The Crow God's Girl (14 page)

The housekeeper bowed and gestured to one of the younger servants, who ran off to the kitchen to prepare a meal for the lord and the lady.

“Be good, children, and eat in the kitchens tonight,” Lady Beatra told the kids. “You will see your father later.”

That was always a treat, not to have to dine under the gaze of parental discipline. Kate felt relief. She didn’t think she could stand to break bread with Lord Terrick. Then again, eating in the kitchen, among her enemies, was hardly any more fun.

The householders had not failed her in their malicious glee at her downfall.

Lord Terrick and Lady Beatra had to pass Kate on the stairs when they went to their chambers. Kate stood aside to let them pass. Lord Terrick looked at her but his expression told her nothing except that he was as dour and impassive as usual. Lady Beatra looked anxious. Kate wondered if they were going to have sex and immediately thought,
Ewwwww
.

When they were gone and the hall emptied out, she heaved a sigh and sat down on the worn stone. She leaned her head against the wall. Someone caught her attention. It was Ossen, carrying an armload of wood for the kitchen. She had gotten swept up in the homecoming. Now she dumped the logs on the floor and sat down next to Kate, still covered in bits of bark and splinters. She cocked her head at Kate. Kate waved a weary hand in greeting. After all, she had no more reputation to lose. Ossen was a warm presence next to her.

“So that was the lord,” the crow girl said at last.

“That’s him.”

“He looks like he has a poker up his backside.”

Kate snorted a laugh that was full of tears.

“Ask me, you are well rid of the whole lot of them. Are you ready to come with me when winter breaks? You can walk the crow’s road with me. Just us two.”

It was tempting, so tempting. She could leave her heartbreak and humiliation behind, travel Aeritan at will... and then she remembered. Crows. Oh yeah. The ones that tried to run you down and kill you and rape you, possibly in that very order. Ossen might be different–Ossen was different, period–but she was still a crow.

She smiled, unwillingly, rustily, through a clogged throat. “Thanks,” she managed. “Maybe. We’ll see.”

Ossen squeezed her hand and they sat for a moment in companionable silence. Then, from the hall, came a bellow. It was Torvan. “Crow!” Ossen jumped to her feet. “Get you to the kitchen with the firewood!”

Ossen gave Kate an exaggerated scowl, and gathered up the logs, scurrying off to the kitchen. Torvan lingered just a moment to give Kate a smirk. Instead of ducking, Kate met his gaze. There was only so much humiliation a person could take when it stopped to matter. The householders were stupid if they thought she was just going to roll over and play the jilted maiden. The life of a wandering crow sounded better and better.

Lord Terrick summoned her a few days later, and she faced Lord Terrick and Lady Beatra in his study on the ground floor, overlooking the front of the great house. The snow had stopped and the sky was ice blue, tree branches poking at the sky in black, stark relief. The sun stayed low over the horizon, a sliver of orange over the gently undulating fields of unbroken snow. A rising moon, a sliver in the darkening sky, hung above it.

Kate took in the view before she sat, as indicated, on the small stool in front of the Terricks. She kept her hands folded in her lap to keep them from trembling.

“Lady Beatra tells me you are angry,” he rumbled. He had aged in the few months he had been at council–or more likely, she just had not noticed his age before.
He’s my dad’s age and that’s not that old.
Except for all she knew her dad looked just like that now. Weathered, aged, thick in the middle.

“Yes,” she said shortly.

“There was no binding between you.”

“I thought–and I know Colar thought–that you had given your permission. Was your word not binding?”

He gathered himself, a storm personified. Despite herself, she quailed a little.

Lady Beatra broke in. “Ke– child,” she said. “You are our foster daughter. We will not abandon you. You may stay at Terrick for as long as you want. We will not drive you away. And–and there are many fine young men who would be married to the foster daughter of our House.”

“Farmers?” Kate inquired. “Sheepherders?”

She could tell she hit home.

“Not all farmers are smallholders,” Lord Terrick said testily.

“But farmers, nonetheless.”

“You will show respect, girl!” he exploded. Kate held her ground as Lady Beatra put her hand on her husband’s arm to settle him down. She took a breath.

“My parents would weep to see how you have treated me.” She had their full attention now. “Do you know how they welcomed Colar into our home? After the hospital, where they made sure he got the best care? They gave him his own room. They bought him his own clothes. They bought him books, a computer, everything he needed. They made sure that he knew that he was a foster son to the House of Mossland and he was given everything he needed to make a life in our world.

“And look how you have treated me.” She spread her hands, showing them her mean clothes, her dowdy tunic and her hand-me-down, shapeless skirt. Lady Beatra had the grace to look ashamed. Lord Terrick remained as flint-hard as ever.

“It was easy for you to deny Colar and me the right to marry. I’m sure you never meant to allow it from the start, but were only humoring us.” This time Lord Terrick flinched just the slightest, and she wondered if she had hit her mark. “I should have realized it when you couldn’t even be bothered to provide me with clothes as befitted my station.

“It never occurred to me what you were doing. I just thought yours was a poor House and it would be ungracious of me to demand fine clothes when you had none. But that wasn’t quite it, was it.”

Now Lady Beatra looked away.

“I don’t want your respectable farmer. I don’t want your fosterage anymore. I reject it. I request guesting from you for the rest of the winter, and when the spring thaws come, I require an escort of men to take me where I wish as well as provisions and money to stake me while I make my way in the world.”

To Red Gold Bridge, to the gordath. They had to open it for her. Lady Sarita would do that for her. She refused to think of any other option.

“You don’t make demands, girl,” Terrick growled, low and ominous.

“You owe me this.” This time, despite her best efforts, her voice shook.

Again Lady Beatra put her hand on her husband’s arm.

“Spring is many months away, child. There will be time to make the right decision. I ask that you are not hasty in this matter.”

“Of course, Lady Beatra.”

The Aeritan river ran wide, swift and dark
between the snowy shores. Across the water rose the snow-capped headlands of Trieve and beyond that, Brythern. On the near shore, the docks were busy with the oared galleys ready to take the Kenery party home. Over one hundred men from the household, along with Kenery’s wife and daughter, and Colar, rode down to the small harbor where their ships awaited them.

Wind blew off the river, and the waves were high and white-capped. Colar looked out over it and sat his horse uneasily. He had played in boats when he was a kid, and during the war he had crossed the river far upstream, but never in the winter. Never here, where the river was vast and fast-flowing.

“Frightened, young Terrick?” Big, blustery Kenery pushed his horse up beside him. He was a big man anyway, and in his furs and leathers and on his heavy horse he looked like a giant.

“No sir,” Colar said, but Kenery was already talking over him. He had quickly learned that about his father-in-law. When Lord Kenery was happy all was right with his world and he let everyone know it.

“Well, you will soon get used to our ways. We live a little differently than you do in the lowlands away from the river. We’re practically Brytherners. We have a different view of things. We take the long view.”

He smacked Colar on the shoulder and the young man winced. His horse snorted and half reared.

“Eh, a wild one, is he? Not from Wessen, I can tell. Now this big fellow is. Wessen born and Wessen bred. You can tell it in the conformation. Paid Wessen enough for him too. Now listen, my lad.” He leaned close to Colar, his heavy jowls rough with salt-and-pepper stubble. His shaggy hair hung wildly around his head like a mad halo, tossed about by the wind off the water. His eyes were damp and his breath stank of vesh and wine, he was that close.

“She won’t like you at first, but you are a pretty lad, and she will come around. And if you have any trouble with her, you tell me. Not her mother. She only encourages her disobedience. You tell me. I’ll set her right for you.”

Colar looked at his father-in-law, who looked at him with expectant good humor. The skies had cleared and become bright winter blue, matched by Kenery’s watery pink-rimmed eyes. He looked out at the river and the lading now well in progress. The sleigh that carried Kenery’s wife and daughter was being loaded aboard. The women waited by the docks, muffled in their cloaks and furs. They were standing close together, deep in conversation, their householders standing in a nearby knot.

He knew he should humor the old man, but this time the habit of obedience lay hard on him, harder than ever before.
I’ve suffered enough for it, I will not suffer more.
He knew that Kenery probably thought he could rule his new son-in-law. Even now, he had to grit his teeth to prevent himself from making his bow and saying yes. It took him a moment to control his voice and when he did his words were clear and steady.

“Affairs between me and my wife are none of your concern, Lord Kenery,” he said. He bowed over his horse’s neck and turned the animal about, moving him toward the dock. He could feel Kenery watching him and the space between his shoulderblades tickled, but he didn’t turn back.

The river smelled like a living thing, cold and wet, rotting and alive. He could hear the creaking of the boat as it rode the waves, sinking lower as the household’s gear and luggage and supplies were stored belowdeck. Colar dismounted and handed off his horse’s reins to a strongholder and walked over to Janye and her mother. They turned to look at him. Janye looked very much like her mother, even as much as she looked like her father.

“Good-day,” he said stiffly.

Janye walked away without a word. Lady Niyani sighed.

“Janye! Oh that child! Please forgive her, my dear Colar. She is so newly widowed, she still grieves for her husband–oh dear. Please, you must give her time. Janye! Come back!” She went after her daughter, still calling out.

Colar felt the burn of anger rise from his gut to his head. He saw Kenery ride down to meet his wife and daughter, and all three began talking at once, waving their arms about and shouting. His wife was giving as good as she got, shouting back in her father’s face even as he made threats and called her names. Colar almost laughed. It was so unlike Terrick. He could not imagine anyone in his family talking back to his father that way. This was his new family. He could only imagine what his father would say, faced with a wife such as Janye.
Serve him right, to see what sort of woman he married me to.

If it wasn’t happening to him, it could
almost have been funny. His father-in-law’s House was a rude, wild place. Scarcely was there a night without a shrieking row between lord and lady, or their children, including Janye. Kenery had four children, three girls and a boy, still a toddling infant. Janye was the eldest. Two of her sisters were married to Kenery men, and they were as loud and brash and angry as anyone else in the family. Kenery blustered, his wife fluttered ineffectually, and the children spoke rudely at all of them. Colar was reminded of a saying that Kate had taught him: They sure know how to put the
fun
in dysfunctional.

The House of Kenery wouldn’t have to know the word to understand the concept.

His wife’s family either tried to cosset him as if he were a child to be bribed, or treated him with sly, winking courtesy, as if they had put one over on him. In a way, they had, he supposed. He had been sold a bill of goods in the form of a miserable wife and a promise of support when his House took over Favor. He wondered if his father was beginning to regret his bargain as well.

For one thing, Kenery’s standing army was like the rest of the House–unruly and undisciplined. The men were ill-prepared for war. To be sure it was winter and war was off the menu until spring at the earliest, but Colar, raised and trained by men who lived and breathed for battle, was disquieted by what he saw. He might not be on speaking terms with his father, but he would have to send him a dispatch about it before the river began to freeze.

And that was another thing, he thought, prowling the walls of Kenery’s stronghold, wrapped in furs and wool. If the river froze completely, then Kenery remained connected to the rest of Aeritan via sledges instead of boats, and that would have been all right. Instead, the river just got thick with ice floes that could sink a ship, so crossings were effectively over until the ice broke up and the river cleared. Terrick wouldn’t be able to move until spring, when Kenery could back them up with men.