Raven's Shadow

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 begi

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 i

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

“No,” she agreed. “But you charmed the i

“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 i

“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 ca

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 ma

He left her to her speculations and began to take down the camp. If Wresen’s horse made it back to the i

“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 begi

“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.