Raven's Shadow

CHAPTER 1

“It’s not far now, my lad,” said Tier. “That’s smoke ahead, not just mist—we’ll find a nice village inn where we can warm up.”

His horse snorted at him in reply, or more likely at a bothersome drop of rain, and continued its steady progress down the trail.

The horse, like the sword Tier carried, was of far better quality than his clothing. He’d scavenged both the horse and sword from men he’d killed: the sword in his first year of war, the horse earlier this year when his own mount had been killed beneath him. A warhorse bred and trained to carry a nobleman, Skew had carried Tier, a baker’s son, through two battles, six skirmishes, and, by rough reckoning, almost a thousand miles of trail.

He was a valuable horse, though in the first few weeks of Tier’s journey the avarice in the eyes of the ragged men in the areas torn by years of war had as much to do with hunger as gold. Tier had waited eagerly for one of them to attack him, to ambush him if they could. But something, maybe the battle-readiness that still lurked under his calm facade, kept them away from him.

But in the more prosperous areas away from the Empire’s borders, the chances of an attack were greatly lessened, damn the luck. A fight would have given him momentary respite from the dread he felt toward his current task—going home.

So many were dead. The two young men from his village who’d signed on with him to fight in a war half a continent away from their home had died, as had many other young men hoping for gold, glory, or escape. Tier had survived. He still wasn’t quite certain how that had happened—he certainly hadn’t planned on it. He had never sought death, but any soldier knows his demise could come at any time.

If the war had lasted forever, Tier would have fought until he died. But the war was over, and the post the Sept he’d served offered him was nothing he wanted. He had no desire to train up more young men for battle.

So now he rode back home. It would have never occurred to the boy who’d crept out of the family home almost a decade ago that returning would be so much harder than leaving.

Tier’s massive gelding shook his black and white mane, splattering Tier with water. He patted the horse’s neck.

“There, what did I tell you, Skew?” Tier said. “There’s a roof down there, you can see it between the trees.”

He looked forward to the warm common room of an inn, flooded with noise and ale—things to fill his emptiness. Maybe a bit of cheer would stay with him until he was home.

He was getting closer. Even without a map, the bitter taste of old magic that filled these mountains would have told him so. Though the battle had been over long ago, wizard’s magic had a way of outlasting even memories, and the Shadowed had been a great wizard. Closer to the battlefield of Shadow’s Fall, riding the forest paths could be dangerous. Near his home village, Redern, everyone knew to avoid certain places still held in fell magic’s grip.

Unconcerned about magic of any kind, the bay and white patchwork-colored gelding picked his way down the narrow mountain pathway, and, as the slope turned gentle, onto a dirt track that in turn widened into a cobbled road. Shortly thereafter the small village Tier’d glimpsed from the hills above emerged from beneath the trees.

The wet stone houses, so different from the wooden villages he’d ridden through these past nine years, reminded him of home, though there was a softness to the architecture that his village did not have. It wasn’t home, but it was a proper village. It would have a market square, and that’s where the inn would be.

He envisioned a small, warm room, bathed in golden light from the fireplace and torches—someplace where a soldier could get a good, hot meal and stay warm and dry.

As he drew closer to the town market, the smell of smoke and roasting meat filled the air. It was reflex only that had him loosen his sword and made the gelding flex and snort: too much war, too many villages burned. Tier murmured to Skew, reminding him they were done with that part of their lives, though he could not make himself resecure his sword.

As they turned into the market square, he saw a burning pyre.

Evening was an odd time for a funeral; Tier frowned. This close to home they would bury their dead, not burn them. He looked through the crowd and noticed there were no women or children watching the fire.

It was an execution, not a funeral.

In most places where the memories of the Shadowed lingered, they burned witches. Not the highborn wizards who worked their magic for the nobles who paid them—they were above village justice—but the healers, hedgewitches, and Travelers who offended or frightened the wrong person could find themselves in serious trouble. When such a one burned, the village women would watch from darkened windows—safe from the wrath of the dead.

Strangers like Tier sometimes found themselves taken for Travelers or hedgewitches. Still, he was armed and had hard coin to pay his way—and from the smell of smoke and flesh, this village had already slaked its bloodlust. He rested his hand on his sword hilt, and decided it would be safe enough to stop for the night.

Tier rode by the pyre with little more than a glance, but that quick look had told him that the man in the center of the burning wood had been killed before the fire was lit. A dead man was beyond aid.

The sullen crowd of men gathered around the pyre quieted further as he crossed near them, but when he took no notice of them, they turned back to their grim entertainment.

As Tier had expected, he found the inn on the edge of the village square. There was a stable adjacent to the inn, but no one manned it. Doubtless the stable boy could be found in the crowd in the square.

Tier unsaddled Skew, rubbed him down with a rough cloth, and led him into an unoccupied stall. Looking for hay, he noticed a handcart bedecked in Traveler’s trappings, leather fringe and bright paint, sadly faded. So the man they’d burned had been a Traveler.

Tier walked past the cart and took a forkful of hay back to Skew, though his eagerness to spend the evening in the tavern had ebbed considerably since he’d ridden into the village. The nearness of violence had set his nerves on edge, and the quiet stable soothed him. He lingered until full darkness fell, but finally the thought of something hot to eat overcame his reluctance to face people.

As he walked out of the stables, only a few figures were left silhouetted against the light of the fire: guards to make sure the man didn’t come back to life and flee, Tier supposed. He’d never seen a man with his throat slit come back to life and cast magic. Oh, he’d heard the tales, too—even told a few himself. But he’d seen a lot of death, and in his experience it was final.

When he entered the tavern, he was taken aback by the noise. A quick glance told him that no one had noticed him enter, so he found a place between the stairs and the back wall where he could observe the room for a moment.

He ought to have realized that the mob wouldn’t have dispersed so easily. After a killing, most men sought alcohol, and the inn’s common room was filled to bursting with men, most of them half-drunk on ale and mob-madness. He considered retreating to sleep in the stables, but he was hungry. He’d wait a while and see if things would calm enough that it would be safe for a stranger like him to eat here.

The room rumbled with frantic laughter, reminding him of the aftermath of battle, when men do crazy things they spend the rest of their life trying to forget.

He had cheese and flatbread still in his saddlebag. It wasn’t a hot meal, and the cheese was a bit blue in spots, but he could eat it in peace. He took a step toward the door.

As if his movement had been a clarion call, the room hushed expectantly. Tier froze, but he quickly realized that no one was looking at him.

In the silence, the creaking of wood drew his eyes to the stairway not an arm’s length from where he stood. Heavy boots showed first, the great bull of a man who wore them followed at last by a girl he pulled down the stairs. From his splattered apron, the man had to be the innkeeper himself, though there were old calluses on his hands that might have come from a war axe or broadsword.

The innkeeper stopped four or five steps above the main floor, leaving his captive in plain view. Unnoticed in his position near the back of the room, a little behind the stairs, Tier faced the growing certainty that he was not going to get a hot meal and a soft bed tonight.

The distinctive silver-ash hair that hung in sleep-frayed braids almost to her waist told Tier that she was a Traveler, a relative, he supposed, of the dead young man roasting outside.

He thought her a child at first, but her loose night rail caught on a rounded hip that made him add a year or two to her age. When she looked up at the crowd, he could see that her eyes were clear amber green and older than her face.

The men in the inn were mostly farmers; one or two carried a long knife in their belt. He had seen such men in the army, and respected them. They were probably good men, most of them, with wives and mothers waiting for them at home, uncomfortable with the violence their fear had led them to.

The girl would be all right, Tier told himself. These men would not hurt a child as easily as they’d killed the man. A man, a Traveler, was a threat to their safety. A child, a girl-child, was something these men protected. Tier looked around the room, seeing the softening in several faces as they took in her bewildered alarm.

His assessing gaze fell upon a bearded man who sat eating stew from a pot. Finely tailored noblemen’s garments set the man apart from the natives. Such clothes had been sewn in Taela or some other large city.

Something about the absorbed, precise movements the man made as he ate warned Tier that this man might be the most dangerous person in the room—then he looked back at the girl and reconsidered.

In the few seconds that Tier had spent appraising the room, she’d shed her initial shock and fright as cleanly as a snake sheds its skin.

The young Traveler drew herself up like a queen, her face quiet and composed. The innkeeper was a foot taller, but he no longer looked an adequate guard. The ice in the girl’s cool eyes brought a chill born of childhood stories to creep down Tier’s spine. Instincts honed in years of battle told him that he wasn’t the only one she unnerved.

Stupid girl, Tier thought.

A smart girl would have been sobbing softly in terror and shrinking to make herself look smaller and even younger, appealing to the sympathies of the mob. These weren’t mercenaries or hardened fighters; they were farmers and merchants.

If he could have left then, he would have—or at least that’s what he told himself; but any movement on his part now would draw attention. No sense in setting himself up for the same treatment received by the dead man in the square.

“Where’s the priest? I need him to witness my account.” asked the innkeeper, sounding smug and nervous at the same time. If he had looked at the girl he held, he would have sounded more nervous than smug.

The crowd shuffled and spat out a thin young man who looked around in somewhat bleary surprise to find himself the center of attention. Someone brought out a stool and a rickety table no bigger than a dinner plate. When a rough sheet of skin, an ink pot, and a quill were unearthed, the priest seated himself with a bit more confidence.

“Now then,” said the innkeeper. “Three days’ lodging, four coppers each day. Three meals each day at a copper each.”

Tier’s eyebrows crept up cynically. He saw no signs that the inn had been transported to Taela, where such charges might be justified. For this inn, two coppers a day with meals was more likely.

“Twenty-one coppers,” announced the priest finally. Silence followed.

“A copper a day for storing the cart,” said the nobleman Tier had noticed, without looking up from his meal. By his accent he was from more eastern regions, maybe even the coast. “That makes three more coppers, twenty-four coppers in total: one silver.”

The innkeeper smiled smugly, “Ah yes, thank you, Lord Wresen. According to the law, when a debt of a silver is incurred and not remanded”—from the way the word was emphasized, it was obvious to Tier that remanded was a word that seldom left the lips of the innkeeper—“that person may be sold to redeem the debt. If no buyer is found, they shall suffer fifty lashes in the public square.”

Flogging was a common punishment. Tier knew, as did all the men in the room, that such a child was unlikely to survive fifty lashes. Tier stepped away from the door and opened his mouth to protest, but he stopped as he realized exactly what had been happening.

His old commander had told him once that knowledge won more battles than swords did. The innkeeper’s motivation was easy to understand. Selling the girl could net him more than his inn usually made in a week, if he could sell her. None of the villagers here would spend a whole silver to buy a Traveler. Tier would give odds that the innkeeper’s knowledge of law had come from the nobleman—Lord Wresen, the innkeeper had called him. Tier doubted the man was a “lord” at all: the innkeeper was flattering him with the title because of his obvious wealth—it was safer and more profitable that way.

It didn’t take a genius to see that Wresen had decided he wanted the girl and engineered matters so that he would have her. She would not be beautiful as a woman, but she had the loveliness that belongs to maidens caught in the moment between childhood and the blossom of womanhood. Wresen had no intention of letting her be flogged to death.

“Do you have a silver?” the innkeeper asked the Traveler girl with a rough shake.

She should have been afraid. Even now Tier thought that a little show of fear would go a long way toward keeping her safe. Selling a young girl into slavery was not a part of these farmers’ lives and would seem wrong. Not even the innkeeper was entirely comfortable with it. If she appealed to his mercy, the presence of the other men in the inn would force him to release her.

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.

Tier had never actually met a Traveler before. But he was well used to dealing with frightened young things—the army had been filled with young men. Even tired and wet as he was, he knew better than to address those words head on—why would she believe anything he said? But if he didn’t get her under shelter, sharing his warmth, she was likely to develop lung fever. That would defeat his entire purpose in saving her.

“Good even, lady,” he said, with a fair imitation of a nobleman’s bow despite the weight of the heavy saddle. “I am Tieragan of Redern—most people call me Tier.” Then he waited.

She stared at him; he felt a butterfly-flutter of magic—then her eyes widened incredulously, as if she’d heard something more than he’d said. “I am Seraph, Raven of the Clan of Isolda the Silent. I give you greetings, Bard.”

“Well met, Seraph,” he said. Doubtless her answer would have conveyed a lot to a fellow Traveler. Maybe they’d even know why she addressed him as bard, doubtless some Traveler etiquette. “I am returning to Redern. If my map is accurate—and it hasn’t been notably accurate so far—Redern is about two days’ travel west and north of here.”

“My clan, only Ushireh and I, was traveling to the village we just left,” she returned, shivering now. “I don’t know where Ushireh intended to go afterward.”

Tier had been counting on being able to deliver her back to her people. “It was just the two of you?”

She nodded her head, watching him as warily as a hen before a fox.

“Do you have relatives nearby? Someone you could go to?” he asked.

“Traveling clans avoid this area,” she said. “It is known that the people here are afraid of us.”

“So why did your brother come here?” He shifted the saddle to a more comfortable hold, resting it against his hip.

“It is given to the head of a clan to know where shadows dwell,” she replied obscurely. “My brother was following one such.”

Tier’s experience with mages had led him to avoid questioning them when they talked of magic—he found that he usually knew less after they were finished than he did when he started. Whatever had led the young man here, it had left Seraph on her own.

“What happened to the rest of your clan?” he asked.

“Plague,” she said. “We welcomed a Traveling stranger to our fires one night. The next night one of the babies had a cough—by morning there were three of ours dead. The clan leader tried to isolate them, but it was too late. Only my brother and I survived.”

“How old are you?

“Sixteen.”

That was younger than he expected from her manner, though from her appearance, she could have easily been as young as thirteen. He shifted his saddle onto his shoulder to rest his arm. As he did so, he heard a thump and the saddle jerked in his hold. The arrow quivered in the thick leather of the saddle skirt, which presently covered his chest.

He threw himself forward and knocked her to the muddy ground underneath him. Holding her still despite her frantic battle to free herself of him, a hand keeping her quiet, he spoke to her in a toneless whisper.

“Quiet now, love. Someone out there is sending arrows our way; take a look at my saddle.”

When she stilled, he slid his weight off of her. The grass was high enough to hide their movements in the dark. She rolled to her belly, but made no further move away from him. He rested a hand on her back to keep her in place until he could find their attacker in the dark. Her ribs vibrated with the pounding of her heart.

“He’s two dozen paces beyond your horse,” she whispered, “a little to the right.”

He didn’t question how she could see their attacker in the pitch-darkness of the forested night, but sneaked forward until he crouched in front of Skew where he held still, hoping that the mud that covered him head to toe would keep him from being a target for another arrow.

He glanced back to make certain that Seraph was still hidden, and stifled a curse.

She stood upright, her gaze locked beyond Skew. He assumed she was watching their attacker. Her clothes were dark enough to blend into the forested dark, but her pale hair caught the faint moonlight.

“Seraph,” said a soft voice. It continued in a liquid tongue Tier had never heard before.

“Speak Common,” answered Seraph in cold clear tones that could have come from an empress rather than a battered, muddy, half-grown girl. “Your tongue does not favor Traveler speech. You sound like a hen trying to quack.”

Well, thought Tier, if our pursuer had intended to kill Seraph, he’d have done so already. He had a pretty good idea then who it was that had tried to put an arrow in his hide. He hadn’t seen that Lord Wresen carried a bow, but there might have been one in the man’s luggage.

“I have killed the one who would hurt you,” continued the soft voice.

Tier supposed that it might have appeared that he’d been killed. He’d thrown himself down half a breath after the arrow hit, and the saddle and blanket made a lump on the ground that with the cover of tall grass might look like a body from a distance.

“Come with me, little one,” Tier’s would-be killer said. “I have shelter and food nearby. You can’t stay out here alone. You’ll be safe with me.”

Tier could hear the lie in the man’s words, but he didn’t think Seraph could. He waited for the man to get close enough for Tier to find him, hoping that Seraph would not believe him. After spending two silver and four copper on her, as well as missing his dinner, Tier had something of an investment in her well-being.

“A Raven is never alone,” Seraph said.

“Seraph,” chided the man. “You know better than that. Come, child, I have a safe place for you to abide. In the morning I’ll take you to a clan I know of, not far from here.”

Tier could see him now, a shadow darker than the trees he slipped between. Something about the way the shadow moved, combined with his voice, gave his identity to Tier: he’d been right; it was Wresen.

“Which clan would that be?” asked Seraph.

“I—” Some instinct turned Wresen before Tier struck, and Tier’s sword met metal.

Tier threw his weight against the other man, pushing Wresen away to get some striking distance between them—where Tier’s superior reach would do him some good.

They fought briskly for a few minutes, mostly feeling each other out, searching for weaknesses. The older man was faster than Tier had expected, but he wasn’t the only one who’d underestimated his opponent. From the grunt Wresen let out the first time he caught Tier’s sword, he’d underestimated Tier’s strength—something that was not uncommon. Tier was tall and, as he’d often been teased, slight as a stripling.

By the time they drew back to regroup, Tier boasted a shallow cut on his cheekbone and another on the underside of his right forearm. The other man had taken a hard blow from Tier’s pommel on the wrist and Tier was pretty sure he’d drawn blood over his adversary’s eye.

“What do you want with the girl?” asked Tier. This was too much effort for a mere bedmate, no matter how Wresen’s tastes ran.

“Naught but her safety,” insisted Wresen. The lie echoed in Tier’s ears. “Which is more than you can say.”

He made an odd gesture with his fingers, and Tier dropped his sword with a cry as it became too hot to hold.

Wizard, thought Tier, but neither surprise nor dismay slowed him. Leaving his sword where it lay, Tier charged, catching the other man in the stomach with his shoulder and pushing both of them back into a mass of shrubs, which caught at their feet.

Wresen, unprepared, stumbled and fell. Tier struck hard, aiming for the throat, but his opponent rolled too fast. Quick as a weasel, Wresen regained his feet. Twice Tier jumped and narrowly avoided the other’s blade. But he wasn’t a fool; unarmed, his chances weren’t good.

“Run, Seraph,” he said. “Take the horse and get out of here.”

With luck he should be capable of holding her pursuer long enough that she could lose him in the woods. If he could keep him busy enough, Wresen wouldn’t have time to work magic.

“Don’t be more of a fool than you can help, Bard,” she said coldly.

The other man swore, and Tier saw that Wresen’s sword had begun to glow as if it were still in the blacksmith’s fire. Steam rose from his sword hand as he made odd gestures toward it with his free hand. Wresen was no longer giving any heed to Tier at all—which was the last mistake he ever made.

Tier pulled his boot knife out of the man’s neck and cleaned it on the other’s cloak. When he was finished, he looked at Seraph.

Her pale skin and face were easy to find in the darkness. She reminded him of a hundred legends: so must Loriel have stood when she faced the Shadowed with nothing more than her song, or Terabet before throwing herself from the walls of Anarorgehn rather than betraying her people. His father had always said that his grandfather told him too many stories.

“Why choose me over him?” Tier asked her.

She said, “I heard him at the inn. He was no friend of mine.”

Tier narrowed his eyes. “You heard me at the inn as well. He only helped the innkeeper add coppers—I bought you intent on revenge.”

She lifted her chin. “I’m not stupid. I am Raven—and you are Bard. I saw what you did.”

The words were in Common, but they made no sense to him.

He frowned at her. “What do you mean? Mistress, I have been a baker and a soldier, which is to say swordsman, tracker, spy, and even tailor, blacksmith, and harness maker upon occasion—and doubtless a half dozen other professions. But I make no claim to be a bard. Even if I were, I have no idea what that has to do with you. Or what being a raven means.”

She stared at him as if he made as little sense to her as she had to him. “You are Bard,” she said again, but this time there was a wobble in her voice.

He took a good look at her. It might have been rain that wet her cheeks, but he’d bet his good knife that there would be salt in the water. She was little more than a child and she’d just lost her brother under appalling circumstances. It was the middle of the night, she was shaking with cold, and she’d held up to more than many a veteran soldier.

“I’ll dispose of the body,” he said. “Neither of us will get any sleep with him out here attracting carrion-eaters. You get out of the rain and into dry clothes. We’ll talk in the morning. I promise that no one will harm you until morning at least.”

When she was occupied getting her baggage out of the cart, he led Skew to the body and somehow wrestled the dead man onto the horse’s wet back. He had no intention of burying the man, just moving him far enough away that whatever scavengers the body attracted wouldn’t trouble them. It occurred to him that Wresen might not be alone—indeed, it would be odd if he were because noblemen traveled with servants.

But all he found was a single grey horse tied to a tree about a hundred paces back down the trail and no sign that another horse had been tied nearby.

Tier stopped beside the animal, and let the body slide off Skew’s back into the mud, sword still welded to his hand. Skew, who’d borne with everything, jumped three steps sideways as the body fell and snorted unhappily. The grey pulled back and shook her head, trying to break free—but the reins held. When nothing further happened the horse quieted and lipped nervously at a bunch of nearby leaves.

Tier rifled through the man’s saddlebags, but there was nothing in them but the makings of a few meals and a pouch of silver and copper coins. This last he tucked into his own purse with a soldier’s thrift. He took the food as well. There was nothing on the body either—except for a chunky silver ring with a bit of dark stone in it. He deemed the ring, like the horse and the man’s sword, too identifiable to take, and left it where it was.

In the end, Tier found no hint of who Wresen was, or why he’d been so intent on getting Seraph. Surely a mage wouldn’t have the same unreasoning fear of Travelers that the villagers here had.

He took his knife and cut most of the way through the grey’s reins near the bit. When she got hungry enough she’d break free, but it wouldn’t be for a while yet.

By the time he rode back to camp, Tier was dragging with fatigue. Seraph had taken his advice; he found her huddled under the tree.

A second oilskin tarp, bigger and even more worn that his, increased the size of their shelter so that he might even be able to keep his feet dry. His saddle was in the shelter too, the mud wiped mostly off. He rummaged in the saddlebags and changed to his second set of clothing. They weren’t clean, but dry was more important just now.

Seraph had turned her face away while he changed. Knowing she’d not sleep for the cold on her own, nor agree to snuggle with a stranger—especially not in the present circumstances, he didn’t bother to say anything. He wrapped an arm around her, ignored her squeak of surprised dismay, and stretched out to sleep.

She tried to wiggle away from him, but there wasn’t much room. Then she was still for a long time while Tier drifted into a light doze. Some time later her quiet weeping woke him, and he shifted her closer, patting her back as if she were his little sister coming to him with a scraped knee rather than the loss of her family.

He woke to her strange pale eyes staring at him, lit by sunlight leaking through morning clouds.

“I could have used this on you,” Seraph said.

He looked at the blade she held in her dirty hands—his best knife. She must have been into his saddlebags.

“Yes,” he agreed, taking it from her unresisting hand. “But I saw your face when you looked at our dead friend last night. I was pretty certain you wouldn’t want to deal with another dead body any time soon.”

“I have seen many dead,” she said, and he saw in her eyes that it was true.

“But none that you have killed,” he guessed.

“If I had not been asleep when they were killing my brother,” she said, “I would have killed them all, Bard.”

“You might have.” Tier stretched and slid out from under the tree. “But then you would have been killed also. And, as I told you last night, I am no bard.”

“Just a baker’s son,” she said. “From Redern.”

“Where I am returning,” he agreed.

“You are no solsenti,” she disagreed smugly. “There are no solsenti Bards.”

“Solsenti?” He was beginning to get the feeling that they knew two entirely different languages that happened to have a few words in common.

Her assuredness began to falter, as if she’d expected some other reaction from him. “Solsenti means someone who is not Traveler.”

“Then I’m afraid I am most certainly solsenti.” He dusted off his clothes, but nothing could remove the stains of travel. At least they weren’t wet. “I can play a lute and a little harp, but I am not a bard—though I think that means something different to you than it does to me.”

She stared at him. “But I saw you,” she said. “I felt your magic at the inn last night.”

Startled he stared at her. “I am no mage, either.”

“No,” she agreed. “But you charmed the innkeeper at the inn so that he didn’t allow that man to buy my debt.”

“I am a soldier, mistress,” he said. “And I was an officer. Any good officer learns to manage people—or he doesn’t last long. The innkeeper was more worried about losing his inn than he was about earning another silver or two. It had nothing to do with magic.”

“You don’t know,” she said at last, and not, he thought, particularly to him. “How is it possible not to know that you are Bard?”

“What do you mean?”

She frowned. “I am Raven, you would say Mage—very like a solsenti wizard. But there are other ways to use magic among the Travelers, things your solsenti wizards cannot do. A few of us are gifted in different ways and depending upon that gift, we belong to Orders. One of those Orders is Bard—as you are. A Bard is, as you said, a musician first. Your voice is true and rich. You have a remarkable memory, especially for words. No one can lie to you without you knowing.”

He opened his mouth to say something—he knew not what except that it wouldn’t be kind—but he looked at her first and closed his mouth.

She was so young, for all that she had the imposing manner of an empress. Her skin was grey with fatigue and her eyes were puffy and red with weeping she must have done while he slept. He decided not to argue with her—or believe what she said though it caused cold chills to run down his spine. He was merely good with people, that was all. He could sing, but then so could most Rederni. He was no magic user.

He left her to her speculations and began to take down the camp. If Wresen’s horse made it back to the inn, there might be people looking for him soon. Without saying anything more, she stood up and helped.

“I’m going to take you to my kin in Redern,” he said when their camp was packed and Skew once more attached to the Traveler cart. “But you’ll have to promise me not to use magic while you’re there. My people are as wary as any near Shadow’s Fall. Redern’s a trading town; if there are any Traveler clans around, we’ll hear about them.”

But she didn’t appear to be listening to him. Instead, when she’d scrambled to Skew’s back she said, “You don’t have to worry. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Tell what?” he asked, leading the way back to the trail they’d followed the night before.

“That someone in your family, however far back, laid with a Traveler. Only someone of Traveler blood could be a Bard,” she said. “There are no solsenti Bards.”

He was beginning to resent the way she said solsenti; whatever the true meaning of the word, he was willing to bet it was also a deadly insult.

“I won’t tell anyone else,” she said. “Being Traveler is no healthy thing.”

She glanced up at the mountains that towered above the narrow trail and shivered.

There were not as many thieves in that part of the Empire as there were in the lands to the east where war had driven men off their lands. But Conex the Tinker, who found the dead body beside the trail, was not so honest as all that. He took everything he could find of value: two good boots, a bow, a scorched sword with scraps of flesh still clinging to it (he almost left that but greed outweighed squeamishness in the end), a belt, and a silver ring with a bit of onyx stone set in it.

Two weeks after his unexpected good fortune a stranger met up with him on the road, as sometimes happens when two men have the same destination in mind. They spent most of the day exchanging news and ate together that night. The next morning the stranger, a silver ring safely in his belt pouch, rode off alone.

Conex would never more go a-tinkering.

CHAPTER 2

“You see those two mountains over there?” Tier gestured with his chin toward two rocky peaks that seemed to lean away from each other.

Seraph nodded. After several days’ travel she knew Tier well enough to expect the start of another story, and she wasn’t wrong.

Tier was a good traveling companion, she thought as she listened to his story with half an ear. He was better than her brother Ushireh had been. He was generally cheerful and did more than his fair share of the camp work. He didn’t expect her to say much, which was just as well, for Seraph didn’t have much to say—and she enjoyed his stories.

She knew that she should be planning what to do when they reached Tier’s village. If she could find another clan, they’d take her in just for being Traveler, but being Raven would make her valuable to them.

If Ushireh had been less proud they would have joined another clan when their own clan died. But Ushireh had no Order to lend him rank; he would have gone from clan chief’s son to being no one of importance. Having more than her share of pride, Seraph had understood his dilemma. She’d agreed that they would go on and see what the road brought them.

Only see what the road brought, Ushireh.

There was no reason now not to find another clan. No reason to continue on with this solsenti Bard to his solsenti village. There would be no welcome for her in such a place. From what Tier said, it lay very near Shadow’s Fall. There would be no clans anywhere near it.

But instead of telling him that she would be on her way, she continued to ride on his odd-colored gelding while Tier walked beside her and amused them both with a wondrous array of stories that touched on everything except his home, stories that distracted her from the shivery pain of Ushireh’s death that she’d buried in the same tightly locked place she kept the deaths of the rest of her family.

Arrogance and control were necessary to those who bore the Raven Order. Manipulation of the raw forces of magic was dangerous, and the slightest bit of self-doubt or passion could let it slip out of control. She’d never had trouble with arrogance, but she’d had a terrible time learning emotional control. Eventually she had learned to avoid things that drew her temper: mostly that meant that she kept to herself as much as possible. Her brother, being a loner himself, had respected that. They had often gone days without speaking at all.

Tier, with his constant speech and teasing ways, was outside of her experience. She wasn’t in the habit of observing people; it hadn’t been a skill that she’d needed. But, if truth be told, after journeying with Tier only a few days, she knew more about him than she had most of the people she’d lived with all her life.

He wasn’t one of those soldiers who talked of nothing but the battles he’d fought in. Tier shared funny stories about the life of a solder, but he didn’t talk about the fighting at all. Every morning he rose early and practiced with his sword—finding a quiet place away from her. She knew about the need for quiet and let him be while she did her own practice.

When he wasn’t talking he was humming or singing, but he seldom talked of important things, and when he did he used far fewer words. He didn’t make her talk and didn’t seem uncomfortable with her silence. When they passed other people on the road, he smiled or talked as it came to him. Even with Seraph’s silent presence, a moment or two of Tier’s patter and the other people opened up. No wonder she found herself liking him—everyone liked him. Isolated as most Ravens were kept, even within the clan, she’d never paid enough attention to anyone outside of her family to actually like them before.

“What are you smiling at?” he asked as he finished his story. “That poor goatherd had to live with a wealthy man’s daughter for the rest of his life. Can you imagine a worse fate?”

“Traveling with a man who talks all the time,” she replied, trying her hand at teasing.

Thankfully, he grinned.

It was evening the first time Seraph laid eyes on Redern, a middling-size village carved into the eastern face of a steep-sided mountain that rose ponderously from the icy fury of the Silver River. The settling sun lent a red cast to the uniform grey stones of the buildings that zigzagged up from the road.

Tier slowed to look, and Skew bumped him. He patted the horse’s head absently, then continued at his normal, brisk pace. The road they were on continued past the base of the mountain and then veered abruptly toward a narrow stone bridge that crossed the Silver at the foot of the village.

“The Silver is narrowest here,” he said. “There used to be a ferry, but a few generations ago the Sept ordered a bridge built.”

Seraph thought he was going to begin another story, but he fell silent. He bypassed the bridge by taking a narrow track that continued along the river’s edge. A few donkeys and a couple of mules occupied a series of pens just a few dozen yards beyond the bridge.

He found an empty pen and began to separate Skew from the cart. Seraph climbed down and helped him.

A boy appeared out of one of the pens. “I’ll find some hay for ’em, sir,” he said briskly. “You can store the cart in the shelter in the far pen.” He took a better look at Skew and whistled, “Now that’s an odd one. Never seen a horse with so many colors—like he was supposed to be a bay and someone painted him with big white patches.”

“He’s Fahlarn bred,” said Tier. “Though most of them are bay or brown, I’ve seen a number of spotted horses.”

“Fahlarn?” said the boy, and he looked closer at Tier. “You’re a soldier then?”

“Was,” agreed Tier as he led Skew into the pen. “Where did you say to put the cart?”

The boy turned to look at the cart and his gaze touched Seraph and stuck there. “You’re Travelers?” The boy licked his lips nervously.

“She is,” said Tier closing the pen. “I’m Rederni.”

Tier was good with people: Seraph had every confidence that the boy wouldn’t make them move on if she left Tier to talk to him.

“He said to put the cart in the far pen,” murmured Seraph to that end. “I’ll take it.”

When she got back to Tier, the boy was gone, and Tier had his saddle and bridle on his shoulder.

“The boy’s gone to get some hay for Skew,” he said. “He’ll be in good care here. They don’t allow large animals on the streets—the streets are too steep anyway.”

He didn’t lie about that. The cobblestone village road followed the contours of the mountain for almost a quarter of a mile, with houses on the uppermost side of the road, and then swung abruptly back on itself like a snake, climbing rapidly to a new level as it did so. The second layer of road still had houses on the uphill side, but, looking toward the river, Seraph could see the roofs of the houses they’d just passed.

Stone benches lined the wide corner of the second bend of the zigzagging road, and an old man sat on one of them playing a wooden flute. Tier paused to listen, closing his eyes briefly. Seraph saw the old man look up and start a bit, but he kept playing. After a moment, Tier moved on, but his steps were slower.

He stopped in front of a home marked by sheaves of wheat carved into the lintel over the doorway and by the smell of fresh-baked bread.

“Home,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know what kind of welcome to expect. I haven’t heard from anyone here since I left to go to war—and I left in the middle of the night.”

Seraph waited, but when he made no move to continue she said, “Did they love you?”

He nodded without looking away from the door.

“Then,” she said gently, “I expect that the men will bluster and the women will cry and scold—then they will feast and welcome you home.”

He laughed then. “That sounds about right. I suppose it won’t change for putting it off longer.”

He held the door open for her and followed her into a largish room that managed to be both homey and businesslike at the same time. Behind the counter that divided the room in half were tilted shelves displaying bread in a dozen forms and a burly red-headed man who looked nothing like Tier.

“May I help you, good sir?” asked the man.

“Bandor?” said Tier. “What are you doing here?”

The big man stared at him, then paled a bit. He shook his head as if setting aside whatever it was that had bothered him. Then he smiled with genuine welcome. “As I live and breathe, it’s Tier come back from the dead.”

Bandor stepped around the counter and enveloped Tier in a hearty embrace. “It’s been too long.”

It was odd to see two men embracing—her own people were seldom touched in public outside of childhood. But Tier returned the bigger man’s hug with equal enthusiasm.

“You’re here for good, I hope,” said Bandor, taking a step back.

“That depends upon my father,” Tier replied soberly.

Bandor shook his head and his mouth turned down. “Ah, there is much that has happened since you left. Draken died four years ago, Tier. Your sister and I had been married a few years earlier—I’d taken an apprenticeship here when you left.” He stopped and shook his head. “I’m telling this all topsy-turvy.”

“Dead,” said Tier, his whole body stilled.

“Bandor,” said a woman’s voice from behind a closed door. The door swung wide and a woman came out backwards, having bumped open the door with her hip. Her arms were occupied with a large basket of rolls. “Do you think I ought to do another four dozen rolls, or are the eight dozen we have enough?”

The woman was taller than average, thin and lanky like Tier. And as she turned around, Seraph could see that she had his dark hair and wide mouth.

“Alinath,” said Bandor. “I believe you have a visitor.”

She turned toward Tier with a polite smile and opened her mouth, but when her eyes caught his face no sound left her lips. She dropped the basket on the ground, spilling rolls everywhere, then she was over the top of the counter and wrapped tightly around him.

“Tier,” she said in a muffled voice. “Oh, Tier. We thought you were dead.”

He hugged her back, lifting her off the floor. “Hey, sprite,” he said, and his voice was as choked as hers.

“We kept it for you,” said Alinath. “We kept the bakery for you.”

Alinath pulled back, tears running freely down her face. She took a step away from him and then punched him in the belly, turning her shoulder to put the full force of her body into the blow.

“Nine years,” she said hotly. “Nine years, Tier, and not even a note to say that you were still alive. Damn you, Tier.”

Tier was bent over wheezing, but he held up three fingers.

“We received nothing,” she said angrily. “I didn’t even know where to send you word when Father died.”

“I sent three letters the first year,” he said, huffing for breath. “When I had no reply, I assumed Father washed his hands of me.”

Alinath put her hands to her mouth. “If he ever got your letters, he didn’t say anything to me. Darn my fiendish temper. I’m sorry I hit you, Tier.”

Tier shook his head, denying the need for apology. “Father told me that someday I’d be sorry I taught you how to hit.”

“Come with me,” she said. “Mother will want to see you.” She tugged him from the room, leaving Seraph alone with the man at the counter.

“Welcome,” Bandor said after a long awkward moment. “I am Bandor, journeyman baker, and husband to Alinath of the Bakers of Redern.”

“Seraph, Raven of the Clan of Isolda the Silent,” Seraph replied with outward composure, knowing her words would tell him no more than his eyes had already noticed.

He nodded, bent to right the basket Alinath had dropped, and began to collect the rolls that had fallen on the floor.

When he was finished he said, “Alinath will be busy with Tier; I’d best get to the baking.” He turned on his heel and headed back through the door that Alinath and Tier had taken, leaving Seraph truly alone.

Uncomfortable and out of place, Seraph sat on a small bench and waited. She should have left on her own as soon as Tier had killed the nobleman who pursued her. She’d have been safe enough then. Here in Tier’s village she was as out of place as a crow in a hummingbird nest.

But she stayed where she was until Tier returned alone.

“My apologies,” he said. “I shouldn’t have left you here alone.”

She shrugged. “I am hardly going to come to harm here, nor do I have a place in your reunion.”

He gave her a faint smile. “Yes, well, come with me and I’ll make you known to my sister and mother.”

She stood up. “I’m sorry that your father was not here as well.”

His smile turned wry. “I don’t know if I’d have been welcomed here if my father were still alive.”

“Maybe not right away, but you’re persuasive. He’d have relented eventually.” She found herself patting his arm and stopped as soon as she realized what she was doing.

Tier’s mother and sister awaited them in a small room that had been arranged for a sick person. Alinath sat on a stool next to the bed where Tier’s mother held court. The older woman’s hair was the same dark color as her children’s, though streaked with spiderwebs of age. She wasn’t old, not by Traveler standards, but her skin was yellow with illness.

Both women looked upon Seraph without favor as Tier made his introductions.

“Tier tells us you have no home, child,” said Tier’s mother, in a begrudging tone—as if she expected Seraph to impose on her for a place to stay.

“As long as there are Travelers, I have a home,” Seraph replied. “It only remains for me to find them. Thank you for your concern.”

“I told them that I would escort you to your people,” said Tier. “They don’t come near Shadow’s Fall, so it might take us a few months.”

“So we are to lose you again?” said his mother querulously. “Alinath and Bandor cannot keep up with the work—every week they toil from dawn to dusk for the bakery, which is yours. When you come back in a few months, I will be dead.”

It was said in a dramatic fashion, but Seraph thought that the older woman might be speaking truth.

“I can find my people on my own,” said Seraph.

“Do you hear that, Tier? She is a Traveler and can find her own way,” said Alinath.

“She is sixteen and a woman alone,” returned Tier sharply. “I’ll see her safe.”

“You were younger than that when you went off to war,” said Alinath. “And you weren’t a witch.” She bit off the last word as if it were filthy.

“Alinath,” said Tier in a gentle voice that made his sister pale. “Seraph is my guest here and you will not sharpen your tongue on her.”

“I can take care of myself, both here and on the road,” said Seraph, though his defense touched her—as if the words of a solsenti stranger could hurt her.

“No,” said Tier, his voice firm. “If you’ll house us for the night, Mother, we’ll start out tomorrow morning.”

Tier’s mother and sister exchanged a look, as if they’d discussed the situation while Tier had left them alone to retrieve Seraph.

Tier’s mother smiled at Seraph. “Child, is there a hurry to find your people? If you cannot tarry here until I pass from this world into the next, could you not stay with us as our guest for a season so that we might not lose Tier so soon after we’ve found him?”

“A Traveler might be harmful to business,” said Seraph. “As I said, there is no need for Tier to escort me. I am well capable of finding my people by myself.”

“If you go, he’ll follow you,” said Alinath with resignation. “It may have been a long time since I’ve seen my brother, but I doubt that he has changed so much as to go back on his sworn word.”

“Stay, please,” said his mother. “What few people who will not eat from the table where a Traveler is fed will be more than compensated for by the new business we’ll get from the curious who will come to the bakery just to catch a glimpse of you.”

Seraph was under no illusion that she’d be a welcome guest. But there was no doubt either that they wanted her to stay if that were the only way to keep Tier for a while.

“I’ll stay,” she said reluctantly and felt a weight lift off her shoulders. If she were here then she wasn’t fighting demons and watching people die around her because she hadn’t been able to protect them. “I’ll stay for a little while.”

“Where is my brother?” Alinath’s voice sounded almost accusing, as if she thought Seraph had done something to Tier.

Seraph looked up from sifting the never-ending supply of flour, one of the unskilled tasks that had fallen to her hands. She glanced pointedly at the empty space next to her where Tier had spent the last three weeks mixing various permutations of yeasted bread. She raised her eyebrows in surprise, as if she hadn’t noted that he hadn’t taken his usual place this morning. Then she looked back at Alinath and shrugged.

It was rude, but Alinath’s sharp question had been rude, too.

Alinath’s jaw tightened, but she was evidently still intimidated enough by Seraph’s status as Traveler not to speak further. She turned on her heel and left Seraph to her work.

Tier didn’t return until the family was sitting down for lunch. He brushed a kiss on the top of Alinath’s head and sat down across from her, beside Seraph.

“Where were you this morning?” Alinath asked.

“Riding,” he said in a tone that welcomed no questions. “Pass the carrots please, Seraph.”

The rhythms of the bakery came back to Tier as if he’d not spent the better part of the last decade with a sword in his hand instead of a wooden spoon. He woke before dawn to fire the ovens and, after a few days, quit having to ask Alinath for the proper proportion of ingredients.

He could see the days stretching ahead of him in endless procession, each day just exactly like the one before. The years of soldiering had made him no more resigned to spending the rest of his life baking than he’d been at fifteen.

Even something as exotic as his stray Traveler didn’t alter the pattern of life at his father’s bakery. She worked as she was asked and seldom spoke, even to him. Only his nightly rides broke the habits of his childhood, but even they had begun to acquire a sameness.

He ought to sell the horse, his mother had told him over dinner yesterday, then he could use the money as a bride price. There were a number of lovely young village women who would love to be a baker’s wife.

This morning he’d gotten up earlier than usual and tried to subdue his restlessness with work—to no effect. So as soon as Bandor had come in to watch the baking, Tier left and took Skew out, galloping him over the bridge and up into the mountains until they arrived at a small valley he’d discovered as a boy. Once there, he’d explored the valley until the lather on Skew’s back had dried and his own desperation loosened under the influence of the sweet-grass smell and mountain breeze.

Part of him was ready to leave this afternoon, to take Seraph and find her people. But the rest of him wanted to put the journey off as long as he could. Once it was over, there would be no further escapes for him. He wasn’t fifteen anymore: he was a man, with a man’s responsibilities.

“You’re quiet today,” said Seraph as they worked together after lunch. “I was beginning to think that silence was a thing that Rederni avoided at all cost. Always you are telling stories, or singing. Even Bandor hums all the time he works.”

He grinned at her as he kneaded dough. “I should have warned you,” he said, “that every man in Redern thinks himself a bard and most of the women, too.”

“In love with the sound of your own voices, the whole lot of you,” said Seraph without rancor, dumping hot water in the scrubbing tub where a collection of mixing bowls awaited cleaning. “My father always said that too many words cheapened the value of a man’s speech.”

Tier laughed again—but Alinath had entered the baking room with an armful of empty boards in time to hear the whole of Seraph’s observation.

“My father said that a silent person is trying to hide something,” she said as she dumped the trays in a stack. “Girl, get the broom and sweep the front room. See that you get the corners so that we don’t attract mice.”

Tier saw Seraph stiffen, but she grabbed the broom and dustpan.

“Alinath, she is a guest in our house,” Tier bit out as the door closed behind Seraph. “You don’t use that tone to the hired boy. She has done nothing to earn your disrespect. Leave her be.”

“She is a Traveler,” snapped Alinath, but there was an undercurrent of desperation in her voice. “She bewitches you because she is young and pretty. You laugh with her and you’ll barely exchange a word with any of us.”

How could he explain to her his frustration with the life that so obviously suited her without hurting her feelings? The bakery was smothering him.

When he said nothing, Alinath said, “You’re a man. Bandor is the same—neither of you see what she is. You think she’s a poor familyless, defenseless woman in need of protection because that’s what she wants you to see.”

A flush of temper lit Alinath’s eyes as she began to pace. “I see a woman who looks at my brother as a way to wealth and ease that she’ll never have when she finds one of those ragtag bands of Travelers. She doesn’t want to go to her people—even you must see that. I tell you that if you just give her the chance, she’ll snatch you into a marriage-bed.”

Tier opened his mouth and then closed it again. He tried to see Seraph as his sister described her, but the image didn’t ring true.

“She’s a child,” he said.

“I was married when I was her age.”

“She is a child and a Traveler,” he said. “She’d no more look at me that way than she’d think of marrying a… a horse. She thinks of all of us as if we were a different species.”

“Oh and you know so much about women,” his sister ranted, though she was careful to keep her voice down so she couldn’t be heard in the front room where Seraph was. “You need to find a good wife. You always liked Kirah. She’s widowed now and would bring a fair widow’s portion with her.”

Tier put the dough in the greased bowl he’d set out for it, covered it with cheesecloth, and then scrubbed his hands in Seraph’s tub of cooling water. He shook them dry and took off his father’s apron and hung it on the hook. Enough, he thought.

“Don’t wait dinner for me,” he said and started to leave. He stopped before he opened the door to the front room. “I’ve been counting too heavily on manners and the memory of my little sister who saw me leave without telling anyone because she understood me enough to know that I had to leave. I see that you need a stronger reason to leave Seraph alone. Just you remember that, for all of her quietness she has a temper as hot as yours. She is a Traveler and a wizard, and if she takes a notion to teach you what that means, neither your tongue nor your fist will do you a bit of good.”

He left before she could say anything, closing the door to the baking room firmly behind him.

Seraph glanced his way as he stalked past her, but he said nothing to her. She’d be all right; his warning would keep Alinath away from her for a while.

He couldn’t face Seraph right now, not with his sister’s accusations ringing in his ears. Not that he believed what Alinath had said about Seraph for a moment—but Alinath’d opened the way for possibilities that made him uncomfortable. He’d never thought much about the peace that Seraph’s tart commentary and quiet presence brought him: he’d just been grateful for the relief from the demands of his family. He didn’t want to examine what he felt any closer. So Tier nodded once at Seraph and also to Bandor before leaving the bakery.

Once outside, his steps faltered. He’d worn Skew out this morning, so it hardly seemed fair to take him out again. He could walk—but it wasn’t exercise he needed, it was escape.

The Hero’s Welcome was a tavern and an inn, a conglomeration of several older buildings, and the first building on the road through Redern. It was seldom empty, and when Tier entered it there were a number of men sitting near the kitchen entrance gossiping with each other while the tanner’s father, Ciro, coaxed soft music from his viol.

It made Tier think of his grandfather and the grand concerts he and Ciro, who had been the tanner himself then, had put on. If Seraph ever heard the old man play, she’d know why Tier would never consider himself a bard in any sense of the word.

He seated himself beside these men he’d known since he was a child and greeted them by name, older men, all of them, contemporaries of his grandfather. The younger men would come in later, when they were finished with their work and chores.

One of the men had been a soldier in his youth, and Tier spent a little time exchanging stories. The innkeeper, noticing that there was a newcomer, offered Tier ale. He took it, but merely nursed it because the oblivion he sought wouldn’t come from alcohol.

Ciro gradually shifted from playing broken bits and pieces into a recognizable song, and an old, toothless man began humming, his tone uncertain with age, but his pitch absolutely true. One after the other the old men began to sing. Tier joined in and let the healing music make the present fade away.

They sang song after song, sometimes pausing while one man tried to hum enough of something he’d heard long ago for Ciro to remember it, too—that man had a memory for music that Tier had only seen his grandfather equal.

It was the first time that he was happy to be home.

“Boy,” said Ciro, “sing ‘The Hills of Home’ with me.”

Tier grinned at the familiar appellation. It no longer fit as well as it had when he’d tagged along after his grandfather. He stood and let the first few notes of the viol pull him into the song. He took the low part of the duet, the part that had been his grandfather’s, while the old man’s warm tenor flung itself into the more difficult melody. Singing a duet rather than blending with a group, Tier loosed the power of his voice and realized with momentary surprise that Ciro didn’t have to hold back. For the first time, Tier’s singing held its own with the old musician’s. Then the old words left no more room for thought. It was one of the magic times, when no note could possibly go astray and any foray into countermelody or harmony worked perfectly. When they finished the last note they were greeted with a respectful silence.

“In all my wandering, I’ve never heard the like. Not even in the palace of the Emperor himself.” A stranger’s voice broke the silence.

Tier turned to see a man of about fifty, a well-preserved, athletic fifty, wearing plain-colored clothes of a cut and fit that would have done for a wealthy merchant or lower nobleman, but somehow didn’t seem out of place in a rural tavern full of brightly dressed Rederni. His iron-grey hair, a shade darker than his short beard, was tied behind his head in a fashion that belonged to the western seaboard.

He smiled warmly at Tier. “I’ve heard a great deal about you from these rascals since you returned—and they didn’t lie when they said that your song was a rare treat. Willon, retired Master Trader, at your service. You can be no one but Tieragan Baker back from war.” He held his hand out, and Tier took it, liking the man immediately.

As Tier sat down again, the retired master trader pulled a chair in between two of the others so he sat opposite Tier at the table.

Ciro smiled and said in his shy speaking voice, so at odds with his singing, “Master Willon has built a fine little store near the end of the road. You should go there and see it, full of bits and things he’s collected.”

“You are young to be retiring,” observed Tier. “And Redern is an odd place to choose for retirement—these mountains get cold in the winter.”

Master Willon had one of those faces that appeared to be smiling even in repose—which robbed his grin of not a bit of its effect.

“My son made Master last year,” he said. “He’s got a fire that will take him far—but not if he spends all of his days competing with me for control of the business. So I retired.”

Willon laughed quietly and shook his head. “But it wasn’t as easy as that. The men who serve my house had been mine for thirty years. They’d listen to my son, nod their heads, and come to me to see if I liked their orders. So I had to take myself out of Taela, and Redern came to mind.”

He raised his tankard to Ciro. “My first trip as a caravan master I came by this very inn and was treated to the rarest entertainment I’d ever heard—two men who sang as if the gods themselves were their audience. I thought I’d heard the finest musicians in the world in Taela’s courts, but I’d never heard anything like that. Business is business, gentlemen. But music is in my soul—if not my voice.”

“If it’s music you like, there’s plenty here,” said Tier agreeably as a small group of younger men came through the inn door.

“Well look what decided to drop by at last,” said one of them. “You wiggle out from under your sister’s thumb, Tier?”

Tier had greeted them all since he’d returned from war, of course, but that had been under different circumstances, when they were customers or he was. The tavern doors made them all kindred.

Too much so.

With the younger men came less music and more talk—and they must have been talking to his mother because most of the talk had to do with his upcoming marriage. The question was not when he was going to marry; it was to whom.

Tier excused himself earlier than he had expected to and found himself leaving with Master Willon.

“Don’t let them fret you,” Willon said.

“I won’t,” Tier said. He almost stopped there, but couldn’t quite halt his bitterness—maybe because a stranger might understand better than any of his friends and kin he’d left behind in the tavern. “There’s more to life than wedding and breeding and baking bread.”

He started walking and Willon fell into step beside him. “I’ve heard as much praise for your baking as I have for your singing. You don’t want to be a baker?”

“Baking…” Tier struggled to put a finger on the thing that bothered him about his family’s business. “Baking is like washing—the results are equally temporary.” He gave a half-laugh. “That’s arrogant of me, isn’t it? That I’d like to do something that means more, something that will outlast me the way these buildings have outlasted the men who built them.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way before,” said Willon slowly. “But immortality… I think that’s a basic instinct rather than the product of pride. It goes toward the same things that they were trying to push you into. How did you put it? Wedding and breeding. A man’s immortality can be found in his children.”

Children? Tier hadn’t been aware that he’d thought about the matter at all, but the need was there, buried beneath the “I can’t breathe with the weight of my family’s wishes” tightness in his chest.

“So what do you want to do, if not bake?” asked Willon, betraying his foreignness with the question. No Rederni would have suggested that he do anything else. “Would you go back to fighting if there were a war to be had?”

“Not soldiering,” Tier said firmly. “I’ve killed more than any man ought—the only product of warmaking is death.” Tier took a deep breath and closed his eyes briefly as he thought. Maybe it was seeing his little valley again on his morning ride, but something inside of him vibrated like one of Ciro’s viol strings when he finally said, “I’d like to farm.”

Willon laughed, but it was a comforting laugh. “I’d not think that growing crops would be much more permanent than baking bread—just takes a bit longer to get to the final product.”

But it wasn’t. It was different. Tier stopped walking so that he could encompass that difference in words that didn’t sound as stupid out loud as they did to himself, stupid but true.

“I’ve known farmers,” he said slowly. “A lot of the men who fought the Fahlarn were farmers, fighting for their lands. They are as much a part of their lands as flour is a part of bread.” He shook his head at himself and grinned sheepishly because it sounded stupider out loud. “The land is immortal, Master Willon, and a farmer has a part of that immortality.”

“So are you going to be a farmer?” asked Willon with interest.

“And marry and breed?” Tier said lightly over the longing Willon’s words produced. “Not likely.” He began walking again, though they’d passed the bakery a while back. He had no desire to go home yet. “There’s not a woman in Redern who’d marry me and let me go farming. I know the money farming brings in and that bakery brings in ten times as much—and it would break my family’s heart.”

“Farmers don’t make much,” agreed the master trader. “But if you look around you might find a woman who’d rather be a farmer’s wife than live in the village under the tyranny of her neighbors.”

That night Seraph got up out of her cot in the small room they’d given her and climbed out of the window into the garden that backed the house, her blanket serving as a cloak. The solid walls made her feel closed in and trapped. Most of her nights had been spent in tents rather than buildings.

She found the bench that had served as her bed on more than one night since she’d chosen to stay here and lay down on it again to look up at the stars.

She needed to go. These people owed her nothing, not the food she ate or the blanket she wrapped herself in. She did not belong here. She hadn’t heard the argument that Tier and Alinath had while she swept the front room, but she’d heard the raised voices.

Tomorrow, she would go. In two weeks or three she would find a clan that would take her in.

Resolute, she closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep. A long time later, exhaustion had more success than her will and she relaxed into slumber.

A rotten tomato hit Arvage’s shoulder while the solsenti boys bounced with nervous bravado. Didn’t they know that the old man could kill them all with a touch of the magic he knew? Didn’t they know that he and Seraph had spent the better part of the past two days banishing a khurlogh, a demon spirit, that had been preying on nighttime visitors to the town well?

Instead her teacher’s arthritic fingers touched the mess on his shoulder and transformed it into a fresh, ripe tomato.

“My thanks, young sirs,” he said. “A rare addition to my dinner.”

The scene faded as Seraph stirred restlessly in protest of the old memory. She quieted and her dream took up again at a different point in time.

Her father’s fingers petted her hair as she leaned against his knee, half-asleep in the aftermath of a full meal and the warmth of the nearby fire.

“The entire clan gone?” her father said, a small tremor in his bassy voice. “Are you certain it was the Imperial Army?”

Their visitor nodded his head wearily. “As far as we’ve been able to determine, the last village that they passed through complained to the commander of the imperial troops stationed nearby. Told them that the Travelers kidnapped a pair of young women. The troops came upon the clan and massacred them from grandfather to day-old babe. Turns out that the women were taken by bandits—the imperial troops found them on their way back to the village.”

They buried Arvage in a wilderness glen, just as he had wanted. Seraph herself had thrown in the first, symbolic, handful of earth. He’d died trying to work magic that he could no longer harness because the pain in his joints broke through his fearsome control. He’d known the risk.

In one of those things possible only in dreams, Arvage stood beside her while her father and brothers buried him.

“It is our task to take care of them or die,” he told her. “Our purpose is to keep the shadows at bay for the solsenti who are helpless against them. This is a Raven’s task before us, and I am Raven—as are you. You aren’t old enough and I am too old, but we do as we must.”

Tier hadn’t lived in the comfortable safety of the village long enough to sleep through small noises in the night. He’d heard Seraph go out, as she often did, and he’d gone back to sleep afterward. But he’d awakened again.

He waited for the noise to repeat itself, and when it did he pulled on his pants and slipped out his window to the garden where Seraph whimpered in the helpless throes of a nightmare.

The man was from the Clan of Gilarmist the Fat, running a message to another clan. He’d flirted with Seraph’s oldest sister and died in the night. Her sister died the next morning, drowning in the fluid that they couldn’t keep from filling her lungs.

By the time four days had passed only Seraph and her brother Ushireh were left to bury the dead. Ushireh worked until he passed out. She’d been so afraid that he was dead, too; it had taken her a long time to convince herself that he was only unconscious. She’d dragged him away from the dead they’d gathered together in the center of the camp, then she’d burned it all—camp and bodies alike. It had been weeks before she could work enough magic to light a fire.

When she managed it at last, Ushireh’s body sat up in the pyre, and his head turned until he could fix his glowing eyes on her. Seraph shrank back and tried to close her eyes. As if in death he’d acquired the magic he’d so envied her in life, his will kept her from looking away from him.

“You left me,” he said. “You left your duty. You cannot run forever, Seraph, Raven of the Clan of Isolda the Silent.”

She awoke with a gasp and a cry and was gathered into warm arms and rocked gently.

“Shh,” said Tier, “it was a dream. You’re safe.”

She buried her head in his shoulder and gave up a lifetime of self-control to sob raggedly against him. “I can’t do it,” she said. “I don’t want to be a Traveler. They all die, and I have to burn them and bury them. I’m so tired of death and duty. I want… I want…” What she wanted was tied away from her in strands of guilt and duty, but she found a fair approximation of it in the safety of Tier’s arms.

“Shh,” he said. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

His words passed over and around her, the sense lost to her grief and guilt, but the sound of his voice comforted her.

From the third of the three windows that looked out into the garden, Alinath watched her brother hold the witch he’d brought home and she clenched her fists before she turned away.

When the worst of it had passed, embarrassment made Seraph turn away and wipe her face with the corner of the blanket.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “It was a nightmare.”

“Ah,” said Tier as he let her pull away from him. “It sounded worse than that to me.”

She shrugged, not looking at him. “Memories make the worst nightmares, my father always said.”

“You don’t have to go find another clan,” he said. “You can stay here.”

She tried to stifle her involuntary laugh. It wouldn’t be polite to disparage the hospitality of his family. “No, I can’t. Thank you. But no.”

“I can’t leave now,” said Tier. “But I fear it won’t be long. Mother complains and frets until it’s hard to believe that she’s sick at all—but she’s losing weight and her color is much worse. Can you wait?”

Seraph held herself still. Could she wait to take up her duties? Oh, yes. Wait forever if she could. But was it the right thing to do?

At last she nodded. “I’ll wait.”

“Good.”

Tier sat with her a bit, while the sweat dried on her back. With the air of a man coming to a decision, he took something from around his neck and put it into her hands.

“This came with me into war and kept me safe enough through any number of battlefields. As I am unlikely to need it now, I’d like you to take it.”

She fingered the collection of large wooden beads carefully.

“They’re not much to look at,” he said hastily, and with a little embarrassment, she thought. “But they carry the blessing of our priest. You’ve met Karadoc?”

She nodded. The priest had sought her out to give her his sympathies on the death of her brother. The only Rederni aside from Tier who had. She hadn’t been quite sure how to deal with a priest—Travelers had little use for the minions of the gods—but he’d seemed like a good person.

“Karadoc gave me that for helping him tend his garden after he broke his wrist one summer.”

“It must have been more than that,” Seraph said thoughtfully. “People don’t give gifts like this lightly.”

He stiffened, “It’s just a bunch of wooden beads, Seraph.”

She put them against her face and rubbed against them like a cat, soaking in the warmth that emanated from the battered wood. “Old wooden beads,” she said. “I can’t tell exactly how old, but they’ve been given in love and worn that way for a long, long time. They comfort me—did they comfort you while you were far from your home?” She didn’t wait for his answer, “Tell me the story of your gardening for Karadoc?”

“I was young,” he said finally. “Karadoc is… well, you’ve met him. He always took time to talk to me, listening to me when my father and I fought.”

His voice hadn’t fallen into the cadences of storytelling; he told this story hesitantly. “Karadoc broke his wrist; I told you that. His garden is his pride and joy, and it started to get overgrown almost immediately. I suppose being the priest of the god of green and growing things has a certain influence on your garden.”

“He hired a boy to tend it, but when harvest season came the boy had to help his father in the field, and Karadoc couldn’t find another one. So I started getting up a little earlier in the morning so I could work on it a bit.”

Seraph smiled a little; the beads and Tier’s company had worked their own magic. “He didn’t know you were doing it.”

“Well, I wasn’t certain that I would do it more than once or twice. A baker gets up early to miss cooking in the heat of the day. I didn’t want to promise something I couldn’t do.”

“And Karadoc found you out,” said Seraph. “When you wouldn’t take any pay, he gave you these.”

He nodded.

Seraph put the necklace around her throat. Gifts could not be returned, only appreciated. She would find something she could do to repay him for his kindness to her and his gift. A Traveler’s blessing could be a useful thing.

“Thank you for this,” she said. “I will treasure it as long as it remains in my hands and pass it on as you have, as Karadoc did.”

They lapsed into a comfortable silence.

“A man asked me today what I’d do if I could do something besides baking and soldiering,” he said at last.

“What did you answer?”

“Farming,” he said.

She nodded. “The land gives back everything you put into it and a little more, if you have the knack.”

“If you could do anything, be anything, what would it be?”

She stilled. She knew about villages, knew that most men’s fates were set in stone when they were little more than children and apprenticed to a trade—or else they were cast off never to be more than itinerant workers or soldiers. Women’s lives were dictated by their husbands.

Travelers were a little more free than that usually. A bowyer could decide to smith if he wanted to, as long as he continued to contribute to the clan. There were no guilds to restrict a person from doing as he willed. And women, women ran the clan. Only the lives of the Ordered were set out from the moment a Raven pronounced them gifted at birth.

No Traveler would ever have asked a Raven what she wanted to be.

The silence must have lasted too long because he said, “That question took me aback, today, too. But I learned something. What would you do?”

“Ravens don’t marry,” she said abruptly. He was easy to talk to, especially in the dark. “We can’t afford the distraction. We don’t do the normal chores of the clan. No cooking or firewood gathering. We don’t darn our own clothes or sew them.”

“You cook well,” he said.

“That’s because Ushireh couldn’t cook at all. I learned a lot when we were left on our own. But being a Raven’s not like being a baker, Tier. You could leave it and become a soldier. You can leave it now and become a farmer if you want. But I can’t leave being a Raven behind.”

“But if you could—what would you do?”

She leaned back on her hands and swung her feet back and forth, the bench being somewhat tall for her. In a dreamy, smiling voice she said, “I would be a wife, like the old harridan who runs an inn in Boarsdock on the western coast. She has a double handful of children, all of them taller than her, and they all cringe when she walks by. Her husband is an old sailing man with one leg. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say anything but, ‘yes, dear.’ ”

She caught him by surprise and Tier gave a crack of laughter that he had to cover his mouth to suppress.

Smiling her satisfaction in the dark, she thought that the oddest thing about her statement was that it was the truth. That old woman ran her inn and her children and their wives and husbands and they all, every one of them, loved her. She lived in the daylight world, where shadow things wouldn’t dare show their faces and the children in her family had no more responsibility than grooming a few horses or cleaning a room could provide.

But the thing that Seraph envied the most was that one winter evening, when Seraph’s uncles entertained the boisterous crowd that gathered beneath the great fireplace and told them stories of haunts and shadow-things, that wise old woman shook her head with a laugh and said that she had better things to do than listen to tales of monsters fabricated to keep children up all night.

So it was that she stayed when she should have gone. But a week or a month would make little difference to her duties—a lifetime or two would make little difference as far as she could tell. So she stayed.

“Don’t pull that up. That’s an iris bulb, trimmed down now that it’s bloomed,” said Tier’s sister several weeks later. “Don’t you know how to weed?”

Seraph released the hapless plant unharmed, straightened, and almost groaned at the easing in her back. “No,” she said, though she’d told her as much when Alinath had set her to the task. How would she have learned to weed? The herbs and food plants she knew, but she’d no experience with flowers at all.

Tier had stormed off at lunch, beset by both his sister and his mother, who had gotten out of her bed only to try and push him into finding a wife. Since then Alinath had been picking at her as if it had been Seraph who’d sent Tier off to seek peace. Seraph had been set to half a dozen tasks, only to be sent to do something else because of some inadequacy in her work, real or imaginary.

“Well leave off then,” said Alinath. “Bandor or I will have to finish it, I suppose. You are utterly useless, girl. Cannot sew, cannot cook, cannot weed. The baking room floor needs cleaning—but mind how you do it. Don’t let the dust get into the flour bins.”

Seraph stood up and dusted off her skirt; she’d left off wearing her comfortable pants when she’d noticed that none of the Rederni women wore anything except skirts.

“It’s a shame,” she said finally. “That Tier, who wears courtesy as close as his skin, should have a sister with none at all.”

Before Alinath could do more than open her mouth, Seraph turned on her heel and entered the house through the baking room door. She regretted her comment as soon as she’d made it. The womenfolk in the clan were no more courteous in their requests than Alinath was. But they would have never turned their demands upon a Raven.

Moreover, Seraph knew the solsenti well enough to know that Alinath’s rudeness to a guest was a deliberate slight. Especially since, except for that first time, she was careful to soften her orders around Tier.

Seraph had done her best to ignore the older woman. She was a guest in Alinath’s home. She had no complaint with the work she was asked to do—which was no more work than anyone else did, except for Tier’s mother. And, by ignoring Alinath’s rudeness, Seraph bothered her more than any other response could have.

There was a more compelling reason to ignore Alinath’s trespasses.

Seraph let her fingernails sink into the wood of the broom handle as she swept with careful, slow strokes. A Raven could not afford to lose her temper. She took a deep, calming breath and sought for control.

The door opened and Alinath walked in. When she started to speak her voice was carefully polite.

“I have been rude,” she said. “I admit it. I believe that it is time for some plainer speech. My brother thinks you are a child.”

Seraph stared at her a moment, bewildered, her broom still in her hands. What did Tier’s opinion have to do with anything?

“But I know better,” continued Alinath. “I was married at your age.”

And I killed the ghouls who killed my teacher when I was ten, thought Seraph. A Raven is never a child. But she saw where Alinath was headed.

“I told Tier what you are up to, but he doesn’t see it,” said Alinath. “Anyone who marries my brother will have this bakery.”

Anyone who married your brother would be safe for the rest of their life, thought Seraph involuntarily, and envied his future wife with all of her heart.

“But you will never have him.”

Seraph shrugged. “And he will never have me.”

She went back to sweeping—and longing to be an old innkeeper who thought that ghouls and demons were stories told to frighten children. She crouched to get the broom under the low shelf of the table where Tier kneaded his bread.

“Where did you get those?”

Alinath lunged at Seraph. Startled, Seraph dropped the broom as Alinath’s hand clenched around Tier’s bead necklace; it must have slid out of her blouse when she crouched.

“Dirty Traveler thief!” shrieked Alinath, jerking wildly at the necklace. “Where did you get these?”

Seraph had heard all the epithets—but she’d been fighting her anger for weeks. The slight pain of the jerk Alinath gave the necklace was nothing to the outrage that Alinath had dared to grab her in the first place.

She heard the door to the public room open and heard Tier’s voice, but everything was secondary to the rage that swept through her. Rage fed by her clan’s death, Ushireh’s death, her desperate, despairing guilt at surviving when everyone else died, and lit by this stupid solsenti woman who pushed and pushed until Seraph would retreat no more.

Alinath must have seen some of it in her face because she dropped her hold on the necklace and took two steps back. The necklace fell back against Seraph’s neck like a kiss from a friend. Just before the wave of magic left her, the warmth of Tier’s gift allowed her to regain control. It saved Alinath’s life, and probably Seraph’s as well because magic loosed in anger was not choosy in its target.

Pottery shattered as the stone building shook with a hollow boom. Cooking spoons, wooden peels, and baking tiles flew across the room. The great door that separated the hot ovens from the baking room pulled from its hinges and flew between Seraph and Alinath, hitting the opposite wall and sending plaster into the air in a thick white cloud as Alinath cried out in fear. Flour joined plaster as the door fell to the ground, taking two tables with it and knocking a barrel half-full of flour to its side.

Closing her eyes to the destruction and Alinath’s frightened face, Seraph fought to pull back the magic she’d loosed. It struggled in her grasp, fed by the anger that had engendered it. It made her pay for her lack of control, sweeping back to her call, back through her like shards of glass. But it came, and peelers and tiles settled gently to the floor.

Seraph opened her eyes to assess the damage. Alinath was fine—though obviously shaken, she had quit screaming as soon as she’d begun. The wall would have to be replastered and the door rehung, the jamb repaired or replaced. The jars of valuable mother, used to start the bread dough, had somehow escaped, and the number of broken pots was fewer than she’d thought. Neither Tier, nor the four or five people who had followed him into the room, had more damage than a coating of flour and plaster.

Shame cut Seraph almost as rawly as the magic had. It was the worst thing a Raven could do—loose magic in anger. That no one had been hurt, nothing irreplaceable broken, was a tribute to Tier’s gift and a little good luck rather than anything Seraph had done and so mitigated her crime not a whit. Seraph stood frozen in the middle of the baking room.

“I told you that she had a temper,” said Tier mildly.

“This was an ill way to repay your hospitality,” said Seraph. “I will get my things and leave.”

Tier cursed the impulse that had led him to invite the men he’d spent the afternoon singing with to try out an experimental batch of herb bread he’d been working on. That he’d opened the door to the baking room when he—and everyone else—heard Alinath cry out had been stupidity. He’d been warning his sister not to antagonize Seraph for the better part of a week.

“Mages aren’t tolerated here,” said someone behind him.

“She said she’d leave,” said Ciro. “She hurt no one.”

“We’ll leave in the morning,” said Tier.

“Strangers who come to Redern and work magic are condemned to death,” said Alinath in a tone of voice he’d never heard from her.

He looked at her. She should have appeared ridiculous, but the cold fear-driven anger on her face made her formidable despite the coating of white powder settling on her.

Someone gave a growl of agreement.

The ugly sound reminded Tier of the inn where he’d rescued her—or rescued the villagers from her. He realized that unless he managed to stop it, by morning his village might not be in any mood to let Seraph go.

An odd idea that had been floating in his head since he’d talked to Willon and then held Seraph in the wake of her night terrors crystalized.

“She is not a stranger,” lied Tier abruptly. “She is my wife.”

Silence descended in the room. Seraph looked at him sharply.

“No,” said Alinath. “I’ll not have it.”

She was in shock, he knew, or she’d never have said such a ridiculous thing.

“It is not for you to have or not have,” he reminded her, his voice gentle but firm.

“I won’t have her in this house,” Alinath said.

“We would have had to leave in any case,” said Bandor, who’d pushed through the crowd and into the baking room. He walked over to Alinath, and put his hand on her shoulder. “Once Tier had chosen his wife, whoever she was, we’d have had to leave. I’ve made some inquiries in Leheigh. The baker there told me he’d be willing to take on a journeyman.”

“There’s no need,” said Tier. Now that his choice was made, the words he needed to convince them all flowed easily. “There’s a place I intend to farm about an hour’s walk from here. I’ll have to get the Sept’s steward’s permission, which won’t be difficult to obtain since the land is not being used. There’s time to build a house before winter. We’ll live there, but I’ll work in the bakery through the spring when planting season comes. Then I’ll deed it to Alinath.”

“When were you married?” whispered Alinath.

“Last night,” lied Tier, holding out his hand to Seraph, who’d been watching him with an expression he couldn’t read.

She stepped to his side and took his hand. Her own was very cold.

“Yes,” said Karadoc, coming forward and putting a hand on Tier’s head as he used to when Tier was a boy. “There have been Rederni who were mages before. Seraph will harm no one.”

The crowd dispersed, and Bandor took Alinath to their room to talk, leaving only Karadoc, Tier, and Seraph.

“See that you come by the temple tonight,” said the priest. “I don’t like to keep a lie longer than necessary.”

Tier grinned at him and hugged the older man. “Thank you. We’ll stop by.”

When he left, Tier turned to Seraph. “You can stay here with me and be my wife. Karadoc will marry us tonight and no one will know the difference.” He waited, and when she said nothing, he said, “Or I can do as I promised. We can leave now and I’ll go with you to find your people.”

Her hand tightened on his then, as if she’d never let it go. She glanced once around the room and then lowered her eyes to the floor. “I’ll stay,” she whispered. “I’ll stay.”