Raven's Shadow (8 page)

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.”

When Seraph reached the narrow bridge, the river was
high and the wooden walkway was slick with cold water from the spring runoff. She glanced across the river and up the mountainside where Redern hung, terraced like some ancient giant's stone garden. Even after twenty years, the sight still impressed her.

From where she stood, the new temple at the very top of the village rose like a falcon over its prey. The rich hues of new wood contrasted with the greys of the village, but, to her, that seemed to be merely an accent to the harmony of stone buildings and craggy mountain.

Seraph crossed the bridge, skirted the few people tending animals, and headed for the steps of the steep road that zigzagged its way up the mountain face, edged with stone buildings.

The bakery looked much as it had when she'd first seen it. The house was newer than its neighbors, having been rebuilt several generations earlier because of a fire. Tier had laughed and told her that his several times great-grandfather had tried to make the building appear old but had succeeded only in making it ugly. Not even the ceramic pots planted with roses could add much charm to the cold grey edifice, but the smell
of fresh-baked bread wafting from the chimney gave the building an aura of welcome.

Seraph almost walked on—she could sell her goods elsewhere, but not without offending her sister-in-law. Perhaps Alinath would be out and she could deal with Bandor, who had never been anything but kind. Resolutely, she opened the bakery door.

“Seraph,” Tier's sister greeted her without welcome from the wide, flour-covered wooden table where her clever hands wove dough into knots and set them on baking tiles to be taken back to the ovens for cooking.

Seraph smiled politely. “Jes found a honey-tree in the woods last week. Rinnie and I spent the last few days jarring it. I wondered if you would like to buy some jars to make sweet bread.”

Tier would have given it to his sister, but Seraph could not afford such generosity. Tier was late back from winter fur-trapping, and Jes needed boots.

Alinath sniffed. “That boy. If I've told Tier once, I've told him a thousand times, the way you let him wander the woods on his own—and him not quite right—it's a wonder a bear or worse hasn't gotten him.”

Seraph forced herself to smile politely. “Jes is as safe in the woods as you or I here in your shop. I have heard my husband tell you that as often as you complained to him.”

Alinath wiped off her hands. “Speaking of children, I have been meaning to talk to you about Rinnie.”

Seraph waited.

“Bandor and I have no children, and most probably never will. We'd like to take Rinnie in and apprentice her.”

Seraph reminded herself sternly that Alinath meant no harm by her proposal. Even Travelers fostered children under certain circumstances, but it seemed to Seraph that the
solsenti
traded and sold their children like cattle.

Tier had tried to explain the advantages of the apprenticing system to her—the apprentice gained a trade, a means to make a fair living, and the master gained free help. In her travels, Seraph had seen too many places where children were treated worse than slaves; not that she thought Alinath would treat Rinnie badly.

So, Seraph was polite. “Rinnie is needed on the farm,” she said with diplomacy that Tier would have applauded.

“That farm will go to Lehr, sooner or later. Jes will be a burden upon it and upon Lehr for as long as he lives,” said Alinath. “Tier will not be able to give Rinnie a decent dowry and without that, with her mixed blood, no one will have her.”

Calm,
Seraph told herself. “Jes more than carries his own weight,” she said with as much outward serenity as she could muster. “He is no burden. Any man who worries about Rinnie's mixed blood is no one I want her marrying. In any case, she's only ten years old, and marriage is something she won't have to worry about for a long time.”

“You are being stupid,” said Alinath. “I have approached the Elders on the matter already. They know that scrap of land you have my brother trying to farm is so poor he has to spend the winter trapping so you have food on your table. It doesn't really matter that
you
have no care for your daughter; when the Elders step in, you'll have no choice.”

“Enough,”
said Seraph, outrage lending unmistakable power to that one word. No one was taking her children from her.
No one.

Alinath paled.

No magic,
Tier's voice cautioned her,
none at all, Seraph. Not in Redern.

Seraph closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to cleanse herself of anger, and managed to continue speaking more normally. “You may talk to Tier when he returns. But if anyone comes to try and take my daughter before then . . .” She let the unspoken threat hang in the air.

“I agree,” said a mild voice from the kitchen. “Enough badgering, Alinath.” Bandor entered from the baking room door with a large bowl of risen dough. “If any of Seraph's children want to apprentice we'd be glad to have them here—but that's for their parents to decide. Not you or the Elders.” He nodded a greeting toward Seraph.

“Bandor,” managed Seraph through her rage-tightened throat. “It's good to see you.”

“You'll have to excuse Alinath,” he said. “She's been as worried about Tier as you are. I've told her that it's not fair to expect a man trapping in the wild to come home on time every
year. But he's her brother, and she frets. Tier's only a few weeks late. He'll show up.”

“Yes,” Seraph agreed. “I'd best be going.”

“Didn't I hear you say you had some honey?” he asked.

“Jes found some in the woods last week. I brought a few dozen jars with me,” she answered. “But Alinath didn't seem interested in it.”

“Hummph,” said Bandor, with a glance at his wife. “We'll take twelve jars for half-copper a jar. Then you go to Willon up on the heights, and tell him we're paying a copper each for anything you don't sell to him. He'll buy up your stock for that so he can compete. Yours is the first honey this spring.”

Without a word, Seraph took out her pack and pulled out twelve jars, setting them on the counter. Just as silently, Alinath counted out six coppers and set it beside the jars. When Seraph reached out to take the money, the other woman's hand clamped on her wrist.

“If my brother had married Kirah”—Alinath said in a low voice that was no less violent for its lack of sound—“he'd have had no need to go to the mountains in the winter in order to feed his children.”

Seraph's chin jerked up and she twisted her wrist, freeing it. “It has been near to two decades since Tier and I married. Find something else to fret about.”

“I agree,” said Bandor mildly, but there was something ugly in his tone.

Alinath flinched.

Seraph frowned, having never seen Alinath afraid of anything before—except Seraph herself on that one memorable occasion. She'd certainly never seen
anyone
afraid of Bandor. Alinath's face quickly rearranged itself to the usual embittered expression she wore around Seraph, leaving only a glint of fear in her eyes.

“Thank you, Bandor, for your custom and your advice,” Seraph said.

As soon as the door was closed behind Seraph and she'd started up the narrow, twisty road, she muttered to her absent husband. “See what happens when you are away too long, Tier? You'd better get home soon, or those Elders are in for a rude surprise.”

She wasn't really worried about the Elders. They weren't stupid enough to confront her, no matter what they thought should be done for Rinnie's benefit. Once Tier was home, he could talk them out of whatever stupidity Alinath had talked them into. He was good at that sort of thing. And if she was wrong, and the Elders came to try to take Rinnie before Tier was home . . . well, she might have failed in her duties to her people, but she would never fail her children.

She wasn't worried about Rinnie—but Tier was another matter entirely. A thousand things could have delayed Tier's return, she reminded herself. He might even now be waiting at home.

Even hardened by farmwork, Seraph's calves ached by the time she came to the door of Willon's shop near the top edge of the village. When she opened the homey door and stepped into the building, Willon was talking to a stranger with several open packs on the floor, so she walked past him and into the store.

The only other person in the store was Ciro, the tanner's father, who was stringing a small harp. The old man looked up when she came in and returned her nod before going back to the harp.

Willon's store had once been a house. When he'd purchased it, he'd excavated and built until his store extended well into the mountain. He'd stocked the dark corners of the store with odds and bits from his merchant days—and some of those were odd indeed—then added whatever he felt might sell.

Seraph doubted many people knew what some of his things were worth, but she recognized silk when she saw it—though doubtless the only piece in Redern resided on the wall behind a shelf of carved ducks in Willon's shop.

She seldom had the money to shop here, but she loved to explore. It reminded her of the strange places she'd been. Here was a bit of jade from an island far to the south, and there a chipped cup edged in a design that reminded her of a desert tribe who painted their cheeks with a similar pattern.

Some of Willon's wares were new, but much of it was secondhand. In a back corner of one of a half dozen alcoves she found boxes of old boots and shoes that still had a bit of life left in them.

She took out the string she'd knotted and began measuring it against the boots. In the very bottom of the second box she searched, she found a pair made of thinner leather than usual for work boots. The sole was made for walking miles on roads or forest trails, rather than tromping through the mud of a farmer's field. Her fingers lingered on the decorative stitches on the top edge, hesitating where the right boot was stained with blood—though someone had obviously worked to clean it away. Traveler's boots.

She didn't compare them to her son's feet, just set them back in the box and piled a dozen pairs of other boots on top of them, as if covering them would let her forget about them. In a third bin, she found what she was looking for, and took a sturdy pair of boots up to the front.

There is nothing I could have done,
she told herself.
I am not a Traveler and have not been for years.

But even knowing it was true, she couldn't help the tug of guilt that tried to tell her differently: to tell her that her place had never been here, safe in Tier's little village, but out in the world protecting those who couldn't protect themselves.

“I can't sell those here,” she heard Willon say to a stranger at the front counter—a tinker by the color of his packs. “Folk 'round here get upset with writing they can't read—old traps of the Shadowed still linger in these mountains. They know to fear magic, and even a stupid person's going to notice that those have Traveler's marks on them.”

“I bought them from a man in Korhadan. He claimed to have collected them all,” said the tinker. “I paid him two silvers. I've had to carry them from there to here. I'll sell them for ten coppers, the entire bag, sir, for I'm that tired of them. You're the eighth merchant in as many towns as told me the same thing, and they take up space in my packs as I might use for something else. You surely could melt them down for something useful.”

On the counter lay an assortment of objects that appeared something like metal feathers. One end was sharp for a few inches, almost daggerlike, but the other end was decorative and lacy. Some were short, but most were as long as Seraph's forearm, and one nearly twice that long. There must have been nearly a hundred of them—
mermori
.

“My son can work metal,” said Seraph, around the pulse of
sorrow that beat too heavily in her throat. There were so many of them. “He could turn these into horseshoes. I can pay you six coppers.”

“Done,” cried the fellow before Willon could say a thing. He bundled them up in a worn leather bag and handed it to Seraph, taking the coins she handed him.

He gathered his packs together and carried them off as if he were afraid she'd renege if he waited.

Willon shook his head, “You shouldn't have bought those, Seraph Tieraganswife. Poor luck follows those who buy goods gotten by banditry and murder the way those probably were.”

A merchant to the bone, Willon should have objected to her buying outright from the tinker rather than cut him in for a percentage—but things like that happened when
mermori
were involved.

“Travelers' spells don't hurt those of Traveler blood,” she said in a low voice that wouldn't carry to others in the store.

Willon looked startled for a moment. “Ah. Yes, I had almost forgotten that.”

“So you think these were gotten by banditry?” she asked.

“My sons tell me that they don't call it that anymore.” Willon shook his head in disapproval. “The present emperor's father declared the Travelers beyond the protection of his laws. The old man's been dead for years, but his son's not going to change anything. He shuts himself up in the palace and listens to people who tell him stories without questioning the truth from falsehood, poor boy.”

He spoke as if he knew him, but Seraph let it pass without comment. Tier had told her that he thought that the caravanning business Willon had retired from had been richer than he let on. He hadn't changed much from when he'd first come, other than the gradual lightening of his hair to white. Though he must have been nearing his seventh decade, he looked much younger than that.

“Ah well,” she said. “They're pretty enough, but they'll make shoes for horses and buckles for harness, sir—surely if Travelers had that much magic left they'd have used it to save themselves.” She set the boots she'd selected on the counter. “Now, I need these for Jes, but I've spent my coppers on the metal bits. In my pack I have some wild honey. I've sold a
dozen jars to Bandor at the bakery below for a half-penny apiece, and I've a little more than twice that left.” She'd looked, and hadn't seen any honey in the section where he kept a variety of jarred and dried goods.