The Crow Rider

by Kalyn Josephson

  “This seems familiar.” Kiva grinned and pressed the sword point a little deeper into Shearen’s skin.

  He hissed.

  “I should slit your throat,” she said.

  “No!” Ericen lurched forward but stilled when Kiva tilted the blade further.

  “Ericen,” Shearen growled, but he fell silent at a sharp look from the prince. The last I’d seen the two of them, they’d been at each other’s throats. Now Shearen was taking orders without complaint? What had happened these last couple of weeks?

  I hurried across the roof to snatch up my bow, nocking an arrow and aiming it at the prince. “Leave.”

  “Thia—”

  “Be thankful I’m allowing you to go unharmed,” I said, ignoring Kiva’s sidelong gaze that asked why in the Saints’ name I was doing just that. But I couldn’t explain it to her. I barely understood it myself.

  Despite everything that’d happened, I couldn’t bring myself to think of Ericen as my enemy again.

  Ericen grabbed Shearen’s arm, forcing him toward the door. Even up against a crow, Shearen looked loath to surrender. But as Ericen shoved him through the door, the prince glanced back at me, and I swore he looked relieved. Then they were through the door and down the stairs.

  I leaned over the building edge. Two massive black Illucian warhorses waited at the mouth of the alley below. Shearen and Ericen emerged, swiftly mounting and kicking their horses into a canter.

  Make sure they clear town, I told Res.

  He leapt into the air, circling us once before taking off after the horses as they made for the boulevard that curved out onto the traveling road.

  “Come on,” I said to Kiva. “Let’s go check on the others.”

  * * *

  With the help of the town’s leader, Samra had seen to the townspeople. By the time we returned, they’d already organized cleanup crews and started guiding the remaining crowd back to their homes.

  As Kiva left me to get a report from a nearby soldier, Samra stepped up, blocking my path. She’d yet to remove her mask. “You let him go.”

  I frowned. “Malkin? What did you want me to do, kill him?”

  Her gaze cut toward me. “You’re at war. You’re forging an alliance against one of the greatest military mights this world has ever seen. You can’t scare it with a little rain and wind. Eventually, you and that crow are going to have to spill blood.” She didn’t wait for me to respond before pushing on through the dispersing crowd.

  I let her go, unsettled. My mother probably would have captured them and had them executed or killed them before they could escape. I hadn’t wanted to risk Res when forcing them out was an option, but it was more than that.

  This was the first time I’d ever asked him to hurt someone. The first time we might have killed or seriously injured someone. But Samra was right. Eventually, we would have to.

  I continued through the crowd, seeking Caylus. I didn’t make it far. It seemed every single person wanted to speak to me. They bowed and thanked me, pressing tokens of thanks and luck into my hands that I respectfully returned, promising them their safety was enough.

  Then a curvaceous, thick-muscled woman stepped into my path, a broad smile on her kind face. I let out an involuntary gasp of recognition. “Jenara!”

  The retired rider wrapped me in a hug so warm and tight, I never wanted her to let go. It’d been months since I’d seen her, first the day of the town festival, when I’d watched her crow make animals out of water, and then again in the capital for each yearly hatch night. She’d been there on Ronoch, and she bore the tiny speck-like scars of falling embers.

  “Thia,” she said in a voice of warm honey. She pulled back, holding me at arm’s length. “Saints keep me, it’s good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you too,” I said with a grin.

  “That was some impressive work by your crow.” She nodded to where Res had just landed on a nearby building, his bright silver eyes searching the crowd with a familiar hunger. The connection between us prickled with a feeling I knew well: food food food.

  “Even for a storm crow, the directional control of the water and the transition to ice was incredible. Especially at his age.”

  “I’m starting to think there might be a reason behind that,” I replied. She lifted a brow, and I hurried to explain the odd occurrences with Res’s powers, ending with my theory that somehow, he might have access to the other crow powers.

  “Fascinating,” she said, rubbing her chin. “Why don’t you and I put it to the test in the morning? I’ll help you train him as if he were a water crow, and we’ll see what he can do.”

  I grinned. “That’d be perfect.” We shook hands, and I scanned the crowd. “You haven’t seen a tall Ambriellan boy anywhere, have you?”

  “The one that viper pulled in front of the crowd? He’s in the town hall building.” She gestured at the structure behind her.

  “Thanks.”

  We parted ways and I made for the hall, asking Res to keep an eye on things outside.

  There was something familiar about the building, its layers rising up toward a point, the edges carved in delicate swirling designs. One of the big double doors had been pinned open, but the other bore the proud, massive shape of an aizel, its coat carved about it like melting clouds of mist.

  Black metal hooks that would have once held lanterns to light worshippers’ way jutted out periodically. A shiver prickled my skin.

  This had once been a Sella temple.

  Ericen’s warning pulled at me, but I shoved it aside. I couldn’t trust him.

  The doors opened into a narrow hall with rooms shooting off on either side. People bustled about, and I pulled one aside to ask after Caylus. They directed me to one of the small side rooms, where I found a healer finishing up tending to the cut from the guard’s blade.

  The healer bowed to me as I entered. Caylus didn’t even look at me. He sat on a small workbench, eyes trained on the floor.

  “Can I have a moment with him?” I asked the healer. The girl nodded and slipped from the room, closing the door behind her.

  Caylus’s hands tightened about the edge of the table, and I knew he did it to keep them from shaking. A flush filled his cheeks.

  “What is it?” I asked softly.

  He shook his head, bringing his hands to his face. “Malkin,” he whispered. His fingers curled in as he dragged them along his face and behind his neck, lacing them tightly. His elbows pressed together like a cocoon to hide in. “You shouldn’t have to fight my battles for me.” His voice came out hoarse. “No one should. But I—I just…”

  His words scraped at raw memories. Hiding under the covers. Craving darkness, solitude, quiet. A place where I couldn’t fail, and I couldn’t lose. Even now, I worried I’d slip, my past my constant shadow.

  I stepped closer. Gently, I wrapped my fingers around his wrists, his skin warm to my touch, and pulled his hands from his face.

  It felt like reaching for a drowning man.

  “I understand, Caylus,” I said gently. “I know what it is to feel useless. Powerless. Weak. But you are none of those things. Sometimes, we need a little help. That’s what I’m here for. To help fight those battles.”

  Finally, he looked at me, and what I saw in the depths of his eyes trapped my breath in my throat. From the day I’d met him, Caylus had always been quiet, a little nervous and a little awkward. He didn’t trust easily, and he’d always seemed uneasy, like he expected the world to crumble around him at any moment.

  He was broken, and it was Malkin’s fault.

  My skin warmed, a trace of heat rising from my stomach to my throat like a tendril of smoke from a growing fire. Suddenly, I regretted my decision to let him go free. He hadn’t deserved my mercy.

  Malkin had done this, and he went unpunished because of Illucia. Because of R
azel. She’d destroyed so much more than I’d realized, hurt so many people.

  Caliza. Kiva. Caylus. Auma. Samra.

  Even Ericen.

  I wrapped one of Caylus’s large hands in both of mine and silently made myself a promise. Before all this was over, I would make Malkin Drexel regret ever laying a finger on Caylus.

  And I would tear Razel down.

  His lips parted, then closed, then pressed into a firm line.

  “There’s a story about an Ambriellan sailor,” he began at last, “who sailed the world alone. When he didn’t return, his friends assumed he’d died. Then one day, a merchant ship came across his boat, floating off the Illucian coast. When they asked him whether he was lost, he said he was. When they offered to give him directions, he said he knew the way home.”

  As he spoke, his fingers flexed in and out, the white scars stark against his golden skin. “‘Well then,’ the ship’s captain asked, ‘how can you be lost?’ And the man replied, ‘Because no matter where I am, it’s never where I should be.’ And when the captain asked him where that was, the man said, ‘I don’t know. I can’t find it.’ Unable to help, the merchants left him there. They say to this day you can spot the sailor’s dinghy floating in the mist, still searching.”

  Maybe it’d been his detached tone as he told it, or maybe it was the way he stared at the wall before him, but the story left me uneasy, the room crowded with his words.

  “That’s not a very happy story,” I said.

  “No, it’s not. But I understand him, the sailor. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’ll spend your whole life searching for it.”

  My throat felt dry. “What are you looking for, Caylus?”

  He leaned his head back against the wall. “I don’t know.”

  The words settled heavily. When I first met Caylus in Illucia, he’d only just escaped Malkin weeks before. His wounds, both physical and invisible, had been so raw. Just like mine. Together, we’d helped each other heal.

  And seeing Malkin again had ripped his wounds right back open.

  Caylus’s hand fell over mine, and only then did I realized I’d curled it into a fist. “I just—” The words caught in his throat. “I just need some time to think.”

  I felt myself nodding, and though I knew he wanted time alone, I couldn’t quite make myself leave. It felt like abandoning him.

  “I’m here for you if you need me,” I said.

  “I know.” He smiled, and it settled the unease inside me. Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe he really did just need some time to process everything. But as I stood to go, crossing the short gap from bed to door, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the distance opening between us might never be closed again.

  Five

  We returned to the ship with plans for Jenara to meet us the next morning. Kiva, Res, and I ate dinner with the rest of the crew in the mess hall as we did every night, but Caylus stayed locked in his room, and I reluctantly let him be.

  Like every night before, as the conversation dwindled and people reclined in their benches, full of hearty stew and thick, warm bread, someone stood to tell a story.

  Myths and legends were the kingdom’s domain, and I’d heard many of the tales the sailors told before, famous as they were among the nearby kingdoms.

  The storyteller was an older woman, threads of gray lining her wheat-colored hair and laugh lines framing her kind green eyes. I recognized her as the ship’s cook, Darya. She held a pint of ale in one hand, the other held up for silence, which was quickly given.

  “Any requests?” she asked, her voice strong but soft.

  I leaned forward. “Do you know any stories about the Sellas?” I asked, ignoring Kiva’s incredulous look. There was no harm in investigating what Ericen had said. “Real ones, not the fairy tales in the books.”

  Darya laughed. “Who says because they are fairy tales they are not real?” The question prickled at the back of my neck. “True enough, there’s little history of the Sellas left behind. No books that are more than stories, few artifacts that have not crumbled into dust. In many places, they’ve been all but forgotten, almost as though someone erased every mention, every memory, until they faded into obscurity. And yet we all agree they were here once. They did exist.”

  Behind me, someone made a low humming sound of excitement, and I realized the story had already begun. With Kiva on one side of me and Res on the other, I settled back to listen.

  “So what happened?” Darya asked. “Once, people worshipped the Sellas like gods. We paid homage to them for their protection from the land’s wild magic, for gifts of power beyond our belief, and for the benevolence with which they let us live freely. Or at least, so one story goes.”

  As she spoke, Darya wound her way through the mess hall, the slow rock of her voice hypnotizing every gaze. It wrapped me up like a wool blanket, carrying me away in the story.

  “Others say the Sellas were hungry and cruel, saturated with power and with nowhere to use it but on weak, powerless humans. They extorted us for their protection at the same time as they tormented us.”

  She paused in the center of the room. “War broke out between humans and Sella, led by the crows of Rhodaire, and we proved far more capable than our gods expected. An unsteady truce was reached.

  “Now,” she said quietly, her voice taking on a curious edge, “what came next is up for some debate. Some say the Sellas, their pride wounded from defeat, sought to destroy the humans who had bested them. Others say the Rhodairen riders intended to ensure they’d never face a Sella threat again. But they all agree that in the end, the kingdoms banded together and slaughtered the Sellas.”

  A strange unease cut through me. There was an uncomfortable parallel between her story and the future I hurtled toward. An alliance forged in the face of an unbeatable foe and the promise of blood to be spilled.

  “When the Sellas died,” Darya continued, “the magic died with them. It retreated from the land, as did all the creatures it’d once sustained, from the aizel to the South Sea serpents. But it hit Sellador worst of all, turning the land to dust and desert. And so the Eastern Wastelands were born, their border now guarded by remnants of long-ago magic.”

  Silence settled in the wake of her words, as if everyone feared to break the spell she’d woven. Across the room, Onis watched me with bright, almost feverish eyes, a talisman clasped in his hands.

  I leaned forward, startling Res awake with a flutter of feathers and shattering the trance. “How can we be sure they’re all dead?” I asked, and a chorus of chuckles sounded back that I ignored. “What if some of them survived?”

  Darya smiled sharply. “Perhaps they did. Perhaps they’ve been lying in wait to get revenge on the humans who turned against them. Or then again, perhaps this is all just another fairy tale.”

  * * *

  I lay staring up at the bunk above me, where Kiva’s snores emanated in waves. I couldn’t put my mind to rest.

  It was full of Darya’s story, Caylus’s pain, and Res’s strange magic. And it was full of the look in Ericen’s eyes. The guilt, the determination, the battle between the two as fluctuating as the sea.

  Giving up on sleep, I rolled out of bed and wrapped a cloak about myself. Res slept soundly in a pile of blankets as I emerged into the hall and climbed the stairs to the main deck. The chill night air cooled my hot skin, each breath laced with the briny scent of the sea. The waxing moon hung heavy in the cloudless sky, bathing the deck in silver light and illuminating a figure near the bowsprit.

  I recognized the wiry build and stiff posture of the ship’s captain and joined Samra wordlessly, staring out at the black waters of the open ocean. For a while, the only sound came from the snap of the sails and the break of water against the hull.

  We’d hardly spoken since Kiva and I had abandoned her on the rooftop. It struck me that in my attempts no
t to be ordered about by her, I’d blatantly shoved aside her own concerns about being seen working with me, something that put her family in danger. I’d been so concerned with being a leader that I’d forgotten one of the most important parts of leadership was listening to those around me.

  But if I couldn’t get Samra to agree with even my simplest decisions, how was I going to convince her to ally her rebels with Rhodaire? My response had been to force my decisions, but that only made her dig her heels in deeper, creating a chasm between us.

  Maybe leading didn’t mean just making decisions and enforcing them. That was what Razel would have done. What my mother would have done. Maybe leading meant being the kind of person people wanted to follow.

  I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about today. I shouldn’t have forced all this without you on board. I should have listened.”

  At first, I didn’t think she would respond. Despite her decision to help us, I knew Samra didn’t like me much. She resented me for my mother’s decision not to help the Ambriels. I understood. My bitterness at my mother had only grown in recent weeks.

  I tried again. “Your father—”

  “I don’t give a damn about my father,” Samra said with deadly quiet. “He can rot in the night’s depths for all I care.”

  “But your family—”

  “I didn’t mean him.” Her hands tightened into fists at her sides, then relaxed all at once. “I was twenty-one when Illucia attacked five years ago.” Her voice had a slight rasp to it, as if the words were still too raw to speak. “My mother was a soldier. She died early in the fighting. My father is the leader of the high council, or what little remains of it. When Razel’s army took Seahalla, she forced the council to submit to her.”

  It was an easy image to conjure, a line of leaders on their knees before the Illucian queen. Razel liked to exert control, and she liked to force people into submission when they stood against her.