Voice of Crow

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  She leaned closer. “I didn’t kill anyone, either. Remember that, my boy, before you accuse me of negligence, and maybe we’ll get along until you can walk out of here.”

  “Walk?” He yanked the blanket from her hands and covered himself. A lock of filthy blond hair fell in his eyes. “I’ll never walk again.”

  “Not true. We can fit you with a substitute made of steel and leather. If you decide to stay, that is.”

  Decide to stay? A sea-size emptiness gaped within him. Everything he knew, everything he was, had been ripped away in one moment.

  He could never return home.

  A door slammed in an adjoining room. Heavy footsteps roamed the wooden floor, and Filip’s defenses went on the alert.

  A lanky, sandy-haired young man stomped into the room. “Are you one of them?”

  Zelia stood between the bed and the door, arms crossed over her chest. “And who might you be, barging in here without my permission?”

  “This is the Descendants’ hospital, right? Then he must be one of them.” His thin lip curled at Filip, who suddenly realized how weak the opium had left him.

  “They have sanctuary here,” Zelia said, “until Galen and the rest of the Council decide what to do with them.”

  “How about this—tie rocks around their ankles and dump them in the river.”

  “And who are you?”

  “Adrek the Cougar. I’ve come from Kalindos to report the latest Descendant slaughter.”

  That name again, Descendants. Filip yearned for a dagger to slice the word out of this man’s throat.

  Zelia planted her hands on her hips. “You’re in the wrong place, Adrek. You should give your report to Galen.”

  “I did. He told me you were harboring the enemy here, that I could speak to one of them.”

  “I’m not harboring the enemy. I’m treating patients.” She widened her protective stance at the end of Filip’s bed.

  Adrek hardened his gaze on her. “They came to Kalindos, four nights ago. Killed our elders. Killed my father. Took everyone.” His breath made his words shake. “Hundred and seventy people, gone, in the middle of the night.”

  Filip’s face burned, and not from lingering fever. He’d heard of Kalindos—his army’s intelligence had described it as a tiny, worthless forest village needing few defenses. It had nothing worth conquering, nothing worth stealing. Nothing but people. Filip’s commander was as brutal as he was incompetent, and had now brought shame and dishonor to all of Ilios.

  Zelia gave both men a look of astonishment, then turned back to Adrek. “Why would the Descendants attack your village?”

  “Because we helped you win your battle against them. Turned out to be a mistake.”

  “Nonetheless, I won’t let you harm one of my patients.”

  Filip almost laughed. She couldn’t stop this Adrek person from killing him, and shouldn’t. Better to die by an enemy’s hands than live like an old man at twenty-one.

  Adrek stepped around Zelia and brought forth a small leather bag. Before she could stop him, he dumped its contents on top of Filip. Several small pieces of metal rolled off to clang on the floor. “What are these things?”

  Willing his hand not to shake, Filip picked up the rigid red-and-yellow ribbon that lay on his chest. It seemed like an artifact from a long-lost world. “They’re nothing,” he whispered.

  “Nothing?” Adrek scooped up the pieces that had fallen, then tossed them into Filip’s lap. “Your people left them behind when they massacred my village. They go on uniforms, right? They’re not nothing.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.” Subtlety was lost on this fellow. “Yes, you’re right. They signify ranks and awards and—” He folded his fingers around the ribbon, though he wanted to toss it away “—it shows where they belong.”

  “So where do they belong? Where can we find them?”

  Filip sifted through the medals and rank insignia until he found a silver button, the kind worn on the outside of the soldiers’ sleeves. “Second battalion.” He sneered. “Not mine.” He tossed it back to Adrek, who snatched it out of the air.

  “But you know where they’re based, right?” he said.

  Filip turned his head away and said nothing.

  “They took my daughter.” Adrek’s voice cracked on the last word. “Where is she?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You know where these soldiers are from.”

  “Somewhere near Leukos.”

  “I know that already! Where?”

  Filip stared at the cobweb in the corner of the ceiling. “I was first battalion. We wouldn’t have bothered with defenseless, insignificant people like you.”

  Adrek held up the button. “These men bothered. Where are they based?”

  Filip rubbed the ribbon between his fingers, contemplating what little honor he had left. “East of Leukos, not far. But they’ll bring the prisoners through the city and process them there. They might not even be brought back to the base at all.”

  “What will they do with her?”

  It took Filip a moment to remember who Adrek was talking about. “How old is your daughter?”

  “Barely two.” His jaw muscles tightened and bulged. “They won’t take her from her mother, will they?”

  He looked at Adrek’s hands, stiff fingers opening and closing, and wondered what it would take to get them around his throat. Despite the man’s overall leanness, his bare arms were well-muscled—perhaps he could snap Filip’s neck before Zelia could get help.

  “She’s weaned,” Filip said, “so yes, they will separate her as soon as possible. If she’s lucky, well behaved and reasonably cute, they’ll sell her to a wealthy barren couple to raise as their own. She’ll be too young to remember her former life, and she’ll grow up thinking she’s an Ilion.” He stopped, waiting for Adrek to beg for the alternative.

  “What if she’s not lucky?”

  “Depends how pretty she turns out to be. If she’s nice to look at, they might raise her as a house slave or a—” A twisted impulse of compassion prevented him from finishing the sentence. The thought of the children cowering in Leukos’s high-priced brothels turned his stomach. “If she grows up coarse looking, though—” Filip raked a disdainful gaze over Adrek’s appearance “—which seems likely, it’s off to the fields, or more likely the mines.”

  “Mines?” Adrek looked ready to vomit.

  “Children can crawl into little spaces that adults can’t. And they eat less, so they’re cheaper to keep. Best of all, they take up less room in the burial pits.”

  Adrek blinked rapidly. “The what?”

  “Individual graves would be too labor-intensive, so they use big pits for the slaves.” He slammed the man’s gaze with his own. “Along with the other beasts.”

  Adrek roared and seized Filip by the throat. Filip forced his own hands to clutch the blankets instead of fighting him off. His right shoulder throbbed—from an arrow wound he just now remembered receiving.

  Adrek throttled him, slamming his head against the pillow while Zelia screamed and tried to pull him away. As the pain rippled through his neck, Filip realized the man had no idea how to kill a human. This death would not be quick.

  Instinct shoved honor aside. Filip’s body bucked. His right heel dug into the mattress, while the remains of his left calf scraped and squirmed. Stitches yanked loose, and he prayed that the warm liquid under his legs was only blood. Yet a vestige of purpose kept him from grabbing his opponent’s neck.

  Spittle dripped on his face from Adrek’s incoherent shrieks. Thumbs squashed Filip’s windpipe.

  “Adrek!” shouted a woman too young to be Zelia. “What are you doing?” Filip couldn’t see her behind the dancing black circles. The voice came closer. “He’s a prisoner of war. You’ll go to jail.”

  “I don’t care,” Adrek said.

  “You’ll care when Daria comes back.” The woman was panting, and Filip could feel two opposing forces struggle over him at
op his bed. Everything was going dark.

  “She’s never coming back.” Adrek’s grip tightened.

  At last, Filip thought, and felt his body go slack.

  “Let. Him. Go.” Her voice, deep and commanding, had moved a few steps away.

  Adrek froze. His hands stopped squeezing but didn’t release.

  “You won’t shoot me,” he said.

  “I won’t have to,” she replied. “Because you’re going to let him go.”

  The ceiling’s wooden beams wavered and swam above Filip. He wanted to tell the woman to leave, let Adrek finish.

  “I know you’re in pain,” she said, “but this isn’t the way. You’re better than this Descendant. Don’t change that by killing him.”

  Filip tried to let go of life, to sink into the closest thing he could find to a warrior’s death.

  The hands left his neck, and breath came staggering back into his lungs through what felt like a pinhole. He gagged and coughed, gasping for air he didn’t even want.

  Zelia’s soft hands touched his throat. He pushed her away and rolled to his right side. The arrow wound speared his shoulder with pain.

  Filip dry-heaved over the side of the bed for what felt like half a day, but when he turned on his back again, the light in the window hadn’t changed.

  Zelia approached, carrying a cloth and a steaming bowl. “I’ve sent for more security. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

  He shook his head and wiped his face.

  “Don’t try to talk.” The healer sat on the bed and dipped the cloth into the bowl, which she then set on the nightstand. “Suicide by crazy Cougar, huh?” She stroked his bruised throat with the cloth. “Bet you thought it’d be quick.”

  He shook his head again.

  “Don’t assume the future will be awful,” she said, “just because it’s not the past. It’ll be different, that’s all.”

  The warm liquid she rubbed on Filip’s neck made his throat expand and relax. The next breath held half the pain as the one before.

  “You can’t make me live,” he rasped. “I’ll stop eating.”

  “How noble. An end fit for a warrior.”

  She had a point, unfortunately. “Who was that woman?” he asked her.

  “Some Wolf from Kalindos. I was surprised she could sway him. Kalindons usually can’t control themselves, much less each other. Still, it’s unconscionable what your people did to them. It’s my duty to protect your life, but I don’t blame that man for wanting to kill you.”

  “Neither do I.” Filip stared at the door, wounds throbbing, and wondered if the mysterious Kalindon woman deserved gratitude or contempt for what she had saved.

  When Zelia left him alone again, he opened his right fist. The red-and-yellow ribbon stuck to his palm, its ridges leaving a fading dent in his pallid skin.

  Just before sunset, Alanka found Lycas sitting at their brother’s grave—at least, it was the spot where he’d decided Nilo was buried. The wheat field, scorched to the soil by the Descendant attack, had been turned into a mass burial ground, home to hundreds of dead Asermons and Descendants, as well as a few Kalindons.

  She strode over the ruddy soil, pushing away the memories. She couldn’t show her brother how the battlefield, even empty, scared her more than ever.

  Lycas’s head was bowed, and his chin-length black hair swept forward to hide his face. He poured an amber liquid from a clay pitcher into a mug.

  As she approached, she noticed tiny seedlings of wildflowers—what the wheat farmer would have called weeds—thrusting up toward the sun, less than half a month after the battle. Soon the field would be a meadow of many colors, and within a decade or two the surrounding woods would reclaim it. No crops would grow here again.

  She sat beside her brother without speaking. He gave her a grim smile and held out the mug he had sipped from. She nodded thanks, then took a long gulp of warm ale. It quenched her thirst in a way water never could.

  Then she noticed the other mug sitting on the ground near them, filled to the rim. Nilo’s ale.

  “You’re leaving tomorrow?” Lycas finally said. On the silent, breezeless evening his voice seemed to echo across the field, to the trees and back.

  “In the morning. We need to get back to Kalindos and help rebuild.” She paused. “You’re staying here in Asermos.”

  “I don’t want to.” Lycas rolled a clod of dirt between his long, thick fingers. “I want to go to Leukos and get your people back. Our father’s people, even though I never knew him. I want to kill Descendants.”

  She nodded, accustomed to his casual declarations of Wolverine aggression. “But you can’t go.”

  “Not with Mali pregnant. Besides, a rescue mission needs people settled into their second-and third-phase powers. I’ve only been second phase for a month.” He took the mug from her. “You drink too slow.” He drained the rest, then refilled it.

  “I’m used to Kalindon meloxa. It’s much stronger.” Thinking of the fermented crabapple drink reminded her of home, and what had happened to it. “I wish I were second phase. Then I could be invisible at night, like Marek, and I could go with the rescuers. I dread going back to Kalindos. It’ll be so empty.”

  “Hopefully not for long. Galen said the rescue party is picking up a third-phase Hawk in Velekos on the way to the Descendant city. Another one’s coming from Tiros to stay here and receive her messages.” He handed her the full mug. “Asermos will keep Kalindos updated as best we can.”

  “Didn’t the Velekon Hawk just become third phase? Won’t that make it harder to figure out what she’s saying long-distance?”

  “It shouldn’t be too hard to interpret ‘We found them!’ or ‘We’re captured!’ At least we won’t be left wondering, feeling any more useless than we already do.”

  She took another gulp of ale. “Don’t feel bad about staying with your family. Ladek’s going back to Kalindos to take care of Thera and Etarek, and because he’s our only Bear. So it’s just Adrek going with the Asermons.”

  “At least it gets him out of your life, which can’t be bad.” He angled a black-eyed gaze at her. “Are you seeing him tonight before he leaves?”

  She looked away and tried to sound casual. “I think so.”

  “Don’t get pregnant.”

  She gaped at him. “Even if I were considering—which I’m not—it’s still the month of mourning.” She couldn’t stop a glance at Nilo’s mug.

  “Good general advice, anyway. Don’t wish you were second phase. Enjoy your youth while you have it.”

  Alanka nudged his shoulder. “My youth? I didn’t know Asermons got old at twenty-four.”

  He didn’t smile at her teasing. “Becoming a parent brings power, but it also takes it away. Mali and I should both be on that rescue mission, but instead we’ll be here, driving each other crazy. Fulfilling life for a pair of warriors.”

  “But like you said, Asermos is only sending established second-and third-phase people, so if Mali hadn’t gotten pregnant, you’d both be first phase and still not going.”

  “That’s not my point—”

  “And if you hadn’t gotten your second-phase defenses before the battle, then you might have been killed—” She stopped before adding too, but not soon enough to avoid the meaning.

  They looked at Nilo’s mug for a long moment. Then Lycas slowly poured its contents onto the thirsty soil.

  05

  A child’s scream splintered the night.

  Rhia launched out of bed, stumbling over Marek in her dash for the door. He grabbed his bow and arrows on the way out.

  They reached the wooden rope bridge between their house and Coranna’s just as the Crow woman opened her own door.

  “All clear!” called Olena, the Wolf woman from two trees over. “Just another nightmare.” After a moment she added a soft “Sorry.”

  Rhia released a sigh, echoed by Marek and Coranna.

  “Was that the third time this night or only the second?” he asked on
their way back to bed. “I’ve lost track.”

  “The second. Better than last night.”

  He crawled in first to lie against the wall. “Were you asleep?”

  “Almost.” She sank onto her back and glared at the ceiling with wide-awake eyes. “You?”

  “Sound.” Marek lay his head on the pillow and sank back into slumber.

  She envied his ability to drop off so easily, but knew his exhaustion came from patrolling all night, hunting before dawn, then chopping wood until dusk. In the five days since the attack, the Kalindons had repaired the homes of every remaining villager, of which there were only a hundred now. Tomorrow they would begin building a new stable and paddock. Nobody wanted to go near the old one and its grisly memories.

  Rhia lay awake for what felt like hours, listening to the dead, unable to discern words among the jostling sounds. She drew her thumbs over her brows to relieve the dull ache behind her eyes. If she could talk back to those who had passed, maybe she could help them cross over.

  She had to try or go mad. Rhia eased herself out of bed, not bothering to be quiet, since Marek would hear her anyway.

  “Where are you going?” he mumbled.

  “To Coranna’s for chamomile.”

  “I’ll get it for you.”

  “She’d rather have me, not you, creep in on her while she’s sleeping.”

  “She won’t hear if I do it.”

  “The baby needs fresh air.”

  He didn’t argue. Outside, she trod over the rope bridge in silence. The cloudy night was pitch-black, but she knew which boards to step over to avoid telltale creaks. She lifted the rusty latch to Coranna’s door, jiggling to release it, then reached inside to silence the hanging doorbell.

  Rhia crept along the wall to Coranna’s herb shelves. By touch she found the clay jar of chamomile and picked it up, so as not to make herself a liar. Then her fingers slid along the highest shelf until they encountered a smooth wooden box the length of her foot. She pulled down the box and opened it.

  A white cloth lay in the center; she squeezed it to make sure the bundle of dried herbs was inside. Coranna had used it to speak with the dead—thanapras, it was called.