If Crows Know Best (Mage of Merced Book 1)

by Aimee Gross

  “I don’t think I like turnips,” Morie said, pursing her lips in doubt.

  “I think you’ll find you like them fine.”

  Annora knelt, spooning some of the soup into the man’s mouth when I came back to the kitchen. He had a napkin tucked under his chin. He watched me with fever-bright eyes as I approached.

  “I’ve you to thank?” he said, his voice more hoarse than in the barn, but stronger. I nodded.

  “His name is Gevarr,” Annora said, spooning up another mouthful for him. I didn’t want to know his name. I should have given the “he’s not our friend” speech in the kitchen, not the bedroom. I shrugged, and told him the same plan I had told Annora: under constant guard, out as soon as he could travel. He inclined his head to nod, then winced and said instead, “Yes.”

  “When you can talk, I want to know whatever you can tell us about the invasion and where things stand.”

  “No fresh news,” he said and gestured to his throat. “Wounded early on.”

  “We’ll talk later.” He knew something, had to know more than I knew from my refuge up in the mountains. I looked out the back window to see more snow blowing. Tiny ice crystals pattered faintly on the glass. I would have to run the rope lines from house to barn and waterwell which we used during a blizzard time. It was too easy to become disoriented and freeze in one’s own yard, mere feet from safety. I sent up a hopeful prayer that our ropes had not also been taken with our ale barrel.

  I thought to fortify with hot soup before heading outside to warm the stones for tonight. I found two pots sitting on the cold hearth. Annora carried cooked food inside from the fire in the barn, rather than cooking indoors. But why two kettles? As I picked the ladle out of one, she appeared at my elbow. “Not that,” she said in my ear, and made to serve me out of the other.

  I looked aside at her, brows raised. “Later,” she said, setting more bowls on a tray to take in for Virda and Morie. I followed her into the bedroom, after setting Wieser to guard the man in the kitchen, dozing after his soup.

  “What?” I said as I helped hand steaming bowls around.

  “Don’t eat from the food I serve him. It’s dosed to keep him docile and fuzzy-headed.”

  “Aren’t you the clever girl,” Virda said warmly, and I had to agree.

  CHAPTER 14

  I had been insulated from some of the realities of the sickroom, for Annora tended Virda. Because of my gender, it fell to me to attend to the soldier’s needs, as food and drink were followed in due time with the requirement to eliminate. I helped him stand to the piss pot, but took small solace that he was able to walk with help to the washhouse by the time more compelling needs arose. I was not going to wipe his ass. I suppose I made a poor nurse. He made a poorer convalescent, though, unsteady on his rag-wrapped feet and putting most all his considerable weight on me while complaining of being unable to tend to himself.

  “Be your age,” I snapped. “How do you think I like it?”

  Curiously, he laughed, but made no more complaints that trip. I had not been thinking to entertain the man.

  Wild-blown snow piled up to the window sills, and more fell daily. The winds packed full the spot by the trough where the soldier had lain, he’d have been entombed there if Morie hadn’t found him. I had to dig it out to allow Dink to blow down and melt the trough ice for drinking. My fire site would no longer do. What boards overhung it were now too burdened with snow—I did not want to be underneath tending our fire when all collapsed. I brought wood inside and we began to use the hearth for more than setting pots upon. It felt more like home, then.

  The soldier began to ask questions.

  “Keep him more muddled,” I told Annora.

  She sighed, floured to her elbows kneading bread. “He’s gaining strength. And if I keep increasing the dose, he won’t be able to aid you at all in getting him about.”

  “He aids me little enough.” Yet, I did not have to drag him, and doubted I could. I compromised by stringing up a quilt to block his alcove, and forbade any traffic through the rear door besides the two of us on the way to the privy. Virda was beginning to get up and about a little, and Morie and Annora could help her outside at need, using the front door. I strung another rope, this time from the front porch to the washhouse, to guide them in blowing snow.

  Morie had been sufficiently glowered at by me whenever she peeked out of the bedroom, such that our invalid had not seen her since regaining his senses. I suspected he had wits enough to count voices, though, of those unseen. Morie’s high voice carried, and he must have heard Virda coughing; was of course familiar with Annora and me, his attendant.

  “Where’s your da?” he asked, catching me off guard when I settled him on his pallet after a trip outdoors. I didn’t answer right off. I should have been more careful when we first brought him in, and tried to isolate him more while I stomped around upstairs in Da’s heavy boots to make him believe he was not alone here with a boy and a passel of females. I’m a wood-wit, I thought.

  “We got separated when we fled.”

  “And Annora’s husband?”

  I didn’t like him calling her by name. He was too familiar by half. “The same.”

  He did not ask when I expected them back, and I fretted about how I should play my hand. Act as if they should walk in any moment, stomping snow from their boots? Then when (if!) they didn’t, he would know what he wanted without asking: he was gaining strength alone with women and children who were no match for him.

  I took my obsidian shard to Annora, and asked her to wrap a bone haft with tough leather and affix it so I might use it as a weapon. She marveled at it, and I found when she finished with it and handed it back that she had balanced it well, and drawn runes on the leather with a fire-heated hasp. “For stealth and protection. This is a powerful gift. You cannot doubt you are magic-touched if the spirit-folk would give you such a thing as this!”

  “Is the stone magic?”

  “Things from so deep under the earth are old magic, time out of mind. The kavsprit strive to keep such in their realm, and do not lightly send them up into the world above. They honor you.”

  “Maybe they meant to honor Virda, she was giving them their due quite regular before she took ill.”

  “No.”

  I kept it on me at all times, once she made me a sheath so as to keep it in my boot without slicing my leg open. Da’s sword was too ungainly to carry constantly, but I kept it near to hand. Out of Gevarr’s sight. I found as Annora continued to call him by name, I fell into the habit also. I resolved to ask him questions, since he could talk well enough to complain. He spoke Mercedish well, and seldom made any comment in Keltanese.

  Annora had set him a chair so his feet could be soaked in a pan of tepid water as he sat behind his quilt barrier. I brought another chair and set it to face him. He looked up from his bleak regard of his swollen toes, and raised his brows at me, inviting me to speak, it seemed.

  “How many came through the northwest pass with you?”

  He considered me for a moment. “How old are you?”

  “I am asking you now. Answer me true and I’ll think of answering your questions later.”

  “Twelve? Not yet thirteen, certainly no older, I think.”

  “I think you’re starting to look fit enough to be put out on the road. Storm’s brewing again.” I kept my voice even, and did not blink.

  His face split with an infuriating grin. “A battalion, does that make you happy?”

  How many men were in a battalion? It sounded like a great many. “How is it you came to be left here?”

  “We raided your place as we marched for the deep water harbour on the coast. I heard talk among the officers of making this a headquarters, else you’d see more damage. Your da was wise to build a stone house. Anyway, they decided it was too far from the main road, and we went on. When we met resistance on the way to the village, I was wounded. I could not march when my squad moved on. I made my way back here over a coup
le of days, seeking shelter.”

  “Resistance from Mercedian troops?”

  “Would have had to be, wouldn’t they?”

  “How many?”

  Again the flash of white teeth. “Not enough.”

  “Enough to take you out of it.”

  He acknowledged this with a slight inclination of his head my direction.

  “Were the men you met in uniform?” For Behring and his men had been, while the farmers and shopkeepers from Bale Harbour, and Da and Wils, would not have been.

  This question surprised him, it seemed, and he took a moment before answering, “Yes.”

  “Are there other wounded around here that you know of? Did you lead others back our way?”

  “Frozen and buried in snow, if so. But I made my way here without seeing anyone.” He paused. “They’ll think me dead. I was unconscious on the battlefield for … I’m not sure how long. All was quiet there when I woke and staggered away. They won’t be looking for me, Judian.”

  I didn’t like him calling me by name, either. Annora needed to learn to still her tongue while she cared for him. “How will you find them when I set you loose?”

  “I’ll go to the sea. There will be no need for me to bring any of them back here. They will have taken the harbour. You are conquered and don’t know it yet.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  He shrugged, then winced at the pull it caused on his neck wound. “I’ve been ten years a soldier. You get a sense of the way of things. Your troops were caught out by the west border build up, and left the flank unprotected. A mistake.”

  “And you used foreign mages to delay the closing of the northwest route, or else your invasion plan would never have worked.” Then I bit my tongue and drew blood, because the idea was for me to get information from him without revealing what I knew. Here, let me demonstrate my lack of experience with men’s doings.

  His craggy features might have been carved of wood, so still did they become. I could read nothing there.

  How old was he? If a soldier for ten years, perhaps ten years older than Wils, then? He looked older than twenty-eight to me. He bore signs of hard use. Ill use.

  “Your tunic has the signs of rank torn away,” I said, for I had noted it when I packed the uniform in the trunk upstairs.

  “Demotion.”

  “Who put those scars on your back? And why?” Are you a worse threat than just an enemy soldier, a criminal, too?

  “She said you were shrewd.”

  She says far and away too much. “Why were you whipped?”

  “I disobeyed an order. I was disciplined.” I waited for him to say more, unmoving. Finally, “This was before we marched on Merced, by some months. Your sharp eyes must see the marks are healed.”

  “That doesn’t tell me what you did to get them.”

  “I refused to throw my men away on a useless gesture, and thus appease the vanity of a petty lord advisor to the king. In the end, they were just as dead, and I was no longer anything but another foot soldier in the ranks. Sent here to be wounded and kept in a farmer’s kitchen like an old tom cat, past use in catching mice.” He seemed to have said more than he planned, and grunted. “That’s my side of it, others might tell another.”

  Annora then appeared around the corner of the quilt to collect his foot bath, which had to be unpleasantly chilly by now. He likely could not feel it, for the throbbing of his feet. Coming out of frostbite is painful, I’d been taught. I helped him out of the chair after she patted his feet dry and re-wrapped them, and the two of us settled him on his pallet together. He was careful not to lean too heavily on her, I saw.

  When she let the quilt fall back into place as she withdrew, his gaze lingered after her. “Your brother is a lucky man, to have such as her waiting his return.”

  I sighed. Wils couldn’t have found a plain bride? I certainly would look for such if ever I thought to marry. “No one waits for you?” I asked.

  He snorted. “No woman has concerned herself with my comings and goings for as long as I can recall. No. No one waits.”

  I turned to go. His voice stopped me. “In fact, I’ve no reason to want to leave here at all.”

  His remark knocked my breath back down my throat, and I had to take a moment before I could say, “It’s not a matter of what you want.” I pushed the quilt barrier aside and went looking for Annora.

  CHAPTER 15

  Likely a good thing Annora was not immediately to hand, with my blood fair roaring in my ears. Not enough that we had an invalid enemy soldier installed in our kitchen, she had to nurse him so tenderly that now he was smitten and didn’t want to part from her. Because I had seen that look before, the way Gevarr watched her move. I had seen Wils look at her the same way—and wouldn’t my brother be delighted to come home to this hearthside scene? How he would thank me! I felt like kicking the hearth, but remembered in time how much more that hurts with a cold foot.

  Annora wasn’t in the house, so I set Wieser to guard Gevarr and sought her outside. Wrapped in her cloak, she stood swinging the axe to chop ice from the trough for Dink. “Do you think we should fix him some shelter?” she asked when she saw me. Then she looked at my face closer. “What is it?”

  “Gevarr sees no reason to leave us. I think you have been altogether too kind to him considering he’s our enemy!” I choked out. “I think you’d better knock him out with one of your concoctions so I can load him on Dink and take him off somewhere to figure his own way home.”

  “I take it you don’t think he’s going to murder us all, then?”

  “Only some of us. You’re likely to be safe.”

  Her eyes flashed. “You think he’s in love with me? No. He’s adrift, without a life to go back to that he wants any longer. It’s only natural he would look at us all and want to stay where family cares for one another.”

  “You’ve known he doesn’t want to leave? And when did you plan to say something to me about it?” I sputtered.

  “I didn’t really think you’d be like this about it. I thought you could use his help around here when he’s well enough.”

  “Gods’ mercy! He’s not a stray pup! He’s double my weight, and age, too. And you think you can bid him do this and that, and he’ll be docile as a—as a—”

  “Judian, take a breath! I don’t object to his staying on, but if you do, well, he can’t stay if you don’t trust him.”

  “Trust him? Why by gods’ teeth would I trust him?”

  “He’d have to earn your trust, of course,” she said with maddening serenity.

  “Are you still on your “I hope someone’s doing the same for Wils somewhere” buggy ride? Because I keep reminding you—he’s not Wils by any stretch. He’s made a ten year career out of killing people!”

  “If you’re going to condemn him just for being a soldier, I remind you your da was one, too.”

  “Da fought for our side! Gevarr’s part of the invasion! I can’t see how you think this could ever be wise, letting him stay.”

  “I haven’t said I advocate letting him stay. I just don’t object to it out of hand. He can’t leave yet, in any case. He’s weeks from being able to walk. There’s time to discuss it and decide. Just let’s go in out of the cold, can’t we?”

  That at least was a reasonable thought. I had come out without any heavy clothes, and could not feel my hands. Annora’s teeth were chattering. Wieser began to bark as I turned to head to the house, and it was no easy feat to get through the snow and up the back steps in only seconds, but I did it with Annora on my heels.

  Gevarr had managed to stand with the aid of my walking stick, and pulled open the back door when I arrived on the stoop. Wieser ceased barking when she saw we had responded to her alarm, and sat. “That’s the kind of warning that does some good,” I told her. She swept the floor with her tail.

  “I’m the cause of some new trouble, I hear,” Gevarr said.

  “Actually, you’ve been nothing but trouble from the firs
t,” I said. I pointed back to his alcove, and took the stick from him.

  “I heard you fighting.” He looked only at Annora. I took his elbow to steer him back to the pallet.

  “I’ll tell you anything you need to know about it,” I said. “In fact, I’ll be doing all your care from now on. Move.”

  He did so, but gods knew I could not have made him if he set his mind against me. It was going to require some careful thought on my part, how to proceed.

  It would be a good time for Da and Wils to come home.

  Annora settled Morie and Virda, who, according to our drill, had barricaded themselves in the bedroom when Wieser sounded off. At least that had happened as I directed.

  I set Wieser on duty again, and went into the bedroom. Annora, Virda and Morie were sitting on the bed in a row, looking toward the door as I entered. I was just preparing to lay out my misgivings about our patient when Wieser yipped.

  “Can the man not just stay where he’s set?” I came out of the bedroom, but a knock at the front door told me Wieser’s different bark was “Company’s come” not “Soldier on the move.” She clicked across the stone floor and met me at the front window. Ticker, the smith’s son who had brought us the fox litter, stood on our porch.

  “What’s the trouble?” I said when I opened the door to him, for certainly he would not have waded through the snow to us unless compelled by urgent need.

  “My mum,” he said, ashen pale. “The baby’s coming, but it’s taking too long, it won’t come down, she says. I couldn’t find the midwife at home.” Indeed not, since she was recuperating in our bedroom. “So, I came up to see if the lady here would come. She knows lore, Mum thinks.”

  Annora came out to us, saying “Of course, we must help her.” I hadn’t noticed the woman was carrying when they had brought the dead vixen and her litter to us. How long ago was that? Must have been middle days for her term then. And, no wonder she so strongly desired to ward off the ill-luck of killing a mother animal.