Meant to be broken

Sharp eyes watch and wait for the will to be read and the new order to be set. The twins Will and Jacob sit assured of their future, while Sophia stands silent behind them. Watching.

Sophia’s father had always been a great stickler for rules. One of her earliest memories - him in his blue velvet armchair, her on his knee.

“Sophia,” he’d said, his whiskers tickling her cheek as he pointed at her drawing. “You’re outside the lines.”

“Only a little bit,” four-year Sophia had replied, a nascent pout tugging at her lips and furrowing her brow. It was only a smudge. Barely noticeable, really.

“A little bit is too much. Do it again. And get it right this time.”

There was something of that memory in the room now. A faint whiff of cigarette smoke, perhaps, old and dry and vaguely floral like cuttings pressed flat between the pages of old books. Or it could have been the sharp blue gaze of the white raven perched on Antonio’s shoulder, staring intently at her in that way it had. The lawyer seemed unperturbed by the bird’s presence, which was interesting to Sophia in the same way herbs and flower cuttings interested her - she filed the information away, noted, to examine later. See what she could glean from the details.

Because Antonio was another example of her father’s rules. A stiff, upright man who wore just enough pinstripe to seem proper and never raised his voice above a pleasant murmur, he was everything one might expect in a lawyer, and birds on shoulders were not part of that image. If the dictionary was a pictionary, his round wire-rimmed glasses and slicked back hair would be right there under ‘l’, sandwiched between baby sheep and cough drops. The white raven, however, would be noticeable by its absence. It wasn’t lawyer-ish at all, nor many other ‘l’ words - loud, loyal or liable to speak plainly. 

In fact, she considered, in many respects the raven was extremely similar to a lawyer, if one ignored the feathers. They were both here for the same reason, too.

“Father gave you Malphus?” Will’s voice was heavy with contempt, rattling the certificates hung upon the back wall and slamming itself against the hardwood table like an indignant bull.

“Don’t be stupid.” Razor-sharp and quick, Jacob interjected before Antonio could even open his mouth. The brothers sat in the stiff-backed wooden chairs of the lawyer’s office, backs to Sophia, who leaned against the wall by the door. Two chairs, two brothers, and Sophia and Malphus watching the pair bicker with blank expressions.

“Would you like me to make them quiet?” Malphus had asked her many years prior. Will and Jacob had been fighting then, too, over something that turned out to be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things - a boy, a girl, who had eaten the last of the chicken teriyaki - when Malphus’ voice had tickled her ear. It was soft and melodious, more songbird than drab funerary raven in its cadence, and a soft weight alighted on her shoulder.

“No, thank you, Malphus.”

“I could make them go away for you. They’re interrupting your study.” 

Sophia glanced down at her diagrams. A spot of ink, spattered in surprise when the shouting began, marred her clean lines. A fresh start was needed. Her brothers’ fault, again. 

“No, thank you, Malphus.”

“You must need something. I will happily fetch whatever you desire - you have only to ask. Perhaps a fresh sheet?”

The vellum beneath her hands was useless, now, and her father would be annoyed by that. It was expensive, priced in silver and blood, and waste was not something to be tolerated. Precision, perfection. Only these were acceptable.

She would need to explain her mistake in order to get a fresh page. And excuses were the worst waste - chewing up time, energy, attention to leave a stinking mire of nothing.

“You know the rules,” her father would say. “You must enact them with care; impose what you know upon the world without allowing distractions to effect you. Let the rules guide your hand, not your mind, not your emotions.”

No, he would not appreciate her waste of the vellum. But if he never knew, if she had no need to go to him and could slip a fresh sheet away without notice, what then? Malphus preened on her shoulder, plucking a milky feather from one wing and letting it fall to the ground. It dissolved in a swirl of blue sparks as it hit the flagstones.

Sophia stood, rolling up her ruined work.

“No, thank you, Malphus.”

“Your brothers have no qualms asking for my help. Do you not trust me? Like me? I’m hurt.”

The raven shifted on her shoulder, wings flared to maintain its balance as its living perch moved underclaw. 

“Rules, Malphus. Rules.” Sophia reached up to scratch under the bird’s chin as she had seen her father do, but quickly pulled her fingers back as a thick, blunt beak clacked shut on the empty space they had just been in. With a rustle of feathers, claws digging into her shoulder in a momentary flash of dull pain, Malphus launched into the air and soared away towards Will and Jacob, leaving only the musty smell of feathers and his voice lingering by Sophia’s head.

“I shall talk to your brothers, then. They are much more agreeable.”

As with all their quarrels, past and present, left unattended the twins simmered into quiet glares and tensed shoulders, arms crossed against chests as if to ward off a pervading cold. Antonio, his face as blank as Malphus’ avian countenance, gave a small cough and straightened the papers that lay in front of him, banging one edge on the green leather that topped his desk. All eyes focussed on them.

Three children, and a raven, watching a small sheaf of paper.

“Your father’s last will and testament is quite short, and very much to the point. He instructs  that you are to remain silent until I have concluded the reading. His final request to you all.

Will, to you he has left a third of his savings, and the titles to a few small holdings out in the country. Some fresh air and hard work will suit you, he writes.”

Will’s thick shoulders tensed as he leaned forwards, thoughtless violence written in the way he moved, the curve of his back, the way his fists curled on his knees.

“Ha!” Jacob’s sneer was like a ray of winter sunlight - bright, sharp and icy cold. “I told you he would leave the work to me. Malphus, come. No need to stay for the rest of this inanity.”

The white raven fluffed its feathers and remained staunchly on the lawyer’s shoulder. With a beleaguered sigh, Antonio pushed his glasses up his nose and rifled through the papers.

“His final request, boys. Do at least try.”

“We’re not boys, you simpering milksop.”

“And yet here we are. Sit down, Jacob.”

Much like the lingering scent, there was something in the lawyer’s quiet voice that brought to mind her father. An edge, sharp and barely sheathed that promised to cut deep and draw blood if provoked. It may have been the way Antonio said Jacob’s name, a short waspish snap tinged with disappointment, or it might have been the blue-eyed raven lending a familiar air to the scene with its piercing gaze. Whatever it was, Jacob subsided with a derisive snort.

“Now, Sophia.”

“What? What about—“

Antonio raised a hand. “You spoke too soon, and now you may wait until the end of the inanity to find out your share. How interesting that your father put your section at the end, even though it was meant to come second.”

A pause. “Sophia.”

She nodded at his repetition of her name, her eyes fixed on the papers. She would have straightened her posture, had she been anyone else, but even in repose she held herself ready.

“Stand up straight,” her father had always told her. “You know the rules of the game, so act like it. Master the rules, and you will always be in control.”

Antonio flipped to a new page, running his tongue over his teeth thoughtfully as he scanned the words. “To you, your father left the manor house and all its accompaniments, accoutrements and attendant burdens. His savings are entirely yours. He entrusts you to continue the family work in all its forms, and grants you all things he had such that you may have everything you need to fulfil your duties.

He also wrote that you know the rules, and abide by them, and in that knowing and doing you gain an understanding of when and how those rules may be broken. He wishes you all luck, and bids you farewell one last time.”

Sophia gave a small smile and held out an arm.

“Come, Malphus.”

The raven’s feathers clattered nearly loud enough to drown out Jacob’s incoherent spluttering, and it landed on her arm with a familiar weight. For a moment their eyes met, one pair blue, one hazel, both cold and thoughtful, wrapped up in assessing the other, and then the girl and the bird nodded at one another.

“The pact is sealed, Master.”

“The ancient words bind, now as of old, and far into forever.”

With a clumsy gait, Malphus sidled up Sophia’s arm to sit on her shoulder as her elder brothers regained enough of their mental faculties to employ understandable words. None of them were pleasant.

“Would you like me to make them quiet?” asked the raven, his voice like honey in her ear. Sophia smiled and reached up to scratch under the raven’s chin.

“No, thank you, Malphus. We have more important things to do; we’re going home.”

And in a swirl of skirts, Sophia left the lawyer’s office and its chaos behind, bearing on her shoulder a demon dressed in feathers with sharp blue eyes.