It carries no bomb. It carries a spike on a spring, in a slot on its belly, and the spike only goes up.
Something with long swept wings is crossing the sky over a capital city on a river. It makes almost no sound. The cameras will not call it an aircraft. The jammers hear nothing, because nothing is talking to it. It was told everything it would ever be told before it was let go.
Over a covered market, it passes under a peregrine named Wick. She turns into it, the way a falcon always does. It kills her in one pass.
Then it comes for Brim. It crosses above him with a wing down, the way one falcon challenges another, and it waits for him to come up. Brim cannot climb. He goes anyway, because he is a gyrfalcon and he cannot help it.
When the team pulls the memory off a downed machine, they find a field Tessa knows, a bird she knows, and her own voice. Somebody built these machines out of her training archive.
It is not a weapon that kills birds. It is a weapon that asks them to come.
Last Falcon is the fourth novel in Sky Shield, the series about a falconer, her bird, and the machines they hunt.
