Raven's Shadow

She turned her head and he saw that there was a bruise on her jaw.

“Who hit you?” he asked.

She picked up a pillow and began straightening the fringe. “One of the Masters told Kissel that they were worried because Collarn was spending so much time away from the Eyrie. They told Kissel that he was to remind Collarn where his loyalties should lie—and Kissel refused them. He said that you would not approve of him picking on someone weaker than himself.”

Tier stilled his strings. “I don’t suppose it even crossed his mind to agree and then either fake it—or tell me about it. Ellevanal save me from honest fools. Why couldn’t they have gone to Toarsen?”

Myrceria stared at him, her hands stilled. “You’ve done it on purpose, haven’t you? You’re taking control from the Masters on purpose. A month ago Kissel would have been happy to please the Masters, to win the fear of the other Passerines. How did you do it?”

Tier played a few notes of a dirge Collarn had played for him on a violin—it sounded odd on a lute.

“They are trying to ruin those boys,” he said at last, “to turn them into something much less than they could be.”

He’d been certain that she was a spy for Telleridge, and that might still be true—but his instincts told him that it wouldn’t take a lot to turn her against the Masters of the Path. He would just have to find the right words.

He played a few more measures. “What happens to the ones who don’t play their little game, Myrceria? Boys like Collarn who would never agree to the kinds of real damage the Path metes out? Or ones like Kissel, who is discovering that protecting someone weaker than he is makes him feel better about himself than tormenting them ever did?”

She didn’t say anything.

“There aren’t as many Raptors as there should be,” he said gently. “Not for the numbers of Passerines they have.”

“That’s how they progress in the Path,” she whispered. “The boys who would be Raptors are given the other boys’ names—the ones like Collarn. They have to bring back proof that they have killed the bearer of the name they were give before they are Raptors.”

She set the pillow aside. “How do you do that?” she said. “If they knew what I told you, they would kill me.”

“You know it is wrong,” he told her. “You know they must be stopped.”

“By whom?” she said, her incredulousness fueled by anger. “You? Me? You are a prisoner in their power, Tier of Redern. You will die as they all do at the end of their year. And I am as much a prisoner as you.”

“Evil must always be fought,” Tier said. “If you don’t fight—then you are a part of it.”

She rose to her feet and walked without haste to the door. “You know nothing of what you face, or you would not be so arrogant, Bard.”

She shut the door tightly behind her.

Well, thought Tier, that was unexpected. Whores learn early that survival means that they have to look out for themselves. Myrceria had been a whore for a long time, but she wasn’t talking like a whore who cared for no one else.

She cared about those boys. She wasn’t happy about it, but she cared.

Tier slapped one of the scrawny first-year Passerines on the shoulder after the boy finally executed the move Toarsen had been struggling to teach him for days.

“Drills,” Tier called. There were groans and half-hearted protests, but they formed up in three ragged lines, lines that straightened at his silent frown.

“Begin,” he called, and worked with them. Drills were the heart of swordplay. If a man had to think about his body and how to move his sword, he’d be too slow to save himself. Drills taught the body to respond to information from eyes and ears, leaving the mind to plan larger strategy than just how to meet the next thrust.

The sword he held wasn’t the equal of the one he’d taken from some nobleman on the battlefield, but it was balanced. Myrceria had brought it to him when he requested it.

Tier’d continued to work with his sword over the years, but the past weeks had sharpened him until he’d almost reached the speed and strength he’d held while he was a soldier. His left shoulder was always a bit stiff until he worked it out, but otherwise he hadn’t lost much flexibility to age.

He drilled with the boys until sweat made his shirt cling uncomfortably to his shoulders, then he brought his sword around in a flashy stroke that ended with it in its sheath.

“Pools!” shouted the boys in one voice, and they dashed, swords in hands, to the washroom to play in the cold pool.

Tier laughed and shook his head when Collarn stopped to invite him to the waterfight. “I’ve no wish to drown before my time,” he avowed. “I’ll wash up in my rooms.”

Loyalty, he thought, watching the last of them disappear into the hall, was won by sweating with them.

“They’ve improved,” said Telleridge.

Tier hadn’t noticed the Master, but he’d been concentrating on the boys. He took a glass of water from a servant.

“They have,” he said, after taking a long drink. “Some of them had further to go than others.”

“I knew that you were a soldier, but you were more than that—I’ve been looking into it,” Telleridge said. “Remarkable that a peasant boy, no offense, could be set to command soldiers. Are you one of the old Sept of Leheigh’s by-blows?”

“Do you know where I’m from?” asked Tier with a lazy smile as he handed the empty glass off to one of the silent waiters.

“The Sept of Leheigh,” replied Telleridge.

Tier shook his head. “I’m from Redern, the first settlement the Army of Man created after the Fall of the Shadowed, named for the Hero of the Fall, Red Ernave. We are farmers, ta

When Tier reached his cell, he closed his door and washed quickly with water from the basin left there for that purpose. Once he’d changed into clean clothes he lay down on his bed.

The last time Phoran had visited, a few days ago, Gerant had sent word that he was on his way. It couldn’t be too soon for Tier’s comfort: the Masters weren’t going to wait forever while Tier wrested control of the Passerines from them.

He woke for lunch and spent the rest of the day in his usual ma

Looking over the faces of the men who listened to his music he knew triumph because, given a chance, most of them would grow into fine men. Men who would serve their emperor, a boy who was showing signs of being the kind of ruler a man could take pride in serving: shrewd and clever with a streak of kindness he tried hard to hide.

When he returned to his room for the night, Myrceria tucked her arm flirtatiously in his and accompanied him.

When they were inside his room, she dropped her flirtation and his arm and settled on his bed. Stroking the coverlet absently she said, “I swore I was done talking to you. I have survived here a long time—and I did it by keeping my mouth shut. How dare you demand more of me?” She said it without heat. “I have no power to affect the men who rule here. I am just a whore.”

Tier leaned against the wall opposite the bed, crossed his feet at the ankles and did his best to look neutral.

“I haven’t seen the sun since I was fifteen,” she murmured, almost to herself. “Sometimes I wonder if it still rises and sets.”

“It does,” said Tier. “It does.”

“Telleridge is pla

“What is a Disciplining?” asked Tier, not liking the sound of it at all.

“When a Passerine disobeys a Raptor, they hold a meeting to decide what his punishment will be. Then they are punished in the Eyrie with all the Passerines in attendance. They usually do one every year, just as a reminder.”