Raven's Shadow

“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 i

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 i

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. Ca

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.