Ravens, and corvids of most kinds, have an uncanny intelligence. My Cohort spent a great deal of time conversing with birds. They have vast networks in which their tribes communicate, though their dialects are often distinct.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  Dragos vaulted over the barrier meant to keep animals out. Urgency drove his sudden speed. The baby’s crying turned his monotonous trudge as swift as a falcon’s strike. He dashed across the lumps and furrows, barely noticing the green sprigs he crushed underfoot as he ran.

  He staggered to a stop beside the baby through the mud sucking at his boots and dropped to one knee to scoop it up, heart pounding, ears thundering.

  The disgust of finding a helpless infant in the middle of a field rolled over him. Casting away an innocent life in such callous cruelty was beyond his comprehension in that charged moment of discovery.

  The baby’s body was incredibly cold. It stilled in his hands like a terrified rabbit caught in a snare. A low rage surged within him as he pulled the infant close, eyes lifted to cast about an accusing gaze. Searching for the one that had left it behind. The one “giving it back to the soil.”

  Of that peasant, there was no sign. No footsteps in the furrows like his own were left for him to track the parents who’d abandoned this moroi viu—this cursed child.

  Or so he assumed. It had been so for him, when he’d been given to the Cohort of Owls.

  His mother had died just after childbirth. She lived just long enough to give him a name that meant “beloved.” The red-haired Solomonar who took him in claimed he’d been born with a caul and eyes like winter glass. People whispered things once they saw his white hair and steel-bright gaze. “Moroi viu,” they said. Without a soul. Anatem?.

  A faint, breathy whimper issued from the muck against his chest. He looked down at it, head shaking, as if to deny the madness of such inhumanity. And yet, if not for the Solomonari, he would have been fed to the fields himself.

  Dragos pulled the child closer to share his warmth. The baby felt like ice against his shirt, smearing the garment with the stink of the field. Strangely cold, and yet so full of life. A wry grimace crossed his face as he stood. He pulled his cloak close to wrap the infant, mud and all, against him.

  When his heart calmed, he looked around again. The air felt dry, with no threat of rain, though the sky remained cloud-laden. No footprints appeared newer than the rainfall. Crows had gathered, wheeling in the sky. A few pecked at the sodden ground, tugging up long worms. Black wings rustled overhead. Dragos met the crow’s gaze and held the child to him possessively.

  They would have gotten on with eating it if he hadn’t shown up. It was their nature. He gave the crow a brief grin and murmured to it, “This one’s not for you.”

  The bird cackled and let out a few long, loud cries as it swooped off.

  Dragos knew it understood exactly what he meant. He paced, his sharp gaze fixed on the ground, questing for answers while ignoring the ear-piercing screaming rasp of the infant in his arms. With no sign of human feet having recently traveled the field, he gave up. Dragos couldn’t ignore the child’s caterwauling for long. It needed more help than he could give.

  He glanced down at it. The child’s eyes pinched shut while its mouth gaped open in a horrid, gasping little circle that made his own throat clench. Shaking his head with silent, angry judgment, Dragos returned to the fence. There, he found a stile and carefully climbed the uneven steps into the muck of the track.

  The mountains cut jagged lines across the clouds, and he glanced at them with a wistful ache. If only he still had a home, the baby’s cries wouldn’t have been so terrible. The Spineback’s silhouette called to him.

  The only place he’d been safe was ?oloman??. The Dark School, as the folktales told, were in some ways told true. The Solomonari took moroi viu children, raised them in cohorts, trained them with skills and virtues that the outside world wouldn’t have understood. Magic was anatem? in Calruthia, but it was life to the Solomonari.

  That way was closed. He had nowhere to take the child.

  He turned away from it.

  Dragos slogged the half-mile it took to get to the cluster of homes that comprised the pitiful village of Mure?el. Few were out since the gloaming hour fell upon the town. A poor time to show up. A stranger carrying a muddy baby was ominous, even to him. He'd hoped he could steal some milk, but the elongated burdei meant the people were close to their animals. The angry little mud monster in his arms made stealth impossible. He’d have been better off not bringing it. Not picking it up.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  That had been out of the question.

  He found it ironic that people spat and clapped their hands at the mere word ?oloman??, and would bury a child as food for their crops, yet it was those reviled Solomonari wizards who scooped up the cast-off children and raised them. Gave them a chance to survive. And here he was, trying to carry on that legacy. Idiocy.

  He wouldn’t stop trying, even if it was foolish.

  Dragos looked at the scattered structures around the commons and tugged his hood further over his head. The thatched roofs bristled in slumber. Each rough-hewn door rested shut against the night. The screaming in his arms had stopped. He shot a look down to see why.

  Nestled in the swaddle of his cloak, the child hitched a hiccup and opened its eyes. A blue as bright as a summer sky stared up at him. Dragos’ lips tightened. Something gripped him, a strange fear that had nothing to do with himself. He lifted the child closer to his face and sniffed. Beyond the animal dung and earthy loam, he caught the faintest scent of lightning and water so pure it sang.

  “Oh no,” he murmured, looking up at the sky in frustration. “Copiii cerului. I hope you’re not a girl.”

  Girls were doomed to a brief human existence, returning to the sky at their first blood. Boys stayed with their feet on the ground, though cursed as moroi viu as surely as Dragos himself was. Not quite Unspoken, yet not seen as human. The scapegoat for any problem, be it hex or the simple and unfortunate cycles of life. A drought? Blame the moroi viu.

  Given back to the soil or drowned at birth, children like this baby. Like him.

  To find out what it was, he’d have to wash the infant, which was coated in a thick layer of scum. And then, he’d have to find a wet nurse. Dragos didn’t know much about babies, but he knew they required milk. A woman’s was best. A donkey would do. Goat’s milk, if there was nothing else.

  Dragos shook himself out of his thoughts. Boy or girl, the child needed warmth and milk. A low grumble of frustration rattled his chest as he scowled at the sky. “Thanks. All I needed was more complications.”

  The child hiccupped in his arms as he made his way across the commons. The farm folk tucked away their herd animals for the night, which were protected from wolves and lynx by barns finer than any of the village burdei. A barn could have sufficed, but for the noise.

  Oh, well.

  A stillness settled, broken by the baby’s incessant cries and his own squelching step. It was typical for a village to be that way. Safety lay in silence, like a fawn in the grass, curled up, motionless, and hidden away from predators. Calruthian village life on the outskirts of civilization was the same.

  Dragos knocked on the first door he came to, then stepped back, quickly tucking any stray hairs back into his hood with a muddy hand. The baby set into a fresh bout of wailing. He inhaled his frustration. Earlier, the task might not have been so difficult, but twilight was a bad time.

  Peasants were superstitious. Suspicious. And they had every right to be.

  Dragos strained to hear anything beyond the baby’s hitching sob. A creak. A whispered voice. Another hissed in reply. His lips peeled back in a silent snarl as the small house went still.

  He knocked again, harder this time, and spoke with his forehead pressed to the door. “Please. Just a little help is all I ask. Prin harul lumini! Even just goat’s milk…”

  Silence. The house pretended to be dead, but he could feel the lives breathing within. Waiting for him to leave.

  His fist clenched with the same pulse as his jaw. He imagined breaking the door and forcing his way in, but he allowed the moment to pass. Badgering those cowards into giving him the help he wanted was—unwise.

  A mother. Dragos had to find a woman whose kind heart overshadowed her senses, one with young children. A woman with a good life that made her just lax enough to allow a stranger into her home after dark. A stranger with a screaming baby.

  Could he even find someone like that in this little farming village?

  He turned on his mud-slick heel, wanting nothing more than to put down the yowling creature in his arms. The haunting knowledge of that choice—and what toll it would take—kept him from it.

  As he moved along the semblance of a road, his neck hairs prickled. An ominous sense of something lurked nearby. He stopped and listened. Turned to survey the path he’d come and the shadows cast by the village structures. Starlight and silence.

  A cow lowed, unseen.

  The sensation passed. There was nothing to do but keep trying to find help. Dragos couldn’t count on the baby’s momentary gasping quiet to linger long. He hoped that whatever it was, it was just something passing by from cel?lalt t?ram, the world of the never-living, where the spirit rivers flowed. Something that cared nothing for the living world or its denizens.

  The next house was just as small, with the slanted thatching brushing the ground and a thin line of pale smoke curling up from the short chimney. The clay walls met the ground, the entrance sloping more than the last one, down to a door that seemed well built. Simple burdei construction. Sturdier than the last.

  He knocked and was met with a lengthening moment of silence. No voices, but again, he felt warmth beyond the door as he flattened his palm to the wood that remained closed to him and the stuttering sobs.

  His straining ears caught the faintest whisper of a prayer beyond the door. His lip curled up as they softly begged for the Light to save them. Protect them. What about an abandoned child? Hypocrites. He snarled in frustration as the child he held wailed.

  How could something so small cry for so long?

  Dragos did not do helplessness well. He considered leaving the baby on the doorstep, half out of spite, but couldn’t move to do it. It was too dark to see it well, but he’d picked it up. It was his to deal with until he found something better.

  Hating how his pity burdened him, he turned, and, just as he did, something dark passed across the sky. It was not because he saw the shape of it, but that the stars vanished and reappeared before his eyes. His heart leaped in his chest. His teeth clenched, and like instinct, he held his breath. The thick band where the stars did not shine passed in the blink of an eye.

  Had he imagined it? The long, weary walk after the fight with the meadow iele could be toying with his mind. His eyes needed rest, perhaps. The afterimage, the memory of the dark current that hid the stars faded. Not into doubt, but into a pragmatic weariness.

  The baby squirmed and screamed against his chest as he stepped into the deepening dark.

  ?oloman??. Something like a family to him.

  (so-lo-mo-NAH-ree) [rolled r]: A race of wizards, sometimes related to vampires by folktales. These are the masters of the Dark School. A bevy of rumors and tales float about them, mostly malicious.

  (mo-roi vee-oo) [rolled r]: The soulless living. Also a word used for people who look or behave atypically.

  Anatem? (an-ah-TEH-muh): Something or someone detestable.

  Unspoken: Synonymous with the spiritual or supernatural. Unexplainable things best left unspoken.

  Burdei (boor-DAY): Simple housing. A dugout with a thatch roof and a door, often found in poor farming areas. Barns may also be constructed in this way, but are unsanitary. in the beginning stages of a village, the burdei was used for cohabitation with animals until barns could be constructed. The wealth and health of a town can be seen in its buildings.

  Prin harul lumini! (PREEN HAH-rool loo-MEE-nee) [rolled r]: By the grace of the Light. Can be used as a plea, or sometimes like "Oh my God!"

  Cel?lalt t?ram (chel-uh-LULT tuh-RUHM):The other realm. Comparable to T?ramul Cel?lalt, which can be found on Wikipedia. Where the spirits roam who were never born, lived, and rarely die, at least not in ways mortals can understand.