by Morgan Rice
“She did,” McCallum said with a smile. “Made my job twice as hard.”
He put the crossbow down now, moving forward. Sienne growled, obviously thinking that there was still a threat, and Sophia calmed her, moving forward to hug the gardener.
“What are you doing here?” Sophia asked, looking around at the house, so empty except for him. “Where is everybody?”
McCallum shook his head. “It’s just me. It has been ever since everything that happened. I keep out the animals and the folk who think that they can just come in to loot. It’s what I took you for until I saw who you were. Your friends aren’t looters, are they?”
Sophia had the sense of a man who had been there alone for far too long, so that he’d lost connection with reality at least a little. Sophia did her best to tether him to it.
“No, they’re not,” she said. “This is Emeline, and this is Cora. They’re my friends. And this is Sienne,” she added, gesturing to the forest cat. “I know it might not look like it, but she’s friendly, too.”
“If you say so, miss,” the former gardener said. “Would you like to come somewhere comfortable and have a bite to eat?”
“I’d like that,” Sophia said with a smile, even though right then the only thing she wanted to do was bombard the man with questions.
Emeline didn’t look convinced by it. “I doubt there’s any food here that isn’t rotten.”
“Oh no, not here,” McCallum said. “Follow me.”
Sophia thought about telling him that she wasn’t done looking around, but the truth was that, however many memories the house held for her, the gardener had the potential for real answers. So she followed, down through the house on a route she remembered running down with her sister whenever their nurse had told them they could play in the gardens. She followed McCallum, and the others followed her, obviously trusting that she knew what she was doing. She didn’t; she was just hoping that there would be more answers waiting for her.
They walked out through the back of the house, on the side that couldn’t be seen so easily from the road. There was a square of garden there that was far neater than the overgrown mess of the rest of it, with a small cottage at its heart that Sophia remembered from her childhood. It had a thatched roof and white painted walls, carefully maintained.
“I tried to do the best I could with the grounds,” McCallum said, as he showed them to the cottage, “but the truth is that it’s too much for one man, and when I did… well, it made some folk think that it was a good place for them to come.”
The cottage wasn’t like the house. The house had been a dust-filled mausoleum, perfectly preserved in a moment in time. This was a living home, with all the mess and clutter that entailed. There was a cauldron bubbling with porridge over a low fire, and a rough wooden table at the heart of the room. Sophia and the others went to it while the gardener set out bowls of the porridge for them. Cora and Emeline took theirs gratefully.
Then there were the ravens.
They cawed and looked down from every rafter and cranny. There were the remnants of cages here and there in the cottage’s main room, but none of the ravens were in them.
“His Lordship’s old messenger birds,” McCallum explained. “I couldn’t just leave them in the house. The poor things would have starved. Besides… I like the company.”
As Sophia watched, one hopped down to the gardener, and he fed it a scrap of meat.
“Can you tell me about what happened?” Sophia asked.
“But you were there,” McCallum pointed out.
She shook her head. “I remember… some of it. Snatches. I was too young to remember all of it, and I don’t think I ever knew how it all fit together. I need to know… do you know what happened to my parents?”
She scanned his thoughts for any clue, unwilling to leave this to chance. Even so, when the gardener spoke next, she knew that he was telling the truth.
“I wish I could help you,” McCallum said. Sophia could feel the sadness coming off him then like mist from a lake. “I never saw them after the night when the killers came. I never saw any of you. Some of the others told me that you’d obviously all been killed in the chaos, but here you are, so I was right to hold out hope! I was right!”
Again, Sophia had the sense of a man who’d been alone for so long and suffered so much that he only had a tenuous grip on the world around him. She could see Cora looking at him with pity, Emeline with a faint roll of her eyes. Sophia decided to try a slightly different tack.
“Can you tell me about what happened that night?” she asked.
McCallum went still, then finally nodded. “All right. You deserve that much at least. I remember the rumors among the staff leading up to it. Some of us had been saying that there would be trouble, that the Dowager wouldn’t just let things go, not after her husband died in the war, but the others told us that we were being stupid and all anyone wanted was peace. They just saw what they wanted to see.”
Sophia could understand that. She could imagine people grabbing for any chance at peace after a long war. She remembered what her mother had written: that her family had accepted being no more than nobles just so the first round of wars would stop. Wasn’t this just the same thing?
“People don’t pay attention,” Emeline said, still eating her porridge. A raven landed near her and she shooed it away.
“They came for us, and it was too late,” McCallum said. “So many people died that night. Not just in this house, either. I’ve heard stories of nobles as far away as Charlke dying because they were big supporters of your family, or they had magic, or both.”
“That sounds awful,” Cora said.
Sophia could imagine that kind of violence sweeping the kingdom all too easily. The peace might have been agreed, but one single night of murder had flickered across it all like wildfire, ensuring that the Dowager would at least have the better of what came next.
“When it was done, there was no one left to protect the lands around here,” McCallum said. “There’s still the fishing port to the east, but mostly, people left the lands here to the robbers once your parents’ protection was gone.”
“How many people died?” Sophia asked.
McCallum shook his head. “In the kingdom? I don’t know. Hundreds at least, maybe more. Here?” His voice turned stony. “I had to bury twenty-seven once it was done, out on the edges of the grounds. They killed whoever they could get hold of. Servant, soldier, family, it didn’t matter to them. I only survived because…”
He trailed off, but Sophia could see the truth of it written in his thoughts. He’d been out in the grounds working when the violence had come, and when he’d seen it, he’d stood there, knowing he should help, but unable to bring himself to move.
“It’s all right,” Sophia said, reaching across the table to take his hand. “If you’d gone inside, they’d have killed you too.”
She heard him choke back a sob. Now even Emeline looked at him with pity.
“I’d forgotten what you can do,” he said. “You and your sister used to make me play guessing games even though we all knew that you’d see whatever I guessed.”
“You don’t have to feel guilty,” Sophia said. “Staying here like this, you’ve done more than anyone could have asked of you.”
“You… you don’t know how much it means to hear that from you,” McCallum said. “It’s a fine thing to do, assuaging an old man’s guilt like that. You’d make a fine lady of the house.”
“That’s a kind thing for you to say,” Sophia said.
The gardener stood, gesturing out the window of his cottage toward the main body of the house. “No, I mean it, my lady. Why not stay? You could have the house, it’s still livable enough, and I could work on the gardens, and I’m sure you could attract some servants once they knew that you were back.”
In its way, it was actually tempting. Sophia could imagine herself in this house. She could send for her sister and…
…and things sti
ll wouldn’t be the way they had been before. That was gone. She’d come here looking for her parents, and all that she’d found of them here was a letter, pointing to her uncle, Lars Skyddar. Between her and the gardener, it seemed that everyone had an idea about what she should do next. Everyone had a dream for her, whether it was her parents’ dream of her taking the throne, the gardener’s dream of rebuilding, or Kate’s old hope that they would both travel the world together while Kate fought. Even Cora and Emeline had their dream of finding Stonehome, with its safety for people like them.
What was Sophia’s dream? What did she want? The answer to that was simple enough: she wanted to find her parents.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I can’t stay.”
The gardener frowned at that. “But miss, this is your home.”
Sophia shook her head. “It was my home,” she said, “and maybe it will be again one day, but home for me means family, and I still haven’t found mine.”
She saw the other girls frown at that.
“The idea was that we would come here, and then go on to Stonehome,” Emeline pointed out.
Cora nodded. “I thought we were going somewhere safe, not going on traveling.”
Sophia could understand that. Even so, this was what she wanted. Not all of what she wanted, though.
“Mr. McCallum, do you think any of your ravens would remember the way to the palace?” she asked.
“You want to start sending the Dowager messages?” Emeline asked.
You know it’s for Sebastian, Sophia sent over to her.
“I think so,” McCallum said. “Ravens are clever birds. They remember.”
Sophia nodded at that. “Cora, can you go back into the house and fetch me writing paper and ink, please?”
Cora at least didn’t argue about it, just went to fetch what was needed. McCallum and Emeline were still looking at her expectantly, as if she might have changed her mind about one of their plans for her.
“I’m not staying to run the house,” Sophia said, “and I’m not going to Stonehome. My plan is to go and find my uncle. My parents’ plan to use him to take back the kingdom is… well, I don’t want that, but maybe he’ll at least know where they are and how I can get to them.”
“And the raven for Sebastian?” Emeline asked.
That was one thing Sophia felt as though she had to do.
“Sebastian is the father of my child,” she said. “He at least deserves to know that he is going to become a parent. He needs to have a chance to follow.”
“And what else are you going to tell him?” Emeline asked. “Are you going to tell him that you’re good enough for his mother’s standards now?”
Sophia could hear the note of bitterness there.
You think I’m abandoning you because I don’t need you, don’t you? she sent across to Emeline.
Isn’t that what you’re doing? You’re a noble.
Sophia shook her head. “I’m not going to tell Sebastian who I really am. The news of his child should be enough. If he’ll come to me when he hears that, then I know he’s everything I hoped he was. If it takes the knowledge of who I am, then I’m not sure that I would want to be with him after all.”
Put like that, the future seemed simple. She would send her raven, head for her uncle’s house across the sea, and hope that it would be enough to bring Sebastian following on behind her. If he did that, it would prove how he felt. If he didn’t… well, that would prove something too.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Angelica could see the great house away in the distance, its dilapidation an affront to her sensibilities. A noble should maintain their home, if only to declare to those around them that they were fulfilling their natural role in the world. Letting a grand house fall into disrepair was a declaration of ordinariness, of lost status, of weakness.
Then again, this wasn’t a living house, but a corpse, meant to be a statement as surely as one left in a gibbet might be. The statement was simple: those who crossed the Dowager suffered for it, whatever the law said about royal power being curtailed. It was one more reason why Angelica didn’t intend to fail in her task.
Her task? Call it what it was. She had to murder Sophia.
Angelica was a touch surprised by how little it bothered her. Killing the bandits before had been nothing, and she supposed that she had destroyed enough lives before now even if she hadn’t actually taken them with her own hands. There was a kind of power to it that Angelica liked. Being able to determine if someone succeeded or failed at court was one thing, but being able to decide if they lived or died was more direct, and more powerful.
“Be careful,” she told herself as she rode closer to the house. She doubted there would be any friends to her within it, and she had no way of knowing how many others besides Sophia were there. At the very least, the rumors on the road said that she had two human companions and some kind of dangerous pet. Riding up to the house, seen long before she got there over the open lawns, would be suicide.
So Angelica waited on the rise before the house, staring down at it as she tried to plan her next move. If she could work out where Sophia would be, she could plan a suitable ambush. The trick was guessing where she would go next. Guess wrong, and she would lose her prey as surely as Sebastian had when Angelica had sent him to Barriston.
She was still considering the problem when she saw the raven rise from the house.
It flew up from it, no more than a dark speck at first, drifting up into the blue of the sky in a flurry of wings. As messenger birds, they were common enough. Angelica recognized it for what it was almost instantly. The question was what she wanted to do about it, because there could be only one reason that the creature was coming from an empty house like that.
Angelica’s fingers brushed the pistols that she’d taken from the bandits. It was a stupid thought. Short-barreled flintlocks like these could kill a man at close range, but with their smooth barrels, they were as likely to miss as hit anything more than a dozen yards away. The odds of hitting a bird in flight at this kind of distance were far too remote.
What she needed in this situation was a bow, or a hunting falcon, although even there, propriety demanded that a noblewoman of her station stuck to the smallest and most delicate of hawks. People used ravens rather than doves exactly because they were harder to bring down.
Angelica’s fists whitened in anger at not being able to do anything about the bird. She didn’t know what its message would say, but it would be too much of a coincidence if it said nothing about Sophia. Worse, the fact that it was flying at all said that she’d been right to avoid the house. There were other people in there besides Sophia, or there would have been no stock of ravens to send.
Angelica was still fuming when she saw the raven change direction, heading straight toward her. The incongruity of it all made her laugh. Was the bird so stupid that it had decided to simply fly to the first person it saw? It was too much to hope for, yet it seemed to be happening.
The raven hung above her in the air, circling as it flew lower. Angelica couldn’t make sense of it. Trained birds just didn’t do this. They flew to the places they were trained to fly. It didn’t even make sense to say that maybe the creature had become confused about where it was, or had lost its instinct for its task, because then it would simply have flown off into the surrounding countryside.
Instead, it circled lower until it landed on a stone not far from her. It was a large thing, probably big enough that Angelica would have struggled to perch it on her arm. It regarded her with deep black eyes that showed no hint of emotion, staring at her from one side and then the other in the way birds did to get a sense of something that wasn’t moving.
“A gift,” it cawed, and Angelica almost fell from her horse in shock. She’d known that corvids could be trained to talk—Lady Harriston of the Netherfields insisted on keeping mynah birds that blurted out the most inappropriate things—but she’d never heard of a messenger bird doing it.
“A gift,” it repeated, “from the Master of Crows.”
Angelica had heard that name as a rumor. They said that he could see through the eyes of his crows, watching advancing armies from above while the beasts circled, waiting for the carrion of battle. She’d assumed that it was a joke, or a way of turning a perfectly ordinary general into some kind of demon to be defeated at all costs. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
The raven kept blinking at her, hopping from side to side as it waited. Carefully, Angelica pulled one of the pistols from her belt, testing the weight of it. Something seemed to change in that instant, like the flicker of someone moving from sleep to wakefulness. The bird froze in place for a moment, then flexed its wings. It fluttered them, and in another second it was airborne again.
On instinct, Angelica lifted the pistol, not caring whether anyone heard her now. She was closer, and at this range, she at least had a chance. She fired, the sound of the shot enough to make her horse rear so that she had to cling to it just to avoid falling. The acrid smoke from the thing filled the air around her, stinging Angelica’s eyes as she struggled to keep her seat in the saddle. It was the better part of a minute before her horse calmed enough that she felt safe to dismount, holding the reins firmly so that it wouldn’t run.
The raven lay dead on the ground a little way away, reduced to little more than blood and feathers by the impact of her shot. Angelica knelt beside it, and while she hadn’t felt anything at the deaths of the bandits who had attacked her, she could feel herself shaking now.
It wasn’t the violence. Angelica didn’t care about violence, although she typically found herself approaching it with the distaste of someone who could afford to have others do it for her. She did care about the strangeness of what had just happened. She might only spend the bare minimum of time in the Masked Goddess’s temples, but she knew about the abominations of magic, and this was definitely one.
The thought of it made her shudder, although probably not for the reasons the priests would have wished. They might hate magic because it was a power that didn’t come from their goddess; Angelica’s reaction had more to do with power that she couldn’t control or influence, that didn’t care what connections she had or what wealth her family had accumulated.
