On the Deep Waters

Chapter One

There were three ravens outside his window that morning.

Kit pressed his face against the glass. The sun hadn't been up long enough for it to be warm. He tried to tell if the ravens were ones he knew. A lot of people thought ravens all looked the same, and that was mostly true. But there were a few ravens he could tell apart from the others. Constance had a chip in her beak. Wilmer had a tufting of white feathers under his chin. Peter only had one functional eye and could talk.

It's not really talking, Alicia had told him once. They can imitate sounds. To them, our languages are just funny sounds. Some of them learn that some sounds mean certain things, but not all of them. I think a lot of them just like making noise.

That was one thing he and ravens didn't have in common.

Another was that he didn't like bread crusts and they did. That was a difference that worked out for both of them; Kit had made friends with several of the ravens by sharing the parts of his bread he didn't eat. That way, no food was wasted, they got something extra, and he didn't have to force himself to eat bread crust.

They're going to start following you around, Alicia had told him.

He could understand how that might be a problem, but it also didn't seem too bad. He liked having friends, even if those friends were animals.

Someone knocked on the door. Kit got up to answer, only opening the door a little when he did. It was Bo. That made sense; the only people who knocked on his door were Bo, Alicia, and Captain Edmund. "I wanted to see how you were doing," Bo said. "I know you sometimes need the time to prepare."

He was right, which was why Kit had remembered to start packing the night before. He nodded and opened the door wider, showing the bag sitting on the foot of his bex. "Oh! That's good. Are you excited to see Nimah and Solomon again?"

Kit nodded again, more enthusiastically this time. It had been months since he'd seen either of them. He missed them. "They're both going to be there?" he asked.

"Well, Nimah wrote for sure that she would, and she said Solomon would be coming too. I'm sure he wouldn't pass up the chance to see you again." Bo adjusted his robes. They were fancier than the ones he usually wore, probably because of all the important business he'd have to do with Alicia in the High Kingdom. "Don't worry about talking to anyone else once we're there. That's Alicia's job. And mine, unfortunately."

Bo was easy to talk to because Kit could always tell what he was thinking. Right now, for example, he was nervous. Bo was nervous a lot of the time, but Kit understood why. It seemed like he always had a lot of really important things to do. "Are you okay?" Kit asked.

"Ah, I'll make it through. It's getting easier. I feel bad for Alicia. She's the one who's going to be crowned in a few months."

That was true. Her being crowned was a good thing, but it was also a frightening thing, and a sad thing. Her father should've been there. Kit knew what absent family felt like.

"At any rate, I was just checking in. We'll be leaving after breakfast. I'm going to go..." Bo ran a hand through his hair. "...pray for a bit."

Hopefully that would help. Praying always seemed to help Bo, even though it had never helped Kit. He'd tried it a few times, and every time it had mostly just seemed quiet. Quiet is normal, Bo had told him. I don't hear anything, either. It just makes me feel better. I know he's listening. That's enough.

Faith was very strange sometimes.

Kit sat back down at the window. There was a tree outside; he was getting better at telling the time based on the slant of its shadow. He used it to tell when it was time for breakfast. There was still time left. That was good. It would give him a chance to be quiet and still before he had to go out and be surrounded by loudness and people. Everyone here was nice, but they could be very loud sometimes. It reminded him of the orphanage a bit, except here he had a job and people who called him "Sir Kit."