‘Familiar with the jarack bird, Acquitor? The grey-crested thief and murderer of the forest?’
She nodded.
‘And what happens when a jarack female finds a nest containing some other’s bird’s hatchlings? An unguarded nest?’
‘It kills and eats the chicks.’
He smiled. ‘True. Commonly known. But jaracks do something else on occasion, earlier in the season. They push out an egg and leave one of their own. The other birds seem blind to the exchange. And when the jarack hatches, of course it kills and eats its rivals.’
‘Then sounds its call,’ she said. ‘But it’s a call that seems no different from those of the other bird’s chicks. And those birds come with food in their beaks.’
‘Only to be ambushed by the two adult jaracks waiting nearby and killed in the nest. Another meal for their hatchling.’
‘Jaracks are in every way unpleasant birds. Why are we talking about jaracks, Udinaas?’
‘No reason, really. But sometimes it’s worth reminding ourselves that we humans are hardly unique in our cruelty.’
‘The Fent believed that jaracks are the souls of abandoned children who died alone in the forest. And so they yearn for a home and a family, yet are so driven to rage when they find them they destroy all that they desire.’
‘The Fent were in the habit of abandoning children?’
Seren Pedac grimaced. ‘Only in the last hundred or so years.’
‘Impediments to their self-destructive appetites, I should think.’
She said nothing to that comment, yet in her mind’s eye she saw Hull Beddict suddenly standing beside her, drawing to his full height, reaching down to take Udinaas by the throat and dragging the man upright.
Udinaas suddenly bolted forward, choking, one hand clawing up towards her.
Seren Pedac stepped back. No, dammit! She struggled to cast the vision away.
It would not leave.
Eyes bulging, face blackening, Udinaas closed his own hands about his neck, but there was nothing to pull away-
‘Seren!’ Kettle shrieked.
Errant fend! What, how… oh, I’m killing him! Hull Beddict stood, crushing the life from Udinaas. She wanted to reach out to him, drag his grip loose, but she knew she would not be strong enough. No, she realized, she needed someone else-