The air felt thinner.
“A tattoo?” My voice cracked despite my effort to keep it steady. “Across my back?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t consent?—”
“You do not consent. You accept. Crow law does not operate on permission.” He turned another page.
“The crest contains an intentionally blank banner. That space is reserved for your husband’s name.”
My heart stuttered.
“His name… on my body?”
“Applied with ink infused with dynasty tech.”
Swallowing hurt.
His hand stilled on the page. When he spoke again, his tone shifted, slightly more formal, as if moving into another rite.
“Separate from the Codex.”
He closed the book with care, leaving the weight of it in front of me, then reached for a long, narrow case set discreetly at the end of the table. Matte black, no crest on the lid, just a thin inlay of silver lines woven in a pattern I didn’t recognize.
“This, is the Tongue Ledger.”
He pressed his thumb to a recessed plate. The case unlocked. Inside, velvet lining cradled three objects:
A slender, dark-glass slate, no larger than my hand, etched with tight, angular symbols that weren’t any alphabet I knew.
A thin ring of metal, almost like an ear cuff, black with a faint silver vein running through it. And a folded strip of parchment, the edges worn as if fingers had smoothed them generations ago.
“The Codex governs law,” the handler said quietly. “The Tongue governs those who wield it.”
My throat tightened. “Tongue?”
“The Crow dynasty maintains a full dialect. A separate linguistic system. It predates the written Codex and underpins it. Law, oath, private rites, internal communication—many exist first in Crow tongue, then in translation for the Registry. You are being granted access to this dialect as part of your binding.”
He lifted the dark-glass slate first and turned it so the surface caught the light. Symbols shimmered faintly.
“This is your Primer.” His finger traced a line of characters. “Root glyphs. Base structure. The first tier of our written tongue. It syncs with your datapad, but it remains analogue-anchored. The Ledger does not live fully on the grid.”
Of course it didn’t. Crows never trusted anything that could be hacked.
He set the slate back into its groove, then picked up the parchment, unfolding it with care.
Handwritten Crow symbols flowed down the page, marked by diacritics that shifted their meaning in ways I couldn’t begin to guess.
“In the Ledger are phrases every Crow wife learns first. Blessings. Boundaries. Requests. Commands.” He paused, eyes flicking to mine. “Oaths of consent. Oaths of refusal. They exist in Crow tongue before they exist in any other.”
My lungs tightened.
“Consent?” I echoed. “You just told me I can’t refuse anything.”
“You cannot refuse the law. But you will be given language inside of it. You will need that more than you realise.”
He set the parchment down and, finally, lifted the black ring of metal from the case.
