Once, in Threll, I was walking the bounds of Esmaris’s estate and came across a dead bird in the street. It had been crushed to death by a wagon wheel—smashed right up its middle, glossy black fire-tipped wings splayed out against the white cobblestones. I knelt down beside it and examined the morbid beauty of the day-old blood against those shiny black feathers, the grotesque symmetry of the way it flattened in the street. I imagined it just standing there as the wheel rumbled over it. And I wondered, How did you get here, little bird? Why didn’t you fly away? Sometimes I found myself looking
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her bird
