As the Crow Falls | ✔

Chapter Twenty-One

The route Niccola led them on through the lowlands was one Isaiah was only passingly familiar with. She followed main roads at first, but quickly took to smaller paths: between houses, along the fences of farms where chickens ran clucking to the fence—they'd both finished their sweetbreads, and Niccola took a moment to boast to the birds about it—and beneath the shading trees of green spaces. When the paths narrowed too much to walk side by side, Niccola took the lead. What ensued was an awkward moment of deciding whether Isaiah should rest a hand on her shoulder or follow by some other means, cut short when Niccola declared, "Well, if we're going to fake-court one another, we might as well keep up the image," and grabbed his hand without further ado.

This did prove most effective. Niccola forged ahead again, her skirts swishing like water against the grass. Isaiah quickly learned to read what she was seeing based on the tension in her hand, just as he could by the way Pekea's claws tightened or loosened against his shoulder. Niccola tugged more quickly when the path ahead was clear, and held tighter, holding him back if it was rocky. At one point, her hold tightened inexplicably on a smooth road.

"Is your face known in Madeira?" she asked in an undertone. "There is a woman in Madeiran dress ahead."

"Good. The faster news gets back to Madeira that I appear to be courting, the more my mother might leave me alone."

Her pause betrayed a desire to ask further, but she simply pulled him onward again. They had reached the quieter western end of the lowlands, where people tended to converge from rather than to. Isaiah strained to pick up locational cues. He was rewarded by the hour-time song of shrine bells.

"And here's the path," said Niccola, halting. "You might want your cane for this one."

He untucked it from beneath his arm and found soft earth in the direction Niccola was standing. Trees rustled overhead. Their sound was a tribute to their density even with the sun behind a cloud, robbing Isaiah of the chance to read their shade.

"Should I trust that you have no plans to murder me in the forest at the end of this trail?" he said, a joke, but one he wanted her response to.

"I would never meet your family if that was the case, would I not? Also, you bought me sweetbread. And despite my disposition towards anyone who had a hand in my sister's disappearance, I am not actually fond of murder."

"How civil of you to be so discerning."

"If you met my sister, you might understand."

There was a subtle pain in her voice that she did not entirely manage to mask, though she certainly tried.

"Is she kind?" said Isaiah quietly, as they stepped onto a trail through the low trees. These were not Talakova trees, or even Talakova-adjacent. More like tall shrubs, though that did not stop Calisian citizens from compulsively clearing them in most places.

"She is... young. Ten years my junior. But she was always the more sensitive of the two of us."

Isaiah kept his silence, giving her space to continue.

She did. "She would cry whenever a bird died, especially in the rookeries. There were always casualties among the spring chicks. Phoebe would cry over each of them, and have to bury them each on their own. She had a whole ceremony to let the adult crows say goodbye. Yet she never stopped visiting. She would spend the night beside any crow that was dying, simply to comfort it. She had the family magic, so she could speak to them, but I suspect she would have done so even without that."

"She sounds like she has a strength to her."

"Of a kind. She would fight for the birds, but never for herself. I was her guardian. Especially after our parents..."