Don’t relax just yet, Kate–you might not get out of here alive.
Lady Wessen followed her gaze and raised an elegant eyebrow. She was lean and narrow-faced like Lady Sarita, their resemblance strong, but Lady Wessen’s beauty was blurred by time.
“I must say, I’ve enjoyed this little interlude you’ve provided us,” Lady Wessen said in her crisp voice.
“My pleasure,” Kate said, cautiously. A serving woman brought them vesh and food and Kate’s stomach grumbled. Lady Wessen served her, as per custom, and Kate waited for her to begin to eat before she took her own bites, again per custom. The plate was filled with corncakes, and a spicy cheese dish, and a deep green vegetable that tasted sweet and peppery at the same time. She tried not to inhale her food, but Lady Wessen snorted.
“Eat up, girl. You’ve been on campaign rations, I can tell. You’ll need all your strength for what comes next.”
Kate wiped her mouth fastidiously on the linen napkin. “May I ask, Lady Wessen, what comes next?”
“What do you want to happen next?”
“I don’t want war.” She surprised herself with her own vehemence. “I want to be able to go back to Temia and rebuild.” She sighed as if sad. “I’m afraid my crows are predisposed to fight, though.”
Lady Wessen cackled. “Well played, girl. I knew I liked you. But there are things you should know about us. You are a nothing chit, as Kenery said. And in the end, our loyalty is to us. Even Kenery has more claim on me than you do, no matter how amusing I find you. If you don’t find a way to make yourself and Temia indispensible, and soon, we will lose our patience.”
Kate set down her spoon. She wiped her mouth again, this time needlessly. “Noted, Lady Wessen. But if you expect me to just roll over and submit to the Council’s whims, you’ve underestimated me.” She leaned forward. “I hope we can be friends and allies, because I would like to be able to rely on your advice. But you had better not commit your troops against mine, because my crows will crush you.”
Lady Wessen’s eyes darkened, and her mouth tightened in anger, deepening the lines that scored her wrinkled face. Kate felt her own anger rise. Who was this autocratic old woman to dictate to her what she could and could not do?
“You don’t want me for an enemy.”
“Likewise, ma’am.” A part of her marveled at her newfound certainty. The rest of her was nothing but bloody singlemindedness. She would not back down.
“Listen to me, girl–”
“Lady Temia,” Kate corrected. “Kate Temia, ma’am.” She didn’t stumble in the slightest over her new surname. “I am lord of Temia, and leader of the crows.”
Summoning all her dignity, she stood and bowed, lord to lord. “Thank you for your hospitality, Lady Wessen. You remind me very much of your daughter. I see where she got her singular strength.”
“Sit down.”
Kate sat so fast her chair moved. How does she do that? she thought, a bit despairingly. Lady Wessen smirked the slightest bit.
“You haven’t finished your dinner. I never let a growing girl leave the table without eating.”
Kate glared, stubborn, then picked up her spoon and her knife.
“You asked what comes next. I think I’ve given Lord Terrick the escape route he needs to back away from Favor and still keep his honor. Too bad for his son, of course, tied to Kenery, but that’s neither here nor there. So if the rest of the lords do not behave like buffoons, and if Lady Trieve can keep from asking for reparations, we might get out of this with no bloodshed. All you must do is control your army as you cross back over the river to your remote House. I expect to hear nothing of you until next year’s Council.”
A reprieve and a chance to build and grow. She couldn’t ask for more. Out loud she said, diplomatically, “I see.” She concentrated on cleaning her plate and when she was done, she drank her vesh. “I think I can do that.”
Lady Wessen gave her a sharp look. “Good. Because that is a deal I can bring back to Council. And in turn, here is what you will do, Lady Temia. You will bring your crows in. No longer will they roam Aeritan with impunity. They–and you–have scorned the laws of the Council for one hundred years. Bring them in, take them home, and make sure they don’t cross the river again.”
Kate felt the color drain from her face. It was impossible. Keep the crows from wandering across Aeritan, as they had been doing for generations? We are the true heirs of Aeritan, Ossen had said. The entire country was their birthright. And who was to say, once the crows were pent up in Temia, that all the forces of the Council would not march north, cross the river, and slaughter them on the plains?
She chose her words carefully, but still stumbled. “And if I ca– won’t?”
Lady Wessen did not smile. Her words were flat, dead certain.
“The alternative is the second destruction of House Temia and death of your crows. You are hanging by a thread, girl, and you have no choice.”
So it was to be war–not over Favor, but for the right of House Temia to exist as more than an internment camp for its people. What am I going to tell Grigar?
Kate stood and gave Lady Wessen a bow.
“There are always choices, Lady Wessen, even when both are hard.”
“Don’t be a fool, girl. Don’t choose war.”
She hadn’t, but her crows would fight anyway.
Sound floated in through the window, borne along by the warming spring winds. Kate frowned and looked out; so did Lady Wessen. The rising cries of men, and the clash of weapons brought them to their feet.
Kate gasped. The quiet camp below roiled with activity. Crows ran everywhere, shouting. The rhythmic keening shrieks floated up within earshot, and she felt sick to her stomach.
Her crows had gone malcra.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Salt was in chaos. The great palazzo thronged with soldiers and frightened servants and townspeople. Kate scanned the scene from the stairway to the guest quarters, desperate for some sign of her people. There! She spotted Grigar in the crowd, and filled her lungs and screamed his name. Miraculously he heard her and came for her, grabbing her arm. They didn’t speak, just ran toward the gates, pushing through the crowd. Men at arms from all the Houses were everywhere, responding to the madness. If she didn’t regain control... her nausea intensified.
They took the stairs down into the city two at a time. Townspeople were in a panic, and the streets were thronged with soldiers. No crows yet, though. Thank heaven for small favors, she thought.
“Grigar, fill me in,” she panted.
Grigar yanked her aside, out of the way of two hands of soldiers wearing the gray and gold of Saraval. “There’s a threat to one of us. Balafray and the others are in camp, and I came to get you.”
“Are they malcra?”
Stupid question. He didn’t bother to answer and kept up the pace. She had a stitch in her side from running so soon after eating. She stumbled and pressed her hand against her ribs. She was going to throw up if they didn’t stop soon, but she didn’t have time to throw up. If she lost the crows, House Temia was truly through.
“Soldier’s god, Grigar. How do I stop them?”
He scanned for a route, and pulled her behind him. “You might not be able to. Come on, chick.”
They were buffeted by the crowds as they threaded their way toward the gate. They were the only ones going out of the city, and she supposed that might be a good thing. No one gave them a second look, a crow and a lady, although Kate’s clothes were bedraggled now, her finery dingy and torn, so there was nothing to show that she was noble.
The sound of crossbow bolts overhead made her duck reflexively. Grigar did too, covering her. Balafray probably told him to protect me, she thought dazedly. Way to go, Kate. Lady Temia can’t protect her own people.
She pushed away the guilt and the shame. She had to get control back.
At the gates, Salt’s men were pushing people away. Kate thought of Lady Wessen and tried to project authority
.
“Let me through,” she ordered.
“Are you mad, girl? There are crows out there. No one goes out.”
“I’m Lady Temia. Let me through.”
The captain stared at her, then waved them over to the side gate. “Go through there.”
A soldier guarding the postern pulled it aside for Kate and Grigar and they ducked through, the soldier following. The walls surrounding the city were thick. It was like walking through a dark tunnel. At the other end she could see light coming through the grate. She ran toward it, stumbling over the uneven ground.
“Wait,” the soldier said. He fumbled with a big iron key and unlocked the gate. He opened it just a bit to let them squeeze through. Kate went through, then Grigar, and they heard the gate slam shut behind them, barred and locked again.
The malcra keening of the crows rose around them as the men ran toward the walls of the city as if they wanted to tear it down with their bare hands.
Another flight of crossbow bolts sang over the walls, and men screamed and fell. Grigar pushed her against the wall, out of the way of the bolts.
“Stop protecting me!” she shouted, irrationally. “I have to stop them!”
“You’ll get yourself killed!”
Maybe she went malcra herself because she elbowed him hard, taking him by surprise and he fell back. Before Grigar could recover, she made straight for the lone figure in the middle of the camp, the crow king himself, oblivious to the chaos and the danger. His long horsetail waved in the breeze, and the cloak draped off his bony shoulders. He stood with his staff raised, as if he were a concert conductor, an ululating keening rippling from his throat.
He turned to look at her as she bowled into him, pushing him off balance to the ground. He was surprisingly light, as if his bones were made of air, but he was strong. They tumbled to the ground, wrestling.
“MAKE THEM STOP!” The force of the scream scraped her throat. He growled and went to bite her, his brown and jagged teeth snapping at her face. She dodged his teeth and pushed his head toward the ground, the strength coming from somewhere outside of her. He tried to bite her hand and she kneed him in the groin. He gave an ugly groan, and she reared back and punched him. Blood spattered. Someone pulled her off of him and she struggled, panting, until Grigar said in her ear, his voice almost gentle, “Stop.”
The crow king groaned and rolled, curled up. He was naked, hadn’t even clothes to protect him, and she felt triumphant and sick to her stomach both.
“He’s doing it,” she said, shrill and furious. “He made them go malcra.”
There was a strange sound from the walls. Kate turned as if in slow motion to see this fresh danger. Grigar shouted something she didn’t understand and then he pulled her up and away, dragging her. With a whoosh a flaming projectile roared overhead and plunged into the camp. A tent went up in a fireburst, and for a second she had an image of a human caught in the flames.
They were being killed. She had lost all control and she could not get it back, and they would all die because of her.
Another projectile soared overhead, and another. The sky was filled with flame. She smelled a thick chemical smell. Naptha, she thought, dazedly, remembering honors chem class. And then, Weird. Oil? If she survived this, she would have to investigate.
The crows pulled back, as if the danger had begun to overcome the malcra. Or maybe, there was just a delay before the crow king’s spell or whatever it was faded and they regained their senses. Now they were running and screaming away from the walls and the fire, not toward them. The gates began to swing open, and the soldiers of all the Houses surged out in controlled formation, swords and crossbows at the ready, the spine-sharp points of the long lances piercing the air. Black smoke drifted across the field and fires burned fiercely.
The crows would live, Kate thought, a lump in her throat. They would go back to being the crows they had always been, living on the edges of the bounty of Aeritan, but they would live. The dream they had of a homeland, of a say in their fortunes, that dream was dead, but the crows themselves would live.
That was, only if she secured their safety.
She turned to Grigar. “They’re calming down. Find your brothers and Ossen and get everyone away.”
He shook his head. “No. Kett. Come now.” Again he tried to pull her with him.
“Grigar, go. It’s over. Otherwise you’ll be captured with me. Go.” And no sense in anyone’s head but mine being at stake. She pushed at him and he stumbled backward as if he had lost all of his strength.
“Do this last thing for me,” she begged him through an aching throat. “Please, Grigar. Find your family, take everyone to safety. Go.”
He shook his head but he took a step back and then another. His eyes flicked over to the approaching army, and she could see him consider the odds. Then Grigar did something surprising–he pulled her to him and kissed her full on the mouth.
“We’ll come for you. I promise it, my lady. Do not despair.”
He backed away, and she turned to face the soldiers, hands over her head, to distract them from his escape.
She hoped that hands up signified surrender. She had no white flag, and she doubted that even meant the same thing here. So her hands in the air would have to do. She flinched at every crossbow bolt and lance leveled at her and tried to steel herself.
Someone called out an order and the soldiers halted. She swallowed hard and came forward a few more steps, out of the smoke and the fire. The air was acrid with the smell and her nose and eyes burned. The captain, the same one who had let her and Grigar go through the postern gate, held up his hand.
“Hold.”
She stopped. She stayed quite still as two soldiers came up to her, tying her hands roughly behind her back. She forced the tears to dry up. Lady Wessen wouldn’t cry, she was sure of it.
They hauled her forward, and she stumbled over the rough footing, risking a glance behind her for Grigar. He was gone. Good, she thought. Go to safety. She hoped Balafray would talk him out of any crazy rescue plan. If they died because of her stupid pride and ignorance, she could not bear to live.
She tried not to look at the dead. It had not been a battle; it had been a massacre. The proof lay in the bodies of the crows, strewn outside the walls. She knew many of them, if not by name then by their faces, because the camp was so small.
Pride and ignorance indeed. She had failed because she wanted revenge on Lord Terrick, and she had not spared one thought for the army that she had so blithely manipulated into following her. They were dead because of her, and there was nothing she could do to bring them back or make their deaths mean anything.
The army and their prisoner came through the main gate. Kate kept her head up while the people of Salt lined up to see her, the strangeling imposter, the crow queen, who had brought down death and madness on their city. Someone threw a clot of dirt at her, and she flinched as it bounced off her shoulder. As if that broke something, the shouting and jeering began, and the city folk entered their own kind of malcra. Even with the soldiers surrounding her she got hit with mud, with horse manure, with rocks. Despite her efforts not to cry, she was in tears by the time they reached the stairs to the palazzo.
They placed her in a holding cell built below the massive city walls. Corroded iron bars caged her in, and dank straw was strewn across a stone floor. A shallow trough against the wall was the latrine and smelled like it. There was daylight from the staircase leading down to her prison, but that was all.
The iron hinges squealed as the soldiers closed the door and locked it behind her. They said not a word to her as they filed back up the stairs, their boots thudding on the stone, and then fading into silence
She was alone. She heard water dripping somewhere, and the acrid smoke drifted in from an open window upstairs. The air was thick with the smell of body odor, urine, and feces. Kate stirred herself and edged over to the front of her cell, sliding down against the bars for support. They hadn’t untied
her hands, and she rubbed her wrists against the rusty bars. She twisted her wrists experimentally, seeing if she could loosen the rope but it was no use–the only result was rope burn.
And even if you get your hands free, what then? How do you plan to get out of your cell?
No matter how many movies she had seen, there would be no jailbreak. But Salt would send for her. She knew that. No way would she be executed in secret. Salt would want to make an example. So she would be hauled in front of the Council and humiliated first, then executed.
But Lady Trieve couldn’t afford for that to happen–if it did, she would lose Favor. And neither could Lord Terrick. She was his foster daughter, and it was the same as if she were his own. If she could count on Red Gold Bridge and Wessen–and she grimaced at the thought of Lady Wessen. Maybe if she hadn’t mouthed off to her, she would have made an ally of the crusty old noblewoman, but no, Grigar was right–she had to believe her own game.
None of that, she told herself. Recriminations would not help her or the crows now. She had to keep her wits about her, and with a little help from the lords and a lot of help from the gods, she might survive this.
And if it came down to it, if the crows could pull off a rescue, that would be nice too.
The only sound was the dripping water and the only light came from the staircase leading down into her cell. Kate shivered and stamped her feet, trying to drive out the damp cold.
They had been so close. If the crows hadn’t gone malcra, if they had just kept their cool, they might all even be on their way back to Temia right this moment.
She had a flash of memory of her dead people lying in the field amid flame and smoke.
“I will not give up,” she said out loud. “It won’t have been for nothing. As the crow god is my witness, it will not end here.”
Colar stood with his wife and mother-in-law, watching Lord Salt work the crowd of nervous lords. “It’s all right now,” Salt said urbanely. He patted a shoulder here, grasped a hand there. The nobles milled about, the news flying from one small group to another. The crows had attacked, the soldiers had united to put them down, the city was safe, Kate imprisoned.
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