Jik bristles. Looks at me icily.
“Her canwr rose against her. Now he’s mad and broken. How will you fare if something goes wrong with her plan?”
A moment and I’m up and moving.
I shove a little knife into my boot. I wrap a rope around my arm. I put on my warm uniform. If Jik is right and Caru’s alive, then what he’s been calling for is saving. He’s been calling for me.
If he betrayed Zal, she’ll kill him. I can’t let that happen.
Not after
Ley
I just can’t.
Something moves in the doorway. I look up and see Wedda there, her eyes glowing.
“Nestling,” she says. “Jik wants trouble. Don’t listen to her.”
Jik’s shoulder feathers spike up as though she’s wearing a motorcycle jacket. Her eyes are wider than they were a moment ago, and her blue crest stands up, too, sharp and brittle. She looks small next to Wedda, though, and like a kid.
Like me.
“I don’t want trouble,” Jik says. “I want justice. You’ve heard Caru screaming as long as I have.”
“Caru is a ghost,” Wedda says, her tone tense.
“We all know he is not,” Jik retorts. “The captain says he is, and we follow her orders and call him dead, but that bird lives in torment.”
Jik turns to me again.
“You can help the captain. Or you can help us. You’re stronger than she ever was—”
Wedda grabs her by the wing and hisses into her ear.
“Enough! Leave her. Leave now.”
Jik spins and goes.
When she is sure Jik is gone, Wedda looks at me. “Do not,” she says. “Whatever you’re considering, nestling. It won’t end well for you, nor will it end well for that bird. The captain’s canwr isn’t sane.”
“But it isn’t dead either,” I say. I’m completely dressed— prepared, for what reason I’m not totally willing to consider, to go out into the cold.
I march past her, and Wedda reaches out. She clenches my hair into her fingers.
“You can’t stop me, I—”
I realize she’s not trying to hurt me. She’s knotting my hair in a way that feels unfamiliar.
“What’s that you’re doing?” I ask. “It’s not the captain’s knot?”
“No. It is your own,” she says.
When I look in the mirror, my hair is twisted up into tight plaits, close to my skull, twirling and swooping nautilus shells.
“This belongs to you,” she says softly. “Just as your mind, and your will belong to you.”
I stare at my reflection, and Wedda behind me. I hear what she’s telling me. I start to give her my thanks, but she cuts me off before I can even begin.
“If anyone asks, you chose this yourself, nestling. I’m a steward, not a revolutionary.”
And so I go hunting a ghost.
I sidle my way down the ladder and into the galley, where I steal a piece of bread and a small piece of salted meat left from the pig.
I listen hard for the sound of Milekt’s tone. The cote up there has only bitter things to say.
Some of them are hatchlings, as yet untrained to sing with their Magonian hosts, and thus far unbonded to them. Milekt and Svilken are teaching them. The little birds resist. They strain against their chains. When Magonians die, the canwr that are bonded to them die as well, but not automatically. They’re killed. They can’t link with another Magonian. Once the bond is made, it’s permanent.
Oh god, like a wife burned with her husband’s body.
Restraint, trills Milekt. I hear him say it to the hatchlings, training them. He’s a drill sergeant. The same way he trains me. I hear Zal on deck, too, giving orders to the ship’s crew.
I wonder, at times, if she ever sleeps.
I hear a quiet whirring from Zal’s quarters. Knowing Zal’s above, I don’t even hesitate. No one would dare come in here without permission. No one but me.
I push on Zal’s door. Inside, a large bed with red-and-gold bedcovers, an ancient, worn-smooth wooden desk, and rolled-up maps on parchment. There are tons of maps. But they’re not what I’m here for.
In the corner is a screen, and behind it is a cage covered with a dark cloth. Inside it I can feel Caru moving, spinning, stretching his wings out.
I’ve never been in here before.
This is why.
This canwr is contraband. He should be dead.
Aza, the bird says. I jump at my name.
Kill me, he says, voice quieter than it was. He’s talking only to me, to himself.
No, I say. Feed, I tell him, in the Magonian I can manage.
Feed, Caru repeats. There’s a darkness in that voice, a rawness. I take off the cage cover, gently, quietly.
I meet his dark, shining eye. He’s a falcon.
Gleaming black on the top, each shining feather flecked with gold. His breast is creamy with dark markings all over it, and the undersides of his wings are fire red. Enormous. His body is as long as my arm.
I see him, and he’s what I’ve been searching for since I came aboard.
I’m not sure what you want, I say, no longer in Magonian, but in my own language. Eat, I say.
I put my hand through the bars. Caru shuffles forward. I don’t let myself recoil, even though I can feel the despair and longing that are driving him insane. Even though it all makes my heart hurt. He takes the bread from my fingers. He tears loose a bite of meat.
His sleek head turns to me, and he stares at my chest, making a low and dangerous noise, but Milekt’s not with me. The falcon rocks on his perch, his eyes wild and nervous.