In that moment when everyone else relaxed, Likisi grabbed. Not the baby in Ori’s arms, but the one on Bluecloak’s shoulders, when Bluecloak turned to watch Ori. The baby hissed, and clawed at Likisi’s wrist, but he had it by the neck, and the baby was choking.
Ofelia lunged at him, but he pushed her away easily and backed to the door.
“They have tails,” he snarled. “Trained animals—smart lizards—I can’t believe you’re falling for this. A whole rich world, for a lot of little scaly lizards and a crazy old woman who wants to rule it? I don’t think so.” The baby writhed, the stripes fading, the eyes dulling. “Don’t come closer, or I’ll wring its filthy neck.” For a breathless instant no one moved. Then he pointed at Ofelia with his free hand. “You. Crawl over here and get this door open . . . don’t tell me you don’t know the lock-code. Don’t stand up—crawl. Or this baby’s dead.”
Ofelia looked at Bluecloak, at the other humans, at Gurgle-click-cough, and finally at Likisi and the small creature writhing in his grasp. Slowly—her joints would not have it any other way—she lowered herself to the floor and started crawling toward him.
“That’s better,” he said. “It’s people like you who cause all the trouble anyway . . . they should never have taught you to read.”
Let him talk, the new voice said, coming out of its hiding. When he is talking, he is not listening. Or thinking. It was hard enough to crawl; she hadn’t crawled in years, what with her knees and her hip, and now her shoulders added to the pains.
“Faster!” Likisi said, but anyone could see that an old woman couldn’t crawl very fast at the best of times, and this old woman was clumsier than most. She glanced up to apologize, and saw his foot drawn back to kick, kicking . . . and Ofelia grabbed his foot and yanked. She was not strong enough to pull him over, but in that shift of weight he loosened his grip on the baby, which squirmed around and sank its small but very sharp teeth into the skin between his thumb and fingers, at the same moment its long sharp toes got a purchase on his arm, and raked hard. “OW!” he yelled, reflex opening his hand; the baby dropped away with a triumphant squeak, and four blurs past Ofelia’s head became four long knives in Likisi’s body.
She crouched there for an unknowable time while others moved around her, and Likisi’s pain ended in a quick slice of his throat. Then it was softness and warmth, and friendly voices, someone carrying her back to her own house, her own bed, the smell of the food she had cooked . . .
She was in her own bed, wrapped in a blanket, with the babies—all three of them—curled along her side. Bluecloak stood at the left side of the bed; the humans—Kira and Ori pale but calm, Bilong sobbing—stood at the foot of the bed, and the other People crowded behind them. She did not know how long it had been, or what else had happened; the smell of Likisi’s death pinched her nose.
Gurgle-click-cough brought her a glass of cold water; she sipped it and the confusion in her mind settled back into recognizable shapes. She was safe. The babies were safe. Everyone was safe but Likisi, and he had been the only one to threaten the children.
If anyone had to die, that was the right one.
Before the armed men took alarm—long before midnight, that is—Ori had agreed to accept reality; he and Kira went back to explain what had happened (Likisi had “gone ballistic” and threatened one of the babies and Ofelia; the creatures had naturally defended them). Bilong played the role of grieving lover almost too well; Ofelia began to wonder if she really believed all she said about Likisi, if those sobs were genuine.
By the time the advisors appeared, armed and dangerous, the apparatus had all been tidied away. Likisi’s body, Ofelia supposed, still sprawled in its blood on the schoolroom floor, but she didn’t have to see it. The advisors could see her bruises, and the marks on the baby’s throat; they could see that Ori was well-satisfied with what had happened.
“Idiot,” one of them said, in the front room of Ofelia’s house, where they came to interview the team members. Not that they had any authority to do so, Kira muttered to Ofelia, while waiting her turn. Likisi had had the civilian authority, and now it passed to her, as assistant team leader, but it was as well not to upset them. “Idiot,” the man went on. It was the loud one. “Old Bossyboots never did have the sense—”
“May I touch one?” Kira asked, her face gentler now as she peered at the sleeping babies. “Yes,” Ofelia said. “They like to be stroked here—” She demonstrated; Kira copied her, and the baby opened bright eyes, swiped Kira’s hand with its tongue, and went back to sleep. “Cute is the wrong word,” Kira said. “But—”
“There isn’t a word,” Ofelia said, “because they’re not human. They need their own words.”
“Bilong—”
“Bilong,” Ofelia said, more tartly than she meant, “is a fool. She may or may not know anything in her own field, but in person—”
Kira grinned down at her. “I thought a woman like you would like someone like her better . . . she’s more traditional . . .”
“Go read my log notes on Linda,” Ofelia said. The baby had liked Kira; she would not have chosen her, but the baby had. So she might as well learn to like Kira herself. Kira was smarter than Rosara; maybe she could be retrained into a reasonable sort of daughter. “And do not miss your chance when Bilong quits making such a loud noise about Likisi and notices that Ori is still here.”
Kira flushed. “What do you mean? I’m not—”
Ofelia stopped her with a look. “I am an old woman, but I am not stupid, or a fool. You like this Ori—”
“Well, yes, but not like that—”
“He wants to stay. You will stay. You will like him enough to become a mother. You already do; it’s why you hate Bilong.” Wicked, wicked glee, to see that strong-minded woman’s jaw drop as if she’d been hit with a brick. Wicked pleasure bubbling in her veins to see that woman discover that she had been seen, that her mind had been as naked to an old woman’s knowledge of human nature as the old woman’s body had been to her external eye.
Ofelia lay back, watching Kira through the hedge of her eyelashes. “You will call me Sera Ofelia,” she said. “You will help me with these babies, and the next, and you will have a click-kaw-keerrr for your own.”
“But—but—” She did not look so formidable when she sputtered like that, but she did look beautiful with the color of outrage on her cheeks.
“Good night,” Ofelia said, and shut her eyes. After awhile, she felt the mattress shift as Kira stood up, heard the whispers on the far side of the room. The babies squirmed contentedly all along her body, and she went to sleep.
The formal duties of nest-guardianship lay lightly on Ofelia; she spent the early mornings in her garden, with the babies scampering around beneath the great frilled leaves of squash vines grabbing slimerods. Later in the morning, she took them over to the center, where they joined the elders in the schoolroom. Unlike the People’s own nest-guardians, she had help from other elders; they understood that she alone could not keep up with three active babies. When she needed a nap, someone was always there . . . and sometimes that someone was Kira or Ori, who had both elected to stay as her human assistants.