Raven's Shadow rd-1

by Patricia Briggs

  Stone benches lined the wide corner of the second bend of the zigzagging road, and an old man sat on one of them playing a wooden flute. Tier paused to listen, closing his eyes briefly. Seraph saw the old man look up and start a bit, but he kept playing. After a moment, Tier moved on, but his steps were slower.

  He stopped in front of a home marked by sheaves of wheat carved into the lintel over the doorway and by the smell of fresh-baked bread.

  “Home,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know what kind of welcome to expect. I haven’t heard from anyone here since I left to go to war—and I left in the middle of the night.”

  Seraph waited, but when he made no move to continue she said, “Did they love you?”

  He nodded without looking away from the door.

  “Then,” she said gently, “I expect that the men will bluster and the women will cry and scold—then they will feast and welcome you home.”

  He laughed then. “That sounds about right. I suppose it won’t change for putting it off longer.”

  He held the door open for her and followed her into a largish room that managed to be both homey and businesslike at the same time. Behind the counter that divided the room in half were tilted shelves displaying bread in a dozen forms and a burly red-headed man who looked nothing like Tier.

  “May I help you, good sir?” asked the man.

  “Bandor?” said Tier. “What are you doing here?”

  The big man stared at him, then paled a bit. He shook his head as if setting aside whatever it was that had bothered him. Then he smiled with genuine welcome. “As I live and breathe, it’s Tier come back from the dead.”

  Bandor stepped around the counter and enveloped Tier in a hearty embrace. “It’s been too long.”

  It was odd to see two men embracing—her own people were seldom touched in public outside of childhood. But Tier returned the bigger man’s hug with equal enthusiasm.

  “You’re here for good, I hope,” said Bandor, taking a step back.

  “That depends upon my father,” Tier replied soberly.

  Bandor shook his head and his mouth turned down. “Ah, there is much that has happened since you left. Draken died four years ago, Tier. Your sister and I had been married a few years earlier—I’d taken an apprenticeship here when you left.” He stopped and shook his head. “I’m telling this all topsy-turvy.”

  “Dead,” said Tier, his whole body stilled.

  “Bandor,” said a woman’s voice from behind a closed door. The door swung wide and a woman came out backwards, having bumped open the door with her hip. Her arms were occupied with a large basket of rolls. “Do you think I ought to do another four dozen rolls, or are the eight dozen we have enough?”

  The woman was taller than average, thin and lanky like Tier. And as she turned around, Seraph could see that she had his dark hair and wide mouth.

  “Alinath,” said Bandor. “I believe you have a visitor.”

  She turned toward Tier with a polite smile and opened her mouth, but when her eyes caught his face no sound left her lips. She dropped the basket on the ground, spilling rolls everywhere, then she was over the top of the counter and wrapped tightly around him.

  “Tier,” she said in a muffled voice. “Oh, Tier. We thought you were dead.”

  He hugged her back, lifting her off the floor. “Hey, sprite,” he said, and his voice was as choked as hers.

  “We kept it for you,” said Alinath. “We kept the bakery for you.”

  Alinath pulled back, tears running freely down her face. She took a step away from him and then punched him in the belly, turning her shoulder to put the full force of her body into the blow.

  “Nine years,” she said hotly. “Nine years, Tier, and not even a note to say that you were still alive. Damn you, Tier.”

  Tier was bent over wheezing, but he held up three fingers.

  “We received nothing,” she said angrily. “I didn’t even know where to send you word when Father died.”

  “I sent three letters the first year,” he said, huffing for breath. “When I had no reply, I assumed Father washed his hands of me.”

  Alinath put her hands to her mouth. “If he ever got your letters, he didn’t say anything to me. Darn my fiendish temper. I’m sorry I hit you, Tier.”

  Tier shook his head, denying the need for apology. “Father told me that someday I’d be sorry I taught you how to hit.”

  “Come with me,” she said. “Mother will want to see you.” She tugged him from the room, leaving Seraph alone with the man at the counter.

  “Welcome,” Bandor said after a long awkward moment. “I am Bandor, journeyman baker, and husband to Alinath of the Bakers of Redern.”

  “Seraph, Raven of the Clan of Isolda the Silent,” Seraph replied with outward composure, knowing her words would tell him no more than his eyes had already noticed.

  He nodded, bent to right the basket Alinath had dropped, and began to collect the rolls that had fallen on the floor.

  When he was finished he said, “Alinath will be busy with Tier; I’d best get to the baking.” He turned on his heel and headed back through the door that Alinath and Tier had taken, leaving Seraph truly alone.

  Uncomfortable and out of place, Seraph sat on a small bench and waited. She should have left on her own as soon as Tier had killed the nobleman who pursued her. She’d have been safe enough then. Here in Tier’s village she was as out of place as a crow in a hummingbird nest.

  But she stayed where she was until Tier returned alone.

  “My apologies,” he said. “I shouldn’t have left you here alone.”

  She shrugged. “I am hardly going to come to harm here, nor do I have a place in your reunion.”

  He gave her a faint smile. “Yes, well, come with me and I’ll make you known to my sister and mother.”

  She stood up. “I’m sorry that your father was not here as well.”

  His smile turned wry. “I don’t know if I’d have been welcomed here if my father were still alive.”

  “Maybe not right away, but you’re persuasive. He’d have relented eventually.” She found herself patting his arm and stopped as soon as she realized what she was doing.

  Tier’s mother and sister awaited them in a small room that had been arranged for a sick person. Alinath sat on a stool next to the bed where Tier’s mother held court. The older woman’s hair was the same dark color as her children’s, though streaked with spiderwebs of age. She wasn’t old, not by Traveler standards, but her skin was yellow with illness.

  Both women looked upon Seraph without favor as Tier made his introductions.

  “Tier tells us you have no home, child,” said Tier’s mother, in a begrudging tone—as if she expected Seraph to impose on her for a place to stay.

  “As long as there are Travelers, I have a home,” Seraph replied. “It only remains for me to find them. Thank you for your concern.”

  “I told them that I would escort you to your people,” said Tier. “They don’t come near Shadow’s Fall, so it might take us a few months.”

  “So we are to lose you again?” said his mother querulously. “Alinath and Bandor cannot keep up with the work—every week they toil from dawn to dusk for the bakery, which is yours. When you come back in a few months, I will be dead.”

  It was said in a dramatic fashion, but Seraph thought that the older woman might be speaking truth.

  “I can find my people on my own,” said Seraph.

  “Do you hear that, Tier? She is a Traveler and can find her own way,” said Alinath.

  “She is sixteen and a woman alone,” returned Tier sharply. “I’ll see her safe.”

  “You were younger than that when you went off to war,” said Alinath. “And you weren’t a witch.” She bit off the last word as if it were filthy.

  “Alinath,” said Tier in a gentle voice that made his sister pale. “Seraph is my guest here and you will not sharpen your tongue on her.”

  “I can take care of myself,
both here and on the road,” said Seraph, though his defense touched her—as if the words of a solsenti stranger could hurt her.

  “No,” said Tier, his voice firm. “If you’ll house us for the night, Mother, we’ll start out tomorrow morning.”

  Tier’s mother and sister exchanged a look, as if they’d discussed the situation while Tier had left them alone to retrieve Seraph.

  Tier’s mother smiled at Seraph. “Child, is there a hurry to find your people? If you cannot tarry here until I pass from this world into the next, could you not stay with us as our guest for a season so that we might not lose Tier so soon after we’ve found him?”

  “A Traveler might be harmful to business,” said Seraph. “As I said, there is no need for Tier to escort me. I am well capable of finding my people by myself.”

  “If you go, he’ll follow you,” said Alinath with resignation. “It may have been a long time since I’ve seen my brother, but I doubt that he has changed so much as to go back on his sworn word.”

  “Stay, please,” said his mother. “What few people who will not eat from the table where a Traveler is fed will be more than compensated for by the new business we’ll get from the curious who will come to the bakery just to catch a glimpse of you.”

  Seraph was under no illusion that she’d be a welcome guest. But there was no doubt either that they wanted her to stay if that were the only way to keep Tier for a while.

  “I’ll stay,” she said reluctantly and felt a weight lift off her shoulders. If she were here then she wasn’t fighting demons and watching people die around her because she hadn’t been able to protect them. “I’ll stay for a little while.”

  “Where is my brother?” Alinath’s voice sounded almost accusing, as if she thought Seraph had done something to Tier.

  Seraph looked up from sifting the never-ending supply of flour, one of the unskilled tasks that had fallen to her hands. She glanced pointedly at the empty space next to her where Tier had spent the last three weeks mixing various permutations of yeasted bread. She raised her eyebrows in surprise, as if she hadn’t noted that he hadn’t taken his usual place this morning. Then she looked back at Alinath and shrugged.

  It was rude, but Alinath’s sharp question had been rude, too.

  Alinath’s jaw tightened, but she was evidently still intimidated enough by Seraph’s status as Traveler not to speak further. She turned on her heel and left Seraph to her work.

  Tier didn’t return until the family was sitting down for lunch. He brushed a kiss on the top of Alinath’s head and sat down across from her, beside Seraph.

  “Where were you this morning?” Alinath asked.

  “Riding,” he said in a tone that welcomed no questions. “Pass the carrots please, Seraph.”

  The rhythms of the bakery came back to Tier as if he’d not spent the better part of the last decade with a sword in his hand instead of a wooden spoon. He woke before dawn to fire the ovens and, after a few days, quit having to ask Alinath for the proper proportion of ingredients.

  He could see the days stretching ahead of him in endless procession, each day just exactly like the one before. The years of soldiering had made him no more resigned to spending the rest of his life baking than he’d been at fifteen.

  Even something as exotic as his stray Traveler didn’t alter the pattern of life at his father’s bakery. She worked as she was asked and seldom spoke, even to him. Only his nightly rides broke the habits of his childhood, but even they had begun to acquire a sameness.

  He ought to sell the horse, his mother had told him over dinner yesterday, then he could use the money as a bride price. There were a number of lovely young village women who would love to be a baker’s wife.

  This morning he’d gotten up earlier than usual and tried to subdue his restlessness with work—to no effect. So as soon as Bandor had come in to watch the baking, Tier left and took Skew out, galloping him over the bridge and up into the mountains until they arrived at a small valley he’d discovered as a boy. Once there, he’d explored the valley until the lather on Skew’s back had dried and his own desperation loosened under the influence of the sweet-grass smell and mountain breeze.

  Part of him was ready to leave this afternoon, to take Seraph and find her people. But the rest of him wanted to put the journey off as long as he could. Once it was over, there would be no further escapes for him. He wasn’t fifteen anymore: he was a man, with a man’s responsibilities.

  “You’re quiet today,” said Seraph as they worked together after lunch. “I was beginning to think that silence was a thing that Rederni avoided at all cost. Always you are telling stories, or singing. Even Bandor hums all the time he works.”

  He grinned at her as he kneaded dough. “I should have warned you,” he said, “that every man in Redern thinks himself a bard and most of the women, too.”

  “In love with the sound of your own voices, the whole lot of you,” said Seraph without rancor, dumping hot water in the scrubbing tub where a collection of mixing bowls awaited cleaning. “My father always said that too many words cheapened the value of a man’s speech.”

  Tier laughed again—but Alinath had entered the baking room with an armful of empty boards in time to hear the whole of Seraph’s observation.

  “My father said that a silent person is trying to hide something,” she said as she dumped the trays in a stack. “Girl, get the broom and sweep the front room. See that you get the corners so that we don’t attract mice.”

  Tier saw Seraph stiffen, but she grabbed the broom and dustpan.

  “Alinath, she is a guest in our house,” Tier bit out as the door closed behind Seraph. “You don’t use that tone to the hired boy. She has done nothing to earn your disrespect. Leave her be.”

  “She is a Traveler,” snapped Alinath, but there was an undercurrent of desperation in her voice. “She bewitches you because she is young and pretty. You laugh with her and you’ll barely exchange a word with any of us.”

  How could he explain to her his frustration with the life that so obviously suited her without hurting her feelings? The bakery was smothering him.

  When he said nothing, Alinath said, “You’re a man. Bandor is the same—neither of you see what she is. You think she’s a poor familyless, defenseless woman in need of protection because that’s what she wants you to see.”

  A flush of temper lit Alinath’s eyes as she began to pace. “I see a woman who looks at my brother as a way to wealth and ease that she’ll never have when she finds one of those ragtag bands of Travelers. She doesn’t want to go to her people—even you must see that. I tell you that if you just give her the chance, she’ll snatch you into a marriage-bed.”

  Tier opened his mouth and then closed it again. He tried to see Seraph as his sister described her, but the image didn’t ring true.

  “She’s a child,” he said.

  “I was married when I was her age.”

  “She is a child and a Traveler,” he said. “She’d no more look at me that way than she’d think of marrying a… a horse. She thinks of all of us as if we were a different species.”

  “Oh and you know so much about women,” his sister ranted, though she was careful to keep her voice down so she couldn’t be heard in the front room where Seraph was. “You need to find a good wife. You always liked Kirah. She’s widowed now and would bring a fair widow’s portion with her.”

  Tier put the dough in the greased bowl he’d set out for it, covered it with cheesecloth, and then scrubbed his hands in Seraph’s tub of cooling water. He shook them dry and took off his father’s apron and hung it on the hook. Enough, he thought.

  “Don’t wait dinner for me,” he said and started to leave. He stopped before he opened the door to the front room. “I’ve been counting too heavily on manners and the memory of my little sister who saw me leave without telling anyone because she understood me enough to know that I had to leave. I see that you need a stronger reason to leave Seraph alone. Just you remember that,
for all of her quietness she has a temper as hot as yours. She is a Traveler and a wizard, and if she takes a notion to teach you what that means, neither your tongue nor your fist will do you a bit of good.”

  He left before she could say anything, closing the door to the baking room firmly behind him.

  Seraph glanced his way as he stalked past her, but he said nothing to her. She’d be all right; his warning would keep Alinath away from her for a while.

  He couldn’t face Seraph right now, not with his sister’s accusations ringing in his ears. Not that he believed what Alinath had said about Seraph for a moment—but Alinath’d opened the way for possibilities that made him uncomfortable. He’d never thought much about the peace that Seraph’s tart commentary and quiet presence brought him: he’d just been grateful for the relief from the demands of his family. He didn’t want to examine what he felt any closer. So Tier nodded once at Seraph and also to Bandor before leaving the bakery.

  Once outside, his steps faltered. He’d worn Skew out this morning, so it hardly seemed fair to take him out again. He could walk—but it wasn’t exercise he needed, it was escape.

  The Hero’s Welcome was a tavern and an inn, a conglomeration of several older buildings, and the first building on the road through Redern. It was seldom empty, and when Tier entered it there were a number of men sitting near the kitchen entrance gossiping with each other while the tanner’s father, Ciro, coaxed soft music from his viol.

  It made Tier think of his grandfather and the grand concerts he and Ciro, who had been the tanner himself then, had put on. If Seraph ever heard the old man play, she’d know why Tier would never consider himself a bard in any sense of the word.

  He seated himself beside these men he’d known since he was a child and greeted them by name, older men, all of them, contemporaries of his grandfather. The younger men would come in later, when they were finished with their work and chores.