Tortall (11 page)

“Are they all like that?” Terai asked uncomfortably.

Nawat smiled at her. “That one was quiet as darkings go. Just be firm with them.”

As they climbed the stairs to their third-floor rooms, Nawat turned his thoughts to practical matters. He and Aly had chosen only one cradle, because they had a large, round bed made like a nest. If Aly had laid eggs after all, she could have kept them warm in their bed. Now they would need two more cradles for these human nestlings. Perhaps he might be able to talk Aly into placing them in one large cradle, like proper little crows, or even bringing them into the nest-bed. But there should be two more nursemaids in addition
to the one Aly had already hired. Sadly, she was needed at her spying work and Nawat was often away from home.

Nawat asked Terai, “You said you have a child?”

She smiled at him. “My lord, how do you think I come to be in milk?” she asked. “You will need a second wet nurse, though, so we are never in danger of going dry. I know someone.”

Here, at least, Nawat was on solid ground. “You must ask our door guard to escort you to Atisa in the morning,” he explained. “Have you spoken with her yourself?”

Terai shivered. Everyone remembered Aly’s lieutenant after a conversation with her, and everyone in the Crow household had to speak to Atisa at least once before they worked for Aly and Nawat. Only then would Aly meet with them and confirm Atisa’s choices. No one lied successfully to Aly. She saw every falsehood, except those of the crow shape-changers. “Atisa said I was fit to be wet nurse to your family,” Terai told Nawat when her shivers were done.

“Give her your recommendation for a second wet nurse,” Nawat said. “My mate—my
wife
and I have enemies. Atisa is the one who ensures that none get close to us. You must tell her we will require two more nursemaids.” Two more babies than expected would not only need more care, but also more bodyguards. Atisa would pick women who had fighting skills as well as the ability to burp babies. “She probably knows already, though,” Nawat admitted.

They reached the door to the suite of rooms that housed the Crow family. The man and the woman in army uniforms at the door brought their spears and their bodies straight in a salute to their commander, though their eyes flicked over
the three small bundles in undyed wool blankets. Then the woman reached for the grip on the double door and opened it. As Nawat and Terai passed through, Nawat heard the man, the human, whisper, “Congratulations,
lurah.
” (Chief.)

The woman, who was a crow when needed, murmured, “What, no eggs?”

“I am a failure as a mate,” Nawat joked in reply.

The door opened onto their sitting room. The queen had placed them in the royal tower itself. Nawat had approved. The height would be a good perch when the nestlings tried their wings. He knew that might take longer than usual, since they had entered the world in human form.

The thought made him stumble as he led the wet nurse across the sitting room. A single hop gave Nawat his balance again; a cheerful grin comforted Terai, who had gasped in alarm. Inside, Nawat was not at all cheerful or comforted. There had been a tug in that thought about his children taking longer to fly—or was it that they had been born human? He was not certain which idea had made him start, but the feeling itself was what his people called “the god pulling a feather.” It was a warning of trouble to come, a signal for a crow to be vigilant. He looked at the infant in his arms. What danger would come to her and her nest mates?

Ochobai was awake. She looked vaguely in his direction, but he knew she only did so to look
somewhere
. When he was learning to be of use to Aly, the village mothers had let him watch over their young. They had told him how much their nestlings could see and what their noises and movements meant.

“That way is your mama’s workroom,” he said, as much for the wet nurse as for Ochobai. “No one goes there without Mama’s permission. If anyone tries to enter, the door will burn their hands. Here is the bedroom that Mama and I share.”

“What a strange bed!” Terai remarked. “The wood’s carved like—”

“A nest,” replied Nawat. “It was Aly’s gift to me on our wedding.” Inside the sheer insect curtains the blankets and pillows were arranged just as he and Aly liked them, in a circle around the mattress. Nawat was glad to see that everything was in order. Aly would be tired when she came home. She would want to fall into her usual comfortable bed.

Inside the nets, he saw darkness rise from a carved bowl set in the wall above the pillows. “Aly not screaming now?” asked Aly’s personal darking, Trick. It had been unable to bear the sounds of childbirth.

“Aly is fine. She’s taking a bath,” Nawat assured it as Terai stared at him.

“Who are you talking to?” she wanted to know.

Nawat opened a mosquito curtain and pointed. “Trick, this is Terai. Terai, Trick.”

“Hello, Terai,” the darking piped.

“Trick is Aly’s friend,” Nawat explained. He ushered Terai to a second door. “And this,” he said, “is to be your domain.” They walked through the open door into a well-lit room. Nawat halted, startled again. Three nursemaids, one of them the woman Aly had chosen herself, were tidying the room. They arranged diapers on changing tables, set
washbasins where they would be needed, put linens and drying cloths on the tall shelves, and in all ways prepared everything for the addition of more infants and servants than they had expected at first. Cots and chairs were already set up for the new staff.

The cradle situation was also under control. There was the cradle he and Aly had chosen, its insect net open. Rifou, one of Nawat’s distant crow-cousins and a promising carpenter, had carved the name “Ochobai” on the beautifully decorated piece of teak that hung on the foot of the cradle. Another cradle, plainly made but of good wood, had a net already but waited for a carved piece that read “Junim.” That lay on the floor next to Rifou. The crow-man, still in his uniform, sat cross-legged before the cradles, cutting the third sign. His glossy black hair swung forward, hiding his face. His hands, as brown as Nawat’s, but scarred from learning the carpenter’s work, carved Ulasu’s name in graceful letters.

“Rifou, I give thanks, but it will do no harm if they do not have signs,” Nawat said to his cousin. Rifou was several years older. Even though Nawat was his commander, Nawat always took care to be polite with him. “They have different-colored strings on their wrists.”

“I needed something to do,” Rifou muttered. “I’ll work on
proper
nests for the new ones when I have finished these. Proper
human
nests, that is.”

Nawat did not like the mix of tones of his cousin’s voice or the darkness that lay over his spirit. Rifou’s human mate, Bala, crouched beside him. Her eyes were red and swollen from weeping.

“Cousin, please look at me so I may introduce your new kindred to you,” Nawat said. He wanted to see the face that Rifou was so determined to hide.

Rifou hesitated, as if he thought to refuse. Then he turned and stared up at Nawat. His face, too, was red and puffy, but not from tears. Ointment lent a greasy shine to several deep holes on his cheeks. They were peck marks.

“I am
kaaaakitkik
,” Rifou said without emotion. “I have been cast out. The great Rajmuat flock said I have become more human than crow.”

The extra wet nurse had come. Aly, the nestlings, and the new staff were asleep when Nawat flew from his bedroom window out over Rajmuat. Damp air rose from the City of Ten Thousand Gardens, as some ambassador had named it to Queen Dove. Nawat would have traded all 5,354 of them—one test for crows in his war band was to count Rajmuat’s gardens, even the little ones—for a week in the dry air of Lombyn, the northern island where he and Aly had met.

He had taken no escort. Even Aly did not know where he was bound, though unless she was entirely exhausted, more than he’d ever seen her, she at least knew he’d gone. This was crow business, though. After their rude reception of his nestlings—they left before Nawat had a chance to show them Ulasu—the Rajmuat flock had interfered with Nawat’s adult flock, his war band. He needed to learn the exact nature of the problem that had brought them to meddle with another crow’s people.

He found them in their roosting trees, on the hills that
overlooked the humans’ great burying place. The moonlight gilded the forest of pale stone monuments below. The roosting trees grew tall outside the wooden fence on the graveyard. Priests renewed the spells that kept the crows from eliminating dung and urine onto the stones each month, but they knew better than to go near the trees themselves. Those were sacred to the crows. Each great flock had its own place, and bad things befell anyone who intruded upon it, so humans thought. However powerful the mage who cast the graveyard’s protective spells, the magic never lasted much longer than a month. Kyprioth the Trickster favored his crows too much to order them to respect the human dead.

As Nawat flew over the ten-acre burial ground, the crows’ sentinels cried out that another crow approached. Always in the last two years Nawat had been treated as flock, with no warning given when he came close to them. What had changed? Did he carry the scent of birth blood on his feathers, and had they mistaken it for some other kind of blood? Rather than risk an attack by the flock, Nawat landed at the top of the steps to the temple dedicated to Batiduran the Python, the raka god of the dead.

He waited there, taking deep breaths for calm. He did not like it here, and he did not want to be so far from home if Aly woke. Neither did he want to be courting the favor of these arrogant city crows if his nestlings were being diapered instead of learning to use the edge of the nest. At the same time, as the head of Rifou’s flock, he owed a duty to his war-brother and cousin. The Rajmuat flock must see that they could not attack his people.

One advantage of the city’s water-thick air was that it
carried sound quite a distance. The voices of crows passing word to the heart of the flock came to Nawat’s ears, as did the sleepy complaints of Ahwess, their king, and Gemomo, their queen. Soon the treetops, black against the moonlit sky, seemed to rise like an incoming wave. The peak of the wave traveled on, until twenty crows flew into the open. Eighteen landed among the gravestones. Two settled on the open ground at the foot of the temple steps. Ahwess and Gemomo clacked their beaks at Nawat, angry that he had taken the high ground.

Nawat spread his wings to say he meant for them to remain below him. He stayed that way for a short time, then folded his wings and stepped back, opening a large square of space on the temple porch, should the other two crows want it.

The royal pair hesitated. They didn’t want to accept Nawat’s charity, but it was worse to stay below him. They opened their wings and flapped up, over the stairs, to land on the porch beside Nawat. Then they settled themselves, angrily poking their beaks among their feathers to ensure that none had gotten lost or out of order on the way.

Finally Gemomo settled. “What is it, outlander?” she demanded. “What news or schemes have you that will not wait for the sun?”

“Neither,” said Nawat flatly. “Who gave you the right to judge Rifou? He is part of
my
flock, not yours. You harried him away. Your people pecked him. I want an explanation. I want satisfaction. I want an apology for Rifou.” Each time he said “I want,” he ruffled his feathers a little more, to make himself look more powerful than his opponents. Among
humans Nawat was a tall, slender, well-muscled young man, not one to make anybody feel threatened. Among crows, his human muscles were an influence on his crow size. He was strong and powerful, more so than the aging Ahwess and Gemomo. He used that strength now for Rifou.

“Threaten as you like,” Ahwess said, his voice gravelly and harsh. “You would be dead before you laid a claw on either of us. You and your company of misfits may call yourselves a flock if you like, but you fool no one! The true crow flocks may cast out any crow that has forgotten what it means to be one of our people.”

“Look at Rifou!” Gemomo snapped. “Cutting wood instead of hunting food. He does not nest or roost. He teases no animals or humans. He does not molt or eat carrion. He has turned his back on his people. He was warned, and he ignored the warning. Once one flock casts him out,
all
will do so.”

“He isn’t alone!” cried one of the crows who had accompanied the monarchs. “That clutch
you
call a flock—they get more corrupt every day!”

“Silence,” Ahwess called without looking at the offender. He eyed Nawat. “It was one thing during the war. Our cousin the god told us to fight at the side of the humans, to return the rule of this place to the brown-skinned raka, our other cousins. We did so.”

“The war is over,” Gemomo told Nawat. “The humans can do without us. We never needed to involve ourselves in their messes. But your people have not returned to their flocks.”

“My war band still has work to do,” Nawat said hotly. “Traitors continue to plot and rebel against the Crown. Sometimes my flock is the first to discover it. My humans and crows work beautifully together to get work and spying done!”

“Let what is human stay in human hands,”
Ahwess retorted. “What one flock casts out, all will cast out. Many of your crows are close to the point of no return, from crow to not-crow.” He took off, flying back to the trees. The crows in the burial ground did not move, but waited for their queen.

She walked over to Nawat and slashed him with her beak. He jerked away, but the smack of her beak on his made his eyes water with pain. “Don’t count on Cousin Kyprioth’s favor protecting you,” Gemomo said, her voice flat. “You are in the most danger with your human mate and nestlings. You are watched, Nawat. If you fail a crow’s test, any test that makes a crow different from a human, you will never be part of a flock again. Not ours, not your family’s in the north.” She took to the air.

All of the Rajmuat crows returned to the roosting trees. Only when their noises softened to those of sleeping birds did Nawat seize the air with his wings and slowly climb into the sky.