Colar’s stomach clenched with nerves. He was no fool; he knew that his parents, and Janye’s too, most likely, would try to keep him and Kate apart. It didn’t matter. He would send her a message, tell her to meet him at the little falls down by the river. It would be private there. Or he could meet her at Callia’s. The midwife would be happy to assist them.
The still-bare trees revealed the house at a fair distance, the elm-lined avenue aiming straight and true at the great pile of stone. Colar’s heart eased. For all that had happened, Terrick was home. His roots were here in the great house where generations had lived and fought and died.
Not his though, not anymore. He was destined for Favor, and Terrick would go to Aevin, or Yare, or even Eri, if the high god touched her the way Lady Wessen and Lady Trieve had been touched.
The wagon train trundled into the courtyard, and the household awaited them, alerted to their approach by villagers keeping watch and running ahead with the news. There was his father, as dour as ever, and his mother. He caught a glimpse of her anxious, lined face, but she smiled when she saw him and he smiled back. It was good to see her.
And Aevin, Yare, and Eri, all clapping and waving at him. No sign of Kate, but of course not. He felt a pang. She was hiding somewhere, sad, hurt, and angry.
High god, get me away from all this so I can find her.
His mother and father stepped forward to greet the Kenery household, their words full of formality and ceremony.
“Greetings Lord Kenery. Terrick gives you and your family guesting. Greetings, Lady Janye, our new daughter.”
At least Janye knew the formalities. She let herself be kissed by her new mother-in-law and replied, “Greetings, my new mother.”
Formalities over, there was a whirlwind of greeting and kisses of peace, Lord Kenery’s booming voice rising above the commotion. Colar picked up Eri and gave her a big hug, and clasped hands with Aevin. Yare tried to give him a high five and their hands missed, and he could see the strange look that his new family gave him. He could almost hear them thinking, What was that?
Under the noise, he gestured to Aevin and his brother leaned in close.
“Where’s Kate?”
Aevin looked at him, wide-eyed, but before he could say anything, Lord Terrick said, “Come, good folk of Kenery, we give you guesting forever and always. Come inside for the welcome cup.”
“A fine House, a fine House,” Kenery shouted, and they followed Lord Terrick in, as the householders carried up their trunks.
“Colar,” his mother said. She handed him the cup, letting her fingers clasp his for a moment, and he lifted the cup and sipped the spiced wine. She smiled at him, but her eyes were wet with tears. “We’ve given you and Janye the front bedroom, the guest chamber. She will like it, will she not?”
The guest chamber had the most windows, the largest fireplace, the biggest bed. It was the prettiest room in the house. Janye would turn her nose up at it. Colar had stopped caring for his sake, but if she hurt his mother’s feelings…On the other hand, best she should know now what manner of a daughter-in-law she had traded Kate for.
“It’s a fine room,” he told her. He turned to his wife, standing with her mother with her back to the room, deep in conversation, or complaint more likely. “Janye!” He snapped his fingers.
The rudeness cast an instant spell of silence on the room. Everyone turned to look at him, even his wife, even her family, even the householders, carrying in luggage. His mother’s eyes widened in shock and embarrassment as Janye’s expression turned white and still with anger and hatred.
“My mother gave you the best chamber,” he called out. “You should thank her.”
Stiffly, slowly, first with a look at her own mother, Janye sank into a curtsey.
“Thank you, mother-in-law,” she said through her teeth. “Your kindness and courtesy is most welcome.”
His mother stammered a reply and turned back to Colar, confusion in her expression. “Colar?” she said. He just looked at her and she understood. Red flooded her face.
“Excuse me,” he said, and gave a little bow. “I need to tell Torvan where to bring my trunk.”
Kate was not at dinner. The dinner was grand and loud except for Colar and his wife. They sat at the head of the table side by side and said nothing to each other. Janye picked at her food, and her mother exhorted her to eat more, to taste the lovely dishes of Terrick. Colar mostly drank, and he could tell his father and mother were displeased. Kenery partook of the bounty of Terrick wholeheartedly, and soon his face was a drunkard’s red, flushed and swollen. He regaled Lord Terrick with hearty observations, while Lady Niyani alternated between attending to her daughter and speaking loud and fast with Lady Beatra. Her conversation was about servants, her children, or the dresses she wore to Council.
Colar looked over at Aevin, Yare and Erinye, choking back giggles at this new family, so loud and so different from Terrick. He caught Eri’s eye. Where’s Kate? he mouthed. He could tell she understood, but whatever she said he didn’t get.
Janye put down her bread, which she had managed to crumple into seedy bits. “I’m tired, mother. I want to go to bed now.”
“Colar too, I wager!” Kenery bellowed. Colar ignored that. Lord Terrick and Lady Beatra appeared to be transfixed with horror. Lady Niyani jumped to her feet.
“Come come, child, let me help you. It has been such a long day of travel–” though they had reached Terrick in the late morning–“you poor lamb, you need to rest in a cozy bed with a warm brick and your warmest nightdress.”
She bustled her daughter off. Colar tossed back the last of his wine and stood. Kenery bellowed another laugh but Colar went over to his brothers and sister. He was unsteady on his feet.
“You three. Our room. Now.”
They jumped up and followed him.
He heard them out without a word, sitting on the bed, with only the glow from the fireplace to push away the darkness.
“They were crows,” Aevin said. “Not the, you know, mad kind. But Houseless. Lordless.”
Crows. She went away with a pack of crows. No one stopped her. They just let her go.
“Why would she go with them?” Eri asked, sniffling a little. “Won’t they hurt her?”
“Eri, we told you! It’s because Colar married that other girl!” Yare said.
“But won’t they hurt her?”
“Not Ossen,” Yare said with confidence.
Colar wanted to wring Ossen’s neck. He had heard enough about the man’s prowess in rescuing Yare.
“The scarface man would,” Eri said. She shuddered.
Colar’s head swum and the wine sat uneasily on his empty stomach. He hoped he wasn’t going to throw up, then the thought of it brought him to his feet. With a quick movement he was off the bed and kneeling over the chamber pot and retching.
Finished, he wiped his mouth. Yare and Eri were laughing at him, but Aevin stood next to him with a towel and a mug of water. He wiped his mouth again, sipped the water and spat, trying to clear his mouth of the taste.
Aevin made a face and put the chamber pot outside the door then came back in. “You’re going to have a sore head tomorrow,” he said practically.
“Really, Aevin? Thanks, I had no idea.”
Aevin lowered his voice so the kids couldn’t hear. “What are you going to do? Go after her?”
“Shut up,” Colar said.
“High god, you’re useless,” Aevin said. The disgust in his voice made him sound years older than fifteen.
The two younger kids hushed, their eyes flickering over to the two brothers with uncertainty and fear.
“Did she say where she was going?”
“Home,” Yare said. “She was arguing with mama and lord father and said she would go to Red Gold Bridge so she could go home.”
Colar felt as if he were punched in the stomach. Of course–trying to open the gordath made the most sense. But could she? It was closed, last summer, when they tried immedi
ately after he and Tharp’s men rescued her from the general. And it was still closed, according to Lord Tharp in his report to Council. There were two guardians now, one in Red Gold Bridge, and one in North Salem, and together they kept the gordath shut tight. It had been opened too many times and was too dangerous to be opened again, so soon.
But what if she got through? What if he followed?
He thought about the Annapolis brochure and the world of possibility it represented for him. If he got through, could he make a life there, with Kate if she would have him, without her if not?
High god, what a terrible thing the gordath was. He had two futures but only one life. The gordath made that clear, taunting him with possibility. Stay, and be lord of Favor –
Go, and become a Navy pilot, sloughing off Aeritan and embracing her world?
“Colar?” Eri timidly put her hand in his. He smiled and squeezed it.
“Go to bed,” he told her. He was still drunk, but he felt himself more clear-headed than he had ever been. He jerked his head at all of them. “All of you. Leave.”
They slid off the bed, leaving him alone. The householders had brought up his trunk and, unbidden, brought over his childhood chest, knowing the way that servants did without being told that he would be staying in this room and not with his wife.
He had to stop her. The crows left five days before, heading northwest to Red Gold Bridge, while he and the Kenery retinue came in from the northeast. It would take another five days on foot to the river and thence to Red Gold Bridge. A fast rider could make the trip in six days in all, even in the sloppy conditions. And there was a courier from Kenery sitting idle in the Terrick barracks. Colar lit a candle at the fire and put it in the small candle holder on the desk under the window. The flame streamed sideways in the constant draft, but it cast enough light for him to find paper and ink.
The ink was dry. Colar cursed his brothers mildly. They were not the least interested in schooling, the idiots. He spit in the ink and stirred it up, then dipped the quill.
To Lady Sarita of Red Gold Bridge, he wrote. Lady Sarita would not let Kate go. She’d keep Kate by, long enough for Colar to send for her.
Just wait, he’d tell her. Wait until this small war is over and I am Lord Favor. Then I will cast off Janye and you and I will be together.
The wine and brandy conspired against him. He finished his letter and rolled into bed fully clothed, his boots still on, his head spinning. As the room whirled around him, he imagined he was in two worlds, his bedroom here and his bedroom in Kate’s house in North Salem. It was as if the portal that separated the two worlds had thinned and become a flimsy veil, a curtain blowing in the cool night air.
He could hear whispering, and could almost understand the words.
I wish she would come home.
Don’t think about it. Try to sleep.
She’s trying to go home, he thought drowsily. She’s really trying.
What was that? Did you hear that?!
Mrs. Mossland, I’m sorry. I tried, I–
He passed out.
The little fire crackled in the wet wood, coaxed into life by some skill and woodcraft of Ossen’s brother Arlef, but it was mostly smoke and little heat. They could use it to heat their vesh at least, but little else.
Spring in Aeritan was wet. Kate squatted on her heels and huddled inside her cloak, with the hood up around her head to ward off the rain. Everything she owned was damp.
The first day of their journey was the only day the sun had come out, she thought bitterly. It had rained every day since and they had woken up to snowfall more than once. Kate was tired and chilled to the bone, and her body ached with the effort to stay warm.
The crow brothers were no more happy than she was and their constant bickering was beginning to wear on her.
“Here,” Ossen said, handing her a cup of vesh. Ossen looked more crow-like now, more like her brothers, now that she was in her element. Kate was grateful for her company. They slept next to one another, Ossen keeping her strange brothers at bay.
“Thanks,” Kate said, taking a sip. The warmth spread down through her core.
“Always serving the princess first,” Ivar whined. He was skinny and long-legged, long-nosed, his face pitted with acne scars. “Crow god, Ossen, I’m freezing here, and I always get served last! Every day, all the way to Temia, it will be the same thing!”
“Shut up for once,” Grigar said wearily. “It’s always the same with you!”
“Easy for you to say, you dumb bastard. You get fed first, but me, now, just the scraps. Just the ends. That’s what I get from my own brothers...”
He stopped at Balafray’s growl.
“The girl gets served first, because she’s our fortune,” the scarred man said.
Kate’s heart sank. They had been solicitous of her these last several days, and she had thought it was because she was not used to the road and they traveled hard. A kindness from strangers, that was all. This sounded ominous. She glanced at Ossen, but the girl was humming a wordless melody and looking off into the darkness outside their campfire with an indulgent smile.
Running off with the crows may not have been her best idea.
We’re just sharing the road to Red Gold Bridge. We’ll part ways then, and they can go wherever crows need to go. Temia? Have at it, boys. She had bad memories of Temia.
She hoped it was that simple, but with Balafray hinting that he had another use for her, she prayed the soldier’s god had her back. She kept a long knife tucked in her bedroll with her but knew she would need courage and luck to use it.
“You don’t have to serve me first,” she said with as light a tone as she could manage. Ivar took a breath to continue his whine when first Grigar and then Arlef cuffed him.
“Damn you!” Ivar went to hit Arlef, and they started scuffling until Balafray stood up. In an instant both brothers stopped. Balafray said nothing, just loomed. Kate opened her mouth to say something, but Ossen caught her hand. She shook her head in warning, and Kate backed down.
Balafray stared at the brothers, and then walked off into the darkness. A second later they could hear him answer nature’s call. Grigar let out his breath and then turned on Ivar.
“Just shut up,” he said viciously. “Hold your tongue, you useless creature! Or I’ll see to it we leave you on the road. Crow god, Ivar, you need to show some spine for once.”
Ivar continued to make excuses and Grigar finally hauled him to his feet and dragged him into the woods in the other direction. He threw him hard, and Ivar stumbled and fell in the mud.
“Stay out there then!” Grigar shouted. “Stay out there all night! I’m sick of you, you useless bastard!”
Biting off a curse, Arlef went after his brother and Grigar went off in another direction in a huff.
Alone, Ossen and Kate looked at each other. She wrapped her hands around the cup, enjoying the fast fading warmth. She took a sip.
“Wow,” she said finally. “I think I’m grateful that my parents didn’t give me a little brother or sister, like I wanted.”
Ossen half-laughed, half-groaned. “Sometimes I just want to kill them all.”
“Oh come on, all of them?”
“Depends upon the day, the hour–yes, all of them.”
“Ossen, why am I your fortune?”
Ossen poured herself some vesh, and dolloped in brandy from a crudely blown glass flask, corked it, and sipped. The crow girl coughed a little.
“Well, let me ask you–why are you traveling with us?”
Subdued now, Ivar and Arlef came creeping back. Grigar sat down on his haunches, the only way to keep somewhat dry, and gave his brothers a quelling look. With them all settled down, Ossen handed out the jerky and flatbread that had been their every meal since they took to the road. Kate felt the presence of Balafray looming behind her and her neck prickled. She answered lightly.
“It’s not like I could stay at Terrick.”
“You could have married
that merchant from Saraval,” Ossen said. “Or Lord Terrick would have found another husband for you.”
It was sounding good right now. She’d at least be warm and dry and safe. But Lord Terrick would have won, and Kate grew stubborn just thinking about it.
“It wasn’t good enough,” she said. “I want–I deserve–better.”
It was the first time she said it out loud. An arranged marriage would have disposed of her neatly, tied up the loose end that was the foster daughter of Terrick. I’d rather be a monkey wrench than a loose end.
“So do we crows,” Balafray said. At first she thought he was responding to her unspoken wish, and his gravelled voice sent a spike of fear up her back. “What Aeritan gives us, we crows must take, for we are her true inheritors. But the lords have given us little these many years; their share has grown niggardly, and when we take our rightful portion from their fields and their stock, they bring out their armies and punish us.”
“Except when they need us to fight their wars,” Grigar said. “They prey upon the weak among us, those under malcra, and use them.”
“The malcra is our birthright!” Balafray said, swelling with rage against his brother.
“It’s our curse.” Grigar’s voice was flat, bitter.
It had the sound of an old argument. Kate swiveled between the two of them. The twins and Ossen were doing the same.
“You’ve never submitted to the malcra, so you have no understanding,” Balafray said.
“I see what it’s done to us crows.”
“Us crows?” Balafray inquired, almost silkily.
Kate looked over at Ossen, but she was focused on her brothers. Grigar stood. Whatever Balafray had meant–and she had an inkling that she understood–Grigar had not liked it. He balanced himself, feet wide, in a fighting stance.
Another fight was brewing, and it would take place right on top of her. Kate held up a hand. “Stop. Stop. I don’t know what a malcra is, but just stop this. You can’t fight all the time.” Soldier’s god, what was with these people?
“You know what malcra means. You saw it when the crows chased you down in the war camp.” Ossen’s voice was sulky.
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