Raven's Strike

“Only stupid Travelers,” murmured He

Seraph continued blandly, “I can tell you my grandfather was certain that the U

Ielian made a disbelieving sound.

“Ielian.” Phoran’s command was quiet, but Ielian nodded and subsided.

Seraph shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what you believe, Ielian. Phoran came to us for help, and we’ll do whatever we can for him. I believe finding Colossae is the best thing that we can do, both for Phoran and for my husband. I believe it because that’s what an old, dying woman told my son.” She looked at Phoran and softened. Ielian was doing his duty and trying to protect Phoran. She was glad that his men were that loyal.

“What I can tell you, Ielian,” she said, “is that we will do our best to find the Shadowed and kill him or die trying.”

Something, maybe the truth in her last statement, at last satisfied Ielian.

“All right,” he said. “All right.”

“Is Willon’s map still in the packs you boys took?” Tier asked Jes, breaking the small silence.

Jes bestirred himself and went to his still-full pack and unearthed the map, set it on the table, and retreated to a wall nearer Ri

“Can’t you go sleep, Jes?” Ri

“Go use our bed, son,” said Tier, an invitation that held the force of an order. “There’s room next to Lehr. If you can’t sleep, you can at least lie down for a while.”

Jes stiffened. “There are too many people here. I can’t sleep with everyone awake.”

That was probably true as well; Seraph looked thoughtfully at her son. “Would it be easier outside?” she asked. “Or does the sun bother you?”

Jes shook his head. She could tell he was feeling bad because his gaze carefully avoided touching anyone in the room.

“He’s too tired,” He

“Yes,” said Jes, very softly.

“Get a blanket or two then, Jes.” He

Seraph thought a walk in the woods might do He

“I’m not doing any good here,” He

“We’ll keep working on it while you’re gone,” said Seraph steadily. In the Traveler tongue, she added. “I entrust my son to your keeping, Raven.”

A wild spectrum of emotion flashed over He

“I don’t think so.”

Tier opened the door for them. “Jes?”

Their son turned, so obviously operating on the last of his reserves of strength that Seraph had to fight the need to go to him. Her touch would only hurt him, though, so she stayed where she was.

“Thank you for going with Lehr to Colbern, son,” Tier said. “If you had not been there, he would have died.”

Jes clutched his blankets a little tighter and nodded.

He

Time was such an odd thing. One moment you could talk to someone, then, suddenly, they were gone. Somehow it always seemed to her that there ought to be a way to turn back time and change the events. An hour, a minute, they were so simple in passing… reversing them should not be impossible. But she’d never found a way to do it.

Another clan was dead. More people that she had known and would never see again. She felt… empty.

Jes was silent as he walked. With his shambling gait, he should have been stumbling all over, but somehow his foot always seemed to land on the other side of fallen debris, rocks, or holes.

He

She understood what Seraph had just done, though she rather suspected neither Jes nor Tier knew Seraph had chosen the last words of a Traveler marriage ceremony. The ceremony where parents turned the care of their son to his spouse.

He

She tilted her face into the sun and let her mind go blank, as if there were nothing more than this moment: the sun in her face, the smell of trees and grasses, the sound of birds and insects, and the sense that told her where Jes was that had nothing more to do with magic than the power of the ties between a woman and her man.

He stopped on a gentle slope covered in yellowing grasses that looked no different to her eyes than several other places he’d passed without a pause. He shook one blanket out, handed her the other, then lay down on his face, leaving his back to absorb the late-afternoon, summer sun.

Rather than shaking her blanket out, she folded it and set it on an unoccupied corner of his. Sitting on its soft folds, she pulled her legs up to her chest and settled her chin on her knees, prepared to watch over him while he slept.

“I remember when Papa used to have nightmares almost every night.”

Jes’s voice was so soft it could almost have been the breeze that rustled the leaves on the trees.

He

“He still has them, from his time as a soldier, I think. Though maybe some of them now are from being a prisoner of the Path.”

“I’ll watch over your dreams.” He

“Thank you,” he said, and slept.

Sitting in the sun, trying to think of nothing, He

It had angered Seraph, the thought of someone meddling in her life, someone she had no control over. But He

The gods are dead, she reminded herself fiercely. But she couldn’t, quite, kill the hope that Seraph had given her.

After an hour or so, Jes began to stir restlessly. She’d been avoiding watching him sleep, because some people could feel when they were watched—and, given Jes’s abilities, she assumed that he belonged to that group. But a soft sound drew her eyes, and she watched the subtle motions of muscle in his face, searching for a clue to his dreams. Slowly his face hardened into that otherness that told her the Guardian had come. She’d never seen that happen to an Eagle while he slept before.

“Jes,” she said softly. “Guardian, wake up. You’re dreaming.”

He rolled so fast she almost hit him by reflex. Two arms, strong and hard wrapped around her hips so tightly she knew she’d have bruises tomorrow. His head burrowed against her midriff, and the rest of him curled around her.

“Shh.” She touched his hair lightly, but then decided if her touch were bothering him, he wouldn’t have wrapped himself as close as he could get, and she let fingers sink through the dark strands in a caress. “Can you talk about it?”