Page 9 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)

The Sticky Beauty of a Newborn Gagana

Now, in her bedroom, Anya held the gagana egg on her palm. She could hardly take her eyes off it, it was so beautiful. Where the light caught it, the silvery shell was translucent, and she could see the tiny curled figure of the chick inside.

The egg was very gently vibrating. “Which means,” Gallia said, “it will hatch soon. Be ready, child.”

Swiftly, Anya made a nest in front of the fire from a scarf, socks, and stockings, and balanced the egg in the middle.

“It’ll need food as soon as it hatches,” she said to Gallia. “What kind?”

“Raw vegetables, fruit. Insects. You’ll have to chew them up. It can’t digest solids.”

“I’m not chewing insects.” Not even for the birds.

“Then fish. And it will need a lot of it. Hurry. You don’t have long.”

Anya ran to the kitchens, the gaganas flying alongside.

The annual Argen Ball was to be held that night, and she stared, stunned, at the four hundred wine goblets that were laid out along a trestle table in the scullery, waiting to be polished.

They were centaur-made in living gold, and they shone with a low, constant radiance.

The Argens had not owned such goblets a year ago, she was sure of it, and she said so to Gallia.

“Concentrate,” hissed Gallia. “You are here for thieving. Don’t loiter.”

Anya was not, technically, allowed in the kitchens; if King Halam found out, she would be punished. She trusted the kitchen staff not to tell on her, but if her uncle Claude saw her, the king would hear of it.

She ducked behind the half door, watching the five castle cooks; three women, two men, all broad and strong, all liable to throw spoons at her if they caught her stealing.

At her whispered instructions, Coren and Gallia flew in and out of the kitchen, seizing a slither of fish, a chunk of carrot, a crab apple, and a square of vanilla cake.

“Newborn gaganas do not eat cake,” said Gallia.

“But we do,” said Anya, and she split it between herself and the birds as they darted back to her room.

She was going to take the passage-way behind the simpering mermaid picture, but her uncle was in the hall, seemingly studying the mermaid’s face, his hand resting on the frame.

He looked startled as she appeared round the corner.

For a moment their eyes met, and he let go of the painting as if he’d been stung.

“Anya!” he called after her. “What are you doing here?”

She half curtsied as she ran, but did not stop to be reprimanded.

—

Anya’s room was very small. She had been allocated a state bedroom—as large as a courtroom, in the heart of the noise of the castle—but had fought for this one instead.

The stairs up to it were so narrow and steep that very few people ever attempted them: just her father, and herself, and Madam Elena.

It was the only place she did not feel watched.

She had painted the walls in the tiny bathroom next door with trees to look like the forest, with royal gaganas perched in them (and if the gaganas did not look, in fact, like gaganas, it did not matter, for only she saw them).

The bedroom had just room for one large armchair, a wardrobe, her small bed, and a tin that had once held chocolates in which she now kept the gifts the birds brought her—buttons, coins, small and shining things.

The egg was moving when Anya got back. The oldest gagana, gray-feathered Vrano, was waiting. “You’re just in time,” he said.

Anya emptied her two pockets of food—less appetizing now, crab apple mixed with fish—on the hearth. “I hope it’s enough.”

The egg lurched sideways, almost rolling into the fire; there was a feverish tapping from within; it cracked, and a tip of pin-sharp gold beak poked through.

Anya crouched over the egg. “Yes,” she whispered to it. “Yes! Come on, little one.”

The tapping slowed, grew fainter, stopped. And though Anya waited, her nose almost touching the egg, it did not start again. “What now?” she asked Gallia.

“It’s tired. It’s struggling.”

Panic rose in her. “What do I do? Can I break the shell for it?”

“No, you’d kill it.”

“But it’ll die like this!”

“Cup your hands round it. It will feel your pulse beating.”

Anya laid her palm around the egg. The tapping began again, this time in beat with the pulse of Anya’s own heart. A minute silver claw appeared in the crack; the crack widened; a shard of shell fell away; and suddenly the egg split open, and in Anya’s hands there was a sticky newborn.

A newborn gagana is not, to most eyes, a classically lovely thing.

It is born with hundreds of minuscule feathers, but they are slicked tight to its skin by fluid, and its eyes are glued shut for days.

Its head is too large for its body, and its beak, pure gold, does not yet shine, being covered in liquid from the egg.

But Anya’s eyes were not most eyes. “It’s perfect,” she said. She thought it staggeringly lovely: the silver claws, thin as needles, were perfectly formed. She wiped the beak, very carefully, with her thumb, and saw the gold gleam.

The gagana let out a noise: its first sound on earth, all vowels, all joyful hunger.

“Eea!” it said.

“Exactly,” said Anya. “Yes.” And then, as it clambered to its feet and took a few blind steps, “Bravo, little gagana.”

Bravo . It was, she knew, what you said at the end of a great performance. Sometimes opera singers would come to sing at the castle: she’d heard her father shout the word. And was not the hatching a superb piece of work? It takes courage, and flair, to come alive.

She turned to Gallia. “What is it—a boy or a girl?”

Gallia nudged the small, squirming piece of life with her beak, upended it, nodded. “A male.”

The tiny bird nipped sightlessly at Anya. She laughed. “He’s eating me.”

“He will do literally that if you don’t give him something. Feed him the fire fish and the apple. But not too much—don’t spoil him.”

Anya chewed the fish, mushed it into a ball the size of her finger-nail, and dropped it into the bird’s open mouth.

He croaked with gladness and called for more.

She slotted a chewed chunk of sour apple into his open beak, which nearly drew blood, so eagerly did it snap down.

After six helpings, his stomach was stretched tight as a balloon, and he had ceased to cry for food, only emitting a hum of contentment.

Under Gallia’s instructions, she took him to the sink and dabbed him with a flannel until all the amniotic fluid was gone. She blew on him, so that his black feathers fluffed out in a great mane around his head. He was softer than a newborn duckling; he looked like a black tennis ball.

“He’ll thrive,” said Gallia. “A hungry optimist you have there. He’ll grow fast; flight within days. Come, quick. Get dressed for the ball, or they’ll send someone to do it.”

Reluctantly, Anya got to her feet. “What should he be called?”

Coren, who had been watching with an expression of distant superiority, flew down onto Anya’s head. “Koo,” he said.

—

Ancient old Madam Elena came to dress Anya’s hair. She had naiad blood on her grandmother’s side, and she was smaller than Anya herself.

She came armed with a dozen combs and pins, to brush and pull at Anya’s hair, which fell halfway to the floor if it was left down, until it was plaited and wound around her head in a great circlet.

“It’s freezing in here. Why you never shut that window I don’t know.” Madam Elena gave her hair a tug. “Be still, Anya.”

Because it was a state ball, the king demanded that Anya “look appropriate.” That meant a brand-new choker of rubies cut to look like flowers—a gift from the king—and bracelets to match.

“Take off your mother’s necklace,” said Madam Elena. “You can’t wear both; it looks messy.”

Anya would not take it off—she never did, she loved too much the way it caught the light and seemed to treble it—but she tucked it beneath her dress.

Madam Elena produced Anya’s moonstone tiara. It was a thing of exquisite beauty, but it was too big for her and had to be pinned to her hair. The sharp ends dug ruthlessly into her scalp. Anya jerked away.

“Bide still! Other girls would be grateful to get a single glance at something so lovely.”

“But when I’m wearing it, I can’t see it.”

“You don’t need to see it. It’s the guests who need to see it.”

“I don’t want to be looked at; I want to do the looking, don’t I?”

“Go, now. People are here. You know the king thinks lateness is as bad as murder.”

Which was, it turned out, ironic.