Rocs aren’t the impossible size that storytellers and artists would have you believe, but nevertheless Zahra loomed over me. Fully spread, her wings reach as wide as three people lined up fingertip to fingertip with arms outstretched. I loved her with the gravity of a stone sinking into a pool.Ī fully grown female roc stands a head taller than most men. With one massive taloned foot, she could crush my head like a ripe apricot and tear out my entrails before anyone could make a move. A roc could knock me down in a single blow. I was thrillingly, terrifyingly aware of my fragility. My excitement ran like a fever-the blood hot in my head, my fingertips tingling and swollen.
She was healthy, calm, and brave-the most anyone could ask for. The fledgling hadn’t hunched in the crate in fear, nor exploded out of it screaming with rage. Babak and the gathered ruhkers watching from behind the bars nodded approvingly. Zahra stepped calmly into the mews pen without coaxing. If it happened to me, another apprentice would take my place. Ruhkers have been killed on the first day. Sweat coated my hands and lathered my body beneath heavy leather work gloves and a tarnished scale vest. I was a woman of eighteen, small, wounded, overanxious.
She was a year-old fledgling taken from the nest, already lethal and immense. When the crate opened, all I saw at first were her eyes, the largest of any living creature, enormous golden orbs fixing me with a raptor’s murderous glare.
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