The Crow God's Girl (23 page)

“You think the gordath is a doorway that can be opened and closed at whim, with maybe a bit of difficulty with the lock and the latch.” He grimaced again, and she could tell that it was a nervous tic, not an expression. “It’s a monster, girl. It eats a hole in two worlds, and the more we tickle it to make it yawn, the more it eats. Our only hope is to lock its jaws shut until it forgets all about us and goes to sleep.”

“I don’t believe you,” Kate said, stubborn. “You opened it before. You can open it again.”

“Idiot girl!” he said. “Look closer, fool, and tell me again you don’t believe me.” He let go of her cloak and swept the twigs aside for her to get a clearer view.

Now!

She ran.

Twigs snatched at her, her breath came hard, and she heard Arrim’s futile bellowing behind her. She closed her eyes and ran, crashing through the underbrush, and when her toe caught underneath a root she went sprawling with such force she got the wind knocked out of her. Kate stretched out her full length on the muddy forest floor, her ears ringing.

She sucked for air, until with a whoosh, she could breathe again. As she struggled to her hands and knees, she looked up and froze.

She looked into the gordath, the blackness between worlds. Gone was the portal through which a person could look from one world to another. This was not the gateway. This was death, obscurity. She remembered a year ago the hapless soldier falling between the worlds, and knowing then, as she knew now, that he was consumed.

She had run to it with her eyes closed. She saw herself plunging forward, her momentum carrying her into oblivion. “Crow god,” she breathed, only half aware that she invoked that god.

Trembling, she backed up on her hands and knees, making herself as small as possible. The darkness swelled and throbbed, and she knew the gordath was aware of her. Kate struggled to keep her breathing quiet and slow her racing heart. It took forever to crawl back to Arrim. When she returned to the clearing, she threw up until there was nothing left in her stomach.

“Forest god, forest god,”Arrim whispered, and she could hear the panic. “She’s woken it, lady, she’s woken it.”

“Can you calm it, Arrim?” Lady Sarita’s voice was edged with the same panic.

“Not alone, lady. I don’t know–if it wakes–” He was babbling now.

“Arrim, calm. Calm. Joe is there. He’s right on the other side. He’ll help you.” She sounded kind yet firm. Kate had never heard Lady Sarita talk that way. She managed to get to her knees and then her feet, spitting to get the taste out of her mouth. Lady Sarita dismounted and went over to Arrim, holding his shoulders.

“Can you sense him?” Lady Sarita said. Arrim nodded, and the clarity of his eyes started to come back. He turned to face the gordath and held his hands out. His breathing was even now. It looked as if he was communing with it. Lady Sarita watched for a bit and then gestured to Kate. “Come.” Her expression was no longer kind. She was angry, angrier than Kate had ever seen her.

Weary, shamed, covered with mud and stinking of vomit, Kate stumbled after her. They walked their horses until Lady Sarita found a fallen log to mount from. Kate followed suit, shakily. She looked back once. Arrim had been swallowed up in the forest, and it was coming on dusk anyway. She thought about Joe standing on the other side of the gordath in North Salem, holding up his hands the same way, putting the gordath back to sleep.

She never felt farther from her home than at that moment.

It was almost evening when they returned
to Red Gold Bridge. Back in the warm little room a meal awaited them, steaming vesh, plates of stew and dumplings, and thick, crusty bread.

Kate couldn’t even summon up the energy to be hungry. She dropped into her seat, weary beyond anything, still ashamed. She could barely meet Lady Sarita’s eyes. The lady did not let that stop her.

“What a foolhardy, selfish thing to do.” Lady Sarita’s voice was as cool as always but all the more scathing for that. “Arrim is as fragile as the gordath he guards. Had you gone through–to your certain death, I might add–it would have completely broken him, and then where would we be? The only thing keeping us safe is that we have two guardians, one on each side of the gordath, keeping it shut.”

She was stuck here forever, with no true home, and her only connections a flock of crows, and she might not even have that any more. She wondered if the crows still waited for her, wondering when she would return. They had her money, her horse, all the rest of her belongings. If they treated her the way she had tried to treat them, they would be long gone by now.

“What am I going to do?” she said, more to herself than to Lady Sarita.

“Make a life for yourself,” Lady Sarita said.

Kate gave a short sob. “I thought I had. It was taken from me.”

“No. You had an easy way out, not a life. You thought you could stand everything this world has to offer because it all came so easily to you. A noble husband, a good family; this world tasted sweet, did it not? You would be a noblewoman, forever cosseted. For a girl from your background, I can imagine that it was–seductive.”

Kate burned with shame. Ruthlessly, Lady Sarita went on.

“Would you really have become a doctor once you were Lady Kate?”

“How did–”

“Your young man told me. In his dispatch he sent when he discovered you were on your way here.” She rummaged through the piles of paper on the table and held it up. “I’m to hold you until he takes Favor, and then he will send for you. Presumably, you would become his mistress, as the council doesn’t allow for divorce. Not as conventional a life, but still comfortable, don’t you think?”

Kate felt the color drain from her face. How. Dared. He.

“Or,” Lady Sarita said, as if musing out loud, “You could find your own way. It might be harder, but it will be more satisfying. You should eat.”

Kate looked at the good food and suddenly her appetite was voracious. She grabbed a roll and tore at it, dipping the steaming bread into her stew, and gulping at her vesh. When she was finished, she wiped her mouth on a napkin, her hunger sated but her anger still sharp.

So he thought he could keep her here until he was ready for her? She remembered his choice of words at the waterfall. You’re my betrothed. His sense of ownership, uttered so casually, came through in those words, and now in his letter to Lady Sarita.

All right, change of plans. Maybe the gordath couldn’t be crossed right now. She had seen the gaping wound it slashed between worlds, and she knew that passage was deadly. But that didn’t mean that once soothed, it couldn’t be opened safely again. She might have to wait a year, or two, or ten, but she would find a way to get through. It would be her ace in the hole.

In the meantime, she would join the crows and their gathering storm. And if that storm just happened to throw a monkey wrench into Terrick’s plans for Favor, well, so much the better.

I mean, what was the point of being some kind of symbol to a crazy army if you didn’t use it?

The sun had dropped below the headlands on the other
side of the river when Kate, laden with a generous sack of provisions, walked down to the waterfront, escorted by Captain Tal at Lady Sarita’s orders. He was not like the Terrick soldiers. He was brusque but he didn’t sneer at her. He didn’t treat her in any way differently than anyone else. She supposed it was because of the gordath–once you had people come across from other worlds, they stopped being scandalous. The crows were in the second tavern she tried, lamps burning brightly outside the door and welcoming aromas of good beer and food within. The tavern was busy, and Kate stood just inside the door and off to the side, scanning the place. The clientele was motley: sailors from all up and down the river, shaggy forestholders, and sleek Brytherners. There were a few crewmembers from the River Lady that she recognized, and one raised his cup to her and jerked his head at the corner of the room. She followed his direction.

The crows sat at their own table, hunched over tankards. She watched them for a moment. Ossen looked worried, the twins restless, and Grigar and Balafray wary. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she knew what they were talking about. She should have been back long before, and now they were wondering if they had made a bad bet.

“Looks like you found them,” Tal said. “Try to keep out of trouble.”

He left before she could say anything. Just then, Ossen turned to look at the door and Kate caught her eye. Then Grigar turned around, and then Balafray and the twins. She picked her way through the crowd. No one said anything but she could see by the way they took in her muddy clothes that they wondered what had happened. Ossen moved so she could squeeze next to them on the bench, and Ivar pushed over an extra tankard of beer. Kate shrugged the sack off her shoulder and hefted it onto the table. One of the guys could carry it with the rest of their stuff. She had done her part. She took a drink, licking the foam mustache off her lip. The beer was nutty and thick, almost sweet.

“So,” she said. “Lady Sarita has given us traveler’s aid for the night–we can stay in the stables. And tomorrow we are off to Temia.”

“Welcome back,” Grigar said, his expression bland.

“I knew you’d come,” Ossen said.

“I too,” rumbled Balafray. He glared down the twins as if daring them to contradict him. They shrunk under his gaze.

“Of course I came back,” Kate said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

The spring wind that whipped over the two
armies in Favor had more of winter’s bite than summer warmth to it. It snapped out the banners so that they cracked constantly against the thin blue sky.

Colar sat his horse and watched as Favor’s army marched away in long columns. They did not march like a defeated army but as a disciplined, confident force. Even its large company of camp followers were ordered and calm. The army may have been smaller than the Terrick and Kenery’s, but Trieve’s men would not have been a pushover.

We won, he thought. Favor is ours. Mine. He was lord of Favor. When the army finally left the land’s borders, he could ride in and see what he had won.

But he didn’t believe it. Favor and Trieve had not even tried to fight but they hadn’t exactly surrendered either. Instead, they met the invading force at the border, recited a message from Lady Trieve, and marched away.

“Thank you, Lord Terrick, for holding Favor in trust for Trieve until this matter is decided in Council.” Captain Crae had said those words to Colar’s father, his dark eyes unfathomable but strained, with creases at the corners. He did not seem angry or betrayed. He did not bluster. He looked at Colar only once, and shook his head slightly, the way a father would shame his son. Colar kept his expression steady. He would not show shame or guilt no matter how much he felt.

The words were ritual and meant that Lady Trieve would abide by the Council’s ruling. It was foolish of her, but what choice did she have? So until the Council made its position known, Favor’s status and Colar’s would remain uncertain.

Lord Terrick had nodded briefly at Captain Crae’s formal words, but it was not a bow of lord to lord, but lord to captain. “There is much to be said for avoiding war, captain,” he said gruffly. “Lady Trieve is wise to prevent bloodshed with this decision.”

Crae’s mouth quirked in an unpleasant smile. “Don’t get too comfortable, Terrick.”

He turned and gave a command to his lieutenant, and the man wheeled his horse and shouted an order. At that, the Trieve army and its small Favor force fell in and began their long march away.

When the army dwindled away down the road, Colar, his father, and Lord Kenery, a silent shadow of his former blustery self, turned to look at the House that they had won without a drop of blood spilled.

It was more a fort than a house. To be sure, that could be said of all the Houses in Aeritan, but Favor was modest in comparison to the others. It was hardly bigger than a gatehouse. It had two towers with window slits, a guardwall, and a barred portcullis. It was square and sturdy and completely unremarkable.

It wasn’t the house or even the land that was important, though. It was the vote in Council. The Terrick-Kenery alliance had just grown by another member. Lady Trieve’s gambit was a desperate move, and it would not save her.

He and his father didn’t speak as they rode up to the house, dismounted in the courtyard, and handed their reins to their men. There was an unpleasant smell and the sound of buzzing flies. The smell intensified when they pushed open the door of the House.

Colar couldn’t hold back a groan of disgust. His father and Lord Kenery recoiled the same.

As a parting gift, Crae’s men had slaughtered several sheep and laid them out in a travesty of a welcoming party; one even had a kerchief tied around its head, the welcome cup nestled between its hooves. Their intestines had been pulled out, and blood covered everything; it had even been slopped on the walls.

Next to him, his father cursed with disgust and fury.

Kenery kicked at one of the sheep, his boot sinking wetly into the animal and setting off a cloud of flies.

“I should have killed that bitch when I had the chance,” he growled.