My hopes, despite the tempering of truth, surged anew. His manner invited me to broach the most important topics again. “Relagai…”
The sunlight vanished. I shivered and searched for words sufficient to express my need. Snowflakes drifted from the overripe clouds. A red-tailed hawk circled lazily above the meadow. Kol turned his fish with a stick, frowned, and glanced upward. He sat up sharply.
“Valen,” he said, eyes fixed on the bird. “Canst thou find Picus’s house, by gard or eye or thy human magic?”
Of a sudden, the air thrummed with danger. My gaze swept the forest edge and the ash tree where he’d sat when I joined him in the night, then shot up to the bird, which had completed a loop and now arrowed toward Kol. I had walked here from the hut without any magic. “I believe so. What’s wrong?”
“Kneel and bow thy head so the bird cannot note thy unmarked skin. Do it now.” His command brooked no question. “When I leave the meadow, be off to Picus and await my return. Or Stian’s. Do not walk the world unguarded.”
I did as he said, extending my legs and bending over them in one of his stretching postures. The only reason to hide my unmarked face and groin would be to pass me off as a mature Dané. Which meant that someone—the bird’s master?—must be watching. “Who’s coming?”
“Hush.” He tossed his stick into the fire and rose. Wings ruffled. “In the Canon, bird, and honor to thy master and mistress.” I felt no presence save Kol and the bird. “Fortunately I’ve completed both work and practice this day, thus can answer their summons promptly.”
No one responded. My uncle’s chilly declarations seemed directed solely to the bird.
“I prefer to travel uncompanioned, as you know, but of course, I cannot prevent thee. Wait…”
Kol’s hand rested lightly on my back for a moment. “It seems Tuari and Nysse require my presence, Jinte. Keep thy spine stretched and loose until the finger numbness subsides. ’Tis the surest method for relief.”
I waved a hand and shifted my position slightly as if heeding his advice…as if the bird might remember my false name or how I had responded to the prompting. The evening’s chill settled deeper.
The wings ruffled again and flapped, and after a moment, a sidewise glance showed Kol striding down the meadow and the hawk gliding in lazy circles above him. Once they had vanished into the evening, I jumped up and raced into the wood in search of Picus and Saverian. Kol’s abandoned fish had charred to ash.
Chapter 17
“The messenger bird is like to be a friend of the archon, one who failed to make the fourth passage.” By the light of the twig lantern, Picus picked bits of leaf and thorn from a sheep’s skin. “ ’Tis the common fate of those who cannot dance their Danae magic well enough or learn the skills required of them.”
“They’re forced to become birds if they fail to make the fourth passage?” Saverian paused in her frenetic pacing to gape at Picus as if he’d said Magrog himself would sit down with us to dine.
Saverian’s relentless urgency had me gobbling much too fast. The woman had come near taking off my head with an oak limb when I refused to leave straightaway to take her home to Renna. The woman and the monk were bundled in cloaks and blankets, while I sat comfortably on the snow-dusted ground in shirt and braies, sopping up Picus’s boiled turnips with a wad of doughy bread. Though I mourned Kol’s fish, I would have relished far worse than the monk’s meager fare by this time. Evidently two full days had passed since I’d gone off with Kol.
“None are forced into bird form,” said Picus, scratching his arms thoughtfully before returning to his wool picking, “unless they’ve sore trespassed their Law, in which case their new form would more like be stone or snake. The alter choice for failure is to live on as a hunter, artisan, weaver, or some such like, and such is not a happy life for a Dané. While their fellows dance, their own bare faces wrinkle and their bodies fail near quick as us human folk. Without a sianou they will ever feel rootless and lost. Most prefer inhabiting bird or beast to such shame, though I’ve always been of a mind ’tis a perversion of the ordo mundi as if ’twere I had walked into Navronne as king instead of my good prince. But at the least, they choose it for themselves.”
My hand paused twixt bowl and mouth, soup dripping from the bread onto my knees. “The hawk was a person, then, thinking and listening…” Which explained Kol’s little deception. A person…trapped in that feathered body. And in Moth’s owl, too. I had already decided that Moth, not Kol, had led me into murder in the bogs. I shuddered.
“Nay. No person. ’Tis said they lose most faculties, retaining only what wit their companions especially nurture.” Which made sense if the person had no soul to begin with.
I stuffed the bread into my mouth, making sure to savor every morsel. I’d sworn not to think of souls. I’d plenty more worries closer to hand. “Why would Kol be summoned so abruptly? He seemed wary, but not afraid.”
Picus shook his head. “Tuari hath neither favor nor use for Stian or his kin. If the archon has staunch witnesses to thy rescuing, he’ll happily bury Kol.”
“Bury…” Of course, that’s why Kol had said Stian might come for me, if he could not. The gummy bread clogged my gullet. “Iero’s grace, I must go after him…save him.”
“Fie on that, lad. Ye’d make his good deed a waste and end up broken and prisoned alongside him. None’s so clever as Kol, and he’ll not be easily locked away. They need him.”
I recalled Stian’s words. “Because of his dancing.”
“Because his line is fertile!” Saverian’s declaration burst out like floodwaters through a breached dike. “Picus says the Danae have always been slow to reproduce—likely a matter of their long lives—but the problem has grown worse in the years since Llio’s curse. Children have grown so rare among them that these Harrower poisonings are devastating. They can’t replace those lost. For a Danae coupling to produce two offspring, as Kol and Clyste’s parents did, is unheard of. That’s why they were enraged when Clyste’s child disappeared. To learn that she wasted her fertility on a human mate has surely infuriated them all the more.”
“Aye,” said Picus. “They’re sore diminished from their greatest glory. Tuari blames humankind for all their ills.” The monk’s big hands fell still, and he closed his eyes as if praying. “Sin begets sin.”
“Fear for survival will drive a species beyond custom and boundaries, Valen.” The physician crouched at my side, her jade-colored eyes drilling holes in my skull. “Picus says that this Tuari’s despite is so great that any bargain worked with a human—especially one of Eodward’s kin—is surely devised to turn upon the human party…”
…and Elene believed that Osriel had come to Aeginea to bargain for power—a magical alliance to fuel the dread enchantment waiting at Dashon Ra. I could not imagine the magnitude of the working Osriel planned. But surely a backlash from its failure would be his ruin…and Navronne’s. No wonder Saverian was agitated.
The monk filled my emptied bowl from the ale crock at his elbow, glancing from one of us to the other, his eyes sharply curious. “What troubles thee, friends?”
I took a swallow of thin ale. “Good Picus, I must get this lady home. She guards Prince Osriel’s health and has been from his side too long. As Kol can care for himself, I’ll see her safely back to her duty. We’ll need a few provisions for the road, lest my poor skills delay us.”
“But ye said Kol told ye to bide.” His sheepskin dropped into the mud, and his broad brow knotted in concern.
Who knew how many human days had passed since Osriel had given me up to the Danae? Instinct told me that the winter solstice raced toward us with the speed Nemelez drove her chariot of ice through her demonic lover’s fiery kingdom.