The Crow God's Girl (25 page)

Birds sang in the cloudless sky, a sweet melody.
Where are youuuu? We need you. Where are you? We need you...

She tried to catch a glimpse of them, but she could see only rising and falling patches against the blue of the sky.

She pushed open the courtyard door and went out and around. The pile of stone was white and gray under the blue sky. The foothills of Temia, where the decisive battles of the winter war were fought, stretched up toward the jagged mountains that bordered the rest of Aeritan and Red Gold Bridge.

Whistling cheerfully (
Where are youuuu? We need you
) she poked around the house. She didn’t dare go into the burned-out part–it was probably unstable and she didn’t want to test it. The house rambled along, one story in most places, rising to two or three stories by the kitchens.

There was an old stable, and she pushed the wide doors open, the smell of old hay and manure coming over her.

This time she whistled soundlessly. The crows had come down in the world, if the stable was any indication. It was fine. The loose boxes were big and roomy, and the high windows let in plenty of air and light, helped along by a broken roof. The brick floor of the aisle was cunningly laid, and she pushed aside years–centuries? of dirt to see that the brick had been interlocked and was still solid.

The boxes had the names of horses carved elegantly over each stall, worn but still legible.

Mountain. Storm. Cloud. Rain. Spirit.

The crows once loved their horses, to be sure. She walked down the old, elegant barn, enjoying the melancholy atmosphere.

We can make Temia great again. Rebuild the house, rebuild the stables, cultivate the land. Maybe that’s my path, to help the crows regain their homeland.

A commotion outside made her heart leap. Kate ran back down the aisle, her boots clunking on the bricks. She pushed the door open and slid to a halt, staring.

Crows. At least fifty of them, all looking at her, led by a tattered, mostly naked old man wearing an open robe that had faded to gray and a horsehair cap with a tangled horsetail draped down his back.

The smell of cooking fires rose into
the brilliant blue sky. The new crows met with her small band and they sat together out on the open plains, sharing news and vesh. At Balafray’s urging, Kate sat with him and the rest of the family.

The old man was the crow king. He had piercing dark eyes in a weathered face. He was emaciated, nothing but skin and muscle over bone. Kate tried to keep from looking at him, but she couldn’t help but be arrested by his striking gaze. Every time she lifted her eyes, he looked at her as if he were looking through her. So this was the man who led the crows, brought the malcra, and lifted it from them when necessary. She wondered if he had been given his scavenged garb by Aeritan hooligans who thought it was funny to dress him up in a travesty of royalty.

There were two women among the leaders, their faces proud and lean, wrinkled and careworn. They told the news they had been missing during their weeks on the road.

The lords were preparing for war over Favor, and armies rode south and west. Council had been called in Salt, and the lords gathered to argue the matter, but the outcome was foregone, all said. Favor would fall. The captain of Trieve had sent word to the crows, asking for their help.

“I have no love for the Trieve captain,” one crow growled, and there was a muttering at that. The Trieve captain, that was Lord Crae who killed Marthen last summer and helped Colar rescue her.

“Nor I,” Balafray rasped. He touched his livid scar. “This is my reward for Trieve. Let him keep Favor or lose it, as he will. I do not fight for Favor or Trieve.”

Oh ho. Kate remembered hearing about that last year, when she first got to Terrick. It was scandalous, and she hadn’t understood much of it at the time. The Trieve lord had granted guesting to a crow. Then his wife’s brother, Lord Favor that was, murdered the crow, the crows attacked Trieve for breaking the sacred guesting, and Lord Trieve killed his brother-in-law.

And now Favor is lordless, and that’s why Colar’s dad wants it.
That’s why he married Colar to Janye Kenery. Alliances were the Aeritan way, as was backstabbing. Colar’s family was just like the rest, she thought bitterly.

“We stay out of this,” one of the crow leaders said. She wrinkled her nose at the thought. “Crows don’t fight for Favor. Crows don’t fight for Terrick. Let them kill each other. The crows will have Aeritan, as we once did.”

The crow king stirred, shifting his weight on his skinny haunches. Kate tried not to look.

“Do you not know the law of the crow?” he said, his voice rasping and thick. He tapped a skinny finger on the dirt in front of him. “What Aeritan gives, we must take, for we are lordless and Houseless, and Aeritan herself must sustain us.”

Again they muttered, but uncertainly. The crow king’s measured voice went on.

“The greatest blessing that ever happened to the crows was being cast out of Temia. For now we are the true people of Aeritan. We are Aeritan’s children, and no one can take that from the crows, unless we let them.”

The muttering grew. The crow king tapped once more on the dirt. It felt as if the ground trembled for an instance. Impossible, Kate thought uneasily, but she had felt it.

“But now that blessing has run its course.”

There was a buzz of conversation among the crows, surprise in the tone of their responses. The crow king scanned the crowd, his narrowed eyes making it appear he looked straight at every one of them.

“The lords are at play once again,” he said. “They think only of themselves and their Houses. But there is another House they must consider, another lord. It is time we crows rise up to take back what is ours.”

The rumbling grew louder and then one after another, crows stood up and shouted back.

“They call upon us when they fight their battles!” someone cried. “But when we try to survive, they hound us from land to land, killing us when they can.”

More crows on their feet, shouting, shaking their crude weapons.

This time Grigar spoke, raising his voice. “Have you all gone malcra, and while we sit at council yet? You think they hate each other more than they hate us? Not so. If the crows rose up it would only unite the whole Council against us and they would wipe us clean, as they have done in other years.”

“Hate! They know nothing of hate!” A crow screamed this, a shriek, and Kate gasped, remembering that sound. Grigar was losing them–in a few minutes they would all be crazy.

And I’m the only one here who isn’t a crow.

The crow king needed to stop it. Kate looked at him, but he looked as peaceful and thoughtful as if he had not incited a riot with a handful of words.

She jumped to her feet, taking a deep breath.

“Grigar’s right,” she shouted.

Silence dropped like a stone. The only sounds were the wind and the piping of the birds. Kate’s heart hammered so hard she could feel it in her temples. They had cut off the sound so quickly it was as if she had unplugged them.

The last time this many crows looked at me, they tried to kill me
. This time, they looked at her as if she controlled them.

And if I lose control, then what?
She didn’t want to find out.

“Grigar’s right,” she said again, pitching her voice to carry but quieter, more forceful than loud. She wanted to be a monkey wrench; here was her chance.

“If we fight the Council, we will lose; they will unite against us and kill us once and for all. But there is a way. Let us come to Favor’s aid and they in turn will become our allies. Favor is just the beginning. Terrick wants it for his son, Colar.” She didn’t even wince to say it. “That’s why he’s allied with Kenery.”

She leaned forward and said with emphasis, “With Terrick, Favor, and Kenery, they’ll have so much power, it will be like they’re a High King.”

There was a dangerous rumble at that.

“I say we stop them dead in their tracks,” she said, barely able to contain her excitement. “We throw in with Trieve and Favor, and we keep that alliance from yielding fruit.”

“Why?” said one of the crow leaders, a woman with a proud nose and startling black eyes. She did not look as if Kate controlled her. “What do crows care for the lords and their little games?”

Kate turned to her, speaking with intensity. “It’s about time the crows had a House to speak for them in Council,” she said. “Otherwise, we’ll always be at the mercy of the lords and their ‘little’ games. In the winter’s war, the crows were pawns. Last summer, we got whipped by Trieve after one of our own was murdered under guesting. It’s about time Temia got to have a say about which wars we fight and which we don’t.

“I propose this. I propose that we go to Council and force them to recognize Temia as a House.”

“Which of the lords will say yea to crows?” cried one.

“Trieve will, because I’ll make sure Lady Trieve will know we stand with them at Favor. Lord Tharp will because–”

“Because Lady Sarita will make him!” someone yelled, and they all laughed. The danger was thinning now, the malcra subsiding. They were human again.

“And all the little Houses, Shay and Saraval and Wessen and Camrin, they’ll support us, because they don’t want too much power in one group’s hands. They’re small, but they add up.”

She sat back and let them cheer, hoping that they couldn’t see how hard her heart beat or how her hands trembled. She kept them lightly curved around her knees just in case.

“They won’t let us in,” the woman said. “They will never accept us.”

Kate turned to her. “They’ll let me in.”

She didn’t know where her assurance came from, but as soon as she spoke the words, she knew them to be true. She would speak for House Temia in Council, and she would have an army of crows to back her up.

The cheering grew, rolling over the camp in a wave. Arlef and Ivar and Ossen were grinning like fools, and Ossen raised her fist in salute when she saw Kate looking at her. Grigar looked at her as if he was just seeing her for the first time, his expression a combination of awe and disbelief. She grinned back at him, letting the mood of the crow overtake her.
I know, right?

Under the cover of the cheers, Balafray leaned toward her, his slashed smile crazed.

“And then what, strangeling?”

“Then the balance of power tilts toward us, Balafray.”

The crow king caught her eye then, and her jubilation drained away. His sharp gaze bored into her, and for a moment she forgot her surroundings and the world narrowed down to the two of them. She could hear the laughter and cheers as the crows roared their approval, but at the edge of her senses she heard another laugh, faint and distant, that faded before she could pin it down.

In the madness that was the Council session, the gates of Salt were again thrown open to lords, their retinues, smallholders and forestholders, all thronging into the city for the big event. In the midst of the chaos, Kate and Grigar managed to take a tiny room at an enterprising boarding house near the walls of the city, and then snuck the brothers and Ossen inside, along with Tamra, the sharp-nosed crow matriarch who had spoken out at the crow council.

The rest of the crows of Aeritan were on their way. Most people wouldn’t even know an army was coalescing. The crows would assemble out of sight until the time was right to appear as a formidable army under Salt’s walls. In the meantime, Kate would prepare for council.

Seven people in a boarding house room were five too many. The small room had two beds under slanting eaves. Kate, Ossen, and Tamra shared one, and the other alternated between the brothers. The rest of the crows slept on the floor, among all their gear, leather armor oiled and stained, crude pikes and pitted knives, boots and rucksacks. Even if they had brought nothing, Kate thought, the four men could fill a room. Or clear it–what she wouldn’t give for a breath of fresh air. The four brothers were rank, smelling of sweat, filth, dirty leather and wool.

She was no summer rose herself, until she had a bath. She paid the innkeeper with a coin from their dwindling stash, and the servants hauled out a tub, and filled it with warm, sweet-scented water. The men, Tamra, and Ossen left her so she could scrub herself raw from her head to her toes.

Washing away the road dirt felt so amazing she almost wept. She washed her hair with the harsh soap and poured the bucket of clean water over herself when she was done, her hair so clean it squeaked. Then she wrapped herself in a threadbare sheet, and called out, “I’m ready.”

Ossen came in, along with Tamra. The tall, lean woman looked her up and down appraisingly.

“We shall see what we shall see,” she said enigmatically, and pulled out a comb. Kate stood shivering on bare feet, while Ossen sat on the bed, leaning back against the wall, as she watched Tamra comb out the snarls in Kate’s hair. The crow woman’s hands were firm as she patiently worked out the knots, and Kate bit back a couple of squeaks when she pulled too hard.

Her hair was the longest it had ever been, to the middle of her back. The modern highlights had long since faded and her weeks on the road under the strengthening spring sun had supplanted the chemicals. Kate had never liked her hair–it was drab, plain, and lifeless. Now it would have to serve as her crown.