And in that belief, the cause had been born. From that statement all else had followed. Agents moving among the towns, increasing the fisheries against the day when fliers would need fish to eat. Superiors of Towers sending worker crews to build more jetties. Rivermen holding themselves ready for the day when every worker pit would be emptied in the deep of the night. Even now agents moved across Northshore seeking patches of Tears to spray with fungicide, reducing the number of locations where they were found. When the day came, there would be no human bodies available, at least none treated with Tears. And when the morning of the revolution came, fliers would eat fish or die.
His arms tightened around his burden once more. The fliers would eat fish or die. And the humans in the Chancery? Those in the Towers? Well, they would eat fish or whatever else they liked, but in a little time they would die as well. When the cause struck, there would be no more elixir to keep their superannuated bodies alive. On some days, Tharius actually looked forward to that time. It was not so much that he tired of life as that he tired of the lives of others. His mouth quirked, thinking of this. Oh, to see the end of Gendra Mitiar!
“Why are you smiling?” asked the lady Kesseret, amused at his expression despite herself.
“Because what we are doing is right,” he said. “Because it is right.”
The flame-bird left its nest to swing out across the courtyard, the vivid circle of its flight seeming to linger on the air. Then it returned to the ledge and began to dance, wings out, legs lifted alternately as it hopped to and fro on the narrow stone, bowing, stretching, stopping occasionally to shift the little stones, sharp-edged with red in the ruddy evening light, as though bloodstained.
“Do you think it will light the nest soon?” She could ask this without crying, distracting herself.
“Probably.”
“I always feel so sorry for them.”
“Shh. Kessie. Don’t waste your time feeling sorry for them. If you must feel sorry, feel sorry for yourself, or for me, come to that.”
The flame-bird danced gravely to a music and song it alone could hear, forward on one leg, then back, on the other leg forward, then back, bowing with wings wide, pointing its beak upward as though invoking some far-off presence. In the adjoining room, Martien seemed to sense the rhythm of its lonely ballet, for the music began to accompany the performance.
“I wonder what the bird thinks.”
“I’m afraid we’ll never know.”
Whirling rapidly, the feathered dancer picked up a stone and held it firmly in its beak to strike it against the ledge with a tiny battering sound. Sparks flew, dwindled, died. It struck again, and again.
“Oh, Tharius. Can’t you stop it?”
“I could. But then the young ones wouldn’t hatch, Kessie. The eggs won’t break without it.”
“I know.” She turned her face into the hollow of his throat, not wanting to see.
A spark caught the tinder. The flame-bird picked up a beakful of burning tinder and laid it upon the nest, fanning it with her wings. Smoke rose in a white coil. The sticks and straw of the nest began to burn with tiny, almost invisible flames.
“Did it catch?” A muffled question from her hidden mouth.
“Yes. It caught.”
The flame-bird began to roll one of the golden eggs about on the burning nest, charring the surface of the shell, seeming not to notice its own feathers were on fire, the flesh of its legs crisping, its bill beginning to blister.
The first egg cracked wide in the heat, the tiny nestling within it pushing out a questing beak, then thrusting the shell fragment aside with strong, infant wings as it flew upward in a wild flutter of damp feathers amid the smoke. The mother turned to the second egg, then the third. Only when this last nestling flew did the flame-bird raise itself into the air, singing, alive amidst its flaming plumage, spiraling as though in a frantic attempt to escape its own immolation. “Oh,” cried Kessie. “I hate hearing them sing like that.”