was wrong.
“What—” Jase said.
We both stared at it.
The bird was quite dead. But it was clear it had been dead for weeks.
Its eyes were sunken leathery holes, and its ribs poked through decayed paper-thin skin, its breast mostly featherless. We both looked around, thinking there had to be another bird somewhere else, but there was none. This was the bird we had seen fall from the sky.
A trick of the eyes?
Carried here by some baffling wind current?
We guessed at possibilities, but none made sense.
Jase nudged the dry carcass with his boot, flipping the bird over. A message case was attached to its leg. It was a trained Valsprey, after all. I bent down and pulled the case from its leg, then picked at the thread that sealed it shut. It came apart, and a small piece of parchment unfurled in my hands.
The words I read wrested the breath from my lungs.
“Who’s it from?” Jase asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Who is it for?”
I stared at the note, wondering how it was possible, but somewhere deep inside, I knew. Sometimes messages had a way of finding people. The ghosts, they call to you in unexpected moments. This wasn’t a message sent by a Valsprey. It was sent by a different kind of messenger. I held it tight, not wanting to give it to Jase.
“Kazi? What is it?”
No more secrets, we had promised.
I held the note out to him. “It’s for us,” I said.
Jase took it and read it carefully, several times, it seemed, because he just continued to stare at it. He shook his head, his lips paling. He blinked as if trying to clear his vision, trying to make the words reorder themselves into something that made sense.
Jase, Kazi, anyone,
Come! Please! Samuel is dead.
They’re banging the door.
I have to—
In an instant, his expression went from lost to angry. “It’s a hoax. Some kind of sick hoax.” He crumpled the paper in his fist and whipped around, scanning the landscape again for the perpetrator. “Come out!” he yelled. Only a haunting whine of wind answered back.
“Do you recognize the handwriting?” I asked. It was a desperate scrawl, written in haste. It didn’t seem like a hoax.
He looked at the message again. “I’m not sure. It might be Jalaine’s. We have Valsprey at the arena … The office door there is…” He paced, shaking his head. “I had Samuel working there while his hand healed. He—” Jase grimaced, and I could almost see his thoughts spinning out of control, while mine were leaden, plummeting to one conclusion—
“Samuel is not dead,” Jase growled as if he had read my mind. “Jalaine overreacts. She thought I was dead once when I fell out of a tree and the air was knocked out of me. She ran to tell my parents and caused a panic.” He scanned the landscape again, thinking out loud. “Maybe Aram wrote it, or maybe someone we don’t even know, someone trying to trick you, to convince you to release me. Maybe they didn’t get the message that I was coming home and think you’re still holding me? Or maybe—” He stopped midthought and his shoulders slumped. He leaned forward, resting his arms on Tigone’s back like it was the only thing holding him up. “Samuel is not dead,” he said again, but this time so quietly only a ghost could have heard him.
I looked past him to where the bird had been and saw Death hunched over, his back bowed, lifting a body from the valley floor. He looked over his shoulder at me, and then bird, body, Death, they were all gone.
* * *