Four Roads Cross: A Novel of the Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone

Author:Max Gladstone [Gladstone, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466868410
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2016-07-25T22:00:00+00:00

36

The next morning’s dawn found Matt and Claire returning from their rounds. Their golem cart plodded up the long low ridge, beyond which Alt Coulumb’s towers peaked. A flash of color cut across the road from tree to tree, and somewhere, something sang a sweet song.

“Beautiful bird,” Claire said.

“The singer or the flier?”

“Both.”

“The singer’s not a bird. It’s a gracklet.”

She turned to Matt. “What?”

“Spider-lizard kind of thing. Mimics birdsong. You can tell because of the hiss before it sings.”

“Do I want to know why it mimics birdsong?”

“Guess.”

“Gross.”

“Circle of life,” he said, and hummed a few bars of a mystery play song. “Gracklets are good for the forest. They keep the bird-mind from eating people.”

“Now you’re just making fun of me.”

“It’s in the history books. The first Old World settlers came to Alt Coulumb after a plague hit the city, around the fall of the Empire in Telomere. Before the plague, locals used rallybirds to talk with people a long way off, because the birds’ minds tie together. In plague years, the birds escaped, bred uncontrolled—and the more there were, smarter they got. Millions of them lived in the forests at the height. They’d eat crops ripe for harvest, pick a man’s flesh from his bones if they wanted.”

“And the gracklet?”

“A trader went to Southern Kath and found that even though the coastal jungle near Ajaia’s land was full of wild rallybirds, they didn’t get so smart. She asked around and learned that gracklet kept the birds in check. Their song breaks up the bird-mind, and then they eat the birds. The trader, she went into the heart of the forest and came back with a chest full of gracklet eggs. Planted them in the Geistwood, and here we are today.”

“Where did you learn all this?”

“I read a book. Besides, it’s part of the language.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well—the larval stage of your gracklet, called a vurm, looks like a centipede yea long.” He held his hands a foot apart. “They make cocoons in the trees. The rallybirds didn’t realize what was going on until it was too late. But the more they lost, the dumber they all became, and grackle can eat a lot of rallybirds. More food makes ’em breed faster.”

“Okay,” she said, warily.

“Why do you think, when we talk about the virtues of industry and clean living, we say, ‘The rallybird gets the vurm’?”

Golem feet trod down the road with unbroken stride, and wagon wheels rolled.

She hit him in the shoulder, hard.

“Ow.”

She hit him again, then pushed him so he almost toppled over.

“Careful. You’ll spill my coffee.”

“Do you know what a dad joke is?”

“Nothing wrong with a good shaggy-gracklet story.”

“You are a horrible person.” But she had to say it through laughter. He rubbed his shoulder where she’d punched him. “I thought Corbin’s jokes were bad. Do you get them from the same guy? I could tell the Blacksuits and get him locked up, for a nice reasonable time like let’s say forever.”

“Your dad tells jokes?”

“Not as much as he used to.

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