The Crow God's Girl (39 page)

Ossen put her arms around her and Kate sobbed. She was home.

Late that night, they sat in the kitchen by
the fire and
talked. The crows filled her in on their journey north. They traveled at night and holed up by day, changing Ossen’s bandages and keeping on the run. They asked Captain Varenn to keep a look out for Kate, and the river captain had agreed. They met few crows on the way. “We go to ground,” explained Balafray. “It’s best this way when House folk are ready for war, and angry. No one will find crows if they are not meant to be found.”

Kate nodded, holding onto a small cup of vesh. She stared into the fire. The Council ended with two lords dead, and the Houses would have no compunction about taking their discontent out on the crows.

When it was her turn, she said, “We’re in pretty dire straits. The Council is in disarray for this year, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they get it together enough to send an army north to Temia to finish me off.” She explained about Lord Terrick and they nodded solemnly.

“The merchant gave me a letter,” Ivar said, and he handed it over to her. It was wrinkled and stained. Kate opened it and began to read.

Lady Temia, I’m honored that you have remembered our brief friendship and further honored that you sought me out with your proposal. I am indeed interested. I will send an emissary to discuss your proposition further, a month hence.

“What do we want with a merchant?” Balafray rasped suspiciously.

“It’s because Temia is rich,” Ossen said. “Kett wants the merchants to run the mines and we get the money.”

“The merchants get some of the money, but Temia gets the rest,” Kate explained. Balafray still looked skeptical. “Temia is the richest country in Aeritan. We have the mines in the mountains bordering Red Gold Bridge, and we might even have oil, if some of what I’ve heard is correct. The Council wants to go to war with us, and I think we can find allies elsewhere. We need to start thinking about Brythern.”

She waited for protests but Ossen only said, “How can Brythern help us?”

“What’s so important about oil?” Arlef said at the same time.

“Brythern’s mercenaries can fight for us. We repay the companies in output from the mines. And oil is going to be very important, although it isn’t yet. Brythern can help us with that too.” Brythern universities were centers of knowledge and innovation. If she could explain the principles of an internal combustion engine and the use of refined oil as fuel, she could jumpstart an industrial revolution.

They were silent for a long time. When Balafray spoke his voice rasped more than ever.

“You speak of great riches in Temia but you also talk about merchants and mercenaries, and even Brythern,” he said. “I hear nothing of crows in all of these plans. Temia is our House, girl. Why are you giving it to merchants and mercenaries?”

“But I’m not, Balafray,” she said, fumbling over her words. “No, it’s that the crows can’t fight by themselves. We’ll be killed. The whole Council is coming after us, and there’s no way we can survive this alone. We need the help of mercenaries, just the way the armies of Aeritan have been relying on the crows for generations to fill out their ranks. Only, we have to pay, and that’s where the merchants come in. I’m not giving up the riches of Temia. The merchants will pay Temia for the right to its mines. Once Temia is great again, we won’t need outsiders.”

He was silent, considering her plan, and she waited anxiously. He nodded finally, his grotesque scar in shadow, making him look almost like his handsome brother in the firelight.

“The crows will fight for Temia, and we will fight alongside these mercenaries. Better these soldiers than Aeritan soldiers, who want us only to die in their place.”

She heaved a sigh. “Exactly. This time Temia will hire the fighters.”

“It’s a good plan.”

It was a terrible plan, virtually impossible. But for Temia to survive, she needed an army and she needed money. She was sitting on the biggest fortune in natural resources that Aeritan had. It would all go to waste, unless she managed to exploit it.

She had a vision of Aeritan, the green land with its uncanny forest and its pastoral countryside, reeking with industry, the great river polluted with waste. She almost had to laugh–what would her parents and her friends think of her, giving up all of her environmental principles so easily?

I haven’t been that person in a long time, she thought, so in the end, it didn’t matter. She had a country to build.

Over the next few days the crows trickled
in, though there was no sign of Grigar and no one had word of him. The crow king came in with the others, observing his usual silence. He gave no indication that he had met Kate on the road to Temia. She could not spare too much time for him; there were so many crows still hurt or wounded. Kate tended them as best she could with her shrinking supply of salves and tinctures, and tried to make do with boiled water and bandages.

The crows were stoic, but there were tears at night, and keening for lost family. Tamra had survived, but her husband and her daughters and their families had not. The matriarch was thin and terrible, her proud and wrinkled face full of sorrow and anger. She and Kate worked together to save who they could. She was a comfort and an accusation both. Asking for her forgiveness would only make Kate feel better, so instead she asked her if she knew how to make soap. Tamra nodded, and so at least they could clean the wounds better.

Kate wrote painstakingly at the small writing
desk she had rigged up from a broken board laid across some squarish stones. A stub of a candle barely gave her enough light to see by, but she ignored the discomfort, choosing her words with care. Hiring a mercenary army didn’t come easy. Her eyes were getting tired and she squeezed them tight and rubbed at them. This would be trickier than asking Mitain for money. This was a job for Balafray, she had to admit, except she wasn’t sure she could trust him not to go malcra. Maybe I should go, she thought, but there were difficulties with that approach. What mercenary general would take her seriously?

In the end, she wrote out a simple letter, outlining what she required and requesting terms of payment. She was just finishing when she heard the door open.

“Wait one second,” she said, writing her signature Katherine, Lady Temia, with a flourish. She looked up, expecting Ossen. The girl had gotten back into the habit of sleeping with her, her presence such a comfort on cold nights.

It was Grigar.

Her mouth opened. He shook his head and laughed at her expression.

“You should see yourself.”

Her cheeks heated. “You’re here! When did you get back?”

“Just now. They said you were up here making plans to save Temia.”

“Trying to.” Carefully she set down the pen in the inkwell and stood up. She wasn’t sure what to do. She had thought about this moment many times and now she was overcome with shyness. “Did you go back to look for me?”

He nodded. “You must have taken a crow’s road I didn’t know about, because I could find no sign of you. I finally heard from Captain Varenn that you had crossed into Temia already and so I came home.”

“Thank you.” It was lame and she cringed at her words. It didn’t sound as if she was thanking him at all. “I’m not doing this very well,” she managed.

“Neither am I,” he said, rueful. This time she laughed, and went into his arms.

Being held by him was enough at first. His arms folded around her and he rested his scratchy chin on her head. She closed her eyes, breathing him in. He was dirty and sweaty, but it smelled good. When she rose on her tiptoes and lifted her face to give him a kiss on the cheek, he met her with his own kiss.

Ohhhh. Her knees went weak. The kiss deepened and she forgot everything except for his arms around her and his mouth on hers.

They drew apart at last, and she touched her mouth, her lips throbbing. He took a deep breath.

“So your offer still stands,” he said His tone was dry, but his vo
ice caught as if the dryness were
an act. It was hard to tell sometimes, with Grigar.

Her heart sped up. She was well aware that her bed was right behind them, Callia’s little gift close by. All she had to do was take him by the hand and lead him to it. Still, she hesitated.

“I would. In a heartbeat,” she said, carefully mirroring his words. “But I’m not like I was before.” Vulnerable. “So, I think not. Yet.” She had a sneaking sense of the power she could have over him, and decided to give it back to him right away so she wouldn’t be tempted to use it. “You were right, you know. In my world, I am too young for you. I don’t want to make you wait for nothing.”

He took a breath and cupped her chin. “I can wait.”

At his touch, she shivered. “Good,” she said out loud. “Because we have lots to keep us busy.”

Colar’s chamber in Kenery was more crowded now that Janye moved in. What had once been sparse with only a bed and his gear now held a tall wardrobe, two clothing chests, and a desk. The balding bear rug was removed, and a rich woolen rug was laid in its place. Even in summer the stone walls held a chill, so the rug was welcome, but Colar missed the old predator. It had symbolized a day when Kenery had been a more noble House. Or at least, when the hunting had been better.

He watched the river from the window. River boats plied the currents, the far side for those heading downstream, and the northward bank for boats moving upstream, their spidery oars dipping into the water.

This river needs a bridge, he thought again. He glanced down at the drawing on the desk. It was crude, from memory, of the suspension bridges he had crossed over in New York. No one in Aeritan could build such a bridge.

All he had to do was stay alive to bring the project to fruition. Knowing that he was expected by the Council to meet with an unfortunate accident had gone a long way to reconciling him to his need for survival, if only to rub their noses in it. And if anything, it had solidified in him the desire to steal Kenery out from under the nose of his blustering father-in-law.

The door opened behind him and it was Janye, followed by the householder, Wren, carrying an armful of linens and clothes.

“My lord,” Janye said coolly. Colar nodded, glancing at Wren. The woman met his gaze then looked away. She was round under her dress, her pregnancy clear. A muscle jumped in his cheek. He needed to come to her aid, but he didn’t know exactly what she needed. He supposed he could send her to Terrick, away from Janye’s wrath, but he didn’t think his mother would appreciate a servant with her son’s byblow. “Are you finished? Good,” Janye said, when Wren put the clothes away in Janye’s chest
. “You may go now.”

Never would a Terrick speak to a householder so. Wren slipped out as quietly as she had come in, closing the door behind her. Janye looked at Colar with the mocking expression he had come to dislike.

“I expect you know who the father is,” she said archly.

“It’s none of your business.”

“Well, it is, rather. And now the question is, what to do with her? I will not have your bastard under my roof.”

He almost blamed her for the mess, but kept that back behind his teeth. Instead he said, “Does she wish to marry?”

“It doesn’t matter if she does,” Janye said with studied indifference. “Why should a householder get a choice?”

“I’ll talk to her,” Colar said. “We’ll come to a solution.”

Janye laughed, bitterly. “If you were Kenery, I’d almost feel sorry for her. As it is, knowing you, you’ll give her all your money and acknowledge the brat as your own.”

“I’m not that soft–or stupid.” Anymore. He sighed. “Let me handle it, okay?”

She gave him a startled look at the unfamiliar expression, but grudgingly nodded yes. She glanced over at the drawing on the desk. “What is that?”

He held it up. “An idea.”

She took the drawing and scanned it, absorbed for once in something other than her malcontent. When she gave a swift glance out the window at the river, he knew she got it.

“Can you build this?”

“I think so.” Controlling the flow of traffic across the river would make Kenery a wealthy House, far beyond Salt or Red Gold Bridge. The boats from Brythern and countries south would all put in at the port here, their goods would flow across Aeritan all the easier, and Kenery would become the center of commerce throughout Aeritan.

“Don’t tell your father,” he said.

She gave a scornful laugh. “Of course not. What do you take me for?”

A double-crossing bitch? He kept his mouth shut on that one too. She set down the drawing and turned toward him. She placed her hands on his forearms, but she had to steel herself to do it.

“So, Colar of Terrick, you have big plans. Please manage to stay alive long enough to see them through.”

“Your fortunes rise and fall along with mine, Janye of Kenery,” he said. He drew her close, his hated wife. “With you at my back, what do I have to fear?”

Their kiss was cold, without fervor, and he had to push down the revulsion he felt. It shouldn’t have been this way, but survival required it. Ambition demanded it. He had a House to overthrow and a bridge to build.