Tortall (12 page)

The flock leaders’ threat was a grim one. To the birds that lived in flocks, there was nothing worse than being outcast. Not to have the splendor of a thousand wings beating around him, not to have the certainty that he would be welcome in a gathering of crows … If any of his war band were cast out of the conventional flocks, if
he
were cast out, what
family would they have? Would the war band, Aly, and the nestlings be enough? Would his human friends make up for the great community of the flock? It didn’t seem possible. Suddenly he knew how Aly must feel, so far from her own family and country.

Softly he landed on his window ledge. He shoved the insect net aside and hopped lightly to his bedroom floor. Waiting there, gritting his teeth through the many discomforts of the change to human form, he listened for the sound of Aly’s breathing. He did not hear it. Aly was not in their bed.

Despite the pain he knew would come, Nawat forced his body to complete the change in a hurry, holding wing-hands over his mouth to smother any pain sounds he made. Aching, he took the sarong he’d left on his side of the nest and wrapped it around his hips. Reaching up to brush his hair back from his face, he discovered that it was still half feathers. It would have to change on its own. He was too angry to work on any of the feathers that remained on his head and body. Queen Dove had told Aly’s people,
Aly
had told her people, and
Nawat
had told them, to leave Aly alone after the birthing for a week at least. If they had brought some foolish piece of spy business to her, something Atisa or Taybur Sibigat could handle easily, they would get the rough edge of his tongue and assignment to the smallest rock visible at low tide.

Soft voices were speaking in the nursery, and low, flickering lights burned there. Nawat walked through the open door, ready to scold loudly enough to chase someone out a
window. Four women turned to look at him in surprise. Three were seated on low stools: Terai and her wet-nurse friend, both with babies at their breasts, and the chief nursemaid. His wife sat on the floor, with pillows under her bottom and at her back so she could lean against the wall. She was nursing Ochobai. Nawat could tell, knowing the scents of each triplet. Terai was feeding not only Junim but also her own child, a lusty six-month-old who had arrived just before bedtime. The younger wet nurse, who had brought Terai’s son to the palace, had Ulasu in her lap. She was the one who had lost a child, Nawat remembered.

The women and the infants were not alone. Darkings perched everywhere. They were on the edges of the triplets’ cradles. Two more sat on Aly’s bare feet, while one stretched a thumb-sized ball on a long neck from her shoulder. Its eyes, if it had possessed them, would have been fixed on Ochobai. A big man with curly, gray-streaked hair had taken one of the hardier chairs in the room. He wore the uniform of the queen’s personal guard. Darkings rode his shoulders and sat in his lap.

“Forgive us,” Taybur Sibigat said to Nawat in his softest voice. “They wouldn’t leave me alone until they had seen the triplets for themselves, and the queen is beside herself with curiosity. Secret is showing them to her.” The big man pointed to the darking on Aly’s shoulder. “She will come herself tomorrow, of course, but she didn’t want to bring a horde of courtiers here tonight.”

“Many babies,” piped one of the darkings on the cradles.

“Only three.” Aly said it wearily. Nawat had the feeling that she’d said it several times already. “The bigger one belongs to Terai. As for triplets, it does happen, from time to time.”

“Darkings never see before,” another of the creatures remarked. “Only ducks have so many.”

“Chickens,” said another darking. “Geese,” added a third.

“Before we name all of the animals you know who have more than one child,” Taybur said, his voice quiet but firm, “it is time to leave. These babies need to sleep.”

As if to make a liar of him, Ochobai spat her mother’s nipple from her mouth and began to wail. Instantly the other babies roused to do the same. Several of the darkings fled immediately, using the crack under the door to escape the alarming sound. Others remained to help, or so it seemed, though Nawat was not quite certain. He had realized long ago that darkings liked it when they confused bigger and stricter humans.

Aly tucked herself against the wall, as she often did when the darkings came in numbers and stayed to misbehave. Nawat often wondered if two years of working for Kyprioth the Trickster God had not left her with some of his nature, not that Nawat minded. She did enjoy havoc more than she had when they first met. The only sober thing she did now was hand Ochobai up to him.

Nawat took his firstborn. He knew immediately that she was about to release the results of that day’s feedings. As the wet nurses and Taybur dealt with crying infants and cheering darkings, Nawat slipped the diaper from his older daughter
and, leaning outside, held her beyond the window in the crook of one elbow. He remembered to keep her legs away from the noxious splatter of dung that exploded from her. Once she was finished and he had cleaned her off, he set her naked in her cradle.

The wet nurses and the freshly roused nursemaids did not appreciate the darkings’ presence. That was to be expected. Although there were more of the blobs than there had been when they joined the rebellion two years before, many palace residents did not know when they had seen one. Like Terai, they usually mistook the darkings for shadows or spots. The discovery that they liked mischief after dark was not a happy one.

Some of the darkings chose to try their skills in the nursery. By the time they had arranged things with the women, fetched clean linens, avoided Taybur as he gathered up those who wished to leave, and kept everyone’s attention, Nawat had carried Ulasu, then Junim, to the window. As Nawat placed his son in his cradle, he whispered to the closest darking, “Thank you.”

“Always help Aly and Nawat,” the darking whispered cheerfully. “Human females don’t like window messes?”

Nawat shook his head.

“We help,” the darking told him. “You see.”

Thus twenty or so darkings remained when Taybur kissed Aly’s cheek and left. Normally the big captain would have shaken Nawat’s hand, but Taybur’s arms and hands were fully occupied by gleeful blobs who chattered as he left the room. Secret, the queen’s darking, had pride of place on Taybur’s head.

“They really are safe?” asked the younger wet nurse. Her eyes were on the darkings.

“Far safer than most humans,” Aly said. She drew her legs under her and pushed away from the wall, trying to stand. Nawat went to her and picked her up carefully, remembering that she was sore. Aly looked into his face. “I
can
walk, you know,” she chided. “Farm women are out working in the fields the day after they give birth.”

“But I like to carry you,” Nawat said, ignoring the nurses’ giggles as he bore Aly to their nest in the other room. Someone—the youngest of them from her step—placed a lamp on a table, then closed the door behind her. Nawat eased Aly from her gaudy silk robe and placed her in the nest, behind the insect curtains.

“I did not frighten you, being away when you woke?” he asked as he blew out the lamp and shed his sarong.

“Why should you?” she asked with a yawn. “You’re out often. You did worry me when you came back. Is everything all right?”

“All is well,” he lied. She had turned on her side, away from him, so he could tell untruth to her back, as he could not lie to her face. Aly’s magical Gift for seeing falsehoods was often a problem but not, happily, tonight.

Trick, now a long rope with a head at the end, dropped down from the ornately carved bowl that was its home. “No more screaming-Aly?” it wanted to know. “No more hurting-Aly?”

“No more,” Aly replied sleepily. “We have babies now, Trick. Three of them.”

“But no hurting-Aly,” the darking repeated stubbornly.
“Hurting-Aly’s screams hurt Trick’s heart.” The moment Aly had begun labor, Trick had vanished. Normally the only time Trick would let itself be separated from Aly was at night.

“All better,” Aly told it with a happy sigh. “Do you even have a heart, Trick?”

“Don’t know.” Trick dropped onto the rim of the nest, then to the floor. “Going out,” it said cheerfully. “See babies. Talk to darkings.”

“Be careful,” Aly said, as she always did.

Nawat waited until a plop by the door told him the darking was gone before he asked, “Aly?”

“Hm?” She was nearly asleep.

He cuddled her, wrapping one arm under the still-surprising curves of her chest. “Would you love me if I was not a crow? If I had no flock, if I was outcast?”

Her chuckle moved through her flesh like ripples in a pond. “Nawat, you would always be a crow. Even if you were frozen in man shape all your days, you would be a crow. And I would still love you even if we’d had eggs instead of triplets.”

That was something to think about. Could he still be a crow without a true flock? The word for what he was in crow language did not mean a single creature. It meant one of a flock—the family nest, then the lesser flock of relatives, then the great flock that turned the sky black. Only Aly would say he could be a crow without a flock.

He lay awake, listening to his mate’s breathing, listening for the cawing of his newborns. He could do nothing about his own fate, but the crows of his war band had to be told. They were in danger. Rifou was a warning to all of them.

*     *     *

In the nursery the next morning, he found six-darking teams handing infants to nursemaids. Other darkings drew the insect curtains back from the room’s many windows. One of the babies—Ulasu by scent—was at a table, apparently having received a clean diaper. The nursemaid who stood over the child held a light blanket. She glanced at Nawat, then at Terai, who pursed her lips and shook her head. The nursemaid lightly wrapped the baby rather than swaddling her, then carried Ulasu to her crib.

The darkings called greetings to Nawat as the women curtsied. “No curtsies, no bows to me,” Nawat said, cross. “I am no peacock lord or bird-of-paradise noblewoman. I am a plain old crow.”

“You are a plain old crow who the queen made a captain and a war leader of the realm,” Aly said, coming in from the sitting room. She was already dressed. “They’ll get in trouble if someone besides us sees they don’t salute you.” She nodded as the women curtsied to her. “Or me.” Today she wore a sarong in glorious reds, yellows, and oranges. Her hair was pinned up at the back of her head. Nawat wished, as he often did, that there was a sparkly rock big enough to tell her how much light and cheer she brought to his life.

Ulasu made a noise; Aly went to her. Nawat was patting one of Junim’s fists with his finger when an arrow-feeling struck him. This had nothing to do with his children. He had these feelings often. They came when there was trouble with the crows of his war band. Worse, Rifou was at the heart of it, screaming like a nestling.

The nursemaids screeched themselves when Nawat fast-changed into crow form. Aly only came over to give his sarong to him. He would need it when he changed back. He gripped it in one claw and drew his beak up the side of her leg. She ran her fingernails through his crown feathers before he threw himself at the nearest window.

His war band was quartered a fast glide from their tower. Nawat dropped into the shadows at the west end of the crow barracks less than a minute after he’d left his family. As he resumed human shape, he watched the palace wake. Mists rose from the cool shadows under the trees, meeting air that had already turned warm. Birds stretched. Before his beak changed, Nawat called up to any late sleepers outside the barracks and within them.

He expected Parleen to answer from the open window on the barracks’ second floor. She was Aly’s friend, a born crow who kept a true nest inside the war band’s home. Her nestling, Keeket, was always hungry and would be screeching for breakfast, yet Nawat did not hear him.

There was no reply from Parleen, either, though her nest was beside the window. Nawat frowned, made sure that his sarong would stay on his lean hips, and walked into the crow barracks.

The band was up and gathered near the pot where humans and those in human form cooked their morning rice. Empty bowls showed they had finished their meal. Most of the band sat with something to occupy themselves, sharpening blades, oiling them or oiling leather, doing stretching exercises. The ones in crow form occupied the perches just
behind the benches. When they saw Nawat, they jumped to the floor, changing shape as they went. None of their human comrades so much as blinked to see forty-odd naked people suddenly join them. The easily shocked were always weeded out in the first week after they entered the band.

“Where is Parleen?” Nawat asked.

No one would meet his eyes. Finally someone said, “She left before dawn,
lurah
.”

“Crows from the Rajmuat flock came,” someone else said. It was the woman who slept across from Parleen and her nest. “They talked to us. They said if we become much more human, we will be outcasts, like Rifou. Parleen went with them. She said she did not wish to be part human anymore.”

Nawat looked at his people. “What about her nestling? What about Keeket?”

“They carried him with them,” another of the crows replied. “I followed, and—” Tears trickled down her cheeks. “Outside, they saw Keeket had one leg shorter than the other and his back was twisted. They dropped him onto the burying stones. I would have brought him back if he’d lived, but they killed him with the drop. I left him with the dead.”

“You know why we did not cull him, Nawat. Parleen thought he would heal as he grew. So did I.” Parleen’s mate, Taihi, pushed forward through the crow folk. “But the crows of Rajmuat follow crow law. A deformed nestling must be culled. We didn’t do it, and Keeket died anyway. They sent a messenger to name me outcast. Parleen told Gemomo I forced her to keep him.”

Nawat’s heart ached. The thought of that child, broken
on the stones that had looked so cold in the moonlight, was too much. Yet he would have done it, if Keeket had been his, though he had not said so to Aly. Aly was Parleen’s friend and godsmother to Keeket. She had talked his parents out of culling, meaning well. She didn’t understand that culling was easier on the parents when they took care of it as soon as the deformed young hatched, before they had come to love it. “Why did you not go with Parleen?” he asked Taihi. “You could have defended yourself. You might have been spared casting out and given a last chance.”