The Translator of Birds

In the city of Vael, where any creature that had witnessed a crime could be summoned to give evidence, the court employed only one interpreter of birds. On the third day of the clockmaker's trial, Cressida had every intention of doing her job exactly as she always had: word for word, without opinion. The accused, a widower named Holloway, had already confessed to stealing a diamond ring from the open window of the jeweler's workroom, which stood next door to his own workshop. The crow that had been perched on the gutter that night was there merely to confirm it.

Crows, as anyone who has studied them will tell you, never forget a face. Their language, moreover, has a feature that most human languages lack: every statement carries one ending if the speaker saw something with its own eyes and another if it was merely told. It was a distinction that mattered enormously in court, and it was precisely what Cressida was listening for as the bird, hopping along the rail of the witness box, began to speak.

"The clockmaker took the ring," the crow said, and Cressida translated it aloud. But the ending was the wrong one. The crow had not seen the clockmaker take anything; it had been told. She asked it, as gently as procedure allowed, to describe what it had seen. The bird ruffled its feathers and talked of the moon, the cold, the open window, and then, perhaps forgetting itself, a small hand with a blue ribbon tied around the wrist, reaching in through the jeweler's window. That part it had seen.

Cressida knew that ribbon. Every morning, on her way to the court, she passed a little girl who sat on the steps of the clockmaker's house and fed crusts to the crows, and the girl always wore a blue ribbon on her left wrist. The pieces fell into place with dreadful ease. The child had taken the ring, the father had found out, and, knowing that a crow would be summoned, he had stood at his window the following night and told the bird the story he intended to tell the court. The crow, which owed the girl a year of breakfasts, had been only too willing to repeat it.

The law of Vael was unambiguous. A child who stole was sent to the reform house across the river until the age of sixteen; a father who confessed would lose his workshop, but he would be home within a year. Should Cressida translate every ending faithfully, the girl would be taken away by evening. Were she to leave out a single syllable, nobody in the court could possibly know, because nobody else could understand a word.

The judge, who had been waiting with growing impatience, tapped his pen on the bench. "Well, interpreter? What does the witness say?" The crow tilted its head and looked at her, and Holloway, who had not raised his eyes since the trial began, looked at her too. Cressida opened her mouth, and the whole court leaned forward to hear which of them she was about to betray.