Raven s Strike

by Patricia Briggs

  He bent his head and kissed her. It was a hard kiss, born of rage. She felt her bottom lip split under the pressure. When he tasted her blood, he hesitated, then shoved her away from him—though he didn’t release his hold on her wrist.

  He was still for a moment, then began striding forward again. “Papa leaves his lute in its pack, and my mother cries herself to sleep every night. They pretend and pretend all day long so they won’t hurt us.” His voice was so low that she felt it as much as heard it.

  “That is no different now than it was this morning,” said Hennea. “But your mother and I are getting closer to the answers we need. We know who the Shadowed is. Guardian—”

  She let her voice trail off because she recognized the streets the Guardian had taken, she knew where it led—and she didn’t know how she knew.

  She looked at Jes’s face and saw that he would not listen to her now, not until he’d given vent to his rage—and maybe not even then. It was not a good thing that he’d locked Jes away. Strong emotions were such a danger to the Eagle: love, hatred . . . betrayal. She took hope from the long-fingered hand that was wrapped around her wrist: not once had it tightened enough to bruise.

  She watched that hand, and let Jes direct her to the end of the street, where a temple much like the one they’d found their first day in Colossae presided. Jes led the way through the temple’s open doors into the antechamber which was covered in thick carpets. There was a second set of steps, four of them, and another doorway. He didn’t pause as the carpets gave way to white marble, but walked to the far end of the room. He grabbed her shoulder with his free hand and held her before him so she stood directly in front of the black marble statue on the dais of the Temple of the Raven.

  Like her sister goddess the Owl, the Raven was clad only in a skirt caught with a belt bearing the device of her totem, but there was no paint on this statue. One hand rested at her side, and the other, held up toward the room, bore a raven with ruby eyes. In contrast to the merry expression the Owl had worn, this goddess’s face was serene, Raven-like.

  Her features were Hennea’s own.

  “Alhennea it says on her belt,” said the Guardian. Jes would not have been able to read the belt. “Did you shorten it when you came to my family? Why did you come to us? Were you bored? Decided to play with the lives of mortals for a while?”

  Shock held her still, then she dropped to the floor under the sudden weight of the memories Hinnum had long ago stolen from her. She hit the floor hard enough that she knew, dimly, she would have bruises tomorrow.

  Stronger even than the memories were the accompanying emotions.

  “I do not know you at all,” he snarled, and even in the richness of her banquet of despair she heard him, heard the anguish that underlay the anger in his voice. “You could have healed my father. You could have killed the Shadowed in Taela and saved Phoran from his Memory.” He waved his arms, and she saw Jes filter through the Guardian’s eyes. “You could have destroyed the Path before it was born. You could have saved my mother’s clan.”

  “Jes,” she said hoarsely. “I am not She.”

  “You are,” he insisted, and it was Jes she talked to. “Do you think because I do not have to read your feelings when I touch you that I cannot do so if I want to? I felt you recognize this place. You knew. You are She.”

  Her eyes were drawn again to the statue. “I—I think I was once.”

  She looked back at Jes and tried to pull out words to lessen the agony in his eyes. He was listening, listening, when the Guardian would have protected him from her. Seraph had been right, her son was strong. There were not many Eagle Bearers who could wrest control from the Guardian.

  “I will swear in front of your father, who is Bard still, that I did not know who I was until just now.” She would have said something more, but a memory overwhelmed her. She cried out, a shuddering, inarticulate cry and bowed her spine until her forehead hit the marble floor. Part of her felt the pain of the impact, but a clear image of a red stain spreading in the Owl’s colorful skirts held most of her attention. She could almost feel the cool haft of the knife even yet.

  Then, somehow, she was back in the present, and Jes was curled around her, pulling her into his lap.

  “I have never betrayed you, Jes. I don’t play games with people I—with people I love,” she managed to say. “I don’t have that kind of power anymore, I gave it away.” The words spilled out of her faster and faster. “We took my power and divided it so it balanced with the others. There was no more war god, and so the other gods had to die, too. I had to direct the spell to sacrifice the city, though; no one else knew how to do the spell. But I was supposed to die. Hinnum swore he would kill me, but I think he could not bear to do it. He took my memories instead.”

  Jes kissed her forehead, and it was too much, because she knew her uncontrolled emotions were hurting him. She didn’t want to hurt Jes, couldn’t bear hurting him.

  She pulled herself free of his lap and stumbled away from him. Her nose was running and her face was wet, she pulled up her shirt and wiped all the moisture away and kept moving away from Jes until she could lean her face against a wall.

  “I was supposed to be dead,” she said calmly, pressing her cheek against the cold marble. Then she hit the wall as hard as she could with the flat of her hand, savoring the pain that was so much easier to bear than her memories. “I was supposed to be dead!” She screamed it, felt it roar through her lungs and release the pressure just a little. She would have hit the wall again, this time with her fist; but a gentle hand caught her wrist, opened her fingers, and laid her palm flat on the wall before he let go of her again.

  She stared at her hand.

  “I am so old. I have failed so many times, I—” She broke off. She had no right to burden him with her pain, he had enough of his own. She would mend what she could. “I am no longer a goddess, just very old.” She was babbling. She took a deep breath and felt the lines of her face relax as her control returned. “I am so poor a thing I could not even kill the solsenti mage-priest Volis, because I could not break free of his magic. I thought at least I might help your mother understand what had happened to Tier. I didn’t think she could rescue him; I thought she could spread the word to the other clans.”

  She waved her hand helplessly. “I expected to cause a little trouble for the Path, for the Shadowed, a slap, you understand, because I could do nothing more. I am not used to asking for help, nor having it offered to me. Travelers are not a generous people. They do as they have to, as their history demands, but they take little pleasure in it. I did not expect your mother to help me.”

  She had to take another controlling breath. She was glad he stood behind her so she didn’t have to look at him. “I did not expect what happened—but I did not sit back and watch while your family risked everything, Jes. I helped with every power I had.”

  She stopped speaking because there was nothing more to say, and because if she allowed herself to say another sentence, she would scream her throat raw. She hoped what she’d told him was enough to allow Jes to keep the fragile balance he’d ridden for so much longer than most of his kind. She should have stayed away from him, should have left after the first time they kissed.

  “I’ve never seen you cry before,” said Jes’s soft voice, then his hand was touching her cheek. When it touched her skin, he hissed softly, as a man who burned himself on a cinder might.

  She tried to pull her emotions under control, tried to step away so she wouldn’t hurt him. She didn’t want to hurt him any more.

  “Shh,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and turning her.

  She resisted because she didn’t want him to look at her, her face blotched, her eyes swollen. She didn’t want to look at him and see the distance that the knowledge of what she once had been would put between them. But he was stronger than she, and persistent. In the end, she chose to keep what little dignity she had left rather than fight him.

  His fa
ce was too close for her to see his expression, she only caught a glimpse of velvet-dark eyes before he bent his head to lick gently at the cut on her lip.

  “I don’t want to hurt you either,” he said. “Neither of us does. I’m sorry. I believe you, I believe you. I was almost certain you wouldn’t betray us—but the Guardian had to believe, too. He wouldn’t listen to me. Hush now.”

  He kissed her, a kiss as different from his last kiss as a palace from a midden: closed mouth and soft lips, tender and loving.

  “My mother says Ravens are good at keeping secrets; I think she is right,” he murmured. “My father says it’s not safe to keep secrets from yourself. I think he is right, too.”

  His hands drifted from her shoulders when she stopped pulling away. Lightly, his right hand slid over her breast and stopped just over her navel, as if he sensed the hot ball of grief, pain, and anger she’d buried there.

  “I’m hurting you,” she said, but she couldn’t force herself to back away from his touch. “I don’t want to hurt you. Give me some time, and I’ll—”

  “Bury it again?” he said, his voice a soft rumble against her ear. “I don’t think that is wise.” He kissed her ear and down her neck, nibbling gently as he loosened the tie that kept the neckline of her dress shut.

  She would have sworn passion had nothing new to teach her, but she found under Jes’s inexperienced but intuitive touch, she was wrong. He had barely begun, and she trembled, caught in the fear that he might stop: stop touching her, stop talking to her in that velvet voice . . . stop loving her.

  “Please,” she said, her voice no louder than his. Please don’t let me hurt you. Please touch me. Please love me. She would allow herself to say none of it.

  He met her gaze and smiled, Jes and Guardian both. “Don’t worry so,” he said, before continuing the journey he’d just begun.

  His mouth followed her skin down her throat to her collarbone while his hands trailed heat down the curve of her spine, then across to her hips. He stopped with his mouth over her navel, his head against that ache of grief and memory his hand had found earlier.

  “Here,” he said. “So much hurt. Let me loosen it for you.” He pressed his forehead against her, just below her ribs. And the warmth of him softened the old pain gently, then the Guardian’s coolness eased the ache.

  “Don’t keep your hate and pain so tightly,” the Guardian said, his voice as gentle as Jes’s had been. “I share my rage with Jes, and it lessens. Some hurts need the light of day, Hennea, so that they may be counted and let fly.”

  She sighed and felt the ugliness she had carried for so long in secret, hidden even from herself, writhe under the light he would bring to it.

  “So many dead,” Jes said, his voice subtly softer than the Guardian’s. “Too many to keep here.” His callused hand brushed tenderly over her heart. “They were beloved by you, and loved you. It would hurt them to know they caused you such anguish. Let them go.”

  “You can’t read my mind,” she said, shaken by the accuracy of his words.

  “No,” he said. “But I feel what you feel, and I remember the ones I have lost along the way, and the pain is the same. The cause the same.” He smiled against her cheek; she could feel his dimple. “Selfishness.”

  “Selfishness?” It stung as if he were trivializing her suffering. She tried to pull away.

  He laughed, low in his throat, and pulled her more tightly against him. The vibration of the Guardian’s quiet laughter touched something deep inside, and she yielded to him again.

  “Selfish,” he said again. “I do not know where the dead go.” Jes laughed this time, the sound less graceful, less beautiful, but more joyous. “But they do go and leave their bodies behind, I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it. They go in joy, Hennea, the pain and fear is left with the ones who stay behind and mourn. You and I. And the pain we feel is for ourselves. I will never again see my little sister, Mehalla, who died the year Rinnie was born, and it makes me sad. For me. And I mourn even now, though she is eleven years dead. It is not bad that I mourn, but it is selfish.” He slid down to kiss her belly, then rubbed his cheek against her, his afternoon beard stubble catching on her shirt.

  “Let their deaths go,” he said. “Let them leave off their haunting of your heart.”

  He waited, as if he were listening for something she couldn’t hear. His patience, and the warmth of his arms around her—as if he were protecting her from all harm—was too much to bear.

  “Ah, that’s it,” he said, coming back to his feet so she could bury her face against his chest as she sobbed. “We cry, too, the Guardian and I.” He rocked her softly and sang a lullaby, like a mother soothing an overly tired child. He wasn’t Bard, but his voice was lovely all the same.

  When she pulled back, he wiped her cheeks with his hands. “You need to forgive them,” he told her. “They are long dead, and your anger harms only you. Forgive them for dying and leaving you behind. Forgive Hinnum, if it was he, who loved you too much to allow you death to salve your pain.”

  Hennea felt raw. “You are a child,” she whispered. “How can you know such things?”

  The step she took away from him was more of a stumble than the firm distance-setting stride she’d intended, but it served its purpose. His touch was too unsettling, too necessary.

  He smiled. “Some truths are truths, no matter who says them. My father knows a lot of them. ‘Forgiveness benefits you more than those you forgive’ is one of his favorites.”

  The smile faded, and his eyes darkened. “You lost so much,” he said, and she couldn’t tell who spoke, Jes or the Guardian. “Is there nothing you found afterward? Were no gifts given to you?”

  She stared at him, trying to maintain her dignity; but he waited patiently, a smile lurking just below the surface of his eyes.

  “You,” she said.

  He smiled again and closed the distance between them. As he pulled her into a hug that was more exuberant than sensual, he whispered, “Next time you want to look dignified, you might tie your blouse closed first.”

  He laughed when she pushed against him with an indignant huff. “Come,” he said. “I know of a place that’ll be more comfortable for what I have in mind than this marble floor. I did a bit of exploring before we noticed the face on the statue was yours—the black color threw us off.”

  “You just weren’t looking at the face,” she said, and he threw back his head and gave one of his joy-ridden crows of amusement.

  “Jealous of a statue?” he asked, and picked her up. “A man likes something softer and warmer than marble—no matter how beautiful.”

  She let him carry her up the stairs of the dais and through the half-hidden door beyond. He took her through the halls and into a room built around a serene pool. The afternoon light reflected off the water from hidden skylights, giving the walls a dappled appearance.

  “I remember that this was always my favorite room,” she said, as he laid her on one of the thick mats that covered the ground.

  The Guardian buried his face under her hair, between her neck and shoulder, and inhaled. “I love your scent,” he growled.

  “Wait,” she said, pulling away from him.

  He let her go, though his hands clenched, and he grimaced.

  “I have to tell you,” she said. “I have to tell Jes.”

  “Jes is listening,” rumbled the Guardian, rolling until he was on his belly, his face hidden in his arms. “That is the best we can do right now.”

  Hennea sat up and rubbed his back, then pulled her hand back because it was distracting to touch him and feel him shaking with passion under her fingers—and she needed him to understand just what she was before he made such a commitment to her.

  “There were six of us in the days of Colossae. Raven, Eagle, Owl, Cormorant, Lark, and Falcon. We kept the world safe by the balance of our powers.”

  She folded her legs and made herself small as she organized her newfound memories and composed a story that would mak
e sense to Jes without losing itself in useless details.

  “Colossae was my city, and I loved her. I loved the wizards who lived in her. They asked me for power, and I gave it to them.”

  The Guardian turned onto his side so he could watch her. His body was relaxing slowly from the tension of passion.

  “The only thing I loved more than my city was my Consort. We were created for each other. There was balance between us: Eagle for Raven, Owl for Cormorant, and Lark for Hunter. Then my wizards, using the power I gave them, killed my Eagle.”

  “How?” The Guardian’s breathing had picked up, but not from passion.

  “Like the Path took the Order from its bearer, the greedy wizards stole the Eagle’s power. They died in the doing, but it killed my beloved, too.”

  He turned his gaze to the pool of water, his face neutral, she could not read what he thought.

  “The power we held was immortal, Jes, but we learned that we were not immune to the Stalker’s gift. We lived, the six of us, to keep the greater gods in check. Our world is old and brittle; if the power of the Weaver and the Stalker were loosed upon it now, it would shatter like an old, dry pot. We maintained the balance that kept the gods bound.”

  “One of you died.” It was Jes who spoke now, though she could feel the Guardian’s presence in the chill that raised goose bumps on her arms.

  She nodded. “When the war god was murdered, the Elder gods stirred. People died all over the world. The old god’s power is involuntary, like the dread that always hangs about the Guardian whether he wills it or not: the Weaver creates, and the Stalker destroys, they have no choice. It’s what they are. They came to us, those of us who still lived, and asked us to help them restore the balance.”

  “To sacrifice Colossae.”

  “The bindings that kept the Elder gods in check were failing, day by day, because there was no balanced outlet for their power. We had two problems to fix. We needed to create a new binding and a new balance. Colossae’s sacrifice was necessary to create the binding—as long as she stands frozen, so will the gods be bound.”