The Bird and the Sword (4 page)

I shook my head and sighed. Bethe was my maid. She was prone to fits of alarm, but the theft of the grey was upsetting. She was a good horse, and I hated that she’d been taken.

I touched my eyes and asked a question with my hands. Boojohni answered immediately, understanding.

“No one saw anything . . . except poor Mertin’s ass when he ran from the stables.” Boojohni snickered.

I indicated my clothing from head to toe.
Everything?

“Yeah. All of it. Boots, breeches, shirt, and cloak, to be sure. I don’t think Mertin bothers with underthings.”

I winced, not liking the thought of Mertin’s underthings. He was a big man with a surly attitude and enough hair on his body to weave a small hearth rug. But he was good with the horses and not a man to mess with. I wondered that someone had stolen his things without waking him.

“Mertin thought he’d been pranked until he noticed the horse was gone. He’s not laughing now. He’ll be getting a handful of lashes fer drinking on his watch. He claims he wasn’t drinking—at least not enough to pass out. He has a huge knot on his head, so I’m inclined to think someone clocked him.”

That made more sense, and I nodded.

“Your father isn’t happy. He’s already on edge with the battle on the borders. We won’t mention that ye slept in the woods last night with thieves about.”

We hurried in silence, skirting the road and cutting through the trees, though it wasn’t the most direct route. Boojohni seemed to understand that I would like to avoid the eyes of the early risers, already about their business. I had no reason to be out and about at this hour, rumpled and hooded, looking like I’d spent a night rolling in the hay with Mertin.

My father’s keep sat on a rise with several small villages making a half-circle around it in the south, fields and forest ringing it from the north. The only road to the keep was steep with stiff drops off the craggy mountains that rimmed the upper valley of Corvyn. It was fertile land, beautiful and breathtaking, and well-fortified by the natural landscape. But the Volgar were winged men. Cliffs and climbs would do little to deter them if the army at the border failed to hold them off. We were a mere twenty miles from the front in the valley of Kilmorda, and my father, though worried and constantly in talks with his advisors, had not sent a single warrior from Corvyn to help King Tiras defeat the Volgar.

The keep itself was like a small city—two forges, a butcher, a mill, an apothecary, a printer, a clothier, bakers and weavers and makers and healers—all of the very un-magical sort. Skills were acceptable. Mystical gifts were not. Everyone was quick to show how staid and useful they were, and as a result, my only desire as I grew was to be valuable too.

I was never taught to read or write. My father wouldn’t allow it. He was afraid to give me words, in any form, and because I couldn’t speak, people often forgot that I still understood, and they talked freely in front of me. I learned a great deal that way, listening and watching. I had spent time with the old women of our keep, women who’d never been to school but who were educated in hundreds of other ways. From them I learned to heal with herbs and soothe with my touch. I learned wisdom and wariness, and I learned to patiently accept and quietly wait. For what, I wasn’t sure, but in my heart I was always waiting, as if the hour my mother spoke of would someday arrive.

“We thought you’d been carried away by a birdman!” Bethe shrieked as Boojohni and I entered the kitchens from the rear of the keep, my hood still high, my eyes averted. I sighed. I had hoped I would make it up the back stairs without anyone seeing me, but Madame Pattersley, the housekeeper, and my maid had clearly been watching for us.

“What would one of the Volgar want with little Lark, eh?” Boojohni huffed. “She’s on the scrawny side. He’d need to carry you off too, Bethe. But that would be a bit difficult.” Boojohni winked and slapped Bethe on her very ample behind. She swatted back at him and forgot about me completely, which was what Boojohni intended, but I didn’t get by my father’s housekeeper quite as easily. She swooped in and jerked the hood from my head. She gasped at the sight of my hair.

“Milady! Where have you been?”

Not being able to answer was a relief, and I shrugged and began unwrapping my hair from around my head, releasing the twigs and leaves caught in the coils.

“You’ve been with a man!” Bethe squealed. “You’ve spent the night in the woods with a man.”

“She did no such thing,” Boojohni growled, offended. I patted his head, gratefully.

“Your father will have to be told, Lark. You know how he worries. I can’t keep this from him,” Madame Pattersley said righteously. Madame Pattersley had spent the fifteen years since my mother’s death trying to win my father’s affections. We were alike in that regard, though I’d given up years ago. She told him everything. Maybe that made up for the fact that I could tell him nothing.

“Keep what from me?” My father stood in the doorway.

“Lark was out all night, milord,” Madame Pattersley declared, her proclamation bouncing off the pots and pans hanging overhead, her glee echoing the din.

I raised my eyes to my father, willing him to look back at me, but he looked at Boojohni instead. I could see myself in the grey of his eyes and the fine bones of his face. He was elegant without being feminine, tall without being gangly, thin without being gaunt. But he was also shrewd instead of wise, mannerly instead of kind, and ambitious instead of strong.

“I hold you all responsible,” my father said quietly. “She must be watched at all times. You know this.”

The women dropped deep curtsies and Boojohni bowed, but I could feel his empathy. It permeated the space between us. My father turned and left the kitchen without another word.

T
he chattering squirrels didn’t like our presence. They wanted us to leave. A snake coiled in the bush to my left, and I felt him taste the air
.
His life force pulsed, emitting the word
enemy
and then
wait
. It wouldn’t strike, but it was poised and watching. A toad belched to my right, completely unconcerned with the company. He hardly noticed us at all, and he felt no fear. He belched again, reminding me of my father slumped against the dinner table, the dogs at his feet, waiting for him to leave the table so they could fight over what he left behind. Whispers and clicks and buzzes and hums, slithering across the forest floor and sliding up my skin and into my head. Sound everywhere, yet my companion didn’t seem to notice it.

I dismissed the babbling creatures the way they dismissed me and began filling my apron with the sweet berries hidden by the brambles. A bee fled with one goal in mind.
Home. Home
. Then he was gone. It had been three days since I’d discovered the wounded eagle in the woods. I’d come back every day, as if I would find him again, or he would find me. Or maybe I thought I would find the archer who brought him down and break his arrows one by one. It was not against the law to hunt, and I did not judge a man for feeding his family from the forest, but I was filled with helpless fury when I thought of the eagle. My agitation must have shown.

“You’ll prick your fingers, Milady.” I raised my eyes and met Lohdi’s gaze. Boojohni had been needed elsewhere, and young Lohdi—a clumsy youth of sixteen who couldn’t hold his tongue for five seconds—had been assigned to shadow me. I preferred my own company but was rarely given that option, and it was beyond infuriating. I lifted a shoulder, dismissing his concern.

“Your father said I can’t let you harm yourself.”

I ignored him with clenched teeth and kept picking. I had almost twenty-one summers. Most women my age had several children of their own, and I did not need a nursemaid, especially one younger and decidedly less capable than I.

Lohdi shifted nervously and looked at the skies, as if the patches of blue we could make out above the trees would soon turn to stormy grey.

“We need to go. They will be here soon.”

I raised my gaze from the berry bush once more, questioning him.

“Your father didn’t tell you?” Lohdi asked in surprise.

I shook my head. No. My father didn’t tell me anything. He didn’t talk to me because I couldn’t answer him.

“He is expecting visitors. Important men. Maybe even the king.”

I stiffened, the news making me drop my skirts and lose the berries I was collecting in my shawl. My stomach clenched painfully as Lohdi chattered on in excitement. If the king was coming, I didn’t want to be caught in the woods. I wanted to be safely away, tucked in my mother’s old tower room where he couldn’t find me. Or harm me.

I started immediately for home, Lohdi falling into step behind me, expressing gratitude for my hasty return. When we heard the pounding hooves we started to run, Lohdi in anticipation, me in terror. I flew through the trees, skirts in hand, my hair streaming behind me. My maid complained that my hair was like corn silk. She couldn’t get it to curl or stay or conform to the exotic shapes and styles that were fashionable among the women of Jeru, and I’d stopped trying to tame it, brushing it and leaving it loose more often than not.

“Milady! Stop!” I heard Lohdi call out behind me, but it wasn’t my fault he was slow. I was many things, but slow wasn’t one of them, and I picked up speed, hearing the thundering of the horses and feeling the energy in the air. I broke out of the trees seconds before two dozen riders came over the rise from the nearest village, flags waving and bugles screaming. Green and gold, the colors of the kingdom, adorned each horse and every rider. They were almost upon me, and I stared in horror as they slowed reluctantly, the horses resisting their reins, their eagerness to
run
,
run
,
run
, coming off them in waves. Horses had very few words.
Run. Eat. Home. Fear.

But I was the only one afraid now, because
I was too late.

I stepped back, intending to turn and run back into the forest and hide in the shadows until the king’s party left, even if it drew my father’s ire, but at that moment, Lohdi barreled out from the dense tree line onto the hard-packed road, and collided with my back. I fell to my hands and knees directly in the path of the procession. I heard several horses whinny in panic, stomping and sidestepping, and someone cried out. I felt a foot in my back, and I fell to my stomach on the hard-packed dirt. I realized Lohdi hadn’t just knocked me down, he was trampling me.

“Halt!” someone roared, and I scrambled to my feet, narrowly avoiding a rearing, sweating stallion with bared teeth.

Lohdi cried out as he also tried to rise. I reached to assist him, not wanting to see him harmed, though at that moment I could have killed him myself. Someone beat me to it, catching the back of his shirt and hauling him to his feet. The King had dismounted, and he stood towering above the wriggling Lohdi.

“King Tiras,” Lohdi gasped and fell back to his knees in subservience before being yanked to his feet again.

“Stand up, lad,” he commanded.

“Yes, Majesty! So sorry, Your Highness.” Lohdi bobbed and genuflected. The king released his arm and turned to me, pinning me with eyes so dark they appeared black in a face that was arresting rather than beautiful, formidable rather than cold. Warm skin covered sharp edges and well-formed features, and I was certain he was accustomed to bows and obeisance though I gave him neither.

His hair was completely white against his bronzed skin, like a man well on in years, though he couldn’t yet be thirty summers. His hair had been black when I’d last seen him, but he looked very little like the boy I remembered, and I was certain he didn’t remember me. I’d been five years old when my mother was brought down by his father’s sword. He’d been older than I, but I doubted that day had made the same kind of impression on him as it had on me.

“Are you injured?” he asked. I wondered if I looked as disheveled as I felt. My hair was a wild tangle and my face felt flushed. My palms stung and my skirt was torn, but I didn’t allow myself to smooth my tresses or straighten my clothing. I didn’t care about his opinion and stared back at him stonily.

“She doesn’t talk. She’s a mute,” Lohdi rushed to explain. His eyes shot sideways in apology. “Sorry, Milady.”

“Milady?” the king questioned, his eyes still on me. I held his gaze without expression.

“Lord Corvyn’s daughter, Your Majesty,” Lohdi rushed to explain.

King Tiras shared a weighted look with the man to his left—a dark-haired, broad-shouldered warrior in the king’s coat of arms who had also dismounted—then returned his attention to me.

“So if I ask you if your father awaits, you won’t be able to answer?” he asked me, though it didn’t sound like a question.

“She’s not stupid, Your Highness. She understands pretty well. She just can’t talk,” Lohdi provided. I wished he would shut up. I did not require an interpreter.

“I see,” the king inclined his head, still taking my measure. “Lead the way then, Milady. I have business with your father.” He mounted his horse smoothly as I turned to obey.

I should not have given him my back. It was foolish. But King Tiras had given me no warning of what he intended. I was suddenly swooped off my feet and settled in front of him on his enormous horse. I arched my body in alarm and swung an elbow back, connecting with his breastplate. I only succeeded in hurting myself. His arm simply tightened around my body until I could barely draw breath.