Tortall by Tamora Pierce Page B

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 andinstantly 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