Eyes of Crow

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “Wait,” said the bearded man, “I thought we were just going to scare her a little.”

  Skaris raised the mug to Rhia’s mouth. “It takes a lot to scare a Crow, Adrek.”

  She recognized the name as one of Alanka’s former mates, a Cougar. Her eyes pleaded with him, but he seemed paralyzed. She pressed her lips together to keep out the drink she knew must be poisoned. The Wolverine took both her wrists in one large hand and pinched her nose shut with the other, cutting off her breath. She howled behind her closed mouth, muffling the sound. No one would hear. No one would help. Her legs kicked out, searching for a knee, a groin, anything to make Skaris or the Wolverine let go.

  The toe of her boot hit something hard. The Wolverine shrieked and released her. She squirmed in Skaris’s grip, which had tightened in his surprise. He struggled to keep the mug right side up.

  Rhia watched with confusion as the blond man stumbled away, blood trickling down his calf. A simple kick couldn’t make a Wolverine so much as yelp, much less scream and bleed. He lurched out of the shadow, and in the waning afternoon light she saw an arrow fall from his lower leg.

  Adrek cursed and fled. Skaris yelled after him to come back, to no avail.

  “Let her go.” Marek stepped out from behind a distant tree, an arrow nocked and aimed.

  Skaris’s arm clenched, and for a moment Rhia thought he would use her as a shield. Then he pushed her away and held up his hands.

  “Calm down, Marek. We were just having a little fun. Having a few drinks.” He lifted the meloxa he had been trying to force down Rhia’s throat.

  Marek paced forward, his bow unwavering. “Then drink.”

  Skaris looked at the mug. “What, this one?” He started to turn it over, splashing a few drops on the needle-littered ground.

  “Drink it!” Marek was only about twenty paces away now. He lowered the bow slightly. “Or I make sure you never get to the second phase.”

  Reflexively Skaris covered his groin with his free hand, as if that would stop the arrow’s impact. His chin tilted up. “You’d shoot an unarmed man? Where’s your honor? You want to fight, let’s fight, but no weapons.”

  Rhia looked at Marek, wanting to tell him no. He could never beat a Bear in hand-to-hand combat. Skaris was bigger, and undoubtedly stronger and faster, even when drunk.

  Marek drew the bow even tauter. “Drink that, and we won’t need to fight.”

  “Don’t,” Rhia told Skaris. “It’s poisoned, isn’t it?”

  He downed the mug in one long swig, then tossed it aside. “Fooled you.” He wiped his mouth and gave a long, triumphant laugh.

  Suddenly the Bear’s eyes widened. He uttered a short gasp that was almost a hiccup, then pounded his chest with his own fist.

  Rhia backed away, horror stealing her screams. Skaris clawed at his throat as if to yank out what was inside, the substance that ate his breath. He fell to his knees, bulging eyes staring at her with recrimination.

  “No!” Marek lowered his bow and ran to her side.

  “We have to get help,” she said. “Maybe Elora has an antidote.”

  Marek reached for Skaris. The Bear clutched his hand, then in one move, leaped to his feet and punched Marek in the face.

  Marek slammed to the ground and gaped at Skaris standing over him, not the least bit poisoned.

  “You think I’d try to kill your mate?” He glowered at Marek. “What kind of monster do you take me for?”

  Marek raised himself up on an elbow. “Why else would you try to force her to drink?”

  “To scare her, to make her sick, to make her miserable.”

  “Is this about your sister?”

  Skaris raised a fist like a weapon. “Don’t talk about my sister. She’d be alive if it weren’t for you.”

  Marek flinched as if the Bear had struck him again. “What does this have to do with Rhia? Why do you hate her?”

  “Because she stole a month from my life, from everyone’s life.”

  Marek passed a hand over his left cheek, which already held a wide red bruise. “She’s a Crow. Our people need Crows.”

  “Kalindos won’t get this Crow. When Rhia finishes her training, she’ll take everything she’s learned back to Asermos. Why should we pay for someone else’s gifts? What did they ever do for us?”

  “Plenty,” Rhia said. Skaris tilted his head toward her, never taking his eyes off Marek. She continued. “When it’s time to enter your second phase, there’ll be no advanced Bears here to teach you. You’ll have to come to Asermos to train with Torin. And he’ll be glad to have you. We all will.”

  “Liar!” He turned toward her, and Marek pounced. He leaped on the larger man’s back and locked an arm around his neck. Skaris roared and backed up hard against a nearby tree. The impact made a cracking noise, which could have been a pine branch or one of Marek’s ribs. He groaned but held on.

  In the distance, voices shouted, coming closer.

  “Help!” she cried. “Over here!”

  With a heave of his broad shoulders, Skaris pulled Marek over his head and flipped him onto the ground, then kicked him hard in the side. Marek curled up in pain, but when the next kick came, he grabbed Skaris’s foot and pulled him down.

  They wrestled and scuffled, neither landing another solid blow, until several Kalindons fell upon them, led by Adrek, who had apparently scampered off not in fear, but to find help.

  Four men pulled the fighters apart. Skaris looked unscathed, but Marek’s torn clothing revealed a bruised and bleeding torso. The men led them back into the center of the village, toward the bonfire, followed by the excited crowd, none of whom spoke to Rhia.

  Coranna met them near the center of the village. Her expression was neutral, that of a judge now. “What happened?”

  Marek wiped the grime from his face and said nothing.

  Someone cleared his throat. Adrek.

  The Cougar stepped forward and told Coranna everything that had happened since their arrival at the table, the truth reluctantly spilling from his mouth as he spared Rhia an occasional glance of resentment. When he reached the part about the injured Wolverine, Marek interrupted. “It’s barely a scratch, as I planned. I only wanted to make Drenis let go of her. I thought I was saving her life.”

  “I don’t understand.” Zilus stepped forward, supported by a walking stick. “What made you think the meloxa was poisoned?”

  Marek looked at Rhia, who in turn looked at Coranna. The Crow woman frowned and nodded. Rhia took a deep breath and let the words—and their consequences—fall where they may.

  “I have reason to believe that Skaris poisoned Etar.”

  A murmur ran through the crowd, punctuated by Skaris’s cry of disbelief. “What? I never—why would I want to kill Etar?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He didn’t know, either, but he was sure of it.”

  Skaris struggled against the grip of his captors. “What are you talking about? Who was sure of it?”

  “Etar,” Coranna said. “Rhia speaks the truth. I contacted him this morning to find out why his spirit still lingered. He seeks justice.”

  Skaris gave her a long, incredulous look, then said, “I want a new judge.”

  Coranna nodded. “For a crime such as this, no one in Kalindos can be truly objective.”

  “I’ll send a message to Velekos,” Zilus said, “directly to their third-phase Hawk, and ask her to send a judge.” He looked at Skaris. “And an Owl as well, to question the defendant.”

  “Good,” Skaris said. “Then you’ll know it was all a waste of time.”

  Zilus ignored the Bear. “Now that the river has thawed, they should arrive in less than a month.”

  “In the meantime,” Coranna declared to Skaris, “you shall be held in your home, under guard night and day.”

  Skaris pressed his lips together, wisely saying nothing more without the aid of an advocate. He spared Rhia one last glare as they took him away.

  A hand touched her should
er. She started, then looked up to see Razvin.

  “You’ll be safer without him free,” he said. “We all will.”

  She nodded even as her suspicions of the Fox flared.

  “The boy who confessed,” Razvin said, “was one of Alanka’s…friends.”

  Adrek stood alone, his face etched in bitterness as he watched Skaris be led away.

  Razvin’s hand grew heavier on Rhia’s shoulder. “I’d do anything to protect my daughter. I trust you share my concern.”

  Rhia wanted to shift away, but Kerza’s plea for her to learn more about Razvin forced her to continue the conversation.

  “Protect her from what?” she asked him.

  “Any threats, within Kalindos or—not.”

  Did he consider her a threat to Alanka, merely because she was Asermon? If so, his animosity was deeper than she had first appreciated.

  “Excuse me.” Rhia held back a shudder and approached Adrek just as he turned to leave the area.

  “I wanted to thank you,” she said. “For getting help, and for telling the truth.”

  The Cougar scowled at her. “I just didn’t want to see anyone get hurt. It doesn’t mean I want to be your friend.”

  She took a step back, speechless for a moment. “I don’t deserve this. What did I do to you?”

  “Only what you’ve done to all of us.”

  “First of all, I didn’t know the price for my resurrection. Second, if it’s so terrible, why doesn’t everyone hate me?”

  “Because they’re fools? Because you gave them an excuse for a party? How should I know?” He shook his head. “I won’t bother you if you don’t bother me. Let’s leave it at that.”

  He walked away. Marek approached her, holding his left side where Skaris had kicked him.

  “I have to pay Drenis restitution for shooting him.”

  “What kind of restitution?”

  “Provide him with food and water and anything else he needs during his recuperation, starting tomorrow. It’s just a flesh wound, but I’m sure he’ll drag out the healing just to watch me serve him.” He shrugged. “The punishment would have been a lot worse if I hadn’t done it in your defense.”

  “Or what you thought was my defense.” Rhia turned his chin to examine his wounds. “Elora should look at these cuts.”

  “They just need cleaning, and some ice for the bruises. Skaris could have killed me if he wanted. It’s not as bad as it looks.” The sun disappeared behind the mountains, and Marek faded from view. “Well, now it’s worse than it looks, since it doesn’t look like anything at all.”

  They scavenged some food from the wake and returned to his home, using a basket and pulley to hoist their dinner. Marek hung a blue cloth from his porch railing to signal his presence, then changed it to the red Do Not Disturb flag.

  Rhia washed the cuts on his face as thoroughly as possible, considering she couldn’t see them.

  “Do you really think Skaris killed Etar?” he asked her as she wrapped a chunk of ice within a cloth.

  “Not on purpose.” She reached out gingerly to find his head without poking him in the eye, then held the ice to his swollen cheek. “Maybe someone else put the poison in the drink and had him serve it.”

  “But how would that person know Etar would get that particular mug unless they told Skaris which one to give him?”

  “Good point. Skaris had to have known. But it doesn’t make sense. Why would he do it?” She helped Marek remove his shirt, which reappeared as it left his body. “If Kerza was right, and it happened over a Council dispute, the Owl from Velekos will find out who planned it.”

  “But a second-phase Owl can only detect a direct lie, so they’d have to run through every name in the village, looking for a yes-or-no answer.”

  Rhia stopped, holding his shirt. “Unless it wasn’t one of the Kalindons.”

  “Then who?”

  “What if Etar died for something bigger than Council politics?” She held up a hand in a preemptive plea against his interruption. A thought buzzed around her mind, something that had seemed insignificant at the time. It came to her half-formed. “Didn’t you tell me one of your Bear friends went to the Descendant City? The one who couldn’t feel the Spirits there.”

  Marek let out a small gasp. “It was Skaris. He brought them a message from the Council.”

  “Maybe the Descendants turned him into a spy.”

  “Skaris? Not likely. He’s too boastful to be a good secret-keeper.” He took the cloth to cleanse the cuts on his side. “Your village has been living under the shadow of a Descendant invasion for years. You must think any odd event is a sign of war.”

  “The Descendants have every reason to invade Asermos,” she said, “and no reason not to.”

  “No reason, other than the slaughter of their troops. If your village coordinated its magic, you could stomp any opponent into the ground.”

  “We’d need time to coordinate our magic. Someone would have to warn us of the enemy’s movements weeks in advance.” She sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m not making this up. I had a vision years ago. Someone I know will be killed in the battle.”

  “Have you told them?”

  She shook her head. “It’s forbidden.”

  Marek sat next to her and took her hand. A shadow of nothingness obscured her palm. “When I think of all you have to see and hear as a Crow, I don’t blame you for wanting to run away.”

  Rhia’s toe nudged the cloth used on Marek’s wounds. It was covered in mud as well as blood. “You got filthy in that fight. Would you like me to heat water for a bath?”

  “Oh, that would be—” He caught himself. “No, I’ll do it.”

  “You got this way on my account, so it’s the least I can do. Besides, you took care of me for days in the forest.” She pushed him gently down on his back. “Rest while it heats.”

  Rhia collected a bucketful of water from the cistern that sat on the rope bridge between his home and Coranna’s. His stove was tiny compared to the Crow’s, and by the time the water heated, he was asleep. She wet a cloth and flicked some warm water in the direction of his snores.

  “Hey!” He spluttered, and she heard his feet hit the floor.

  “Your bath’s ready.”

  “Then help me undress,” he said in a tone that invited more than sympathy.

  She obliged, resisting the urge to demand more from his body than it could comfortably offer. He sat on the floor, leaning against the bed, while she cleansed him. His murmurs of appreciation made her long to see his body in the warm lantern light.

  With the leftover water, he scrubbed and rinsed his hair. As he rubbed it dry with a clean cloth, he said, “Sometimes having short hair comes in handy.”

  She broached a difficult question. “Will you keep cutting it?”

  His hand stopped moving, and he set down the towel. “I knew you were wondering.” He put on a fresh shirt from a pile in the corner, then ran the towel over his head again. “It’s growing, isn’t it?”

  “Hair will do that.”

  He was silent as he finished dressing, each article of clothing vanishing as he put it on. “I don’t know, Rhia. It still hurts. I was there.”

  “For the birth?”

  “Usually fathers wait outside, but some women prefer their mates or husbands to be with them. I wonder if it isn’t to make us appreciate how much they suffer to bear children.” She heard him sit on the bed with a heavy sigh. “Kalia wanted me there.”

  It was the first time he had spoken his mate’s name to Rhia. Kalia was real now.

  “It was bad,” he said, “from the beginning. There was so much blood. The baby, he tried to come out feetfirst. He kept ripping her apart from the inside, until finally—she begged Elora to cut her open.”

  Rhia closed her eyes. Such surgeries were impossible to survive without a third-phase Otter or second-phase Turtle.

  Marek’s voice went dead. “But it was too late. When they took him out of her, he wasn’t b
reathing. And neither was she.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “It was nighttime, so she couldn’t even see me before she died. I was already invisible.”

  She sat next to him on the bed. “She knew you were there. She knew you—” Rhia stumbled over the word “—loved her.”

  He drew a strand of her hair through his fingers, sliding down to the ends, which came to the shelf of her collarbone when pulled straight. “Can I ask you how your mother died?”

  “Her heart, it—gave out.”

  “Was it quick?” he whispered.

  “No.” She felt herself shrink inside. “We all had a chance to say goodbye. But it wasn’t enough time, and I—I couldn’t help her cross.”

  His hand drifted to her cheek and caressed it with the backs of his fingertips. “You must have felt terrible.”

  “I still do.”

  “And yet, your hair grows long.”

  “Because I only wear my guilt on the inside.”

  He sucked in a sharp breath. “You think my mourning is some sort of display?”

  “I think it’s punishment, and not just for you. How do you think Coranna feels each time you cut your hair?”

  “She made a bad choice, and we all have to live with it. Except Kalia and my son. They don’t get to live with anything.”

  Rhia touched his chest. “I don’t think Coranna made a bad choice. I’m glad she chose you.”

  “If you knew Kalia, you wouldn’t say that.”

  Eyes stinging, she drew back her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You must wonder if I compare you.”

  “Don’t you?”

  He sighed. “We were so young. We’d loved each other since childhood, but the older we got, the less we understood each other. It’s hard to explain.”

  Rhia thought of Arcas. “You don’t have to.”

  “We fought all the time,” Marek said, “about stupid things, things I don’t even remember. When we found out she was pregnant—” He shifted his weight on the bed. “We didn’t rejoice at the thought of raising a child together when we could barely stand to be within the same walls. We only thought of ourselves, not the baby. So Wolf and Swan turned our new powers from blessings into curses.”