He motioned to a man behind him who brought up a number of leg and neck irons and tossed them toward where the collar lay.
A king’s collar was a magical thing, wrought by a special order of Divines called Kains; it not only prevented a person from working magic, but it weakened them and made them easy to handle.
Sugar realized the men did not come closer and bind the family themselves because they feared some kind of evil trick.
“This is ridiculous,” said Da.
The Crab’s horse danced to the side a few steps.
Then the district lord tossed a large sack towards Da. It landed heavily on the ground. “The contents of that sack were found last evening on the bank of the Green by a group of mothers and children doing their laundry. Open it.”
Da walked over to the sack, squatted down, and pulled the mouth open.
“Whose child is that in the sack, Master Sparrow?”
Sugar heard her mother take in a sharp breath.
Da hesitated for a moment then gently worked the body out. He knelt there for quite some time, not moving, not saying a word.
Then Sugar knew who was in that sack. She could feel it from the crown of her head to her toes. Her fear fled and she raced out the door.
Da turned and motioned for her to stay. “Get back!”
But it was too late. Sugar saw the baby that Da had exposed.
It was Cotton, her little brother. She knew it. Little Cotton, stolen out of his crib earlier this spring. By woodikin or slavers or wild dogs, nobody knew. Yet here he was.
She came closer and saw that the body was bloated and partially decomposed. It had the lighter Koramite coloring and Cotton’s curly hair.
Cotton, their bonny little honey man.
Then Da opened the sack wider and slid the body of a stork out.
From the uncommon kidney-shaped spot of dark feathers on its shoulder she knew it was Lanky, the young stork with a wounded wing that she and Legs had found. They’d wrapped him up in Legs’s tunic and brought him home, careful to avoid the sharp yellow beak. Mother had nursed him back to health. And when Cotton was born, it seemed to think he was its brother. Mother was always shooing it away from him for fear of that long beak. And the stork would go, but only to perch on a fence post or the limb of one of the trees. It pestered them for weeks.
Lanky had disappeared the same day Cotton did.
Sugar had thought the mad bird had finally departed because Cotton had gone. But this was awful. Somebody had taken both and killed them.
Da turned the bird over. Something was wrong with the carcass. She looked closer.
The bird had wings and feathers. But where the talons of the right leg should have been, a misshapen human foot curled. And where short feathers should have graced the beast’s head, patches of long blond hair grew. And underneath that hair lay what surely was a small, twisted, but human-shaped ear.
Sugar’s sickness turned to revulsion.
“Look closely at the foot of the child,” said the Crab. “Notice the nails. Notice also the few patches on its back. That’s not matted hair; it’s the beginnings of chick down.”
Da stood, horrified.
“And now,” said the Crab, “you will put on the collar and chains.”
“Sugar,” Mother called.
But Sugar was rooted to the spot.
Da found his voice. “You think we are soul-eaters? You think we would spend our child’s soul like this?”
“What I know,” said the district lord, “is that someone buried these two. And when the recent floods came, the waters opened the grave, tasted its contents, and spat them out.”
“My Cotton was stolen,” said Mother.
“Yes, yes,” said the Crab. “Snatched by one of the woodikin and taken to the swamps or into the wild wood over the mountains. It’s a fine story, but here he is.”
It was common enough for the Divines of the many glorydoms to draw the Fire that fueled the days of a man’s life. But not the soul. Never the soul. Sleth, on the other hand, stole Fire and soul from men and beasts. The singular nature of the soul was what gave each type of living being its distinct attributes. Consuming bits of another’s soul transferred random aspects of that soul, aspects that manifested themselves in mind and body, slowly twisting the one that had consumed it.
Sleth stole from humans, but because animals couldn’t tell their secrets, Sleth