NAWAT

In the Copper Isles, a tale is told of a crow who fell in love with a mortal woman and changed to human shape, as all crows can change, for her. Their love was sealed in the fire and blood of the Great Revolution that carried Queen Dovasary Balitang to the throne of the Isles. In that time crows, humans, and the black globe-creatures called darkings joined the rebel armies. Together they restored the native humans called raka to rule over their islands once more. This crow and his human love stood at Queen Dovasary’s left hand, where all secrets were kept.

Some secrets reveal themselves after a handful of months. At the usual time following that revelation, Nawat Crow held one of his shrieking wife, Aly’s, hands as she gripped an arm of the birthing chair with the other. Nawat was so tense that feathers kept popping from his human skin, which made the midwife uneasy. Aly, who usually noticed such things, had a mind only for her own efforts. With each strong pain she screamed, “I don’t want eggs! I don’t want eggs!”

Since humans came inconveniently arrayed with arms, legs, and a head, all of which might get stuck as they left their laboring mother, Nawat thought that any woman would be glad to birth a nice, well-shaped egg. Aly had never come to see his point of view. Once, in her sixth month, as he tried to explain it yet again, she had vomited on an expensive silk rug. After that she had forbidden him to discuss the subject.

Now, in a lull between pains, she settled herself in the chair, looked up at him, and plucked a feather from his temple. “Ow!” Nawat cried. He rubbed the sore spot. “Don’t pull out big feathers, Aly!” He showed her the blood on his fingers. “It may not seem dangerous to you just now, but this would be serious if I was crow-shaped!”

Her face was red and dripping sweat, her hair soaked through. She waved the feather at him, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You’re half-changed. You don’t want to be with me. You want to go back to being a crow. You think I’m sweaty and ugly and horrible”—she began to sob—“and I am!”

Ah, thought Nawat, this. Pregnancy had not been kind to his dear one. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, ignoring her halfhearted attempts to shove him away. “You are so beautiful, as beautiful as sunrise and sunset,” he whispered. Holding the fingers of his free hand like a beak, he groomed her limp reddish blond hair with them. “I would not trade being your husband for all the sparkly things in the Isles. I will not return to crow shape and leave you. I—”

The groan began deep in her chest, deeper than any of the cries before. The raka midwife, Mistress Penolong, looked up from between Aly’s legs. “Now then, girl, do your work,” she said, her black eyes sharp. “Push.”

“No eggs,” Nawat heard his love mutter as she braced herself. He got in position to help her. “No eggs no eggs no eggs …”

She bellowed, her face turning purple. Nawat propped her up, silent, holding her tight.

“Here’s a crown,” the midwife said.

Aly tried to sit up straight against the back of the chair. “Is it an egg crown?”

Mistress Penolong snapped at Aly, “Give over these fantasies and push!”

Aly pushed. Nawat held her up, his eyes on her face more than her body. He had not confessed any of his fears to Aly, who had plenty of her own. She was the talker of the two of them. That amused him, because her work required that she keep so many secrets. She had to be the most chattery spymaster in all the Eastern Lands, without revealing anything important to anyone but Nawat or the queen. And it was only to Nawat that she had spoken her fears of dying in childbirth, as so many women did.

Not that she looked as if she might die today. If Nawat had to wager on such a thing, he would bet that Aly would kill the Black God of Death if he came for her at this moment.

“Now,” ordered the midwife. “Now, now …”

Aly roared, the midwife shouted in triumph, and a baby’s howls rose above both. “Finally!” Aly cried with relief.

Nawat reached for the cloth soaking in the basin and used it to wipe the sweat from the back of Aly’s neck. She was relaxing now, a satisfied look on her face. Mistress Penolong was passing their child to her assistant, who did something with her finger, then with cloths. The bundle wailed over the indignities of birth.

The midwife smiled up at Aly and Nawat. “My lady, my lord, you have a daughter,” she said.

Her assistant handed the mite to Aly, who cuddled her. “Have you a name?” the young woman asked Aly. Nawat brushed Aly’s cheek with his hand. This they had settled long ago. Aly smiled up at him, though the smile quickly turned to a grimace. “Ochobai,” she said. “For a teacher and leader who left us for the Peaceful Realms.”

Mistress Penolong and her assistants bowed their heads and drew the sign of life on their breasts. In raka tradition it was bad luck to name a child exactly after someone living or recently dead, but everyone would know the baby’s name was a tribute to a leader of the recent revolution.

Honor to the mage Ochobu aside, Nawat thought his chick was very ugly, all red and crumpled. He saw no pinfeathers, beak, or claws on Ochobai. Perhaps those things would come later.

“You don’t like her,” Aly said accusingly.

Nawat reached a finger down to Ochobai. “I don’t know her,” he explained.

His daughter gripped his finger with one hand, hanging on hard. Something inside Nawat turned warm. Ochobai had a crow’s grip. She would not drop any prize she found. And this was not just a crow’s hold that she had. He smiled at Aly. “She holds on like you.”

He reached inside the child with his crow senses and instantly knew something that only he could teach the nestli—the baby, he reminded himself. Aly stirred on the birthing chair, her face twisting in discomfort again. “May I take her?” Nawat asked.

Aly nodded. “I didn’t think afterbirth felt like another baby,” she told the midwife as Nawat lifted Ochobai from Aly’s arms.

Nawat took the child to the window and opened a shutter. “You are too young to know,” he murmured, “but I will help you. When our people relieve ourselves, we go to the edge of the nest and eliminate outside it.” He undid the newborn’s blankets—they were far too tight—and her diaper, draping them over his shoulder. None of the women noticed: they were busy around Aly. They did not see Nawat hold Ochobai outside the window as the infant peed.

The crows of the great flock of the city, perched in every tree within view, cawed wildly to welcome Nawat’s child. Then they saw that he held a human infant, not a nestling. Immediately they went quiet. Nawat sensed them talking silently with one another, but he had more on his mind than the disapproval of the Rajmuat flock.

“Good,” he said to Ochobai when she was done. He wiped her with the cloth he’d used on her mother, and then did up her diaper again. He was grateful that it was an ordinary day in the Isles—hot and sticky. Without feathers, his tiny daughter might have caught cold. “I’ll tell the servants what to do,” he said as the baby waved her hands. “There’s no reason they can’t teach you properly, even if they aren’t crows.”

Aly let out a cry. “What’s wrong? This hurts!”

“You know we spoke of twins, my lady,” the midwife told her calmly. “Here comes your second child.”

Aly grimaced. “I was just praying it would be one, despite everything. My mother’s bloodline runs to twins. Time to stop whining, then.”

Nawat looked at Ochobai. The little one waved her arms blindly, her eyes squeezed shut. Shouldn’t this nestling want grubs or insects right now? Inside her he felt the beginnings of hunger. He reached into his breeches pocket and found a worm he’d been saving for Aly. Although she had refused the insects he’d brought when he first courted her, Aly hadn’t been able to get enough shovel-headed worms or white-spotted caterpillars during her pregnancy. Nawat had smuggled a few into the birthing chamber in case his wife got hungry.

He dangled the worm over Ochobai’s face as he walked back to the birthing chair. If the little one reached for it, Nawat would chew it up for her. That was his plan, but between muscle contractions his love saw what he was doing.

“Nawat!” she screeched as she thrust a second child out of her womb. She reached out and seized the worm. “Goddess’s great—heart, what are you doing?!”

“Nestlings are hungry,” he explained. Their new boy was even bloodier and more wrinkled than Ochobai. Nawat smiled at Aly. “Junim has come,” he said, using the name they had chosen for a son. “You had better take Ochobai. I must carry Junim—”

But he was too late to take the boy to the window. Before Mistress Penolong had cut the cord that tied him to his mother, little Junim had peed in her face.

“This is common,” one assistant explained to the horrified Aly. “It will happen again.”

Not if I am near, Nawat thought, eyeing Junim. “Our kind does not pee within the nest,” he said aloud.

Another assistant cleaned the boy as she smiled at Nawat. “These are human babies,” she said, as if Nawat were not very clever. “It’s different for them.”

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.

“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.

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.”

Keeket’s father stared at Nawat. “This is my flock now, our people,” he replied. “I can’t return to being a crow in a wild flock. There are too many thoughts in my head. How would I get hot cooked food, or see plays, or hear human music? And mating is so—”

“Short,” someone muttered.

“Boring,” a woman added.

“Humans have a much better way of mating,” a third crow-man said.

“If I’d had a human wife, Keeket would be alive now,” Taihi said angrily. His face twisted and he turned away from the others. Two human women of the war band went to comfort him. The crow-women huddled with each other.

The door at the east end of the barracks smashed open. Rifou’s wife, Bala, was there, her eyes red with weeping. Taybur Sibigat stood with her, unshaven, his hair unruly.

“Rifou hanged himself last night!” Bala cried before Taybur could stop her. “He did it because those vile birds turned on him!” She collapsed in her grief.

*     *     *

Nawat stayed with his people long after the noon meal, talking to each of them, crows and humans. The crows were badly shaken. Parleen was not the only one to leave the war band before dawn: five others had gone out of fear that they might become outcasts from a true flock. The humans did their best to console their sword-brothers and -sisters, feeding them and preening them with their fingers.

When he felt he could leave his people, Nawat went to see Taybur. The guard captain had recovered the bodies of Rifou and Keeket and had told Nawat he could find them, and Taybur, at the Black God’s temple. Nawat arranged for their funerals with the priests, then learned the facts of Rifou’s death from his friend.

“What happens if the Rajmuat flock throws you out?” Taybur asked, letting his darking travel from one arm to the other as they left the death-god’s temple. “I would think it’s a greater risk for you than for any of your people.”

“I’m not worried,” Nawat said, determined to put the best face on things. “I know of nothing that would make me break crow law.”

Taybur arched an eyebrow at him. “Whistling in the dark?”

“No, truly. My little ones are fine and healthy and I will teach them crow ways. My war band and I will be sure to find work that takes us far from those caked-rump croakers,” Nawat assured Taybur. “And if I catch them talking with my people without me again, I shall teach them respect.” He meant it. He would wage war against them if he must, to keep the outsiders from wreaking the kind of havoc they had done with his flock today.

He understood that the ties between crows and humans in his flock frightened the Rajmuat crows. They disliked change. They wanted things to be the way they had been for their ancestors. Nawat and his war band were too new, and too different.

That understanding did not mean that Nawat would not do what was necessary to make them keep their beaks to themselves. There would be no more Rifous or Keekets. Everyone would hold to crow law and crow tradition while staying out of the rival flock’s way. He would see to that.

This state of anger and energy sustained him up until the moment the guards opened the door to his rooms. A small darking that sported a strand of tiny red beads within its body stood there, obviously leaving as Nawat arrived.

“Not fun today,” it called as it rolled around him and outside.

Nawat did not have to ask what it meant. The noise from the nursery was unmistakable. He strode in, scowling. “What is the meaning of this?” he called.

He had meant for the answer to be silence. That was how it went with his war band. Here, it only caused all four infants, counting Terai’s baby, to scream louder. The darkings that held two bounced them, which made one stop crying to giggle—it was Junim, Nawat saw—while Terai’s baby howled and began to hiccup. Two nursemaids and the younger wet nurse were cleaning a mess off the floor while Ulasu waved her fists and wailed.

Aly’s hair was a complete tangle. It hung around her face and down her back. She tried in vain to toss it out of her eyes while keeping her grip on Ochobai. Their firstborn screamed loudest of all.

“I don’t understand!” Aly cried. “She hates me!”

“Her diaper may be full, my lady,” Terai said grimly. She glanced at Nawat. “I trust your day away from us has been a bright and sunny one, my lord.”

Somehow Nawat did not believe she meant it in the way the words fitted together. “Darkings, set Terai’s boy down. Where is Trick?”

“Trick run away when Aly yell,” a darking—Nawat couldn’t see which one—replied. Those that tended the largest infant obeyed Nawat’s order, placing the wailing child in a new crib that had come during the day. The moment he felt a solid bed beneath him, the boy stopped crying.

“Don’t bounce him anymore,” Nawat ordered those darkings. “He doesn’t like it.”

“Junim likes,” pointed out a darking who wore bright orchid petals under its skin. It braced Junim’s head while its fellows bounced the rest of the lad gently.

“Then that is something we know about Junim,” Nawat told them. “It may not be true of all babies.” While he spoke to the darkings in and around Junim’s crib, the women finished cleaning up and restored their area to order. Terai handed the sobbing Ulasu to the other wet nurse. The infant fell silent as the young raka cradled her in her arms.

Ochobai’s howls split into howls and gasps. “I suppose you’re going to wave your magic—feathers at this one and make her all sugar and cream,” Aly said crossly. “I suppose you’ve had a splendid day with the war band while we appease these hungry, pissing, manure-making, screaming things!”

Nawat gaped at the wife who had been so at ease that morning. Terai leaned over to whisper in his ear. “The humors that help her bring children to term are still in her body, my lord. With no children to work upon, they affect her temper and feelings. You must be easy with her. A nursemaid is fetching medicine from the midwife.” Her voice was anxious as she gripped Nawat’s shoulder. “This is normal in a mother, sir. You must treat her well.”

Nawat blinked at the head wet nurse. “I never treat her otherwise,” he said quietly. Looking around, he called, “Trick! Come here, or I will send you to Lombyn Isle to herd sparrows!”

Nawat went to Aly and took Ochobai from his mate. Tucking the sobbing, weeping infant in one arm, he gently began to draw his fingers through poor Aly’s hair, tugging knots free and letting the loose pins fall to the floor. “I enjoyed no splendid day, dear heart,” he explained, kissing tears from her eyes. “We had two deaths. I could send no message that would make sense or that would not frighten you. My people needed me.”

She turned her face against his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I thought you didn’t want to look at me in daylight.”

“You are beautiful,” Nawat whispered, cuddling the weeping Ochobai against his side. The infant was getting quieter.

“My baby hates me,” Aly said, pointing to Ochobai. “She hits my breast when she nurses. When I hold her, she cries.”

“She does not know you yet,” Nawat said. “Would you like mango rice? You always feel better when you have mango rice.” A black head-blob rose over Aly’s shoulder: Trick. Nawat glared at the darking. “Trick will fetch it for you, since Trick left you in distress.”

“Trick hate to see Aly cry,” the darking replied, hanging its head. “Aly cry almost all day.”

Aly clung to her earlier thoughts. “I hated my mother, but at least I waited until I was old enough to know who she was before I hated her,” she said, and sniffed. “Ochobai hates me right away.”

Trick bounced in shock. “Baby not hate Aly!” it cried. “Baby hate being baby!”

Nawat thought the darking was probably right. “Ochobai is too young to know what hate is,” he told Aly soothingly. “She loves you. She just is not sure that she loves nursing, or being outside her wonderful mother.”

Aly began to sob. “You think I’m an idiot.”

One of the nursemaids slipped behind Aly with a brush and gently began to work on her hair. The messenger arrived with the medicine from the queen’s healer. Nawat persuaded Aly to take some, with a promise of mango rice to be delivered soon. Trick rolled out of the room, on its way to fetch a kitchen servant with Aly’s favorite dish. Calmer, Aly let the attentive nursemaid take her to the bedroom for a wash and a change of clothes.

“She will improve,” Terai said over Nawat’s shoulder. “Having a child is complicated for the body. Many women are unable to shake it off right away. Your lady is very lucky to be under the care of the best mages in the Isles.”

Thinking of everything that had changed within Aly’s skin and outside it during her pregnancy, Nawat shivered. “Men do not know when we are well off,” he murmured, kissing Ochobai’s forehead. The baby struck him in the nose.

Terai looked at him strangely. “You are an odd man,” she remarked at last.

“I am a crow,” Nawat said without thinking. “Did the queen visit?” Aly’s upset would not have been helped if Queen Dove had seen her in disarray. She believed that the queen depended on her to be cool and unshakable, when Nawat knew that Dove liked Aly to laugh and joke with her. It was something few members of the court did with the fearsomely intelligent queen.

Terai shook her head, to Nawat’s relief. “The Duchess Winnamine came in Her Majesty’s place,” she said. “She told us that Her Majesty would wait until my lady felt up to guests.”

Nawat chuckled. Trust their friend Winnamine to know what was right! He would send a darking to thank her. He knew that properly he should send a note on some of Aly’s elegant paper, but since everyone called his writing crow tracks, he would rather that a darking carried his message in his real voice.

He distracted Terai by pointing to a nursemaid who struggled to pull a bundle of diapers from a group of darkings. The blob folk thought it was a game. As the wet nurse, who obviously had taken command of the nursery, went to establish order, Nawat carried Ochobai to the nearest open window. He had her blanket and diaper off in one smooth movement, now that he knew the trick of both, as his firstborn batted his chin with miniature fists. He dangled her from the open window as she released her body’s waste, then brought her back inside so he could use the diaper to clean her. As he did, she managed to dig one fist into his eye.

By the time Aly returned to the nursery, groomed and calm, servants had brought supper for everyone, including Aly’s promised treat. The adults even had a quiet time in which to eat while the infants dozed.

Within a week Aly was nearly her former self, if her former self had been breast-feeding three infants. While Terai and the other wet nurse shared those duties, everyone impressed upon the new mother and her mate that a mother’s first milk, before the heavier milk came in, had particular strength in guarding children from illness. It was important that Aly feed each triplet equally, though the breast that Ochobai had blistered that first day was off limits briefly while the midwife’s salve healed it. In that time, those darkings who had taken an interest in baby care learned to amuse their charges, lift them so they were more easily taken from their cribs, hold the insect netting around the cribs at night, and announce dirty diapers. They fetched things for wet nurses and maids alike, conveyed orders to other areas of the palace, and made Aly laugh. For that alone Nawat would have considered them well worth the confusion they caused on occasion.

Aly soon heard of the death of Keeket. Nawat had not hoped to keep it from her for long, not when she was the chief of the realm’s spies. He learned of her discovery when she woke him from a nap—they were both living on naps, the triplets taking their sleep in two-hour doses only—by shoving him.

“They killed that nestling, and you didn’t tell me!” she snapped. Nawat checked: the door to the nursery was closed.

“Bad Nawat!” piped Trick, looped around Aly’s neck as a thin rope.

“You said crows take care of ones that are hurt,” Aly said, giving Nawat a second shove. He struggled to sit up. “You said they nurse them like humans do.”

“If they’re slashed, or hurt in a way that heals,” Nawat said. “But a defective nestling must be culled. It hardly ever happens.” Only now, as he sat up, did he see that Aly was crying. Of course she would cry for her friend and for her godschild.

“I’m sorry,” he said, abashed. “I should have told you sooner, but I could find no time that was good.”

Aly raised her hands as if to hit Nawat, and collapsed against him instead, sobbing. Trick slid off her neck. “Bad Nawat,” it whispered before it dropped to the floor and wriggled out of the room. “Badbad.”

“Keep doing that and I’ll feed you to one of my band as a worm,” Nawat whispered loudly. He cuddled Aly and kissed her head.

“I can’t stand being this way,” Aly said at last. “Weepy and yelling. Mother would laugh. She always said I’d be more sympathetic once I had children of my own.”

“You will get better,” Nawat consoled her. “Terai says, and she knows.”

“Until then, promise me you will never drop our children to their deaths, or give them to a flock to kill,” Aly said, gripping him by the arms. “You must promise, Nawat.”

“Aly, this is foolish!” he cried, offended at last. “Our children are fine, healthy nestlings! I would no more cull them than I would you! Just because I am a crow does not mean that I have no human feelings!”

She stared at him for much too long, her green-hazel eyes intent. At last she threw up her hands. “Megrims and vapors, that’s what my nursemaid at home called them,” she said. “I try to get a grip, but my inside is far too close to my outside these days. My da would be so ashamed. He taught me better.”

“I like your emotions where I may see them,” Nawat told her. “It is good to know how you feel in truth, for a change, without talking around you too much.”

“But you always know how I feel in truth,” Aly protested. “That’s why I married you.”

“I don’t mind it when it is easier,” explained Nawat with a kiss.

A wail from the nursery brought them both out of bed. Ochobai was awake and hungry, which meant the others would soon be wailing, too.

Ochobai may have consistently been the first to wake and scream for a meal, but it was Junim who caused the nursery women to flutter and whisper two days later. Aly was in her office deep in the palace for the first time, but Nawat was present when the women set up a stir. Looking around from the game of bounce-me that he played with Ulasu, he asked, “What is the matter?”

“Junim turned over,” the younger wet nurse said, pointing to Nawat’s son. The boy was on the floor with Terai’s crawling child and Ochobai. Instead of lying on his belly to look around, as he’d been doing when Nawat picked up Ulasu, Junim now rested on his back, gazing with interest at the new world he’d found.

“I turn over all of the time,” Nawat said to Ulasu, giving the baby a slight jiggle. She chuckled and drooled on her father. “No one gets excited when I do it.”

“Only very clever babies do so when they are just a week old,” Terai said patiently. “Most wait a couple of months, or three.”

Nawat shrugged at Ulasu. “I don’t think it’s clever,” he replied. “Crow nestlings stand right away, long before humans do. The belly is too vulnerable.”

The women glared at him. “Most fathers are proud of what their children do,” Terai informed Nawat. “One day these little ones will hear you compare them unfavorably to crow-children. It will hurt them.”

Nawat smiled at her from his position on the floor. “One day they will learn to become crows. They will understand what they have been missing.”

Junim blew a spit-bubble, and new scents reached Nawat. The crow father sighed inwardly. His son was about to pee. There would be no easy way for Nawat to hand off Ulasu and gather up Junim, now the object of so much attention from the women, in time to make it to the window unobserved. That meant that Junim was soiling his diaper. He would soon begin to smell.

Nawat sat up, keeping Ulasu upright in his hands. How was he to teach his children the proper ways with so many humans to look on? If only humans didn’t have such foolish ideas!

Junim did not remain the sole master of the front-to-back rollover for long. Within two days Ulasu was doing it as well. Ochobai tried and tried, until she managed it two weeks after the triplets’ birth.

While the women congratulated Ochobai and told her what a big girl she was, and how much more clever all the triplets were than other children, a messenger entered the nursery with a sealed document. Seeing Nawat, she trotted over to give it to him. It bore the seal of both the queen and Aly’s Department of Information.

Orders, Nawat thought. His quiet time with the nestlings was over. He broke the seals and began to read. Once he had mastered the contents of the message, he went to the crow barracks to get his war band ready.

That night, in bed with Aly, he told her of Ochobai’s new skill and his own preparations to travel north. “Everything’s in order,” he finished. “I think Ochobai will miss me.”

“Those smugglers,” Aly murmured. “I wish we could send the army, but it’s not enough trouble to justify the expense. Especially not when the army’s preparing for the monsoon. It’s been so nice, having you here all the time. I don’t know about Ochobai, but I will miss you.”

“My crows ache for a long flight and time away from Rajmuat,” he told her. “My humans feel the same. The Rajmuat flock has kept a watch here. It makes my war band tense.” He’d seen the city crows observing his visits to the window with an infant in his hands. He didn’t appreciate their spying on him, either. “If all goes well, the journey will be short. These smugglers think we do not know they are there. We will take them by surprise. Since the rains are late, I’ve already sent my crows out. Our ship leaves before dawn.”

“No,” Aly said, wrapping her arms around him.

Trick, watching from its bowl overhead, sighed. “Now she will mope,” the darking said. “She always mopes when you are away.”

“Everyone says she is perfectly fine when I am gone!” Nawat protested.

“I work hard to make them think that,” Aly whispered, burying her face in Nawat’s hair.

Nawat was gone less than a week. When he returned, Ochobai saw him first and cried out. She set off a chorus of noise from Ulasu, Junim, and even Terai’s boy, who knew actual words and could yell “Nawat!” Nawat gathered Ochobai up and gave her a sparkling rock he’d brought from the northern tip of the island. He handed a monkey doll to Terai’s son, who snatched it gleefully.

“No, no stones,” cried a nursemaid, swooping down on them. “She’ll put it in her soft little mouth and hurt herself!”

The moment the stone was taken from her hands, Ochobai began to shriek. “Does this mean I am not to give Junim his shell, or Ulasu her feather?” he shouted over his daughter, frowning at the woman. “Must I take the doll away, too?”

Terai moved into his view, as stately as an eagle. “Babies put things in their mouths, my lord,” she said calmly into Nawat’s ear. “They even try to swallow them. The doll is a splendid gift for my boy, and I thank you.”

“Crow nestlings inspect objects, and learn from them,” Nawat retorted. “How do you know my infants will not do the same?”

He did not wait for an answer, but carried the wailing Ochobai to the nest he shared with Aly. There he rocked and bounced his oldest daughter until she began to calm, and to think of filling her diaper. They made it to the window just in time.

As he cleaned her, Nawat had a feeling, the same one he’d gotten from her once or twice before. It was something in the smell of her dung, he thought, but closer sniffing as he wiped her did not reveal the scent. Once he’d cleaned her off, he ran his nose all over the baby while she pummeled his head with her fists and tugged his hair. Deep in thought, Nawat replaced her diaper from those kept in the bedroom, then carried Ochobai out to the nursery.

The darkings, nursemaids, and wet nurses, often confused by his behavior, watched him curiously. He removed first Junim’s diaper, then Ulasu’s, and gave each infant as thorough a sniffing as he had given Ochobai. He thought they smelled sweeter than their older sister, but the scent was so faint, and so elusive, that he couldn’t be certain it was real.

As he replaced the diapers, he finally realized everyone was staring at him. He smiled. “Getting reacquainted,” he said. “They don’t have feathers for me to preen, so I do this.” It wasn’t even half a lie. Crows did have greetings after they returned to the nest. “How have Aly and the little ones fared?”

It was a good distraction. It kept his children’s caregivers talking until kitchen servants arrived with supper for the nursery folk. Seeing that Nawat was there, they set another place at the table for him. Nawat ate with the women. Afterward he remained to play with the children and talk to their caregivers.

There was no sign of Aly. Terai said that Aly had not been present for the last feeding, an hour before Nawat had arrived. It was three hours later, time for the next meal, and Ochobai was starting to fuss. Aly rarely missed two meals in a row if she could help it. She had confided to him that she felt like a bad mother if she always left it to the wet nurses to feed her children. Not only that, but she liked nursing, now that the bumps in the road were smoothed.

Nawat unpacked his bags as the wet nurses fed the infants, setting gifts for Aly on the bed. He was taking the gifts for the wet nurses and the nursemaids out to them when he saw that his wife had come at last. Aly stood in the middle of the nursery, her hands folded neatly before her. Today she wore a sarong in greens and browns that made her look like a tree spirit with very forbidding eyes. The room felt much colder to Nawat. The maids and wet nurses all had their faces averted. The darkings, except for Trick, who rode as Aly’s necklace, had vanished.

Aly took a breath. “Nawat. I would like a word with you, if you please. Elsewhere.”

Nawat followed Aly, wondering what had pulled her tail feathers. Normally she threw herself at him when he came home, and let him spin her around. If she was not brooding eggs, they had other fun as well. Something was wrong, because she did not take him into her office in their rooms, as he expected, to scold him in private. Today she led him downstairs to the second level and around the outer wall to her official offices as the queen’s spymaster.

As they walked in silence, Aly slightly in the lead, Nawat began to get irritated. He was no longer an unschooled island crow, to be ordered about this way—he was her mate and war leader of one of the queen’s finest commands. Surely he deserved an explanation!

Aly entered the offices that served her and her spies. At the moment they were empty: everyone was at supper. It was when they walked into Aly’s private office that Nawat found that some people were not taking their evening meal. Queen Dove sat on one of the chairs, her small cat-face expressionless. The hanging gems on the points of her fanned crown shivered in the candlelight: her body was quivering. At her left shoulder stood Taybur, at her right Duchess Winnamine, their own faces unreadable. Darkings pooled at the queen’s feet.

Nawat bowed deeply; Aly curtsied. “Your Majesty,” Nawat said.

“Nawat Crow,” Queen Dove said quietly. “There is a thing I hoped you might be able to explain to me.”

“I am always at Your Majesty’s service,” Nawat replied cautiously. The queen’s gems shook harder than ever. The entire population of the royal palace knew this to be a sign that Queen Dove was most displeased. The harder the gems swayed on the delicate crowns worn by the Isles’ queen, the worse the trouble was for someone. Had one of his people offended Dove in some way?

“I have come from a most embarrassing interview with the Tyran ambassador,” Dove said, her soft voice measured. “Apparently he and his aides took Moon Orchid Walk on their way out of the enclosure not long ago. As they passed the northeastern side of our residence, the Tyran ambassador stepped aside to admire a blossom. The god must have guided him. The splash of dung that might have drenched him struck his secretary instead.”

Uh-oh, Nawat thought, bowing his head. I was certain no one was out there.

“Of course,” Dove continued in that same quiet tone, “their party was quite startled. They looked to see what sort of bird had anointed the poor man. Imagine their surprise when they saw a pair of arms pull a naked infant into an open window of our residence. Imagine my surprise when the ambassador told me all this!”

Nawat understood the reason for Dove’s quivering gems now. She was furious with him.

The young queen got to her feet. The darkings moved away from her in an arc. “I had to apologize to that condescending moneybags for the insult to his delegation when I am trying to get a very big loan to repair the damage that was done during the rebellion. I offered my own maids to help his secretary bathe the stain away, silks from my own storehouse to replace the ruined clothes, and the best of our shaving and hair oils.” Small red patches had appeared on her cheeks. “Once I had rid myself of him, I sent for word from my household. My gardeners tell me they have been cleaning dung from that spot since your children were born. Aly says she knows nothing of it!”

“Crows don’t foul their nests, Your Majesty,” Nawat replied calmly. He had never seen Dove so angry, but she was reasonable. She would understand where Aly and the women of the nursery had not understood. “We go to the edge and eliminate outside it. Aly and the nursemaids insist on cloth diapers, but they’re smelly and unnatural. I clean our babies right away. They don’t get the rashes that make Terai’s son cry, and they don’t stink like he does.”

Dove sighed. “It could have been the ambassador from Carthak, Nawat. They once started a war because they thought the presents for an imperial birthday weren’t impressive enough to be anything but an insult. That’s how they added Zallara to the Empire. Or it could have been one of the Yamani embassy—any of them. Then the defiled person, because they think anyone contaminated with the dung of others is defiled—that defiled person would have to kill himself immediately, probably on my doorstep. Then the emperor would have to avenge his relative, because everyone in the embassy is related to him somehow, except for the people who haul away the contents of their privies!”

“Oh,” Nawat said, applying one of Aly’s first lessons in diplomacy to himself. When faced with angry nobility or royalty, she had explained, be still.

“Yes. Oh.” Dove sank onto her chair. Her lips twitched. “You should have seen his face.…” She made herself look stern again. “I have to show him that I’m punishing you, so get yourself and your band ready for a lot of stupid small tasks. And I can’t believe it’s healthy to stick your babies outside when the monsoons are coming.”

Crows live outside, Nawat wanted to reply, but he remained still instead and bowed to his queen. She rose and left the chamber, her darkings following her like a train. Taybur and the duchess nodded to Aly and left in the queen’s wake. Nawat could not help but notice that the guard captain’s body was shaking. Was Taybur getting ill?

Aly cleared up his confusion by whispering after Taybur, “It’s not funny!”

After the door closed behind the queen and her companions, Nawat considered what had just taken place. He’d received his first reprimand from the queen. There would be tasks, but he had heard that such things were also usually accompanied by other punishments, such as a demotion in rank, or a reduction in salary. Technically, he had no rank. His war band operated on its own rules with Nawat as lurah, leader. Nawat dealt with the queen’s generals, admirals, and captains, but only she had the power to command him. She had spoken as if command of his flock remained his. As to reducing his salary …

“Do I get a salary?” he asked his mate.

“What!” Aly shrieked behind him. Nawat turned to stare at her. She looked as though he’d turned into a kraken.

“Why do you raise your voice?” he asked, though if the truth was to be told, he had a good idea.

“You embarrass the queen—and our family!—with people we are asking for money, with the representatives of a foreign nation, a nation that might take offense, and you want to know why I might raise my voice?” she demanded, though she also asked it more quietly. “Nawat, what am I to do with you? Human babies wear diapers, and ambassadors are living symbols of their realms!”

He crossed his arms over his chest, feeling as stubborn as his mate. “Crow nestlings go outside the nest. Those diaper things are a filthy habit. And they smell. I am sorry Ochobai splooted on the secretary next to the ambassador.”

“There’s another thing,” she said, ignoring his apology. “You’ve been holding our children out the window all this time?”

“Only when no one sees.”

“Are you mad?” Aly demanded. “What if your hold slipped? Our nestlings would be as dead as poor little Keeket from this height!” She frowned. “Actually, I’m surprised you got the ambassador’s secretary from so high.”

Nawat beamed. “Ochobai has very good aim,” he explained. “She doesn’t even foul the outside of the nest.”

Aly started to grin, then glared at him again. “This isn’t funny!”

“No, it’s important,” Nawat agreed. “It shows her muscles are healthy. She is healthy.”

“She can be healthy in diapers, like a normal child,” Aly retorted.

“My children must be crows!” Nawat cried, his voice harsh. “They must learn the things that crows learn when I am with them! You knew this when we married, Aly! They may look like humans, but they are half crow!” He was so upset that he began to sprout feathers: they itched and pulled under his clothes and dragged at his hair until they fought their way free.

“Crows!” he shouted, and left her. He would not make sense once he got so angry. Had she forgotten the Rajmuat flock? Did she want that fate for their nestlings, or for him?

Sometimes it is hard to be married to Aly, he told himself, not for the first time, as he ran downstairs and outside. Barely acknowledging the guards, he stalked through a gate in the Royal Enclosure. Sometimes she forgets that we are not her Tortall family. I cannot turn myself into a human knight or a human spymaster like her parents. At least Dove is only upset because we soiled a foreigner.

He turned down the path to the small lake near the Royal Enclosure. The beautiful pavilions that stood in the three coves held no interest for him. Instead he found a rock that stood over the turtle beach and sat there until dark, nibbling grasshoppers, dragonflies, and beetles as he watched the fish. Aly would never let him eat beetles at home; she said the way they crunched gave her the shivers.

When he saw the lamplighters come down the paths, Nawat rose and stretched with a sigh. His feathers were gone, had been gone for two hours at least. Ochobai was probably crying for him right now. She usually napped after her late-afternoon pee, and when she woke, after she’d fed, she wanted her father, even if she did hit him. Junim would be circled by cooing maids, while the darkings cuddled Ulasu—if they did not actually talk to her. It was time to see if Aly still wanted him as a mate.

He certainly did not expect what he found in the nursery. Aly was directing the maids in the placement of three big pottery jars, one next to each crib. She looked at Nawat and smiled ruefully.

“Sometimes I am so busy quarreling that I forget there is always a solution, if I take time to think,” she said with a blush. “I don’t know how you can put up with such a difficult wife. Will these do? It isn’t the same as dangling our children out the window—but really, isn’t this safer?”

Nawat looked from her to the jars. They were wide-mouthed and glazed, with handles for the maids to grip. With care, he could hold the nestlings over them easily.

He went over to his wife and kissed her well. “You are so clever,” he murmured as the nursery women sighed romantically. Then Ochobai began to scream. Nawat laughed and went to pick up his daughter.

The queen was a woman of her word. She issued a number of orders for Nawat’s band that could as well have been handled by the army or navy. The group went up the coast or out to tiny islands that were marked only on the most precise maps. As if to help the queen prove that the father responsible for the Tyran secretary’s embarrassment would be well punished, the belated rainy season began. The crows were forced to ride or sail with the humans or risk being blown out to sea. Generally Nawat’s humans considered the little tasks a very good joke, but the crows still fretted about the danger of outcast status. They sulked.

“We have no babies to show the world we are teaching them crow ways,” Nawat heard one of his people say to another.

“We could sit on the palace roof and mate-feed each other,” suggested her friend. “But will that be enough? How do we know they’re watching?”

Nawat pretended to ignore them. He asked himself the same questions, and he had no answers. To help put an end to the unpleasant trips, he presented the humiliated secretary with ten precious yards of a silk woven on only one of the Isles, a hard-to-get and expensive gift. It was pronounced a suitable apology by the ambassador, and the war band was allowed to relax.

On a rare day at home, Nawat decided not to eat the last of a worm snack. Instead, while Aly was in her office near the queen’s rooms, and the nursery women were cleaning, he took Junim into the bedroom to play. The boy was alert and fascinated by the new toy his father took from his pocket. He giggled and swiped at the thrashing worm that Nawat dangled over his head.

“Catch, Junim,” Nawat whispered. “Catch the treat!”

A couple of the darkings provided comments.

“Too low.”

“Almost had it that time.”

“Uh-oh.”

Nawat thought “uh-oh” was a grab that almost got the worm until the darkings shot out of the bedroom. Without turning to face his mate, Nawat said, “Would you like it? I’m full.”

When she said nothing, Nawat added, “I know they aren’t supposed to have anything but mother’s milk. I wasn’t feeding, only playing.”

Aly’s sigh made his heart hurt. “I didn’t think it would be this hard. I thought, the longer you were with me, the more you would be …”

A coal of anger started to burn in his heart. When she did not finish her sentence, he said, “Go on. You thought I’d be more human by now.” He called for his feathers in his hair and along his bare arms. When he did it on purpose, he could control how much change took place and where. Junim gasped as the long shafts grew from Nawat’s scalp and skin. The infant’s face crinkled. He grinned hugely, showing pink gums, and reached not for the worm, but for his father. Nawat turned to look at his wife, tilted his head back like a bird, and dropped the worm down his gullet.

Aly walked out.

Picking up Junim, Nawat grimaced as he swallowed the worm. Just now he would pull out a wing feather before he would admit it to Aly, but he really preferred to eat things as a human. The taste was much better when he could chew and savor. Bouncing the boy in his arms, Nawat carried him into the nursery and turned him over to Terai. Even though Ochobai was crying, Nawat left the rooms.

He bedded down with his war band that night. No one said a word about it. He worked on his own gear, sharpening the weapons he used as a human and oiling his leathers. He looked around at every squeak, thinking it was one of the triplets demanding attention—it was an annoying habit he had developed since their birth. He tried to sleep in the barracks, but every time he closed his eyes, he thought he heard Ochobai’s cranky wail. Instead he changed to crow shape and took a turn at rooftop watch, despite the rain that poured from the skies. Even the weather couldn’t distract him from his family.

When the next member of the band flew up to relieve him, Nawat didn’t return to the barracks. Instead he flew straight to the Royal Enclosure. The mosquito nets on the windows of their room and around their bed were up, but the bed was made and unwrinkled. Nawat changed into human form and went to the clothespress where the drying cloths were kept.

“Aly working,” Trick said from its bowl home over the bed. “Aly told me go away. She in bad mood. Are you in bad mood?”

Nawat sighed as he dried himself off. “I’m in a crow mood, Trick.” It was a lie. Crows didn’t get depressed unless a mate or a nestling died. Only humans got depressed over emotions.

Trick squeaked. “Crows drop darkings from high up!”

“It’s not that kind of crow mood. Don’t worry about it.” Nawat went to a shelf for a sarong and picked one from the stack. When it didn’t even cover his behind, he realized he’d gone to the diaper shelf without thinking. He folded the diaper carefully and replaced it, then went to the right shelf, for the right clothes. Normally he could manage well in the dark, even with human eyes, because he remembered where everything was. “Is she getting tired of me, Trick?”

“No fair,” Trick said testily. “No fair, talk about Aly like that.”

Nawat combed his wet hair back from his face with his fingers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

He was almost to the nursery door when he heard the darking say, “Nawat good friend to Aly. Aly good friend to Nawat. Everyone grumpy during rains.”

The darking’s words struck Nawat near the heart. The little creatures only gave advice when they cared deeply about the recipients.

“You’re a good friend to us, too,” he said at last, when he had mastered his voice. He opened the nursery door.

Just two shaded lamps were lit. Everyone was sleeping, not a state he wanted to interrupt. The one thing the entire Crow household had agreed upon, that first week after the triplets were born, was that sleep was sacred. The infants left them few unbroken periods of it, so all of them napped when they could.

Nawat heard a stirring of body and cloth, then the slightest indrawn breath. Without a sound he dashed to Ochobai’s crib. Her eyes were open and so was her mouth. “You knew your da had come, didn’t you?” His voice was barely audible in his own ears as he picked her up and checked her diaper with an expert hand. She was dry, a miracle of its own.

He wrapped her loosely in her warmest blanket, the rains having chilled the air. Rather than wake anyone, he sprouted a feather, plucked it with a wince, and left it in the cradle to let the nursery workers know who had the baby. He covered Ochobai’s mouth on her first angry yell and trotted out of the rooms with her. Only after the guards closed the front door behind them did Nawat take away his hand to free Ochobai’s furious wails.

“Good lungs.” One of the guards was Bala. “She might be a herald one day.”

The other guard chuckled. “Any howler monkey in your bloodlines, sir?”

Nawat grinned and carried Ochobai away from the residential part of the Gray Palace, down the stairs, and out into a colonnade that overlooked the garden between palace and temples. The torches gave scant light to the trees and buildings beyond, but he could hear the falling rain and smell grass and wet dirt. Ochobai sobbed briefly against her father’s shoulder and fell quiet. She gripped a fistful of his hair and yanked.

Nawat bore the painful tug. “You’re an ungrateful little sploot,” he said, giving her the war band’s name for dung and pee shot out of the nest. “All you do is hit me, scream in my ear, burp mother’s milk on my clothes, pull my feathers, pull my hair.…”

Ochobai flailed the hand that gripped his hair, tugging it back and forth.

“Junim and Ulasu are glad to see me,” Nawat said. “They smile. They do cute things. They blow little bubbles. You punched me in the eye once. More than once.” He was getting that feeling again, the wrong feeling. It came from his little girl. It was inside her, the wrongness. Now that he was alone with her, without distractions, two months after her birth, he felt it cleanly. It was the sense he had always gotten from Keeket, the one that had made him want to cull the nestling.

Slowly Nawat slid to the foot of the inside colonnade wall, his legs in front of him. He placed Ochobai on his thighs, holding her with his hands curved around her sides. For once she remained quiet, willing to look around at the torches and her father.

Nawat bent over her, letting his crow senses spread through his nestling. He closed his eyes as he found what was wrong not now, but in its seeds at the heart of her bones and organs. Spread through her tiny body, Nawat followed the ghostly path of her future shape.

It would go slowly, so very slowly. She might be ten or fourteen when she stopped growing at the height her brother and sister would be at the age of eight or nine. He saw the curves that would develop in her leg and arm bones, the way her hands would get heavy, the cage her ribs would form for her organs.

He had seen the dwarfs of the human world. One served Queen Dove as keeper of her birds. Others performed with the Players who kept her court entertained at state dinners. He’d seen two of them begging in the street on his arrival in Rajmuat. Later he’d learned that both were spies for Dove’s rebels. A family of cloth merchants in the city had two dwarfs in their shops, a weaver and a little boy.

Something about the shape of Ochobai’s future bones made him remember the winter after he’d taken man shape to court Aly. He was living in Tanair village with Falthin the bowyer. Across the street, the miller’s daughter gave birth in February to the tiniest of babies, one that weighed barely two pounds. For all its size, the baby was fully developed, not one of the unfortunates who came before its time. It was simply … very small, and very wrong. Nawat had stayed away from it. He’d feared he might peck it, though it was not his nestling or his responsibility.

It had died suddenly, two weeks after it was born. The family buried it after dark, with no priest to say words. Nawat had always wondered if they had done a human kind of culling, killing the baby before it grew, but no one ever spoke of it again. Even its mother said nothing, once she began to appear in public.

That baby had been wrong from birth, as crows saw it. From the patterns in Ochobai’s body and bones, it might be a year or two before a human mage realized that she did not grow well. With crows, it would be different. Nawat was her father. It stood to reason that he would be the first to pin down the wrongness in his daughter. But in a matter of months, perhaps only weeks, other crows would begin to feel it. They would know that Ochobai had to be culled. They would wonder why Nawat had not taken care of it, when she was in his nest. They would look at the dwarfs of the city, working and playing, having children, and they would know that Nawat was acting like a human, not a crow.

He would be cast from the flock, from the great family of crows. The Rajmuat flock would drive him away, and the flock of his blood family back on Lombyn Isle. He could imagine their beaks tearing at his flesh, their claws digging into his hair and back.

He lifted Ochobai and stood. It would be better if he did it right away. If he used the fountain, he could tell Aly the baby had slipped from his hands.…

Aly.

If he culled one of their children, she would never forgive him. Even if he made it look like an accident. He had tried not to lie to Aly, who had the magical Gift of Seeing lies and other things. The fact that he was a crow confused her Gift; sometimes he could lie to her, but he didn’t know if he could do such a big lie without her detection.

It didn’t matter if Aly could See his lie or not. It would be in his heart, rotting away his love for her. How could he give up Aly of the sparkly eyes and glittering smile, Aly of the dancing hands and feet? That was the way he had first seen her, tending a flock of goats. The stubble of hair on her head had shone red-gold in the sun. She moved like a butterfly. She joked with him as if they were friends before he ever changed his shape. She was so much more than a human who treated a crow with respect, even at the start.

Nawat turned away from garden, fountain, and colonnade. Aly would not believe that Nawat was foolish enough to take the baby into the rain, or so slow that Ochobai would drown before he pulled her from the water.

He would cull Ochobai properly, from the nest. He could say he was sleepy and forgot the jars, so he took her to the window. It would be quick, quicker than Keeket. He would stay a proper crow, and lose his mate.

Small fists dug at his chest as he climbed the stairs from ground floor to third. Nawat looked down into Ochobai’s face. She had gone quiet as she struck him over and over. Did she know what he planned to do?

She looked no different from Ulasu and Junim as they explored something of interest. Ochobai’s interest just now seemed to lie in pummeling her father. She did it with determination.

She does everything with determination, thought Nawat. Like Aly.

He ground his teeth together, forcing himself not to think of Ochobai as anything but a nestling with a disease that would be a problem to the flock. He would be helping her. Perhaps she cried so much from pain in her bones, though the midwife said she was healthy. As far as the midwife, Aly, and every other human were concerned, Nawat would be killing a perfectly normal baby.

Ochobai looked up at him and made a sound. She screwed her face up in a yawn. Nawat stopped, her beauty stabbing him all the way through the heart. Ochobai was his favorite, though he wasn’t supposed to have one. From the beginning he was the only person of all the triplets’ attendants who could quiet Ochobai mid-tantrum. He loved her from her downy puff of dark hair to the tiny nails on her hands and feet. Her grip on his finger was more ferocious than that of her brother and sister, the power in her lungs more piercing even than that of Terai’s older baby. How could he drop this pink nestling, his first, sixty feet to the hard stone flags of Moon Orchid Walk?

She woke him up when he’d come home from missions for the queen, tired of flight, and tired of humans. She spat her mother’s milk in his face, on his clothes, in his hair. When she had filled a diaper, she smelled horrible. She had gotten baby dung on his hands and chest. In the bath, she splashed so much that she got soapy water in his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. She hated every toy he gave her.

The guards let them inside the rooms. Everyone was still asleep: Ochobai had not roused them by screaming for her midnight meal.

Nor did she now. She did need the jar—or the window, Nawat thought, his gut in a knot. Do it now, while it is quiet, while no one is awake. Before the Rajmuat flock knows I have not culled her.

Taking her blanket and diaper off, he looked inside her again. There was the wrongness: the part that made all of him that was a crow want to shriek and claw. It battered against his rib cage, demanding that he cull this malformed nestling now. It was flock law; it was crow law.

Nawat was sprouting feathers as he carried Ochobai to the window farthest from the sleeping women and the door to Aly’s room. He ignored them and the claws that formed at the tips of his fingers. Holding the nestling in one arm, he pulled the mosquito net aside with the other and leaned over the stone sill.

He was about to stretch out the arm with the nestling when Ochobai grabbed two fistfuls of chest feathers and gave them her hardest yank. The crow-man looked at his nestling. Ochobai met his gaze. She yanked his feathers again without looking away.

The crow did not think of his mate. It was Nawat who saw those fearless baby eyes. Did Ochobai even know what he intended to do? How could she, an infant barely two months old?

If he killed her, he would be killing the baby who was already showing a stubborn streak equal to her mother’s. He would kill the daughter who slept between him and Aly more often than her siblings, because she was calmer with her parents. He thought of those small punches to his nose and his eyes again, but they were not insults. They were Ochobai, fighting two other babies to be the first into the world.

He held her with both hands. “You’re not going to be wrong,” he whispered. “Different, yes. Many of the dwarfs are different, and they have lives and families and work. They are no stranger than merpeople or Stormwings or centaurs. You will need to be a fighter.” He cuddled her against his chest. “I am a fool. I cannot undo what I have become, no more than your mother can un-bear you.”

A trickle of wetness down his leg told Nawat he had brought Ochobai inside before she had done the business she, at least, was there for. “I am well served,” he said, kissing the crown of her head. “If I gave you a fright, you have paid me back.” He realized that when he’d had his change of heart his feathers had retreated. Only Ochobai still clung to a few. “You have paid me back royally,” Nawat murmured with a wince, feeling sore spots where she had ripped the feathers from his chest. He carried her back to her crib for cleaning with the diaper he had not thought she would need again.

When she was tidy, Nawat carried the naked infant into his bedroom. Aly was awake instantly. Smelling the milk on her mother’s nightgown, Ochobai began to fuss.

“Oh, poor baby,” Aly murmured, holding out her arms. “I’ll take her, Nawat.” As soon as Ochobai began to nurse, Nawat washed off Ochobai’s urine. Once he was clean, he got into the bed with a burping cloth in one hand and a clean diaper in the other.

“I’m sorry about … before,” Aly murmured. “So very sorry. I’m all at odds and ends. It seems as if I take it out on you because what you say touches me in places where I have no defenses.”

“Hush,” Nawat said, putting a finger to her lips. “I have something you must know, something that will touch you there, and not because of me. Ochobai, Aly. She will not be like Ulasu or Junim. She will be a dwarf.”

Aly looked up at him, her eyes wide in the dark. Through the open door to the nursery, Nawat glimpsed a maid as she lit several lamps. Junim and Ulasu had begun to wail for a meal. Terai and the other wet nurse moved to the cradles as Nawat watched.

“There’s no sign,” Aly said at last, her voice soft in the dark. “Mistress Penolong said nothing. She did enough spells over my womb while I was carrying. Surely she would know.”

“Sometimes it does not show for years,” Nawat replied as the other triplets went quiet outside. “But crows—we know when a nestling will not fledge into an adult like all the rest. We always know.”

“And then you throw them out of the nest, or drop them to the ground, like Keeket,” Aly said. She slid a hand under her pillow, where she always kept a dagger. “You cull them.”

“Yes,” Nawat said calmly, keeping his eyes on the scene in the nursery. He had not forgotten that Aly was a dangerous woman. He had to trust her. “Humans will allow a child that is not perfect, or some humans will.” He thought of the tiny baby that had died in a cold winter, buried without witnesses. “I thought I was a good crow, fit for the Rajmuat flock. Instead I am only a crow fit for my own war band, and for you, I hope.”

Aly looked at him. He could feel it, coming from her, the special attention that was her magical Gift. She was trying to See if he lied. “But you will be cast out,” she said.

Nawat dared to stroke his daughter’s soft hair. Aly did not stop him. That was a good sign.

“I will be cast out of the great, cruel Rajmuat flock,” he said. “My war band has faced it, and so will I. We can live with that. It would kill me to lose Aly and my favorite daughter.”

“You’re not supposed to have favorites!” she whispered softly. “You’re supposed to love them all equally!” She slid her hand out from under her pillow with a sigh. “Maybe when you get to know the other two better,” she suggested.

Ochobai had finished her snack. She pinched her mother’s breast to let her know that.

“A dwarf,” Aly said, and kissed her daughter’s forehead. “We will learn, then, all of us. We’ll teach you to keep fighting.” She handed the baby to Nawat. “We’ll bring other dwarfs into this household. And no one will mock you for who you are.”

“They will,” Nawat said as he placed Ochobai against his shoulder. “Humans are like crows in that way. Ochobai will teach them better.” He patted her back.

Ochobai belched wetly onto the cloth.

*     *     *

In the morning, Nawat went to the crow barracks to tell his war band he, too, would soon be outcast. He wanted to give them a last chance to leave if they still cared to go. He also wanted to make certain none of them would try to cull his firstborn. He took Ochobai with him, because she began to scream when he tried to leave her behind. Now he waited for his band’s response with the baby in the curve of his arm. He watched each of the born crows, daring them silently to utter a word about his dwarf child.

Instead Bala looked at another of the born humans. “You lose,” she said. “Pay up.” She held out her hand.

The man grumbled and dug in his purse until he found six coins, all of which he set on her palm. “We had a wager on,” he explained to Nawat as other members of the band handed over coins to Bala and one of the other women. “Bunch of us thought you’d get yourself made outcast over Lady Aly. These two thought it’d be one of the babies.” He nodded at the pair who were taking in money.

“Did no one bet on me remaining a crow in flock standing?” asked Nawat, outraged.

All of his people looked at him and shook their heads slowly. “We are a bit worried about the Rajmuat flock coming after us, though, lurah,” his second-in-command told Nawat. “They can be real nasty.”

Nawat bounced his daughter, who cackled. “I’m going to talk it over with them,” he explained. “I have a bargain I’ll offer. The Rajmuat flock leaves us be, and we don’t hire mages to witch the roosting trees.”

Everyone gaped at him. Roosting trees were sacred. “You’d do that?” Bala asked, eyes wide.

Nawat grinned at her and then at Ochobai. “I’m a crow, aren’t I? Cousin to the Trickster God himself.” He lifted his daughter in the air and wriggled her until she drooled on him. “We’re both crows.”

Suddenly the crows of the war band began to caw in triumph. The humans jumped to their feet, waving and pointing. In all the fuss, Nawat finally understood he was to look at the back of Ochobai’s head.

A small quill had sprouted there, the sign of a nestling’s first feather.