The Crow God's Girl
Page 17
Now!
She ran.
Twigs snatched at her, her breath came hard, and she heard Arrim’s futile bellowing behind her. She closed her eyes and ran, crashing through the underbrush, and when her toe caught underneath a root she went sprawling with such force she got the wind knocked out of her. Kate stretched out her full length on the muddy forest floor, her ears ringing.
She sucked for air, until with a whoosh, she could breathe again. As she struggled to her hands and knees, she looked up and froze.
She looked into the gordath, the blackness between worlds. Gone was the portal through which a person could look from one world to another. This was not the gateway. This was death, obscurity. She remembered a year ago the hapless soldier falling between the worlds, and knowing then, as she knew now, that he was consumed.
She had run to it with her eyes closed. She saw herself plunging forward, her momentum carrying her into oblivion. “Crow god,” she breathed, only half aware that she invoked that god.
Trembling, she backed up on her hands and knees, making herself as small as possible. The darkness swelled and throbbed, and she knew the gordath was aware of her. Kate struggled to keep her breathing quiet and slow her racing heart. It took forever to crawl back to Arrim. When she returned to the clearing, she threw up until there was nothing left in her stomach.
“Forest god, forest god,”Arrim whispered, and she could hear the panic. “She’s woken it, lady, she’s woken it.”
“Can you calm it, Arrim?” Lady Sarita’s voice was edged with the same panic.
“Not alone, lady. I don’t know–if it wakes–” He was babbling now.
“Arrim, calm. Calm. Joe is there. He’s right on the other side. He’ll help you.” She sounded kind yet firm. Kate had never heard Lady Sarita talk that way. She managed to get to her knees and then her feet, spitting to get the taste out of her mouth. Lady Sarita dismounted and went over to Arrim, holding his shoulders.
“Can you sense him?” Lady Sarita said. Arrim nodded, and the clarity of his eyes started to come back. He turned to face the gordath and held his hands out. His breathing was even now. It looked as if he was communing with it. Lady Sarita watched for a bit and then gestured to Kate. “Come.” Her expression was no longer kind. She was angry, angrier than Kate had ever seen her.
Weary, shamed, covered with mud and stinking of vomit, Kate stumbled after her. They walked their horses until Lady Sarita found a fallen log to mount from. Kate followed suit, shakily. She looked back once. Arrim had been swallowed up in the forest, and it was coming on dusk anyway. She thought about Joe standing on the other side of the gordath in North Salem, holding up his hands the same way, putting the gordath back to sleep.
She never felt farther from her home than at that moment.
It was almost evening when they returned to Red Gold Bridge. Back in the warm little room a meal awaited them, steaming vesh, plates of stew and dumplings, and thick, crusty bread.
Kate couldn’t even summon up the energy to be hungry. She dropped into her seat, weary beyond anything, still ashamed. She could barely meet Lady Sarita’s eyes. The lady did not let that stop her.
“What a foolhardy, selfish thing to do.” Lady Sarita’s voice was as cool as always but all the more scathing for that. “Arrim is as fragile as the gordath he guards. Had you gone through–to your certain death, I might add–it would have completely broken him, and then where would we be? The only thing keeping us safe is that we have two guardians, one on each side of the gordath, keeping it shut.”
She was stuck here forever, with no true home, and her only connections a flock of crows, and she might not even have that any more. She wondered if the crows still waited for her, wondering when she would return. They had her money, her horse, all the rest of her belongings. If they treated her the way she had tried to treat them, they would be long gone by now.
“What am I going to do?” she said, more to herself than to Lady Sarita.
“Make a life for yourself,” Lady Sarita said.
Kate gave a short sob. “I thought I had. It was taken from me.”
“No. You had an easy way out, not a life. You thought you could stand everything this world has to offer because it all came so easily to you. A noble husband, a good family; this world tasted sweet, did it not? You would be a noblewoman, forever cosseted. For a girl from your background, I can imagine that it was–seductive.”
Kate burned with shame. Ruthlessly, Lady Sarita went on.
“Would you really have become a doctor once you were Lady Kate?”
“How did–”
“Your young man told me. In his dispatch he sent when he discovered you were on your way here.” She rummaged through the piles of paper on the table and held it up. “I’m to hold you until he takes Favor, and then he will send for you. Presumably, you would become his mistress, as the council doesn’t allow for divorce. Not as conventional a life, but still comfortable, don’t you think?”
Kate felt the color drain from her face. How. Dared. He.
“Or,” Lady Sarita said, as if musing out loud, “You could find your own way. It might be harder, but it will be more satisfying. You should eat.”
Kate looked at the good food and suddenly her appetite was voracious. She grabbed a roll and tore at it, dipping the steaming bread into her stew, and gulping at her vesh. When she was finished, she wiped her mouth on a napkin, her hunger sated but her anger still sharp.
So he thought he could keep her here until he was ready for her? She remembered his choice of words at the waterfall. You’re my betrothed. His sense of ownership, uttered so casually, came through in those words, and now in his letter to Lady Sarita.
All right, change of plans. Maybe the gordath couldn’t be crossed right now. She had seen the gaping wound it slashed between worlds, and she knew that passage was deadly. But that didn’t mean that once soothed, it couldn’t be opened safely again. She might have to wait a year, or two, or ten, but she would find a way to get through. It would be her ace in the hole.
In the meantime, she would join the crows and their gathering storm. And if that storm just happened to throw a monkey wrench into Terrick’s plans for Favor, well, so much the better.
I mean, what was the point of being some kind of symbol to a crazy army if you didn’t use it?
The sun had dropped below the headlands on the other side of the river when Kate, laden with a generous sack of provisions, walked down to the waterfront, escorted by Captain Tal at Lady Sarita’s orders. He was not like the Terrick soldiers. He was brusque but he didn’t sneer at her. He didn’t treat her in any way differently than anyone else. She supposed it was because of the gordath–once you had people come across from other worlds, they stopped being scandalous. The crows were in the second tavern she tried, lamps burning brightly outside the door and welcoming aromas of good beer and food within. The tavern was busy, and Kate stood just inside the door and off to the side, scanning the place. The clientele was motley: sailors from all up and down the river, shaggy forestholders, and sleek Brytherners. There were a few crewmembers from the River Lady that she recognized, and one raised his cup to her and jerked his head at the corner of the room. She followed his direction.
The crows sat at their own table, hunched over tankards. She watched them for a moment. Ossen looked worried, the twins restless, and Grigar and Balafray wary. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she knew what they were talking about. She should have been back long before, and now they were wondering if they had made a bad bet.
“Looks like you found them,” Tal said. “Try to keep out of trouble.”
He left before she could say anything. Just then, Ossen turned to look at the door and Kate caught her eye. Then Grigar turned around, and then Balafray and the twins. She picked her way through the crowd. No one said anything but she could see by the way they took in her muddy clothes that they wondered what had happened. Ossen moved so she could squeeze next to them on the
bench, and Ivar pushed over an extra tankard of beer. Kate shrugged the sack off her shoulder and hefted it onto the table. One of the guys could carry it with the rest of their stuff. She had done her part. She took a drink, licking the foam mustache off her lip. The beer was nutty and thick, almost sweet.
“So,” she said. “Lady Sarita has given us traveler’s aid for the night–we can stay in the stables. And tomorrow we are off to Temia.”
“Welcome back,” Grigar said, his expression bland.
“I knew you’d come,” Ossen said.
“I too,” rumbled Balafray. He glared down the twins as if daring them to contradict him. They shrunk under his gaze.
“Of course I came back,” Kate said. “Why wouldn’t I?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The spring wind that whipped over the two armies in Favor had more of winter’s bite than summer warmth to it. It snapped out the banners so that they cracked constantly against the thin blue sky.
Colar sat his horse and watched as Favor’s army marched away in long columns. They did not march like a defeated army but as a disciplined, confident force. Even its large company of camp followers were ordered and calm. The army may have been smaller than the Terrick and Kenery’s, but Trieve’s men would not have been a pushover.
We won, he thought. Favor is ours. Mine. He was lord of Favor. When the army finally left the land’s borders, he could ride in and see what he had won.
But he didn’t believe it. Favor and Trieve had not even tried to fight but they hadn’t exactly surrendered either. Instead, they met the invading force at the border, recited a message from Lady Trieve, and marched away.
“Thank you, Lord Terrick, for holding Favor in trust for Trieve until this matter is decided in Council.” Captain Crae had said those words to Colar’s father, his dark eyes unfathomable but strained, with creases at the corners. He did not seem angry or betrayed. He did not bluster. He looked at Colar only once, and shook his head slightly, the way a father would shame his son. Colar kept his expression steady. He would not show shame or guilt no matter how much he felt.
The words were ritual and meant that Lady Trieve would abide by the Council’s ruling. It was foolish of her, but what choice did she have? So until the Council made its position known, Favor’s status and Colar’s would remain uncertain.
Lord Terrick had nodded briefly at Captain Crae’s formal words, but it was not a bow of lord to lord, but lord to captain. “There is much to be said for avoiding war, captain,” he said gruffly. “Lady Trieve is wise to prevent bloodshed with this decision.”
Crae’s mouth quirked in an unpleasant smile. “Don’t get too comfortable, Terrick.”
He turned and gave a command to his lieutenant, and the man wheeled his horse and shouted an order. At that, the Trieve army and its small Favor force fell in and began their long march away.
When the army dwindled away down the road, Colar, his father, and Lord Kenery, a silent shadow of his former blustery self, turned to look at the House that they had won without a drop of blood spilled.
It was more a fort than a house. To be sure, that could be said of all the Houses in Aeritan, but Favor was modest in comparison to the others. It was hardly bigger than a gatehouse. It had two towers with window slits, a guardwall, and a barred portcullis. It was square and sturdy and completely unremarkable.
It wasn’t the house or even the land that was important, though. It was the vote in Council. The Terrick-Kenery alliance had just grown by another member. Lady Trieve’s gambit was a desperate move, and it would not save her.
He and his father didn’t speak as they rode up to the house, dismounted in the courtyard, and handed their reins to their men. There was an unpleasant smell and the sound of buzzing flies. The smell intensified when they pushed open the door of the House.
Colar couldn’t hold back a groan of disgust. His father and Lord Kenery recoiled the same.
As a parting gift, Crae’s men had slaughtered several sheep and laid them out in a travesty of a welcoming party; one even had a kerchief tied around its head, the welcome cup nestled between its hooves. Their intestines had been pulled out, and blood covered everything; it had even been slopped on the walls.
Next to him, his father cursed with disgust and fury.
Kenery kicked at one of the sheep, his boot sinking wetly into the animal and setting off a cloud of flies.
“I should have killed that bitch when I had the chance,” he growled.
“Base dishonor,” Lord Terrick said, his words bitter. “It’s only Favor’s people who will suffer. Raymon, gather up the householders to clean up the mess.”
Raymon stepped forward and Colar knew what he was going to say even before the lieutenant could get the words out. That had been a surprisingly large number of camp followers leaving with the army.
“There are no householders, Lord Terrick. They’ve all gone. I have my men rousting out the smallholders, but it looks like they’ve gone to earth. We’ll keep looking. With your permission, sir, we can use sterner tactics to encourage them to come forward.”
“Burn down the nearest village and slaughter the rest of their sheep,” growled Kenery. “That will bring them out.”
Kill the smiths and burn the forges. Colar remembered carrying out that order. Sweat sprang onto his forehead, and he clenched his fists. His nausea increased, the smell overwhelming.
“No,” he managed. “These are my people. I will not have you harass them. Raymon, call for a detail of men and clean this place up.”
He walked out into the fresh air, taking deep breaths to calm his gag reflex. He stripped off his helmet and let the sharp breeze cool his sickness. The pragmatic part of him knew that if he showed mercy to Favor, the people would mistake it for weakness and he would govern an unruly country, perhaps for years, until the land would run with blood. But he also knew that if he did not separate himself from his father and father-in-law from that moment on...
He would become ruthless.
Colar waited for his stomach to settle, and turned back. His father and Kenery hadn’t stayed inside, and they waited for him in the small courtyard.
“Feel better, boy?” Kenery rumbled, the barest smirk in his voice. Colar gave him a level look, and Kenery’s smirk faded.
“We’ll divide our forces–Seven hundreds of Kenery’s men with our captains to lead them will stay here,” Colar said. He fought back the urge to look at his father for approval. “Three hundreds to travel to Salt. We best get on the road. We have but a half-month before Council, where I will be named Lord Favor.”
“Wait,” Kenery said. Now he was angry. “I won’t travel to Salt with only two hundreds of my men.”
“I’d leave you here to clean up,” Colar said. “But we need your vote.”
Kate took her first look at the House of Temia and almost burst into tears. They had been three days on the road from Red Gold Bridge to Temia. It rained and snowed and sleeted the entire journey. All of her clothes were wet. Her expensive boots had given up their oil-proofed protection and were no match for the mud and the damp. Her wool socks never dried. They couldn’t make a fire because all the wood was wet. So for three days she and the others had been drinking cold-water vesh and gnawing on grain mush and crusty bread.
Wait until we reach Temia, the crows had all said. They sang the praises of their ancestral land. Blazing fires and a roof overhead, soft beds and warm furs, ale, and sausage and spicy stew. They painted a pretty picture and Kate had been desperate enough to believe it, despite her own personal experience of Temia as a miserable gods-forsaken land.
The house was a rundown, ramshackle pile of stone. The roof had fallen in at one end of the long, rambling structure, blackened from a fire. There were dry dead weeds growing up through the cracks in the courtyard flagstones. Water dripped somewhere. It sounded as if it came from inside the House.
“This is it?”
They all looked at each other but no one answered.
“Is there any part of the house that has a roof and shelter from the outdoors?” She tried to keep her voice from trembling. I just really wanted to be warm and dry, she thought, disconsolate.
“The kitchens,” Grigar said. “We can make it warm for you, chick.”
It better be, she thought, petulantly. They were crows, they were used to it. Then she looked around and saw that they were as miserable as she was, hunched in their ragged, wet clothes, and instantly felt ashamed of her princess moment.
They trailed around to the side of the house. As Grigar had promised, the house suffered less damage back here. The walls met a roof, at any rate. There was a small wood door in the high wall, and he pushed it, putting his shoulder into it when the door refused to budge. With shrieking hinges and a long scrape, the door opened and they followed him through into a courtyard.
Kate’s spirits rose a bit. This was better. This had been a garden once. There were dead and neglected beds edged with stone and marble. A fountain, drowning in leaves, took center stage. It was cracked and splotched with moss and mold.
I can see this place as it must have been. The white marble gleamed in the sun, the green plants trailed along the flagstones, and the water from the fountain created a spray of rainbow.
She blinked and the vision faded. There was an arbor along the wall covered with ropy vines. That would do to give Hotshot shelter from the elements. She led him over and stripped off his saddle and wet saddle pad. He closed his eyes and rubbed his head against her. She took off the bridle and scratched him behind the ears, where a horse always itched after the bridle. She wished she had a warm mash to give him while she rubbed him down, but this was the best she could do. She gave him a double handful of grain and let him eat.