As the Crow Falls | ✔

Chapter Forty-One

The other side of the bed was empty when Isaiah awoke. He dropped a hand to Niccola's spot, to find it cold. She'd been gone for some time already. Nobody spoke or moved across the room as he pushed himself up. So Phoebe was out, too, or else still asleep. He hoped she was with Verde or Margaret. She'd been through a lot in the last... well, however long eight moons was in deep-Talakova time, and the couple were excellent at helping people talk through their traumas.

"Phoebe?" he said, then slid his feet out from under the still-sleeping Pekea and crossed the room to check that Niccola's sister really was gone before he started changing. Phoebe's bed was empty. Isaiah returned to his own and found the clothing Verde had left at the foot of it. There were two outfits, side by side. The first was more formal: the kind of thing he'd choose to wear if he were visiting the City Guard first thing. The second was much softer and looser, and probably not publicly presentable. Isaiah switched his night-clothes for the latter and made his way downstairs.

The lower half of the house was a study in quiet domestic noises. Walls clicked in the sunshine, and the kitchen fire crackled in the muffling belly of the stove. Verde didn't seem to be in. Isaiah paused on the stairs to listen for him. The sibilance of sandpaper over softwood and taps of a mallet indicated Margaret was in her workshop with company—either Niccola or Phoebe, though Isaiah had never read Niccola as the kind of person who'd be much into woodcarving. She liked more active things, with fewer small, fiddly components.

He descended the rest of the stairs. Someone shifted on the windowseat.

"You're up," said Niccola, sounding suspiciously cheerful. "You slept like death."

"Good morning to you, too."

Isaiah made his way over to her, grateful to find all the furniture between them still in its proper place, despite the chaos of the evacuation orders that had come very near this street the day before. Niccola shifted to make room on the windowseat. There were pillows at either end of it, with room for two people to cross their legs without bumping knees. Niccola withdrew her feet long enough for Isaiah to sit down, then stretched one out beside him and stuck the other under his knee as he settled himself. Isaiah reciprocated cautiously. Niccola seemed comfortable with their tangle-limbed proximity, and he wasn't complaining. Hearing a person in front of him was one thing. Feeling that they were there was different.

"You're pleased about something," he said. Niccola was buzzing with energy from something she'd yet to disclose.

"Gideon came by this morning." Her grin was audible. "He said the investigators found something in the clearing where... well, where Dinah kept her prisoners."

Isaiah, unfooled, raised a sardonic eyebrow.

"Okay, fine. Where I fought with her the first time."

"There was more than a first time?"

"Participating in your ruse at the end counts."

That was a euphemism for the thing neither of them wanted to acknowledge. Unwilling to see Niccola's good spirits deflated so quickly, Isaiah poked her with his foot. "So what did they find?"

"This."

A light tube landed in Isaiah's lap, followed by something with straps. He picked up the latter first. It was a crow's message-holder, etched along the sides and gritty with a thin dusting of dirt. Setting it aside, he located the first object. This one was a crow-message scroll written on diplomatic paper, its edges dry and uncrinkled. It must have been in the tube when found, then. Isaiah gauged its weight—it had the heft of a lengthy and likely important message—then ran a fingertip over its wax seal. He stopped dead. Niccola was chuckling under her breath.