A Flight of Ravens

by John Conroe

  “Hmmpf. Like I’d trust your safety to a newbie,” I said.

  “Wow, now I really am intrigued,” she said, and I could tell that she was. Secrets drive Brona crazy. Puzzles, codes, tricks, and cyphers, all absolutely must be solved or she can’t rest.

  “Hey, looks like we’re done here. Want me to carry these crates out?”

  Her eyes narrowed and the hand holding the pruning blade tightened. “I’d stab you myself if I thought it would do any good,” she said, then sheathed the blade as if to remove temptation.

  I went to grab a crate and she put her foot on the edge of it. “Savid Thomas DelaCrotia!”

  Some secrets I never tell her, like gifts and surprises of a good kind. But I started this little game knowing that she had to know or I’d never get my agents planted near her and her father.

  “I have a couple of young assets, one male, one female. The lad is Paddy’s eldest boy, Brent. Sixteen and very well trained already. He’d be going for this year’s enlistment, but I held him back, thinking he’d make an excellent unknown agent. The girl is a true stray, a street kid that Soshi took in. Rose. She’s fourteen.”

  “I know who Brent is; he’s Welton’s older brother. I think that would be an easy fit. If anyone presses me, I tell the truth—son of one of my people. Could he learn to be a page?” she asked.

  “Already knows quite a bit about it. We expose a lot of our people to the court so that they know how to blend in. I’ve had Brent with me in the castle several times, as has his father and his Uncle Ash. We’ll say he’s fifteen and not yet ready to enlist, but with Paddy missing and presumed dead, he needs to help his mother.”

  “Is that true? Does Paddy’s widow, Treena, need help?” she asked, a furrow between her eyes.

  “No, we’ve made sure that’s the least of Treena’s worries, although extra money never hurts. I take care of our people to a greater extent than anyone knows. Sissa too. I’ve actually had Welton and Brent helping their Aunt Sissa as well, what with the pregnancy and all.”

  “How is Sissa?” Brona asked.

  “Well, she’s getting later in term and her husband is almost certainly dead. We check on her constantly, as does Treena, and the boys.”

  “Is she working still? She’s so very gifted with a needle.”

  “As much work as she wants or can handle. She’s as good with leather as she is with fine cloth, so we have lots of sheaths and weapons harnesses for her.”

  She smiled at that, then got serious again. “Tell me about this Rose. I’d heard something about Soshi having a foster child. What can she do? Fourteen is pretty young.”

  “She’s an orphan. Taken in by a thief’s den at about five years or so. They trained her along with the other urchins. She tried to pick Soshi’s pocket. That didn’t go well, or you could say it was the best thing she could have done under the circumstances. That was four years ago. She does all kinds of odd jobs for us; everything from cleaning rooms at the Knife and Needle to running messages to lookout duty and some light undercover work.”

  “You’re working the poor girl that hard?”

  “Don’t judge till you meet her. We call her Rose because she’s pretty, but wicked thorny too. She was already pretty good with a knife when we got her; now she’s lethal. And a bit of an actress. Any warrior or assassin who discounts her will pay the price. And if we didn’t work her, then she’d get bored and into trouble. But give her a task, even menial, and she’s all over it. And she likes to earn money. Building herself a Go to Hell fund, as she calls it. Bright as the sun, interested in business, loves working for us.”

  “I’m supposed to be in charge of the Shadows. How come I didn’t know about her?”

  “Because she’s not a true Shadow… not yet. She’s been headed that way all along. There are all kinds of assets you don’t know about because that’s what you have me for.”

  “Hmm. What’s your play?”

  “That will be your call, but I was thinking you might need a new chambermaid, or at least an extra one.”

  “You were going to tell me all along, weren’t you? I’ll have to meet her. Chambermaids don’t get to stay close enough all the time. How much education does she have? How does she talk?”

  I frowned at her. “You know better than that. All my people’s kids have to take lessons. She could read a bit and was great with numbers when we got her. Now, reading in her spare time is one of her favorite things. And for the last month, Trell has been teaching some of our people. He tells me she has a good ear for accents and potential to learn the flute. She won’t sound like a gutter kid, but I don’t know that you could pass her off as one of your ladies, at least not yet, but she can ride a horse, use a crossbow, clean a room, tally numbers, or serve meals.”

  “I’ll just have to meet her. When?” she asked, serious as hell. I couldn’t hold back a grin. Yes, it made sense to add extra security as soon as possible, but really, this was her curiosity more than anything. I moved three of the crates to the garden entrance, then came back.

  She frowned at me, eyes on my grin. “I can bring her by anytime you say,” I said. “Sooner would be better.”

  She thought about it, tapping her ruby lips with a work-gloved finger. “Just after the noon meal, I’ll be in my office, working on accounts. Bring her yourself. My secretary will give you grief about interrupting me. Be insistent—but don’t be an ass about it!” she warned, the gloved finger now held in front of my face. “She’ll check with me and I’ll agree, grudgingly. You have information for me and just happen to have this Rose with you. How does she dress when she’s playing messenger?”

  “Depends on how official it is. If it’s to a business or High Family house, we have them wear a kind of uniform. Dark jacket, cap, and trousers, with clean, well-made boots.”

  “Have her wear that. Hair up and under the cap. As boyish as possible,” Brona said, the wheels already clearly turning.

  “Well, as I said, she’s a pretty one. You want us to mask that?”

  “Yeah. Don’t go crazy but make it hard to tell if she’s a girl or boy, at least at first glance. Enough so that if she was in a dress and made up the next time anyone saw her, they would have a hard time knowing it was the same person.”

  She already had a plan and there was no way in hell she’d tell me. Payback’s a bitch, as they say.

  “Have Brent report to the castle seneschal today. We’ll put him to work as a page for my father within the next day or so. In the meantime, I would like you to think about who our bad seed might be.”

  I stacked the last crates with the others.

  “You must have gotten up pretty early to have harvested all of this by this time of morning,” I said.

  “Yeah, couldn’t sleep. Dreams that my closest confidant and partner was hiding pretty young girls in his workplace,” she said with a mock glare.

  “I was up early too. Thinking about Ash and the others.”

  “That’s actually what woke me. Wondering what the Paul did to our people. We need to get a hold of that as well.”

  “Let’s get this extra security in place while we come up with a plan to find the hidden agent. I’ve got every Shadow and Shadow asset on alert for anything to do with the Paul.”

  “As do Father and Neil. Now, I’ve got to ready some of these beds for winter and I don’t have much time before my first appointment. Scram, Shadow,” she said. Then she leaned close and kissed me on the lips. She had a spot of dirt on the tip of her nose and I pointed to my own to warn her. With a cute frown, she wiped her nose and then made a shooing motion with her hand.

  We call our stray young thief Rose because of her looks, sharp knife, and quick, thorny wit, but when Brona was a young girl, the staff all called her Razor, at least among themselves. So sharp, of wit, intellect, and tongue that you could easily be cut to the quick. I’m told, by some of those same servants, that after I left for Drodacia, she changed and the nickname faded away, replaced by simply Her Highness
, or in private, Herself. Soshi’s protegee and Brona might just have some things in common despite the vast differences in their stations.

  Chapter 4

  “You’re getting fat,” I said.

  A single black ear briefly flicked my way before returning to its previous position.

  “Oh, you’re okay with that are you?” I asked.

  Tipton snorted in reply. He has very expressive snorts. Most are various ways of saying he’s happy. This one was pretty sarcastic.

  “Fine, be that way. As a friend, I’m just trying to look out for you,” I said. Both ears flicked back toward me, then went forward. His walk might have picked up a little speed.

  I talk to Tipton because I’ve had him most of my life and he’s one of my few constants. I also talk to him when my mind is working on difficult problems and I need to distract myself. Sometimes when I do this, new ideas or answers pop up all on their own. It wasn’t working this morning.

  Brona’s information had disturbed me right to my core. If one of the three men she’d listed was a traitor, the kingdom was in trouble. Putting a pair of teenagers near my princess and king was not the ideal solution, no matter how well trained they were or how dedicated. My first instinct was to abduct all three men and question them at length, preferably with eslling help.

  It was a bad instinct for at least three reasons. First, it would totally alienate one or all of them to begin with. It would be just like the Paul to send an agent with a false idea of a buried traitor just to get us fighting among ourselves. Each of the three played a vital role in the kingdom, jobs for which they had been handpicked. They were replaceable, but it would be a waste of enormous talent and possibly send the wrong messages to those around the king and princess, those who were loyal and dedicated.

  Secondly, exposing a traitor was a wasted opportunity, at least according to Jella. My battlemaster trainer always looked to make an opportunity out of every problem. Feeding false information back to the Paul would be a tremendous help in weakening his plans. I mentally check marked this point to circle back to, as there was something there even without knowing who or if a spy was among us.

  The third reason was more practical. I didn’t have an eslling in my direct employ who would be useful for an abduction and question session. That point was one I intended to remedy immediately, and plans were already underway.

  Tipton walked us into the Knife and Needle’s courtyard and Welton was there to take his reins.

  “Where’s your brother today?” I asked.

  He grinned a wicked grin. “He’s hauling wood for Mama and then for Aunt Sissa.”

  “Isn’t that your job?”

  He shrugged. “Normally, but I had to come here. He doesn’t have a job at the moment,” he said with another cheeky grin.

  “Fetch him. His lack of employment has just changed,” I said.

  The boy’s shoulders slumped as he realized his relief from his family chores was over, but his eyes flashed with interest. “What’s he going to be doing?”

  “That’s for me to tell him, O shadow of Shadows,” I said. He grinned at that. Our cook, Brin, had called him that from the time he could first toddle about, always following his father, Paddy, everywhere he went. Then sadness washed away his humor and he looked at the ground.

  “It’s really hard, isn’t it?” I asked. He just nodded, his throat bobbing a little, then something occurred to him.

  “For you too?” he asked, maybe surprised.

  “I’ve known your father longer than you have, Welton, as well as your Uncle Ash. Your dad was very important to us and your uncle was my right hand.”

  “They’re not coming back, are they?”

  “I won’t lie to you… It doesn’t look good.”

  His expression went briefly bleak, then turned fierce, a mini-mirror of his father’s war face. “We’ll kill them all, sir, won’t we? All the woldlings!”

  “That’s pretty much what we do, lad. Now, see to Tipton, then fetch Brent please.”

  “Yes sir,” he said, straightening and looking me in the eye. Paddy’s sons were two of the best boys I had ever met. And now I was about to task one of them with a job he was too young for, one that might snip his life cord before it had barely started to unroll.

  Hemppe looked up from the keg of beer he was rolling toward the bar as I entered my inn. He nodded toward my office, then continued his task. Hemppe is a man of few words; his gestures and expressions say far more than his mouth.

  I entered my office and found a rolled-up parchment, sealed with wax that bore a unique mark. Rather than a signet ring or family crest, the mark was that of a local brewery, the same mark as the one on Hemppe’s keg. Yesterday’s parchment had the mark of the bakery we used most often. Tomorrow’s seal would be that of whichever winery we were featuring this week. Bread, beer, and wine was a phrase the soldiers of the Ranged Reconnaissance Squadron used among themselves. It was the answer to why we fight for our kingdom.

  “For bread, beer, and wine.”

  The phrase began hundreds of years ago, according to Squadron legend. One of the first special soldiers to serve the kingdom had been asked by a pompous member of the king’s high council if he took great pleasure in serving the High Families. His response had been flippant. “No, I work for bread, beer, and wine,” was his answer, which completely ruffled the nobleman’s feathers and resulted in disciplinary action, all of which pretty much guaranteed his words would immediately spread throughout the Squadron.

  The truth is that we work for the kingdom, nobility be damned. I’d had that concept thrown in my face a great deal when I first entered the Squadron. It was rare for any member of the High Families of Montshire to go anywhere near the RRS. Sons of nobility go into cavalry or heavy infantry, not special warfare. I might have joined the RRS with excellent skills and toughness, but that didn’t mean the rest of my education wasn’t long and sometimes painful.

  Hemppe used the phrase to code each day’s intelligence report. If the mark had been altered or had an out of order vendor for that day, then I would know it had been opened or swapped out. It wasn’t a perfect measure by any means, but just one of many ways we all worked to prevent Shadow secrets from falling into anyone else’s hands.

  When I unrolled it, the report looked like a summary of alcohol, food, and lodging sales. Short sentences that told which beer sold best or which rooms had been rented. It was all code. I could care less what mix of products Hemppe pushed through the Knife and Needle. That was his job, and he was good at it. Bottom lines were mine. But this simple summary actually gave me the high points of intelligence reports gathered from assets throughout the kingdom and outside of it, collated by my inn manager and agent dispatcher.

  A line that mentioned that Coal Diggers stout beer from Pug’s Keep, north of Wenkroy, was currently selling well told me that our asset in that town had been observing an uptick in Sylvanian activity, as that wretched country is well known for the flammable black rock. Pug’s Keep was in a kind of neutral zone, north of Wenkroy, south of Drodacia, almost directly in between Montshire and Sylvania. The independent town had survived for centuries by being a crossroads for trade between all four nations while beholden to none of them. This was the kind of thing we looked for to figure out the Paul’s intentions.

  The sentence that indicated that we had a room rental to a Berkette merchant wasn’t real. It was an indication that a trade delegate from the Republic of Berkette was in Haven, likely to hold discussions with the king and the minister of commerce.

  There were other coded mentions of Sylvanian activity in Mandrigo, Berkette, and Wenkroy. Agents and supposed businessmen from the dark kingdom nosing around. But it was a line about southeastern Drodacia that caught my eye, and it wasn’t even in code, just an FYI comment under the heading Knife’s news.

  A corn farmer near Allby had lost a pig to predation a week ago. That kind of thing happened to farmers all the time, but this was a Drodacian farmer. Ever
y citizen of that country is a skilled hunter. This farmer couldn’t identify what had killed his pig, but was pretty sure it wasn’t a bear, cat, canine, or even giant fisher. There were some odd creatures that came out of the wilds, but a big, unknown predator that could kill and haul away a heavy pig sounded most like a woldling. Except only one pig of three was killed and taken. Woldlings tend to travel in groups and mostly they are kept under close rein by their Lashes. And they leave lots of sign. The only woldling that I had come across that operated singly was the one I called Silver Girl, and she was a definite exception.

  There was nothing else to catch my eye, so I locked the report in my files and turned to the correspondence which had come during my time at the castle. There was a single letter from a business I had a relationship with in Lachia, and most of the rest were invitations to parties and galas. The public reestablishment of my social standing by Brona and her father a bit more than a month ago had punched the intricate, ever-changing society circles in the gut. None of the influencers who had so publicly shunned me during my supposed fall from grace knew exactly how to treat me. The fact that I was back in obvious excellent position with the Warcans had left many a social climber shaken and anxious, the result being an inordinate number of invitations to society events. I generally turned down most of them, albeit with a neutral response. This time, there were two that I couldn’t so easily ignore. One was a fundraiser for a widows and orphans group that I supported, as did Brona. I would have to go to that one. The other envelope carried a wax seal that I had known almost from birth—the DelaCrotia family crest.

  Chapter 5

  I broke the wax, opened the expensive parchment, and read: You are forthwith summoned to the naming day of Gracid DelaCrotia’s newborn son and heir, Ircian DelaCrotia, on the anniversary of his thirtieth day of life.

  It was a family event for my oldest brother’s newborn son… my nephew. It seemed a little soon, as most naming days came after the first month of life to ensure the baby was hale and healthy. But holding it on the thirty-day mark wasn’t unheard of, especially among the more aggressive and powerful families. For my father’s heir to now have an heir was a big deal. It moved my second brother, Tallen, farther down the lines of family succession. Not that it mattered to me—I wasn’t even in the line of succession.