At last the creature opened his eyes once again, and this time they stayed open, though only barely. He was scarcely conscious, just alert enough to roll his head and look around from below heavy lids. He squawked feebly when he caught sight of the woman beside him. His mouth drooped open, revealing the lines of needlelike teeth inside, and he tried to hiss.
“Shh-sh-sh,” the Grandmother hushed him in soothing tones, grasping his wrists lightly as the boy tried to fight the restraints again. “Rest, my child. Rest. You’re in good hands.”
She smiled at him, hoping that this universal sign of friendship amongst humans might just cross between species, and it seemed to work somewhat. The child quieted, his mouth fluttering soundlessly and split tongue lolling to one side, but he continued to struggle against the linen cuffs. Against her better judgment the Grandmother loosened each one slightly, careful to make sure the boy watched her do it.
“Shh,” she said again, sitting back down and turning her gray eyes to meet his. “You see? You are safe, child. You are safe here.”
The freeing of his wrists and ankles, if only marginally, seemed to do the trick. The atherian finally stilled, only occasionally tugging weakly at his wing. He looked at his caretaker expectantly, but the old healer shook her head sadly.
“No, my darling,” she whispered. “No. You’re hurt there. I can’t risk you doing more harm to yourself.”
It became clear right then how profound the lost words between the two of them were. The boy had obviously not understood a thing. He began to pull at his wing more fiercely, rolling his head to look at the long straps of leather holding it down. The Grandmother was prepared for this, though, and from her pocket she pulled two short wooden sticks, twigs she’d collected from the stocked kindling the clan used for its fire every night. Stowing one into her sleeve while the lizard-babe wasn’t looking, she touched his shoulder cautiously, waiting for him to turn his head to her. When he did, she pointed at the stick in her hand, then reached out to lightly prod the recently healed upper bone of his wing. She didn’t press hard, but pushed just enough for the child to feel the pressure and wince, opening his mouth again to try and nip at her hand. She shook her head, indicating the stick again, and snapped it in two pieces. Then, sure she had the child’s attention, she pointed at herself, stuck the two pieces back together, and began wrapping them in a spare bit of cloth bandage. It was a small trick to switch the broken halves with the whole stick in her sleeve, and when she was through with the wrapping she smiled, pointed at herself again, and began unraveling the cloth. All the while the atherian watched, intrigued, tired eyes tinged with childish curiosity. When the last of the wrappings fell away, the Grandmother held up the “healed” stick.
The effect was unexpected. The child’s mouth tugged back as it did when Grea stroked his head, and he made a sound somewhere between a series of hiccups and snarls.
The Grandmother smiled when she realized he was laughing.
Satisfied that her point was made, she was about to throw the sticks out into the night when the boy whined, straining against his bindings, eyes on the wooden bits.
“Again?” the Grandmother asked him with a laugh, returning to her seat and holding up the twigs. He whined again, and the old woman couldn’t help but chuckle.
“All right,” she said, turning her back to him so he wouldn’t see her push the broken halves back together and hide the whole one once more, “but at some point, Raz, you’re going to have to let this old bag of bones get some sleep.”
V
“He’s awake.”
Agais raised a brow in surprise. He turned to his wife, forgetting the pelt blankets he was tucking away in preparation for their departure beneath the golden glow of an early morning. Grea was breathing hard, laboring under the weight of her eight-month swell. She must have run to his wagon in all her excitement, and Agais was about to scold her when she shot him a look.
“I think, as the mother, I’m fully capable of judging what I can and cannot do. Come though! It’s amazing.”
Rebuked, Agais tossed the folded blankets to the wagon floor and jumped down, following Grea across the caravan ring. They passed the ashes and coals of the previous night’s fire, making for the Grandmother’s cart. When they were close, Grea held up a finger for silence, and Agais nodded. Together they crept to the side of the hut and, her smile bright with excitement, Grea pulled back the goatskin entrance flap just enough for him to see around.
Peering inside, Agais did a full double take.
There was the Grandmother, looking haggard but happy, seated beside the atherian’s bed. She was watching the lizard-babe play with a thick copper hoop, something she’d probably conjured from her eclectic collection of trinkets. With a jolt Agais realized the boy’s hands were no longer tied to the bed. His clawed fingers toyed with the hoop curiously, amber eyes—looking almost wholly awake—not straying from the shiny bauble. He didn’t look away from it even when the Grandmother got up to retrieve a wooden cup from the back wall, nor when she returned with a sewn-leather water pouch.
“Here, child,” Agais heard the woman say quietly. “Drink now. Here.”
She poured a bit of water into the cup before holding it over the creature’s mouth. With her free hand she helped the boy grab it awkwardly in his long fingers, then sat back and watched the atherian lift his head and tip the contents down his throat. The motion was awkward, as though he had only just learned it, and a good portion of the water splashed over the linens.
“Tell me he’s still drugged,” Agais whispered to his wife without looking away. Beside him he felt Grea jerk in alarm, but too late.
Despite the discreet volume of Agais’ voice, the atherian’s barely healed ears flicked immediately to attention. With a cry somewhere between a hiss and a scream the boy flung the wooden cup away and tried to lift his body from the bed. Fortunately the leather straps still bound his wing and chest, so instead he thrashed, arms flailing as he tried to rise from his vulnerable position.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Grea huffed, annoyed, pulling the flap aside completely to reveal them. Carefully she clambered up the hanging steps into the wagon, glaring at Agais over her shoulder. “It took us most of the morning to get him to trust me, and now you’ve probably gone and undone all the progress we made.”
“He could hear me?” Agais demanded, astonished, following his wife up into the hut.
The Grandmother was trying hard to calm the child, her hands struggling to push his arms down with little result. He ignored her completely. In fact, Agais realized with another shock as he stood up, the boy seemed more interested in getting between the Grandmother and the newcomers than anything else. His eyes—only a shade or two lighter than the rising Sun outside—darted between the two Arros, lingering on Agais.
“Hush, Raz! Hush, foolish boy!” Grandmother panted, struggling hard to quell the outburst. “You’ve already met Grea, and I very much doubt Agais is here to bring you any harm!”
The words obviously meant nothing to the child. He continued to struggle, at one point even grabbing the Grandmother’s arm and nearly unbalancing her as he tried to pull her back. There was a snap, and the cloth loop that tied his left ankle to the bed broke, adding another limb to the melee.
Agais was about to move forward to help, but Grea held him up with a hand to his chest.
“Do. Not. Move,” she hissed. “You’re male, human, and unfamiliar. I’d have thought you understood what that represents to him right now.”
Agais froze, eyeing the sky-blue membranes of the atherian’s pinned wing. Slender red veins cut patterns through the leathered skin, and the limb flexed and stretched as much as it could beneath its bindings. He trusted it was well secured, but regardless Agais found it hard not to imagine those wings spreading out to swallow him.
He kept very still. Instead, Grea edged forward, hands up and fing
ers spread. She was smiling, trying to make her face bright and trustworthy. As she got closer, the babe seemed to recognize her fully, and he relaxed the slightest bit. He stopped writhing, focusing instead on threatening Agais with spread ears and exposed fangs as he switched between hisses and juvenile squawks that were a clear attempt at the intimidating roar he might one day develop. His head, awkwardly raised from his position on the bed, seemed to grow and shrink with the extension and folding of the blue crest.
“Quiet, Raz, quiet,” Grea hushed, stepping closer. “Friend… Frieeeeend. See?” She pointed at herself, then at Agais. “Friend. No need to be scared.”
Who is more scared, him or us? Agais thought, mimicking his wife and slowly raising his open hands. Grea moved around the bed carefully, still smiling, until she was standing behind the boy’s head. There she knelt, mindful of her pregnant belly, to rest with both knees on the ground. The lizard-babe—Raz, as she and the Grandmother had apparently named him—flinched when she touched the top of his head, but the woman only paused. Smoothly she ran the tips of her fingers down the apex of the scaled snout and between his ears, whispering as she did. Raz remained tense, his golden eyes never leaving Agais, but his noises stopped. Instead his bluish ears continued to fold and spread, twitching this way and that.
“Make no sudden movements,” the Grandmother said quietly. She’d seated herself slightly back and to the side of Grea, nursing the part of her arm the atherian had grabbed. “But come closer. Slowly.”
Even as Agais took his first step, Raz became agitated again. His eyes widened and mouth opened to let out a low hiss. Grea shushed him, stroking the crest of his head, nodding for Agais to continue.
It took the man almost a full minute to approach the side of the bed, not wanting to take any chances. He steered clear of the babe’s free leg, all too aware of what those wicked claws were capable of, and came to stand beside the Grandmother out of reach of Raz’s unrestrained arms.
“Give me your hand,” the old woman said without looking over her shoulder at him, a smile plastered on her face. Hesitating, Agais held it out. The Grandmother took a hold of his arm and pulled him nearer to the bed. She didn’t say anything, inching the man’s fingers closer and closer to the atherian’s all-too-visible teeth. Agais turned his head away, helplessly anticipating the chomp and crunch of crushing bone.
It never came.
Instead, there was nothing. Then, after a few seconds, he was aware of something rough brushing against the surface of his palm. Dry breath rushed over his hand. He looked and watched in astonishment as Raz sniffed at his open hand and fingers, snakelike tongue flicking out to taste the calloused skin. The boy’s nose traveled up Agais’ arm a ways, then back down, then nudged the bottom of his wrist. The Grandmother turned Agais’ hand over, and the process was repeated.
After a minute or so Raz seemed to have had his fill. He let his head fall back to the bed so Grea could continue stroking it, half closing his eyes. Still the atherian’s gaze didn’t leave Agais, but threat and suspicion seemed now replaced by the much more tempered glint of mild curiosity.
Agais himself, feeling his heart dropping to a normal rhythm for the first time since entering the tent, sighed. “How is he?” he asked, watching the child’s webbed ears twitch at the sound of his voice.
“Very well.” The Grandmother was watching Raz fondly. “I’m not familiar with his kind so much as to know if his recuperation is race-related or a gift he’s uniquely blessed with, but he should be fit to walk by the time we reach the Garin. I’d like to have him familiarized with all the rest of the family by that point so as to avoid another scene like today’s. Jarden first. His introduction may pose the greatest problem.”
“You’d be upset, too, if you’d been cracked across the face with a shovel,” Agais muttered. “You think it’s necessary that he get to know everyone? I don’t know how much longer he’ll be staying with us. The oasis crosses atherian land, and there’s usually a tribe or two holed up nearby. The only reason they stand for us living around their watering hole for a few months a year is because they know they can’t stop it.”
“For now we must assume we won’t be handing him over to his kind anytime soon,” the Grandmother said, and once again Agais heard something layered behind the tone of her voice. “It’s only speculation on our part that the atherian will want to take him back. They could just as easily kill him.”
She’s planting doubts, Agais realized, astounded, watching the head of the bed where sudden concern had leapt across Grea’s face. Why, though, he had no idea.
But she also had a point. Raz was a winged male, and while to men that meant only a faster, stronger, and more dangerous atherian, the lizard-kind were a strange race. They might not want the anomaly of a more powerful male in their society. Perhaps the child had even been sold into slavery by his own people, the whole species unwilling to deal with his existence themselves.
There was no way of knowing. Still, Agais had to put his foot down somewhere.
“We’ve sheltered him, fed him, and treated him as best we could. Unless you wish to raise the beast, Grandmother, I suggest you figure out how to tell him we will be handing him over to his kind soon enough.”
The Grandmother said nothing. Instead she watched Raz yawn, fully revealing the mottled black and pink inside of his serpentine mouth as he gave in once again to the remnant drugs in his system. Grea, for her part, looked sad, but didn’t argue. As the boy fell asleep she got up and followed Agais out of the tent.
After the flap had fallen closed behind them, the Grandmother got to her feet. Bending down, she picked up the copper toy Raz had been so infatuated with before the commotion and placed it gently back in the child’s hands. She smiled as his clawed fingers curled over it in his sleep.
________________________
For the two days that followed, the wagon train approaching its goal with every passing hour, Agais felt as though conversation with his wife was oddly forced. It had happened before, these periods of silence, but they’d generally accompanied her times of moonblood, which had obviously stopped since the conception of their child. Frequently he watched her, trying to discern what was bothering the woman, though he thought he had a good notion. As noon of the third day passed and Grea still showed no signs of rising from her sulk, he sighed, sick of it, and gave in.
“What else would you have me do?” he grumbled, twitching the reins so that Gale and Haron picked up a little speed along the bottom of a dune. “I was willing to give leeway to the Grandmother while the child was unhealthy, but we can’t keep the babe, Grea.”
“Maybe through the summer, at least?” his wife asked, looking at him fully for the first time all day.
I hate when I’m right, Agais thought bitterly.
“And to what end?” he asked, forcing himself to keep a steady tone. “After the summer is over, what would we do with him? Abandon him in the first fringe city we pass through and hope he survives? He’s a child, despite whatever intelligence he shows. He’d die or, worse, get sold right back into the chains he nearly killed himself to be free of.”
Grea was silent, watching the passing desert again.
“The best thing we can do is get him to his own kind,” Agais pressed, eyes on the distant, twisted line of the hilly horizon. “It’s a risk, I admit, but a small one, at least compared to the other choices we have on hand. Males are rare amongst the atherian. A winged one could provide some backbone to their survival.”
“And if they kill him?” his wife asked without looking at him, resting her head against the side of the cart. “What would you do then?”
Sun burn you, Grandmother.
“There’s nothing I can do. We’ve treated him to the best of our abilities. Now we can only hope the lizard-kind around the Garin will be willing to take him in.”
Grea had the look of someone biting back an arg
ument, twisting away to make herself more comfortable. Agais glanced down in time to see a bump appear momentarily in the side of her swollen belly, and he smiled.
“Besides, if you adopted him, we’d have to worry about two new mouths to feed, and I’m not quite sure I’m ready to handle the one we’re expecting already.”
The woman smiled unwillingly, but still refused to look around. After a few minutes of silence Agais decided to try again, though this time he was unsure of whether he wanted to hear the answer to his question.
“So… you named the boy?” he asked. Grea nodded but didn’t respond. After a while, though, she seemed to tire of the silence herself, straightening in her seat.
“Raz i’Syul,” she explained. “The Grandmother said in the old desert tongue it means ‘Child of the Sun.’ It’s what a lot of people think the atherian believe themselves to be: Children of the Sun and Moon. Children of the Twins.”
Agais stiffened. Grea didn’t notice.
“I didn’t know she knew old desert,” he said casually, straightening the horses from a distracted course once more.
Grea shrugged. “She knows enough.” She shifted in the seat again. The child must really have been bothering her. “We weren’t about to give him a name in the common tongue. They do that to slaves. And obviously no one knows the atherian language, so that didn’t leave us with much. So: Raz i’Syul.”
“Not what you expect,” Agais quoted under his breath, feeling his temper touch surface.
“Sorry?” his wife asked, looking at him curiously.
“Nothing.”
Sun burn you, Grandmother. Sun burn you.
VI
“I don’t understand the game you’re playing.”
Child of the Daystar (The Wings of War Book 1) Page 5