The Raven Lady

by Sharon Lynn Fisher

  His chest swelled as he took a deep breath. He gestured to the table, and we both moved to sit down.

  “I quite agree,” he said as a footman ladled soup into shallow bowls. The king glanced up at him. “We’ll manage the rest of it. All of you may go.”

  I stared as the servants departed.

  “You as well,” the king said to the sentry, who had stationed herself just inside the door. “Wait outside.”

  When we were alone, we sat a moment in strained silence. It appeared that the king, at least, was not afraid of me. Much as I might have enjoyed seeing him quaking like his servants, his unfazed manner—combined with the unorganized state of his court—was far more to my advantage. I might not be monitored as closely as I had feared.

  “You are not afraid of me?” I couldn’t resist asking him.

  His eyebrow jutted up. “Should I be?”

  My gaze faltered down to my soup bowl. He was not easily unbalanced. In truth, I had known it the moment he so coolly dispatched my furies, as one of my English tutors had referred to the magic that seemed to burst out of me when I experienced any kind of strong emotion. Even when one of the birds had drawn his blood—a thing that had never happened before—he had hardly reacted.

  “We are enemies after all,” I replied finally, meeting his gaze. I had not expected him to be afraid. I had expected him to be repulsed. If he was, I had not yet seen it in his face.

  He held my gaze a moment. “You have been frank, lady. May I?”

  I felt a flutter of anticipation and clasped my hands in my lap. His scrutiny was unsettling. I had been examined by both suitor and would-be assassin and felt it less.

  “I imagine that you were sent here against your will,” he began, “just as I have agreed to foster you against mine.”

  Foster? My blood boiled at the notion. Like marriages, fostering was often a component of peace accords. A child of one side would be sent to the court of the other to help ensure hostilities would not be renewed. While it was true I was still answerable to my father, I was certainly no longer a child. Neither had I been sent here against my will, though I had loathed the idea of it.

  “Fostering may have been how it was presented, Your Majesty,” I replied tightly. I knew that I should stop. Let him think me a child. The more he disregarded me the better. But my anger at his arrogance ran away with my tongue. “But I am not a child, as you well know, because your queen and my father had originally intended that we would marry.”

  He shook his head. “Forgive me for the poor choice of words. I am no statesman. I only wanted to make you feel welcome. To lessen the sting of . . .”

  The king hesitated, looking uncomfortable, and I glared at him. “Of your rejecting my hand and instead offering to take me as your political prisoner?”

  He sat back, sighing long and loud. “Do you wish to marry me, princess?”

  I froze, the blunt question causing my breath to catch.

  “I’m not asking what your loyalty to your people and your father requires of you,” he continued. “Do you, yourself, wish to marry me?”

  I swallowed. “I do not.”

  “No, indeed,” he said with exasperating smugness. “We are very different—neither of us is anything that is pleasing to the other. But I was in no position to refuse the queen’s request outright, as I expect you would not wish to refuse your father, so here we are. Can we not try and make the best of it?”

  That I will certainly do. I bowed my head in acceptance. “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  I had known that I would be as distasteful to him as he was to me, yet his confirmation of it was more than I had bargained for. In physical form, he was not as repugnant as I had expected.

  “I know that it is Your Ladyship who has been forced to leave your home,” said the king, “but we are alike in ways that may not have occurred to you.”

  I stared at him, dubious.

  He pushed his soup bowl away and rested his forearms on the table, interlacing his fingers. “Is Irish comfortable for you?” he asked. “We can speak English if you like. I regret I speak neither Elvish nor Icelandic.”

  This consideration on his part was unexpected. “My English is much better,” I admitted. I had learned it from childhood. Irish had only been added in recent years, in preparation for the eventual takeover of the country by my father’s allies.

  “I have been here—” he continued in English “—this castle has been here, fewer than three months. Once I left my family for the Battle of Ben Bulben, I never returned to them. Before all this, I was a sailor. A ship’s captain. It was a life that pleased me.”

  “So I understood, Your Majesty,” I said with a nod. “That is, I knew that you had not always been king.”

  His laughter startled me. “The farthest thing from it. The ancient O’Malleys were pirates, and so was I.”

  Finvara

  The angry, brooding thing almost smiled, I would wager on it.

  “A pirate,” she said, raising her brows into the line of dark fringe that covered her forehead. “A sea raider, Your Majesty?”

  I knew that she was thinking of her father’s allies, the Fomorians, a tribe of monstrous creatures—demons, goblins, wraiths, giants—that hailed from a hidden island kingdom. I also knew that I had exaggerated in calling myself a pirate.

  I reached for a decanter of wine and filled our glasses. “More of a smuggler,” I admitted. “My blood made it inevitable—on both sides. My father is descended from Grace O’Malley, the pirate queen of Connacht, and I inherited my first ship from my mother. She was born a slave on an island in the Caribbean, where she was both freed and orphaned by a rebellion. She was raised by pirates and spent most of her life at sea.”

  The almost-smile faded. “I see,” she replied faintly. I didn’t know the lady well enough to guess whether she was given pause by my mother’s enslavement or by my unorthodox family. As I understood it, the princess was her father’s sole heir and carried the blood of two noble lines.

  “When the captain who raised my mother died,” I continued, “she inherited his ship and became a smuggler.”

  “What did she smuggle?”

  “Men, mostly.” Again her brows disappeared into her hair. “Escaped slaves. She carried them from America to Europe.”

  “To Ireland?”

  “Aye, she did have business in Westport sometimes, not far from here. That’s how she met my father.”

  The elf maid agitated her soup spoon. Her countenance was impenetrable as Hadrian’s Wall, but I could feel the gears turning behind it. She was a guarded and watchful creature, and I sensed there was little she missed.

  “And you followed into your mother’s profession?” she asked.

  “Eventually.” Squeezing the stem of my wine glass, I pulled it toward me. “She left me to be raised by my father, though she did visit us sometimes—he was a widower, and lonely. As the youngest of four boys, and a bastard to boot, I had no prospects in Ireland. So when I was old enough, I persuaded her to take me on as crew. When America’s war over slavery ended, she returned to Ireland and married my father, as she had promised him she would. I struck out on my own.”

  “Did you continue as a smuggler of men?”

  I drank from my glass, fervently wishing for stronger spirits. The girl’s dark stare raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I had aimed to soften her this evening, thinking I might prevent her becoming one more problem I’d have to personally manage. I realized now that this would not be the work of one evening—and might not be possible at all.

  But no more angry ravens had descended upon me, and I considered that to be an improvement.

  “With the war over, there was no need,” I replied. “While smuggling out slaves, my mother had also smuggled in goods to raise money for her operation. I focused exclusively on that part of the venture.”r />
  “Profit, you mean.”

  She was quick, and direct. I gave a short nod. “Profit.”

  “What goods?”

  “Absinthe, mostly. They developed a taste for it in America, in Louisiana specifically, but it is heavily taxed. The same for other imported spirits. Also coffee and chocolate.”

  Her curiosity apparently sated, she at last raised the spoon to her mouth. The spring-green soup smeared her burgundy lips. As her tongue swept the residue away, I noticed that her lips were soft and overfull. Even with her countenance resting, she appeared to pout. It was a contrast to the sharper lines of her face, and not an unpleasing one.

  She blotted her lips with her napkin and set down her spoon.

  “Not to your liking?” I asked.

  “It’s a . . .” She hesitated. “. . . a texture I have not encountered before.”

  I couldn’t help laughing, and she glanced up sharply. Tetchy as a ginger mare.

  “Peas,” I said. “I don’t much care for it either. Let me help you to something else.”

  I slid her soup bowl aside. “I had not intended to bore you with my personal history,” I said, uncovering and peering into the other crockery. “The point I wished to make is that I’m just getting my bearings here myself. We’ll be finding our way together.”

  As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I had overplayed my hand. She studied me curiously, and I offered a placid smile before turning my attention to serving lamb and potatoes.

  The sturdier fare appeared more to her liking, and bodily needs took the place of conversation for a while. Her manners were more ladylike than I had expected, but there was no daintiness to her appetite.

  When she had cleaned her plate, she sat with her eyes lowered. “The suggestion that we might undertake anything together seems, to my thinking, overly optimistic, Your Majesty.”

  This one is going to give me a run for my money.

  “Maybe so,” I agreed. “I hope I have not offended you. I only wanted you not to feel completely alone.”

  Koli

  I could not meet his gaze. Was any of this genuine, I wondered, or was he attempting to charm me out of my enmity? It was a game that two could play.

  “That is kind of you, Your Majesty,” I replied.

  Seconds ticked by while he watched me. I concentrated on softening my features—loosened my jaw, parted my lips, flattened my brows. He reached for the wine and refilled both our glasses, though I had drunk only a sip or two from my own.

  “Is there anything I can do to make you feel more at home?” he asked. “Is your chamber comfortable? Is there anything wanting?”

  Meeting his eyes, I rested my forearms on the table. “I want for nothing but some way to occupy my time.” Some occupation that will allow me to move about the castle listening at doors. “I’m not used to being idle.”

  He brightened. “Of course. What are your talents, my lady?”

  I stared at him. Conjuring ravens. Poaching sheep. Lurking in shadows. Walking barefoot over glacier ice, volcanic rock, and steaming ground.

  “Talents?”

  “How did you bide your time in Iceland? Ladies in Ireland and England . . . some play musical instruments, some knit or do needlepoint, some do charitable work . . .”

  His face fell slightly, and I feared that I had failed to conceal my disgust. “Were you in some manner employed by your father?” he persisted. “What was your role in his court?”

  The same as in this court: I spied on his enemies. Sometimes I killed them.

  “I grew up very differently than you, sire,” I said, “but my parents, too, lived apart. My mother, though descended from an ancient queen, was born a simple farmer’s daughter. Shortly after my birth, we moved to a cottage on the crater lands outside our village. My father sent us gold and other things of value from Skaddafjall, but what wasn’t spent on essentials was used to hire tutors. My mother said the world was growing smaller, and education would broaden my prospects.”

  The king’s expression betrayed an awakening interest. Little as I liked to speak of myself, I knew it was an easy way of gaining another’s trust.

  “Your mother was a wise woman,” he said.

  “All else I learned from my mother was to aid our survival.” I rested my folded arms on the table. His bright eyes reminded me of the gemlike glacier fragments that studded Iceland’s shoreline. “My homeland is a sort of hell, Your Majesty,” I said. “A place where your countrymen would not thrive.” And yet I would never have chosen to leave. “The landscape is continuously sculpted by ice, fire, and wind. One is always a heartbeat away from death, whether through cataclysm, exposure, or starvation.” I leaned toward him. “In Iceland, you can bake bread by burying it in the ground. Once, a family near my home was killed when a hot spring bubbled up under their cottage.”

  The king stared, and I knew I had interested him in my story. But I did not share the rest of it with him.

  My mother’s “congress with elves”—though it had been undertaken for the benefit of her people—was blamed for this calamity. The year before I came of age, the villagers drove us over the cliff behind our cottage. My mother plummeted to her death, and I clung unseen to the rocks until Ulf found me and took me to Skaddafjall.

  “I do not wonder at your self-sufficiency,” said the king, a breathless note in his voice. “What of your father?”

  The inked brand between my shoulder blades tingled. I felt the Elf King’s distant gaze upon me.

  “When my mother died, I was taken to live with him. His stronghold stands invisible to mortals among the ridges of Vestrahorn Mountain. It is a bleak outpost, overlooking the black sands and untamed ocean, yet very peaceful. My life was very different there, but easier in some ways. I was never again hungry.”

  I sipped from my wine glass, collecting my thoughts. The events I was recounting had occurred decades ago, but I remembered them clearly. My mother’s death, brought about by the scorn of her own countrymen, was a wound that had never healed. She had predicted that the memory of her sacrifice, and the peace that came with it, would one day be swallowed up by the Icelanders’ hatred of the elves.

  “And how did you occupy yourself there?” asked the king, bringing us back to the original question.

  “That would be difficult to explain, Your Majesty. My life has stretched over many years. When I lived with my mother, I was not permitted to travel farther than the village, though we knew my father’s people were always watching.” Which had saved my life, and somehow not my mother’s. “In my father’s house, I was assigned a bodyguard, and I wandered all over the country with him as my companion.” I learned to understand the ravens. I ranged with my cousins, the young shadow lords, over the Icelandic highlands. I sewed vengeful seeds among the villagers who killed my mother. “I was taught to use a bow, and often hunted game for our table.”

  I watched him closely, and I did not see him flinch at the idea of a lady bowhunter. I had been warned to expect strange notions about the proper place of women in these lower islands—and needlepoint as a vocation seemed a strange notion indeed—but Finvara’s mother had been captain of a sailing ship. I was about to suggest that my skills at hunting might be of use here—I had not been permitted to bring my bow, and I hoped to persuade him to give me one—when Keane burst into the hall.

  “Sire, you must come!”

  The king turned, looking more weary than wary. “What is it?”

  “There is a ship in the sky above the castle.”

  LOST

  Finvara

  A ship?

  I stood up, saying to the princess, “Forgive me for cutting short our conversation.”

  “Of course,” she replied, rising from her chair. “May I join you, Your Majesty?” I could see that she was as eager as I was to inspect the new arrival.

  I hesi
tated. Was she my prisoner? My guest? Was it advisable to trust her? She was right that it was deuced awkward. I certainly could not arm the woman with a bow, as she had seemed about to suggest a moment ago, but I could see no harm in her accompanying me.

  I nodded. “If you wish.”

  We followed the servant to the great hall, which was dimly lit and empty at this hour. A stairway along one wall of the two-story chamber led up to the battlements, and we climbed and emerged on the parapet. I heard my companion’s intake of breath as our eyes were drawn to the beast—floating in the sky above the forest, just southwest of the castle, was a full-sized sailing ship.

  Night had fallen and a waxing spring moon, the color of the inside of an oyster shell, hung above the vessel, flooding light over the landscape below. Until recently, this area had been an unremarkable stretch of farmland and grassy, low hills that gave way gradually to the rough and mountainous bog country of Connemara. Now it was thickly forested, and Knock Ma was the highest inland hill in Connacht. On a bright evening like this, my lookouts should have seen an airship approaching from any direction.

  The deck of the vessel was illuminated by lamps, though there was no sign of a crew. It was neither like my own ship Aesop, a fast-sailing barque, nor quite like Captain Grace O’Malley’s Sea Queen of Connacht, a tub-hulled and stodgy Gap galleon that had once navigated the void between Ireland and Faery. Halfway from stem to stern, a great black balloon was suspended in the rigging. There were square rigs furled on either side of it, and a set of narrower sails—in the shape of wings—affixed to the hull. The figurehead was a black bird. Near the bow was inscribed the word Corvus—the name of the crow constellation, which appeared next to Virgo in the southern sky.

  What the devil did it mean that the Elf King’s daughter, who had greeted me with an attack of ravens, and a mysterious airship styled like one had been deposited on the doorstep of Knock Ma on the same day?