Raven's Shadow

Every evening she took out Isolda’s mermora and searched through her library to find out what to do with the Ordered stones.

“Why don’t you use them?” asked Lehr, one evening. He was seated on the other side of the little table from Seraph, playing with the game pieces to a game no one knew how to play. “We almost lost all to Volis—and there will be more wizards with Papa. Wouldn’t the extra power be useful?”

“Travelers don’t like to deal with the dead,” said Jes. He was curled up on the floor with as much of Gura on his lap as he could get, grooming the dog with a silver comb that Isolda had kept by her bed.

“It’s not that exactly,” said He

“Especially when doing so leaves you vulnerable to the Stalker,” agreed Seraph. “Since we have seen that he is already concerned in these matters, we’d be foolish to allow him an invitation to one of us.”

“I like walking,” said Jes contentedly.

He

“What do you like about it?” she asked him.

“The Guardian is happy, because we’re going to get Papa,” he said. “And Ri

“I like walking, too,” He

“Why?” He bounced once on his heels and then turned his head to look at her with a bright smile that lit his eyes and summoned the deep dimple in his cheek.

She smiled back; she’d found that it was impossible not to respond to Jes when he was happy. “For the same reasons you have. Walking means that right this moment, nothing bad is happening. There are interesting things to look at. My feet like to feel the road under them.”

“Yes,” he said contentedly. “It’s just like that.”

After a minute he said, “Lehr is not happy.”

“He doesn’t like walking?” she asked.

He frowned, “I don’t think that’s it. I think he worries too much. He is like the Guardian, you know. He thinks that he needs to take care of everyone. He doesn’t know about walking. He finds things that are bad and tries to solve them before they happen.”

He

Jes nodded. “He is my brother and I love him. He is not afraid of the Guardian; he loves the Guardian, too. I like that. Ri

“I like your family, Jes,” He

He smiled again. “I do too.”

A week’s travel from Korhadan, the first of the large cities that lay between them and Taela, they stopped to eat lunch a little distance from another, larger party that they’d been trailing for a few days.

“We could eat on the road, Mother,” said Lehr to Seraph as she sat down beside him. “We could make another mile in the time it takes for Jes to finish eating.”

She shook her head. “And lose more miles in a few days when Skew is too tired to go on. It’s all right to push hard if your journey’s end is in a day or two, but we have to strike a speed that we can hold on to for a month or more. How is that blister you had?”

“Fine.”

“Traveler whore!”

Seraph was on her feet before the young man’s bellow had finished; her eyes found He

Before Seraph could take more than a step or two, Jes, with Gura at his side, stood between He

“Apologize,” whispered Jes.

Seraph increased her speed.

The men backed away, most of them mumbling apologies. If they stared at the huge growling dog, or Jes, rather than looking at He

“Go,” Jes said. “Leave us alone and we’ll do the same.”

“Hey, what goes on here! Are you vagabonds threatening my sons!”

“Jes, I’ll deal with this,” said Seraph in a low voice, moving until she was between Jes and the young men. When the older man, presumably their father, was close enough to hear her, she said, more calmly than she felt, “There were no problems until your sons made them.”

The man strode past his sons and stopped not two paces from Seraph, clearly intending to intimidate her with his size. “My sons, Traveler?”

Anger was going to make her do something stupid, she knew it—and Jes would be no help at all. Where was Tier when a diplomatic word was needed? She could have left it to He

“One of your boys decided it was a good game to throw mud at a woman who was doing him no harm,” said Seraph. She should have stopped there, but she couldn’t abide bullies. “Obviously he was poorly raised; he has no ma

“Poorly raised, Traveler bitch?” he snarled. “Who are you to say so?”

Jes, Seraph noticed gratefully, had taken her at her word and dampened the fear he generated. Fear fed anger, and might make the man do something more stupid than he otherwise would. Of course, she herself would have to control her tongue or risk pushing the man too far anyway. She knew, even before she spoke, what choice she had made, throwing away years of iron-willed control and prudence.

“Indeed.” Seraph kept her tones polite, even though she knew that would inflame the man more than if she yelled. “It seems that they were not the only ones who were ill-taught.” She paused for effect and then borrowed Jes’s whispering technique. “Didn’t your mother teach you that bad things happen to people who a

She didn’t know if she wanted to scare him away, or force him to attack her. She’d assumed she’d long ago buried all this anger at the solsenti who hated and needed the Travelers. But all it took was a bit of mud to prove her wrong. The anger that flooded her felt good, even cleansing.

Whatever she’d wanted to gain by her threat, the people from his group who’d begun to gather around forced him to act rather than run. Perhaps if she had been a man he could have backed down and not lost face.

Perhaps if she didn’t have a full bag of mermori to remind her how dangerous it was when solsenti began to lose their respect for Travelers she would have given him a graceful way out.

“Have a care, Seraph,” said He

The man took another step closer. He was a big man, but Seraph was used to looking up at people and a few inches more didn’t make much difference to her. “Your man should have taught you respect for your betters, whore,” he said on the tails of He

Seraph held her tongue. A raised eyebrow and a speaking look at him did the job nicely: You? My better? I don’t think so.

He raised a hand. Gura sank a bit, ready to defend her and she could hear the sheath of Tier’s sword rattle as Lehr readied himself to draw it. She still might have let him hit her but for Jes breathing heavily beside her.

With a word and a breath of power, she froze his arm in place.

When she smiled at the crowd of solsenti, several of them backed up hastily. She had the feeling that her victim would have backed up, too, but he couldn’t move his arm from where it was stuck.