Copper Ravens (2 page)

“Sorry,” I offered as I plopped down beside her. “That was really cool, though.”

“Yeah.” Sadie fingered the broken metal; she'd stretched it so thin it was translucent, like a fine china teacup. “How was the Gathering?”

“Long and frustrating. Where's Max?”

“Out.” She didn't elaborate, and I didn't ask. Not having specific knowledge of Max's extracurricular activities had always served us well.

“You know, as the Inheritor you should really be going to these Gatherings with me and Micah,” I said.

“And do what? Show off my party tricks?” Sadie's head drooped, and she covered her face with her hands. “I'm useless.”

“You're not. You're just new at it.” Sadie nodded but remained silent. I idly poked at the bits of metal scattered across the ground; she'd been working not only with copper but with a few hunks of silver, too. I squinted and probably screwed up my mouth in the way that always makes Micah laugh. Since working with metal was also new to me, I tended to overcompensate.

Slowly, the copper and silver pieces worked themselves into segregated piles, then they morphed and melted and stretched into long wires. After wiggling them this way and that, I willed them toward each other and twisted them together in a single fluid motion. A moment later, a heart formed of the two metals floated onto my lap.

“Thinking of Micah again?” Sadie said with an eyeroll. I shoved her in retaliation, but it was playful. Undeterred, Sadie took the heart and ran a finger along its curves. “You really love him?”

“Yeah.” My belly warmed just thinking about him. “I do.”

“So, what's all this heir business?”

I sighed and took the heart back. I remembered one of the first talks Micah and I had had about heirs—children, I mean children. His and my potential children. Babies.

My hands trembled just thinking about it.

We hadn't started out discussing babies, though. It had been two days after Micah had rescued me from the Institute where Max was held, the morning after the first night I'd spent in the manor. I was wearing the silverkin's first attempt at jeans—a noble effort on their part, but so very, very wrong. The pockets were too low on the sides of my legs, so I couldn't stuff my hands in them, and they were way too loose. Still, I had appreciated that they had tried, so I had worn them.

We won't discuss the monstrosity of a sneaker they produced.

Baggy denim notwithstanding, I was on cloud nine. Micah was all warm and snuggly in the morning; I'd worried that our first morning together would be awkward, all bed head and bad breath, but it wasn't. Micah had asked the silverkin to serve us breakfast in bed, and we had lazed around, getting crumbs and tea stains on the sheets, for the better part of the morning. We had decided to get up shortly before noon, really only so someone else could deal with all those crumbs and tea stains, and Micah had taken me on a tour of the manor's gardens. They were vast, lush, and colorful, packed with flowers and herbs and beautiful vine-covered nooks where we could while away the day.

And the orchards! The gardens were surrounded by trees bearing every sort of fruit, from standard apples and pears to fruits that I hadn't even known grew on trees, such as mangoes and star fruit. I'd never even known that something called star fruit existed, which is further evidence of the Peacekeepers' stellar nutrition policies.

We'd been walking through one of the orchards—plum, I think—when I asked, “When do you think it will be safe for me to go home?”

Micah's brows quirked. “Love, you
are
home.”

I stared at him for a moment, wondering where my voice had gone. “You want me to live here? With you?” I whispered at last.

“Of course. You are my consort.” He brushed his warm fingers across my cheek, neck, shoulders, his hands coming to rest at the small of my back. “Do you not wish to stay?”

“I do,” I whispered, leaving off the part about this all being so sudden.

“Good,” he murmured, kissing me lightly. “I'd be lost without you.” I wrapped my arms around his waist, happy and content and more than a bit elated about my new home. Then, to my utter horror, he brought up babies.

“I hope that you'll soon be with child,” he said, his fingers coming around to caress my belly.

“Your heir,” I murmured, pressing my face to his chest so he couldn't see its bloodless state. “An heir is very important to you, isn't it?”

“Heirs are important to every house, but more so here. I am the last Silverstrand.”

I hadn't even considered this. I knew that Micah didn't have any siblings (and thus will never know the joys of an elder brother covering him with shaving cream while he slept, or a younger sister crawling into bed with him when she's sick, only to puke on his favorite pillow), but I'd thought there were more Silverstrands somewhere. Maybe a few cousins, or a wacky aunt, even. But no, it was just Micah, lording over all the silver, all alone.

“And, you want
me
to produce this heir?” I pressed. Micah laughed and tightened his arms about me.

“I can think of no one better than the woman I love,” he said. I couldn't really argue with that—not that I'd wanted to, anyway—and we'd left it for a time. Then there had been the business of rescuing Max, bringing Mom and Sadie safely out of the Mundane realm, and dealing with the Iron Queen. Life had been moving at a pretty fast pace, and we hadn't had time to discuss such details as babies and inheritance.

Then Oriana was rescued from the Iron Queen's oubliette, and as she struggled with her long recovery, the Heavies began discussing things like succession. You see, if childless Oriana were to perish, the rulership of metal would be passed to Micah, but he was also childless. Couple that with the lingering animosity between those of metal and those of stone, and it was a most precarious situation indeed.

Naturally, Micah and I had resumed our discussions about children. No, discussion was too strong a word; Micah had gushed about how much he loved me, and how happy he would be once we had our first child. First, as in he expected me to do this multiple times. Me, I just sat there, smiling and nodding, hoping he didn't notice my sweaty palms. It seemed that, as long as I was a part of Micah's life, the threat of babies was a part of mine as well.

I glanced at Sadie and sighed again. “Heirs. That's what he wants.”

“Is that what
you
want?” she pressed.

“I guess.” Sadie raised her eyebrows; if she had been wearing glasses, it would have been the perfect “quiet, this is a library” look. “I mean, he needs an heir. And I don't want him having them with anybody else. Besides, once I'm pregnant, I get to be Lady Silverstrand.”

Sadie pursed her lips and asked, “You're already his consort, and you keep saying that you don't want anything to do with politics. Do you really need to be Lady Silverstrand?”

Leave it to the little one to ask the tough questions. “I want to be his wife.”

“You mean you have to pop out a kid first?” Sadie demanded.

“No, I just have to be pregnant. Then,
poof,”
I flicked out my fingers, miming a small explosion, “we're married.”

“That's ridiculous. What if you were pregnant with someone else's baby?” I glared at her, so she amended, “I know you wouldn't do that. But still, this custom doesn't seem very well thought out.”

“Tell me about it.” I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Stupid customs or not, it's what's done around here. And, since I want to be his wife, babies are definitely in my future.”

“You love him that much?”

“I love him that much.”

“Well, then.” Sadie looked around the room. “Do you think Micah will let me set up a library?”

“With what books?” I countered.

“I'm sure the silverkin can get some.” She got to her feet, holding her hands together as if she were framing a scene. “All good aunts read to their nieces and nephews. Just sayin'.”

I threw the heart at her.

3

S
ince setting up a library was the first thing Sadie had shown any interest in here in the Otherworld, I went ahead and summoned the silverkin in order to get things started. After all, in addition to lots and lots of books, we would need shelves, tables, chairs, and a few lamps. Sadie even wanted a card catalog to keep everything organized. As if anyone besides her would be able to make heads or tails of
that
system.

Before long, Sadie was discussing her new library with the silverkin; she'd even made a few book wish lists, along with some fairly detailed schematics.
How long has she been planning this library, anyway?
While the little guys were normally quite attentive, today they were so aflutter they could hardly pay attention. After a bit of questioning, I learned why the silverkin were so agitated—Max had returned to the manor while Micah and I were at the Gathering of the Heavies and had brought his typical path of destruction home with him. Since we had entered via the garden door and taken the back stairs to our chamber, we'd avoided the mess Max had created.

The mess in question did not sit well with the silverkin's leader, an energetic little fellow I called Shep, short for Shepherd. He's forever inciting his flock of 'kin to scrub harder, faster, and more efficiently. He has no qualms about kneeling down to clean off the soles of your shoes while you're still wearing them. He'd scrub under my toenails if I let him.

Shep and the rest of the silverkin had truly met their match in my brother, the epitome of slovenliness. Max typically trudged home in the dark of night, tracking mud, branches, and other filthy things across Shep's shining floors. Once, he'd even brought home a clutch of boggarts, easily the ickiest creatures in the Otherworld. They ranged in size from chihuahua to bull terrier, though boggarts walked upright, and tended toward mud-brown pelts, long pointy snouts and ears, and enormous bellies; that last bit was because they ate everything in sight, regardless of whether it was actually food. And, they stank something fierce.

Shep had barred the doors to the kitchens and the larder, which didn't go over too well with the clutch. In retaliation, the boggarts had immediately claimed the front sitting room as their own. They were a pain in every sense of the word, from their insistence that Max had won them, fair and square, and that they needed to stay close to their leader, to the skinned knee I'd suffered as we herded them into the garden. Boggarts are not indoor pets.

It turned out that Max hadn't actually won the boggarts. In reality, he'd lost a rather epic bout of gambling and, unable to pay his debts (again), had been cursed. It was Mom who had detected the curse, and Mom who had known the proper way to reverse it. Then she had to re-curse the boggarts with short-term amnesia, since we couldn't very well have a band of scruffy beasts trolling about the Otherworld, claiming that they had seen a Fairy Queen living in the Whispering Dell, and one who should have been long since dead, at that.

With a sigh, I eyed the evidence of Max's latest revels. The front door had several long scrapes in it, the atrium was trashed, and there was mud on the ceiling.
The ceiling
. At least we hadn't found any boggarts, or other beasties, hiding in the corners or under a chair. Yet.

And where was the one responsible for this mess? Max, true to form, was snoring away on the couch, muddy boots propped up on the cushions, while Shep directed the silvery cleanup crew. I looked on in awe, amazed that my brother was such a jerk. A filthy, inconsiderate jerk. I mean, he could at least have the common decency to look ashamed.
Awake
and ashamed.

Although the way Mom had described Dad's younger days, I was fathered by the very same sort of jerk. Intrigued, I left Sadie with the silverkin and went in search of Mom. She'd come in from the gardens and was taking her tea in the kitchen, oblivious to the chaos in the front of the manor. I sat beside her and grabbed a scone.

“Was Dad ever as bad as Max?” I began. Mom nearly blew out her tea.

“Oh, Beau was much worse,” Mom replied. “Give Max time, though. He's still new at raising hell.” I smiled as I worried at my scone, reducing its tasty goodness to a heap of crumbs.

“What if…what if you find a man who isn't so fiery?” I asked.

“Like Micah?” Mom asked. Okay, I know I was being obvious, but she could have let me beat around the bush a little. “I think Micah is a fine man. Don't you?”

“I do.”

“Then, what's troubling you about him?”

“He's
not troubling me,” I clarified. “He wants a baby. I don't—not yet, anyway—but I want to be more than a useless consort.”

“Do not make the mistake of seeing consorts as useless,” Mom said. “Many have shaped our world from the bedchamber.”

“I don't want to shape a world! I just…” I shoved the plate away and sent crumbs flying. A silverkin was there in an instant to sweep them up. “Why do I have to be obviously pregnant before I'm Lady Silverstrand?”

“Ah. You don't feel that consorts are useless; you feel useless
as
one.”

“Of course I do,” I grumbled, now pouring my own cup of tea. “No one pays any attention to me; no one cares what I do or say.”

“Micah does.”

“All they do is stare at my stomach, looking for bulges.” I dumped too much sugar in my tea, stirred it a few times, and pushed it away. “So? Why do I have to be pregnant?”

“To prove that your relationship has been consummated,” Mom replied. “In the old days, a bride was held in a tower from her wedding night until she was heavy with child. That way, no one could dispute who'd fathered the babe.”

Well, that was pragmatic. “I hope Micah doesn't stick me in a tower,” I mumbled.