Raven's Shadow (2 page)

Instead, she smiled contemptuously at the innkeeper, showing him that she, and everyone in the inn, knew that he was exploiting her vulnerability for profit. All that did was infuriate the innkeeper and silence his conscience entirely—didn't this girl know anything about people?

“So, gents,” said the innkeeper, glancing toward Wresen, who was finishing the last few bites of his meal. “A dead man cannot pay his debts and they are left to his heir. This one owes me a silver and has no means to pay. Do any of you need a slave or shall she join her brother where he burns in the square?”

The flush of anger that had highlighted her cheeks paled abruptly. Obviously, she hadn't known the other Traveler had been killed until the innkeeper spoke, although she must have suspected something had happened to him. Her breathing picked up, and she blinked hard, but otherwise she controlled herself until all that showed on her face was anger and contempt.

Stupid girl,
he thought again—then he felt the tingle of gathering magic.

He'd been nine long years in the Imperial Army under a Sept who commanded six wizards—doubtless that was the reason Tier was contemplating helping the Traveler rather than running out the door like a proper Rederni. Those years had taught him that mages were just people like anyone else: this girl was unlikely to be able to save herself from a mob of frightened men. After they saw her work magic, no one else would be able to save her either.

She was nothing to him.

“One silver,” Tier said.

Wresen started and shifted to alertness, his hand touching his sword, staring at Tier. Tier knew what he saw: a travel-stained man, tall and too thin, with a sword on his belt and his years in the Emperor's army recorded in the myriad small scars on face and hands.

Tier opened his belt pouch and sorted through a smattering of small coins before pulling out a silver round that looked as though it had been trampled by a dozen armies.

“Take off your hood,” said the innkeeper. “I'll see a man's face and know his name and kin before I take his money.”

Tier tossed his hood back and let them see by his dark hair and eyes that he was no Traveler. “Tieragan from Redern and late of the Imperial Army under the Sept of Gerant. I'm a baker's son, but I gave it up for the battlefield when I was young and stupid. The war's ended by the Emperor's writ, and I am homebound.”

The girl's magic died down to a slow simmer.
That's it,
he thought,
take the time I'm giving you to remember that one man is easier to take than a whole room. You don't really want revenge; you want escape.
He didn't know whether he was saving her from these men, or the men from her.

“If you take her, you won't stay here,” blustered the innkeeper. “I don't want her kind in my inn.”

Tier shrugged, “I've camped before, and my horse will take me a few hours yet.”

“Two silver,” said Wresen abruptly. The nobleman set his hands on his table with enough force that his sword bounced and the big silver ring on his left hand punctuated his words with a bang. When all eyes turned to him he said, “I've always wanted to sample Traveler bread—and that one looks young enough to bring to heel.”

Tier couldn't afford to offer much more than Wresen's two silver. Not because he didn't have it, the better part of nine years of pay and plunder were safely sewn in his belt, but because no one would believe that he, a baker's son and soldier, would spend so much money on a strange woman-child no matter how exotic. He could hardly believe it himself. If they decided he was a confederate of hers, he might find himself sharing the pyre outside. On the other hand, a bored nobleman could spend as much as he wanted without comment.

Tier shot Wresen a look of contempt.

“You'd be dead before your pants were down around your knees, nobleman,” Tier said. “You aren't from around these mountains, or you would understand about magic. My armsmate was like you, used to the tame wizards who take the Septs' gold. He saved my life three times and survived five years of war, only to fall at the hands of a Traveler wizard in a back alley.”

The mood in the room shifted as Tier reminded them why they had killed the man burning outside.

“We”—he included himself with every man in the room—“we understand. You don't play with fire,
Lord
Wresen, you drown it before it burns your house down.” He looked at the innkeeper. “After the Traveler killed my fighting brother, I spent years learning how to deal with such—I look forward to testing my knowledge. Two silver and four copper.”

The innkeeper nodded quickly, as Tier had expected. An innkeeper would understand the moods of his patrons and see that many more words like Tier's last speech, and he'd get nothing. The men in the room were very close to taking the girl out right now and throwing her on top of her brother. Much better to end the auction early with something to show for it.

Tier handed the innkeeper the silver coin and began digging in his purse, eventually coming up with the twenty-eight coppers necessary to make two silver and four. He was careful that a number of people saw how few coppers he had left. They didn't need to know about the money in his belt.

Wresen settled back, as if the Traveler's fate was nothing to him. His response made Tier all the more wary of him—in his experience bored noblemen seldom gave up so easily. But for the moment at least, Tier had only the girl to contend with.

Tier walked to the stairs, ignoring the men who pushed back away from him. He jerked the girl's wrist and pulled her past the innkeeper.

“What she has we'll take,” Tier said. “I'll burn it all when we're in the woods—you might think of doing the same to the bed and linen in that room. I've seen wizards curse such things.”

He took the stairs up at a pace that the girl couldn't possibly match with the awkward way he kept her arm twisted behind her. When she stumbled, he jerked her up with force that was more apparent than real. He wanted everyone to be completely convinced that he could handle whatever danger she represented.

There were four doors at the top of the stairs, but only one hung ajar, and he hauled her into it and shut the door behind them.

“Quick, girl,” he said, releasing her, “gather your things before they decide that they might keep the silver and kill the both of us.”

When she didn't move, he tried a different tack. “What you don't have packed in a count of thirty, I'll leave for the innkeeper to burn,” he said.

Proud and courageous she was, but also young. With quick, jerky movements, she pulled a pair of shabby packs out from under the bed. She tied the first one shut for travel, and retrieved clothing out of the other. Using her night rail as cover, she put on a pair of loose pants and a long, dark-colored tunic. After stuffing her sleeping shift back in the second pack, she secured it, too. She stood up, glanced out the room, and froze.

“Ushireh,” she said and added with more urgency, “he's alive!”

Tier looked out and realized that the room looked over the square, allowing a clear view of the fire. Clearly visible in the heat of the flames, the dead man's body was slowly sitting upright—and from the sounds of it, frightening the daylights out of the men left to guard the pyre.

He caught her before she could run out of the room. “Upon my honor, mistress, he is dead,” he said with low-voiced urgency. “I saw him as I rode in. His throat was cut and he was dead before they lit the fire.”

She continued to struggle against his hold, her attention on the pyre outside.

“Would they have left so few men to guard a living man?” he said. “Surely you've seen funeral pyres before. When the flame heats the bodies they move.”

In the eastern parts of the Empire, they burned their dead. The priests held that when a corpse moved in the flame it was the spirit's desire to look once more upon the world. Tier's old employer, the Sept, who had a Traveler's fondness for priests (that is to say, not much), said he reckoned the heat shrank tissue faster than bone as the corpse burned. Whichever was correct, the dead stayed dead.

“He's dead,” Tier said again. “I swear to it.”

She pulled away from him, but only to run back to the window. She was breathing in shaking, heaving gasps, her whole
body trembling with it. If she'd done something of the same downstairs, he thought sourly, they wouldn't be looking to ride out in the rain without dinner.

“They were so afraid of him and his magic,” she said in a low voice trembling with rage and sorrow. “But they killed the wrong one. Stupid
solsenti,
thinking that being a Traveler makes one a mage, and that being young and female makes me harmless.”

“We can't afford to linger here,” he said briskly, though his heart picked up its beat. He'd gotten familiar with mages, but that didn't make them any more comfortable to be around when they were angry. “Are you ready?”

She spun from the window, her eyes glowing just a little with the magic she'd amassed watching her brother's body burn.

Doubtless, he thought, if he knew exactly what she was capable of he'd have been even more frightened of her.

“There are too many here,” he said. “Take what you need and come.”

The glow faded from her eyes, leaving her looking empty and lost before she stiffened her spine, grabbed both bags resolutely, and nodded.

He put a hand on her shoulder and followed her out the door and down the stairs. The room had cleared remarkably—doubtless the men had been called to witness the writhing corpse.

“Best be gone before they get back,” said the innkeeper sourly, doubtlessly worried about what would happen to his inn if the men returned after their newest fright to find the Traveler lass still here.

“Make sure and burn the curtains, too,” said Tier in reply. There was nothing wrong with any of the furnishing in the room, but he thought it would serve the innkeeper right to have to spend some of Tier's money to buy new material for curtains.

The girl, bless her, had the sense to keep her head down and her mouth shut.

Out of the inn, he steered her into the stable, where the stable boy had already brought out his horse and saddled it. The Traveler handcart was set out, too. The girl was light, so Skew could certainly carry the two of them as far as the next village, where Tier might obtain another mount—but the handcart proposed more of a problem.

“We'll leave the cart,” he said to the boy, not the Traveler. “I've no wish to continue only as fast as this child could haul a cart like that.”

The boy's chin lifted. “M'father says you have to take it all. He doesn't want Traveler curses to linger here.”

“He's worried that they'll fire the barn,” said the girl to no one in particular.

“Serve him right,” said Tier in an Eastern dialect a stable boy born and raised to this village would not know. The girl's sudden intake of breath told him that she did.

“Get me an axe,” Tier said frowning. They didn't have time for this. “I'll fire it before we go.”

“It can be pulled by a horse,” said the girl. “There are shafts stored underneath.”

Tier snorted, but he looked obediently under the cart and saw that she was right. A clevis pin and toggle allowed the handpull to slide under the cart. On each corner of the cart sturdy shafts pulled out and pinned in place.

Tier hurriedly discussed matters with the boy. The inn had no extra mounts to sell, nor harness.

Tier shook his head. As he'd done a time or two before, though not with Skew, Tier jury-rigged a harness from his war saddle. The breast strap functioned well enough as a collar with such a light weight. He adjusted the stirrups to hold the cart shafts and used an old pair of driving reins the boy scavenged as traces.

“You've come down in the world once more, my friend,” said Tier as he led Skew out of the stable.

The gelding snorted once at the contraption following him. A warhorse was not a cart horse, but, enured to battle, Skew settled into pulling the cart with calm good sense.

While he'd been leading the horse, the girl had stopped at the stable entrance, her eyes fixed on the pyre.

“You'll have time to mourn later,” he promised her. “Right now we need to move before they return to the inn. You'll do well enough on Skew—just keep your feet off his ribs.”

She scrambled up somehow, avoiding his touch as much as she could. He didn't blame her, but he didn't stop to say anything reassuring where the stable boy might hear.

He kept Skew's reins and led him out of the stable in the
opposite direction that he'd come earlier in the day. The girl twisted around to watch the pyre as long as she could.

Tier led Skew at a walk through the town. As soon as they were off the cobbles and on a wide dirt-track, Tier broke into a dogtrot he could hold for a long time. It shortened his breath until talking was no pleasure—so he said nothing to the girl.

Skew trotted at his side as well as any trained dog, nose at Tier's shoulder as they had traveled many miles before. The rain, which had let up for a while, set in again and Tier slowed to a walk so he could keep a sharp eye out for shelter.

At last he found a place where a dead tree leaned against two others, creating a small dry area, which he increased by tying up a piece of oilskin.

“I'd do better if it weren't full dark and raining,” he said to the girl without looking at her. “But this'll be drier at any rate.”

He unharnessed and unsaddled Skew, rubbing him down briskly before tethering him to a nearby tree. Skew presented his backside to the wind and hitched up a hip. Like any veteran, the horse knew to snatch rest where it came.

The heavy war saddle in hand, Tier turned to the girl.

“If you touch me,” she said coolly, “you won't live out the day.”

He eyed her small figure for a moment. She was even less impressive wet and cold than she had been held captive in the innkeeper's hand.