Raven's Shadow (29 page)

“Indeed.” Seraph kept her tones polite, even though she knew that would inflame the man more than if she yelled. “It seems that they were not the only ones who were ill-taught.” She paused for effect and then borrowed Jes's whispering technique. “Didn't your mother teach you that bad things happen to people who annoy
Travelers?
”

She didn't know if she wanted to scare him away, or force him to attack her. She'd assumed she'd long ago buried all this anger at the
solsenti
who hated and needed the Travelers. But all it took was a bit of mud to prove her wrong. The anger that flooded her felt good, even cleansing.

Whatever she'd wanted to gain by her threat, the people from his group who'd begun to gather around forced him to act rather than run. Perhaps if she had been a man he could have backed down and not lost face.

Perhaps if she didn't have a full bag of
mermori
to remind her how dangerous it was when
solsenti
began to lose their respect for Travelers she would have given him a graceful way out.

“Have a care, Seraph,” said Hennea in Traveler.

The man took another step closer. He was a big man, but Seraph was used to looking up at people and a few inches more didn't make much difference to her. “Your man should have taught you respect for your betters, whore,” he said on the tails of Hennea's words.

Seraph held her tongue. A raised eyebrow and a speaking
look at him did the job nicely:
You? My better? I don't think so.

He raised a hand. Gura sank a bit, ready to defend her and she could hear the sheath of Tier's sword rattle as Lehr readied himself to draw it. She still might have let him hit her but for Jes breathing heavily beside her.

With a word and a breath of power, she froze his arm in place.

When she smiled at the crowd of
solsenti
, several of them backed up hastily. She had the feeling that her victim would have backed up, too, but he couldn't move his arm from where it was stuck.

“What's going on here?” said an authoritative voice—and a young man pushed his way through the crowd.

Ash-pale hair in a waist-length braid announced his Traveler bloodlines as well as a written sign. Soon he had a wide circle around him.

“Look by the road, Mother,” whispered Jes.

Seraph looked, and sure enough, there was an entire Traveling clan waiting on alert.

Silence had fallen, mostly because the
solsenti
group hadn't yet noticed the Travelers beside the road and didn't know what to make of a man whose arm hung unmoving in the air.

“Well,” he said again, “What goes on here?”

“I am Seraph,” she said. “Raven of the Clan of Isolda the Silent. This one's half-grown sons offered insult to my young friend. We were discussing the issue.”

The stranger tilted his head at the man's arm. “Interesting discussion?”

“No,” said Seraph. “I was almost finished. If you'll excuse me a moment.” She turned to the man. “I have no more patience with you. I
curse
you and your sons that if you ever hit a woman or child, you'll lose the use of that which men value most. Now go.”

She released his arm and met the eyes of the few
solsenti
inclined to linger.

The stranger waited until they were gone before he started laughing. “I'm no Raven, but even so I could tell there was no magic to power that curse.”

She smiled. “It doesn't need magic, does it?” If any of them ever hit a woman or child they'd remember her words and worry about it. Worry could achieve the effect she wanted more easily than magic.

“Who are you?” asked Jes, breaking into the shared moment.

“Ah, my apologies, sir. I am Benroln, Cormorant and Leader of the Clan of Rongier the Librarian.” He bowed shallowly. “If we may join you in your eating we might exchange stories.”

“Come and be welcome,” agreed Seraph.

 

There was a fair bit of confusion as the Clan of Rongier organized a meal stop and the
solsenti
group packed hastily and left, most eating the remains of their meals in one hand while they started out.

The fear on their faces didn't bother Seraph nearly as much as the catcalls that came from the Librarian's clan. Her father would never have stood for such a thing, but Benroln was young, and perhaps he felt much the same as the young people who teased the
solsenti
. Still there were older heads about, and Seraph thought that someone should have said something.

A glance at the clan's wagons and clothing told her that having a young leader hadn't hurt the clan materially, even if their manners had suffered. Their clothing was without holes or mending and their wagons were all freshly painted.

Seraph's small family stayed close to her as the strange clansmen laid out food and attended to the chores of meal preparation. Doubtless the boys were intimidated by the foreign tongue and sheer volume of noise so many people set to a single task could make. Seraph finished the last of her meal as Benroln approached her with three other men.

“Seraph, this is my uncle, Isfain,” he said, indicating the eldest of the men. “My cousin, Calahar” was a young man with unusual raven-black hair. “Kors” had reached middle age and middle height with slightly stooped shoulders.

“This,” continued Benroln, “is Seraph, Raven of Isolda the Silent, and her family. This young man here is Eagle.”

The older man Benroln had introduced as Isfain smiled. “Well blessed in the Order your family is. Will you introduce them?”

There was nothing in the words they spoke to raise Seraph's suspicions, but there was just a little extra stress in Benroln's voice when he named the Orders. That stress had been answered with a thread of smugness in Isfain's voice.

Seraph bowed her head. “This is my son, Jes, Eagle. My son Lehr, and my friend Hennea.” No one had ever accused Seraph of being a trusting soul. She couldn't hide the Orders Benroln had noted, but there was no need to share information unnecessarily. Time enough to clear the matter up if necessary once Seraph knew more about the Clan of Rongier.

“May I inquire how it is that there are so few of you?” asked Kors diffidently. “I had heard that the Clan of Isolda the Silent fell to the sickness years ago.”

Seraph nodded graciously. “Only my brother and I survived. When my brother died we were left without kin.” Two decades of living with
solsenti
had not lowered her awareness of the disgrace of what she had done—so she lifted her chin, daring any of them to comment. “I married a
solsenti
man and we lived with him and his family until he died this spring. His relatives turned us out—but they did not know that he had investments in Taela. We are headed there to recover his monies.”

The men considered what she told them. For a Traveler to marry or even lie with
solsenti
was expressly forbidden. It happened, but a very strict clan leader could punish the offender with banishment or death.

Only Kors looked taken aback, and Benroln tapped him on the shoulder before he could say anything.

Isfain merely said, in tones of apparent delight, “Ah, we take the same road. Our clan has business that lies along the road to Taela, and we have friends in the city who are willing to aid us. We'd be more than pleased to lend you escort until our roads part.”

There was no way out of Isfain's generous offer without offense, so Seraph nodded. “Your escort would be most welcome.”

Calahar glanced over at Skew and then moved toward him. “Nice horse,” he said.

“My husband's warhorse,” replied Seraph. “Careful. He's old now. But he was trained not to let strangers approach too closely.”

“I've only seen a few horses with his coloration,” he said. “Your husband get him as a war prize?”

“Yes.”

“Too bad he's a gelding.”

“Yes,” replied Seraph. “But he serves us well as it is. Lehr, would you check to make sure we've gotten everything packed?”

 

Hennea waited until they were walking again and the fuss of adding new members had died down before approaching Seraph.

“You were less than forthcoming,” Hennea said quietly. “And Skew's never objected to me.”

“But they don't need to know that. I'd rather not have people ruffling through our packs. There's something off about this clan,” Seraph replied. “Though it's been a long time since I walked with Travelers, so perhaps I'm misreading something.”

“Perhaps you are right to be suspicious,” agreed Hennea thoughtfully. “They certainly aren't going to be looking for Lehr and I to be Ordered, not when they know that two of us are Order-Bearers. Although if they have a Raven who looks at us, they'll know what you are up to.”

“I've been
looking,
” said Seraph. “The only Order-Bearer I've seen is Benroln himself.”

“I suppose there will be no harm done,” said Hennea.

“No harm to whom?” asked Benroln.

Seraph carefully maintained her smile. “To us. It's a relief to find a clan to journey with—but it bothers me that we might need your protection. This is a main road, there should be no danger for Travelers here—but I worry all the same.”

“It's not just those hotheaded men either,” said Benroln in grim tones. “There hasn't been a Gathering in a long time. The last one was disrupted by
solsenti
soldiers, and the clans
felt that another Gathering might just be setting ourselves up for a
solsenti
sword. The illness that swept through our clans twenty years ago took out more than just your clan. If the
solsenti
have their way, in another twenty there will be no Travelers at all.”

The clipped note in his voice when he said
“solsenti”
reminded her forcibly of the way some of the more frightened Rederni said “magic.”

“Then it is their doom,” said Hennea indifferently. “Travelers exist to keep the
solsenti
from paying the price of a failure that was not theirs.”

“What failure?” said Benroln explosively, but Seraph saw calculation in his eyes. He was playing to his audience. “A story nattered at by the elderly? It is only a story—and it was old before the Shadow's Fall. It's a myth, and no more accurate than the twaddle the
solsenti
spout about the gods. There are no gods and there was no lost city. There is no evil Stalker. We have paid and paid for a crime committed in an Owl's tale. If we don't wise up we'll be nothing more than a
solsenti
minstrel's tale ourselves, something told to frighten small children.”

“Wise up and do what?” asked Seraph.

“Survive,” he said. “We need to keep food in our mouths and clothes on our backs. We need to teach the
solsenti
to leave us alone—as you did to that
solsenti
bastard who tried to injure Hennea.” He paused, then said softly, “You taught that man and his sons to leave us be. If you had allowed your Eagle to teach them, the rest of the
solsenti
in that group would have taken the story to his village and they all would have trembled in fear.”

“Maybe someone did,” said Seraph coolly. “Maybe that's why, instead of welcoming us and looking to us to help them when my brother took us into the village years ago, the villagers feared us so much that they burned my brother.”

“The
solsenti
already fear us, that is the problem,” said Hennea. “Fear leads to violence. The villagers who killed Seraph's brother were very afraid and too ignorant to know that they had nothing to fear from a Traveler. Perhaps because, in the last few generations, we have taught them that they should fear us.”

“Rot,” said Benroln curtly before turning his attention back
to Seraph. “You have lived among them for what?” He glanced at Jes and Lehr and came up with an accurate guess, “Twenty years or more? You are beginning to sound like one of them—or worse, one of the old ones who sit around the fire and say, ‘We are supposed to protect them.' ” The anger in his voice was honest now. “Let them protect themselves. They have wizards.”

“Who are helpless against the evil we fight,” said Seraph.

Benroln's lip curled. “When
solsenti
soldiers caught my father and our Hunter and Raven out alone, there was nothing we could do but bury them. Had my father not believed the old folktales, he could have taught that village what harming a Traveler might mean. When those villagers killed your brother—
you
could have saved him. Could have made them so afraid that the thought of harming one of us would never occur to them again. How many of us died because you didn't teach them what you taught that man today? How many more will die because you didn't loose the talons of your Eagle upon them instead of tricking them into thinking you'd set a spell on them?”

Part of Seraph agreed. Part of her
had
wanted to burn the village to the ground. She had spent most of that first night at Tier's side wondering how long it would take her to get back to the village and avenge her brother.

She could have killed them all.

“Your father was killed?” said Hennea softly, taking Benroln's arm in sympathy and distracting him from Seraph.

He nodded, his anger dissipating under Hennea's attention. “Our Clan Guide took us to the Sept of Arvill's keep. My father said that they'd never admit a whole clan, so he, who was Raven, took our other Raven—my cousin Kiris who was only fifteen—and our Hunter to see what was amiss. They didn't even make it to the gate of the keep before they were shot from ambush.”

“Terrible,” agreed Seraph. “When I think about that village where my brother was killed, I think of how helpless they would have been against my power. I think of the children who lived there, and the mothers and fathers. More death never solves a crime, no matter how regrettable.” She tried to keep her tones conciliatory, but she could not agree with him.