Tortall (10 page)

Ochobai screeched, her small face screwed up in fury. Nawat felt her sharp need to eat and looked at his wife. “You took the only food I had,” he said with reproach.

Aly reached for Ochobai, sitting up on the stool. “She’s a
baby
, not a nestling,” she replied. “Human babies
nurse.
”

“I forgot,” Nawat replied as he gave their daughter to her. “I have seen it, but it looks uncomfortable. Bugs are much easier.”

Aly shook her head at him. “Crow,” she said lovingly. She cradled Ochobai in her right arm and guided her nipple to the infant’s mouth. Ochobai latched on to her mother, which drew a yelp from Aly. After a moment Aly said, “I thought this didn’t hurt. It’s hurting. Not like the pains, but—ow!” Aly tried to take the baby from her breast. That proved to be even more painful than leaving her there, because Ochobai would not let go.

The assistant who had told Nawat that his children were human left the room.

“You are too much like your namesake,” Aly whispered to her daughter. Then she winced again. “She was the most
obstinate old woman I ever met.” Aly gasped and glared at the midwife, who was still crouched between her legs. “Mistress Penolong, you said the afterbirth wasn’t so bad! Don’t I have enough problems at
this
end?”

The midwife was frowning. “The afterbirth is
not
supposed to give you such pain.” She felt Aly’s abdomen.

Ochobai spat out her mother’s nipple and began to wail, her tiny voice piercing Nawat’s skull. Aly looked at her breast. “No wonder it hurt!” she said, pointing. “I’ve a blood blister there. A big one!”

“Your little one must not have gotten the whole nipple into her mouth,” the midwife said. “You will need to have that breast healed before you can nurse there painlessly.” She reached into Aly’s body between her legs.

Nawat looked away. He was not shy, but he felt there were some places that hands did not belong, not up to the forearm. He was already unnerved enough by Aly’s casual attitude toward her nakedness among all these strangers. Of course, he thought, if I had spent a day with nearly all of my openings in plain view to a room full of persons, maybe I would not care by now, either.

The assistant who had left returned with a raka wet nurse Aly had spoken to weeks before. Nawat searched his memory for the newcomer’s name: Terai, that was it.

“Ah, she didn’t have her mouth in the right place,” Terai remarked the moment she saw Aly, the blood blister, and the screaming infant. “Plenty of them do that, my lady. I’ve an ointment for that blister that will mend it.”

The sarong over Terai’s bosom was stained with leaking milk. She popped a large brown breast from her clothes and
walked over to Ochobai and her parents. “Now I’ll take the little one,” she said, holding out her hands. Though Ochobai and the lad Junim were both crying loudly now, Nawat heard Terai’s voice clearly. “I know you didn’t truly want a wet nurse, my lady—”

“I wanted to nurse my baby myself,” Aly wailed. Despite her protest, she was already handing Ochobai up to Terai.

The woman nodded to the screaming Junim. “Give that one a try,” she advised. “On the other breast.” She put Ochobai to her own nipple. Immediately the baby began to suck.

“Traitoress,” Aly murmured, settling Junim in her hold. “Oh!” Junim had found her nipple without any help from anyone and was nursing with determination. Aly kissed her son’s head in gratitude. Then she murmured, “With twins, I suppose I’ll need help. Mother said she needed a wet nurse for my twin and—Hag’s sacred
toenails
, that hurt! That’s just as bad as having the babies!” she shouted at Mistress Penolong.

Nawat let out a squawk. “Is it the feeding? I thought you said they didn’t have teeth as fledglings!” he accused, glaring at the midwife’s people, then at his son. He reached to take Junim from Aly, using his crow senses to discover if the infant had ill intent toward his mother.

Aly said, “It wasn’t him, love, it was—” She pointed at her still-splayed legs and Mistress Penolong.

The woman’s attention was focused on Aly’s birth canal. “More oil,” she ordered her assistants. “Clean the blade
now
, and we’ll need more cloths!” She wrenched the bottle of oil
from the girl who offered it to her and poured it over her hands. The third assistant had already emptied and rinsed the basin where Junim had taken his first bath, and was filling it again with water.

“Stop your screeching, if you don’t want that baby you’re feeding to yell all his days!” the midwife scolded, looking up at Aly. “You may be the queen’s left hand and her good friend, but it seems to me you don’t know monkey
sampah
about the important things. Didn’t your mother teach you to keep a serene heart as you nurse?”

To everyone’s surprise except Nawat’s, who had heard many stories of Aly’s lioness of a mother, Aly broke out into a great, ringing belly laugh. Her laugh went on and on. Finally she managed to gasp, “My mother is as serene as a
volcano
!” before she laughed again. Now the midwife, the assistants, and Terai were laughing, or giggling, as their natures let them. Nawat was glad to see his mate laugh in that way she had when she had been working too hard and worrying too much. She would shed a hundred cares in such an outburst.

He also saw that Junim and Ochobai now slept contentedly against the breasts that had fed them. He reached over to stroke Junim’s head, since the boy was closest, and smiled at little Ochobai. Aly stiffened against him with a gasp, whispering words she normally used far from the proper women who worked here in the queen’s wing.

“
Here’s
what’s been causing this trouble!” Mistress Penolong said with pleasure. “Good thing you’ve got a wet nurse after all, my lady!” She lifted up a small, wriggling
body that had a wet, lacy white veil over its face. “This one will be a seer, with this caul,” she said as her assistants whispered prayers to the Mother Goddess. Gently the midwife cut the caul away from the infant’s face, until her chief assistant could take it. Looking at Aly, the midwife said, “You have another daughter. I believe you are done now, save for the afterbirth.”

Aly looked back and up at Nawat. She seemed pleased and alarmed. “What other names did we think about? I don’t remember.”

Nawat smiled and smoothed her sweat-soaked hair back from her face. They had chosen several names when Aly continued to fret about laying eggs. Three had been dedicated to close friends killed in the recent revolution. “Ulasu,” he reminded her.

“Ulasu,” Aly said. She let an assistant place her newest daughter in her free arm after the umbilical cord was cut and tied off by Mistress Penolong.

Junim was done feeding. Now an assistant took him to the long table at the side of the room. Nawat had a hand on Ulasu, checking that the child did not subject her mother to a bath of infant pee. The most he felt in this newest nestling was her confusion about the thing Aly wanted her to do. “I’m trying to feed you,” Aly whispered. Nawat felt a hand in the pocket where he kept the worms. He turned his head and pretended not to notice as Aly quickly ate a handful.

Nawat
did
see that the assistant who had taken Junim had not only placed a diaper on the boy, but was wrapping him snugly in a blanket, top to toe.

“Stop that!” Nawat cried. Angry as he was, he did not forget to wait until Aly was sitting up before he removed his support of her back. Only then did he stalk over to the table. “What is this? He has to flap his wings! If you bind him tight like this, you risk breaking the bones! We’re not made like you!” He snatched Junim from the assistant and began to pull at the snug blankets.

“But everyone swaddles babies,” the assistant said. “It’s good for them!” She looked at Ochobai. “You took off her blankets!”

Nawat glared at her. “No wonder humans never grow feathers or wings, if you bind your children when they are born.”

“Nawat,” Aly called.

He turned, the boy in his hold. Junim waved his fists as he smacked his lips. Nawat’s anger did not seem to disturb the boy, any more than Nawat’s stripping away of his wrappings upset him. Ochobai, however, was waking up in Terai’s arms. She was unhappy. She was telling all of them that she was unhappy. “Aly, you cannot let them cripple our children!” Nawat called over Ochobai’s howls. “One day he will take crow shape. If the bones shift while he is swaddled, they will break!”

The midwife rose to glare at Nawat. “I let you into this birthing room out of courtesy.”

“She is my mate and these are our nestlings,” retorted Nawat. “Crows need no midwives.”

Aly sighed. Terai handed Ochobai to the shortest of the midwife’s assistants and drew Ulasu out of Aly’s grip. Without
the baby to hold, Aly leaned forward and rested her head on her hands.

“Don’t you move your behind from that chair, my lady!” snapped the midwife. “You’ve got the afterbirth yet to come. A brawl in this room won’t help with that!”

Aly looked up as she sat back once more. Nawat instantly recognized the look in her eyes. Aly had so many faces that even he had trouble keeping track of them all, but this one he knew well. This was Aly-Smoother-of-Feathers, smiling and serene, with a bag of tricks behind her back. “Mistress Penolong, my husband is a crow. He has been so from birth. He has only been human since meeting me, and he changes to crow shape often to lead his war band of hunters. We did speak of this before, you and I. Is it not possible that Nawat may know more about our children, about how they are inside, than we do? I thought you had understood that, when we talked about our arrangements.”

Nawat believed that such a talk, given in Aly’s warmest voice, with her kindest smile, would have melted anyone, even when Aly was splashed with blood and whatever else was involved in giving birth.

Mistress Penolong, though, could have been made of the strongest oak. “My lady, my lord, I have helped more children into this world than I care to remember, and I say, if these little ones are not swaddled, they will grow crooked in their limbs!”

Aly nodded, wearing her sympathy face. Nawat understood that she had to conduct a long negotiation. In the meantime, he could tell his son had to pee again. While the
assistants observed Aly, and Terai fed Ulasu and hushed Ochobai, Nawat carried Junim to the window so he could do what was necessary outside the nest. This time the watching crows made no sound at all. They had expected a human nestling and they did not like it. Nawat showed them a rude human gesture when Junim was done, then took his boy inside.

Aly got her way with Mistress Penolong after more debate. The triplets would not be swaddled. Nawat had never doubted that, not after his mate had turned her skills on the midwife. Aly was the realm’s chief spy and mortal trickster, after all. Kyprioth, chief of the tricksters and cousin to the crows, had brought her here and made her his servant. Aly could persuade almost anyone of anything.

The youngest of the assistants was lighting the room’s lamps when the mass of the afterbirth slid from Aly’s womb and onto the cloth the midwife had laid underneath her. The midwife wiped Aly down with yet another oil. Once the afterbirth was placed in a bowl and set aside to be offered to the Great Mother, the assistants helped Aly to her feet and wrapped her in a sarong. One of them opened a door that had been closed the entire day. As the assistants helped Aly to the new door, the midwife held up a hand. The wet nurse, who cradled two of the infants, had not moved.

“Take your children to the nursery, Master Crow,” ordered Mistress Penolong. A light seemed to come from her, a light as pale as the moon. “The cleansing bath is a matter for the mother, her attendants, and her goddesses. Men, even crow-men, are forbidden.”

Aly looked back over her shoulder. “It’s all right, love,” she said. Her hair, spilling out of its pins, was not its normal reddish sun color, but tangled and black with sweat, her face pale with strain. Black shadows circled her hazel eyes. To Nawat she was still the beautiful creature who had called to his heart one morning as he followed the trickster Kyprioth because he was bored. “It’s all right,” she repeated, returning the smile that had come to his face. “It’s a human ceremony. I’m in good hands.”

Nawat saw the assistants exchange smiles of their own. His Aly had a way of winning friends. He stepped back as the women passed through that open door. The midwife closed it behind them all, but not before Nawat had seen that pale light still around her, lighting up the hall beyond.

“Lord Crow?” Terai asked as Nawat wondered which gods were abroad that night. “Where is your nursery? I would like to set these young ones down. And I will need to send for my own child, and some clothes.”

Nawat blinked. The nursery—was it even ready for two additional nestlings and the servants the queen felt Aly’s household should have? “This way,” he told Terai, leading her through the door that all of them had used that weary day. He still carried Ochobai, who had fallen asleep at last, a frown on her tiny face. The wet nurse had Junim and Ulasu in her arms. Ulasu was getting her second meal since her birth, while her brother napped.

Spotting a round shadow on the stairs, Nawat asked Terai, “What do you know of darkings?”

The wet nurse frowned at him. “They are said to be black bug gods that serve the queen. The Great God
Kyprioth gave them to Her Majesty to help her defeat the luarin masters.”

The shadow halted and reared up on its bottom. “Not bugs!” it squeaked in outrage. “Bugs tasty snack! Darkings people!”

Nawat thought that Terai must be a very accomplished wet nurse. Though she was clearly startled and even backed up a step, the infants in her arms remained calm.

“They are still here,” Nawat explained. “We hope you can live with them. They report to Aly all of the time.”

Terai looked at the darking. “It looks like a cupful of dark wine.”

“Wine not think or talk or spy,” the darking replied. It looked up at Nawat with a head-knob it had shaped for itself. “Trick say nursery ready. Where Aly?”

“Aly is taking a bath. Tell Trick we’re coming with babies, all right? And thank you,” Nawat said with a nod. The darking shrank back into a ball and continued along its way.