Raven's Strike

“You sound as if they are not making their own choices,” said He

Seraph didn’t bother arguing with the disapproval in He

“You look for excuses where there are none,” commented He

She started rerolling a map as she finished speaking. Seraph took another and rolled it as well. When all of them were stored in the satchel, He

“You have maps to a world long lost, Cormorant,” she said. “This bag is spelled by one of the Elder Wizards of Colossae. It is a treasure entrusted to you.”

Jes stuck his head into the room. “I found something,” he said.

Tier expected the tavern to be nearly empty, but it was full of strangers, mostly hired swords, he thought. They were probably from some merchant’s caravan just passing through.

Maneuvering around the extra people, he found an unoccupied table in a corner and took a seat. Regil, the tavern owner, saw him and rushed over.

“Tier, welcome,” he said. “I was just hoping you or Ciro would be stopping through to keep this lot occupied. Our midday meal is bread from your sister’s ovens and fresh sausage—and you are welcome to it if you’ll sing.”

Tier smiled. “I’d be happy to, but I was helping my sister this morning. I didn’t bring my lute.”

“Would mine work?” asked Regil.

“That would be fine,” Tier agreed.

Regil gri

Tier turned in his chair, to see the old merchant standing just behind him. “Willon, good to see you. I thought you’d be in Taela yet a while.”

Regil backed a few courteous steps away, then turned and hustled off in the direction of the stairway to his apartment. Willon took the seat on the other side of Tier’s narrow table.

“Once I heard some secret society had been brought low by Travelers, I figured Seraph had managed your rescue without my help.” Willon gri

“I’m pla

“Disappointing,” He

“You’d expect any place that Volis went to such trouble to hide would have something in it.” Lehr brushed his hands on his tunic to rid them of the tingle of the power he’d used to open the lock on the hidden door Jes had found.

Seraph had thought it would have been magic he used, but it wasn’t—at least it wasn’t the same kind of magic that came to her call. Falcon’s secrets, she thought, and smiled. It was a good thing that Brewydd had known more of the Falcon’s Order than she did. She’d forgotten that locks and gates were something the Hunters did well—Brewydd had told them it had something to do with traps being a Hunter’s art. Whatever the reason, Lehr seemed to enjoyed being able to open whatever locks came his way. If it hadn’t been for him, for his tracking and lock picking skills both, they’d never have made it through the palace to the cell where Tier had been held.

Ri

“Sorry,” said Jes.

“Not at all.” Seraph couldn’t see the interior of the room, but if it was big enough to hold Ri

“Then we don’t have to carry them all.” Jes gave her a bright grin. “Lehr and I,” he said. “We would have had to carry them all. Two trips for all these books. Through the town to home, then back through the town to here. Back through the town and home again. There aren’t so many Traveler books as there are wizard ones. Through the town just one more time.”

“You’ll still have the stairs,” He

“Only one set. Easy.” Jes bounced passed her and ran up the stairway.

When Lehr decided to go exploring with Jes, Seraph relented and let Ri

“We’ll get more done,” she said, after the others had left.

“They’re not so bad,” He

“Just not used to being cooped up.” Seraph tapped her finger lightly on the page of the book she’d been paging through. “I’ve seen this book before, I think.” She closed her eyes to aid her memory. “It was in a different language, but I recognize the illustrations.”

“In Isolde’s library?”

“I don’t know,” Seraph said. “For the first ten winters after Jes was born, I worked my way through the library of every mermora that came to me.”

Seraph opened her eyes and set aside the book. “I had Isolde’s after my brother died,” she said. “Once I settled at the farm with Tier, I think I had three more. By the time Jes was nine, I had twenty-five. I went through all twenty-five libraries before I admitted my father was right when he told me that the Elder Wizards did not include anything about the Orders in their writings.”

“You didn’t say anything about that when Brewydd had us go through Rongier’s library on the way to Taela.”

“Rongier the Librarian might have had books in his library that the wizards in my first twenty-five didn’t,” Seraph said. “Then, too, you and Brewydd know different languages than I do. We didn’t find anything—but we might have.”

He

“It sometimes seems to me that most of my life I’ve spent shaking my head, and saying, ‘What are the chances?’ ” Seraph fought to imitate He

“There are probably more of them out there,” He

“Even the solsenti would have noticed a Raven when they tried to train him to be a wizard,” Seraph said.

“Really?” He