The Crow God's Girl (24 page)

“Base dishonor,” Lord Terrick said, his words bitter. “It’s only Favor’s people who will suffer. Raymon, gather up the householders to clean up the mess.”

Raymon stepped forward and Colar knew what he was going to say even before the lieutenant could get the words out. That had been a surprisingly large number of camp followers leaving with the army.

“There are no householders, Lord Terrick. They’ve all gone. I have my men rousting out the smallholders, but it looks like they’ve gone to earth. We’ll keep looking. With your permission, sir, we can use sterner tactics to e
ncourage them to come forward.”

“Burn down the nearest village and slaughter the rest of their sheep,” growled Kenery. “That will bring them out.”

Kill the smiths and burn the forges.
Colar remembered carrying out that order. Sweat sprang onto his forehead, and he clenched his fists. His nausea increased, the smell overwhelming.

“No,” he managed. “These are my people. I will not have you harass them. Raymon, call for a detail of men and clean this place up.”

He walked out into the fresh air, taking deep breaths to calm his gag reflex. He stripped off his helmet and let the sharp breeze cool his sickness. The pragmatic part of him knew that if he showed mercy to Favor, the people would mistake it for weakness and he would govern an unruly country, perhaps for years, until the land would run with blood. But he also knew that if he did not separate himself from his father and father-in-law from that moment on...

He would become ruthless.

Colar waited for his stomach to settle, and turned back. His father and Kenery hadn’t stayed inside, and they waited for him in the small courtyard.

“Feel better, boy?” Kenery rumbled, the barest smirk in his voice. Colar gave him a level look, and Kenery’s smirk faded.

“We’ll divide our forces–Seven hundreds of Kenery’s men with our captains to lead them will stay here,” Colar said. He fought back the urge to look at his father for approval. “Three hundreds to travel to Salt. We best get on the road. We have but a half-month before Council, where I will be named Lord Favor.”

“Wait,” Kenery said. Now he was angry. “I won’t travel to Salt with only two hundreds of my men.”

“I’d leave you here to clean up,” Colar said. “But we need your vote.”

Kate took her first look at the House of
Temia and almost burst into tears. They had been three days on the road from Red Gold Bridge to Temia. It rained and snowed and sleeted the entire journey. All of her clothes were wet. Her expensive boots had given up their oil-proofed protection and were no match for the mud and the damp. Her wool socks never dried. They couldn’t make a fire because all the wood was wet. So for three days she and the others had been drinking cold-water vesh and gnawing on grain mush and crusty bread.

Wait until we reach Temia, the crows had all said. They sang the praises of their ancestral land. Blazing fires and a roof overhead, soft beds and warm furs, ale, and sausage and spicy stew. They painted a pretty picture and Kate had been desperate enough to believe it, despite her own personal experience of Temia as a miserable gods-forsaken land.

The house was a rundown, ramshackle pile of stone. The roof had fallen in at one end of the long, rambling structure, blackened from a fire. There were dry dead weeds growing up through the cracks in the courtyard flagstones. Water dripped somewhere. It sounded as if it came from inside the House.

“This is it?”

They all looked at each other but no one answered.

Kate dismounted, throwing the reins over Hotshot’s head. Poor boy had suffered along with the rest of them, and his hipbones jutted out from his short rations.

“Is there any part of the house that has a roof and shelter from the outdoors?” She tried to keep her voice from trembling. I just really wanted to be warm and dry, she thought, disconsolate.

“The kitchens,” Grigar said. “We can make it warm for you, chick.”

It better be, she thought, petulantly. They were crows, they were used to it. Then she looked around and saw that they were as miserable as she was, hunched in their ragged, wet clothes, and instantly felt ashamed of her princess moment.

They trailed around to the side of the house. As Grigar had promised, the house suffered less damage back here. The walls met a roof, at any rate. There was a small wood door in the high wall, and he pushed it, putting his shoulder into it when the door refused to budge. With shrieking hinges and a long scrape, the door opened and they followed him through into a courtyard.

Kate’s spirits rose a bit. This was better. This had been a garden once. There were dead and neglected beds edged with stone and marble. A fountain, drowning in leaves, took center stage. It was cracked and splotched with moss and mold.

I can see this place as it must have been.
The white marble gleamed in the sun, the green plants trailed along the flagstones, and the water from the fountain created a spray of rainbow.

She blinked and the vision faded. There was an arbor along the wall covered with ropy vines. That would do to give Hotshot shelter from the elements. She led him over and stripped off his saddle and wet saddle pad. He closed his eyes and rubbed his head against her. She took off the bridle and scratched him behind the ears, where a horse always itched after the bridle. She wished she had a warm mash to give him while she rubbed him down, but this was the best she could do. She gave him a double handful of grain and let him eat.

The others roamed around, and she heard Ivar shout from inside. She hurried over with the others. He stood in the mostly intact kitchen, a grin on his ugly face. Kate grinned too.

The kitchen had long been looted, but what remained were two huge domed ovens set into the wall, a stone for baking flatbread, and a few iron utensils pitted with rust. Best of all, forgotten in a corner, was a stack of wood almost crumbled away into chips but still usable as fuel. Balafray nodded in satisfaction.

“Ossen, get an oven working. Ivar and Arlef, bring in wood–we can dry it for tomorrow. Grigar, come with me, see what we can salvage.”

He turned to look at Kate, and in the dimness of the afternoon twilight he looked almost normal.

“The birth of a new world is never easy, strangeling. I promise you–I promise you–” He broke off. He was crying.

Kate turned away–she couldn’t bear to watch. All of the crows were as dumbstruck as she was. Balafray squeezed the bridge of his nose in the universal gesture of a man who didn’t want to cry, and growled something. Then he stalked off into the house, followed by Grigar.

“I’ll start a fire,” Ossen mumbled. The twins pushed at each other in their haste to leave.

Kate pulled out their meager provisions. She wiped down the stone and mixed up the flours in a dry heap. Ossen, her head in the oven as she blew on the tinder to light it, said, “I think there’s a cistern over by the window.”

A small window set in the thick wall let in a bit of light. Kate looked over at the enormous stone well, covered with broken planks. She lifted the hatch and heard the blessed sound of rippling water. There was a leaky wooden bucket and ladle. She dropped the bucket, heard the splash, and drew up water, ice cold and black in the dimness. She smelled it–it smelled of stone and minerals, so she tasted it.

Clear, clean, like snow melt.

She made a simple wet dough, kneading it lightly as she had been taught by her mother and by the cooks in Terrick, and let it rest.

The fire in the oven glowed and a faint bit of warmth overcame the kitchen. Ossen put six yellow potatoes into the oven, and Kate’s mouth watered at the thought of the hot, mealy goodness. The twins came back, laden with damp wood.

“Over there,” Ossen said, nodding to an empty rick near the oven. They stacked it, and went back for more.

Balafray and Grigar returned as Kate patted the dough into flat disks. Grigar helped her slide the stone into the platform built into the oven wall. He gave her an encouraging smile.

“See? Better, right?”

She blushed. “Sorry about that,” she managed.

“No need, chick.”

He was so uncrowlike. She could see the others going malcra, even Ossen, because she had seen the crow girl in action. Not Grigar. He’d stand there and charm his enemies to death. Family or no, what was he doing here? She opened her mouth to ask him when Balafray spoke. He had regained his composure and looked around at the kitchen with satisfaction.

“Give thanks to the crow god, my brothers and sisters, for tonight we live like lords,” he rasped. “Our sisters will sleep here tonight. There is another room off the hall with a fireplace where my brothers and I will sleep. Tonight we rest in peace and warmth.”

No lord would appreciate his castle as much as they did this simple shelter, Kate was sure. The kitchen was releasing its chill, and the aroma of flatbread and potatoes filled the air. She surreptitiously dipped her finger in the bucket on the lip of the well, and flicked some water on the floor. She was grateful, and she didn’t mind letting the crow god know. He might be the god of crazy, but so far he left her alone.

She glanced up and saw Ossen’s eyes on her; the crow girl looked thunderstruck. Kate hoped she hadn’t done anything wrong.

Eating a dinner of flatbread and potatoes in a warm kitchen, dry and warm for the first time in ages, Kate was content. She looked around at her companions. Ivar and Arlef bickered idly. Ossen rested her elbow on her raised knee and her chin in her cupped hand, and stared with half-lidded eyes at the fire. Grigar stretched out, ankles crossed, his hands linked under his head. She caught Balafray’s eye. The crow looked at her, unsmiling. She had the sense that he had been staring at her for a while. Her sense of contentment evaporated.

“What?” she said, trying for bravado and mostly just sounding loud.

Balafray just shook his head. “Sleep tonight, strangeling. The new world begins tomorrow.”

The two girls made ready for the night in
silence
.
The oven still radiated warmth. Kate took off her boots and her socks, setting the socks to dry near the oven. The boots needed some serious TLC. The leather was cracked and stained. They needed to be cleaned and oiled. She wiggled her toes. It felt so good to be free of her socks. Her bedroll and cloak were only slightly damp after being draped to dry in the warm kitchen, so she laid the blanket out on the hearth and pulled the cloak over her, cushioning her head on her arms. Next to her Ossen wrapped herself in her cloak and curled up in front of the oven.

Kate listened to Ossen’s breathing and the slight simmering crackle of the fire. Hope the men have a fire too, she thought, and yawned. A full belly of warm food, a roof overhead, and the ever-present chill at long last easing in her bones, and she started to drift off.

“I’m sorry we lied to you,” Ossen said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Kate turned to look at her. “It’s okay. Sure, it’s a fixer-upper, but my mom would say it has good bones.”

“Balafray told me about you. He knew you, Kate. In the army, a winter ago. He remembers seeing you standing on a wagon, looking back at him, among all the crows. You looked straight at him, he said, and it was enough to send them all into the madness.”

Kate froze, barely breathing.

“They ran you to the edge of the forest, and they almost had you, except you were rescued by the ghost horse.”

She remembered running. Sometimes in her nightmares, she ran on leaded feet, waking up just when they caught her, but not before the horror started.

“He was malcra then, but he knew you meant something. That’s why he sent me to Terrick to find you. And just before, when you gave the offering to the crow god, I knew he was right. You are one of us now, only you are strangeling too. You live outside, like us crows.”

Kate looked up at the dark ceiling. The glow from the ovens faded but the warmth held. So that’s what she was, a strangeling who lived neither within Aeritan’s rules and walls, nor entirely outside, among the crows. She walked a tightrope between two worlds, and if she fell she would be at the mercy of either one of those worlds. Suffered, but not welcome, in either camp.

It took a long time for her heart to slow and to relax. She had traveled safely with the crows for nearly a month. It was not likely that they would go malcra tonight. She yawned, and drifted back into sleep. One last thought was the image of Dungiven standing on the edge of the woods, the big horse belling a lonesome neigh.

They got the story wrong–the stallion hadn’t rescued her, that had been Marthen’s lieutenant–but that was myth for you. And maybe she could use it to her advantage.

Kate woke slowly, stiffly, and stretched
. Sunlight shone through the small window at the top of the wall, and she could see blue sky. Ossen lay curled up next to her in a tiny ball.

“Hey,” Kate said, nudging her shoulder. “I’m going to look around.”

Ossen muttered something but otherwise didn’t move.

Kate put on her stiff, dry socks and boots, and grabbed her half-cloak. The warmth of the kitchen had faded, but the early morning sun was already taking off the chill. The walls of the courtyard held back the wind from the plains of Temia, and she shaded her eyes against the brightness of the day. Hotshot had wandered loose from the arbor and browsed on a few patches of green that she hadn’t noticed the previous evening. He raised his head and nickered at her, but went right back to tearing at the grass and the leaves.