He reached out and pulled her close, holding her tight, even though it must have been painful. His hand tangled in her hair, as if he was trying to pull her inside him, and his breath was warm against her neck.
“Knew I was being an asshole,” he said, and his voice was muffled. “I just can’t stand the idea of losing you again.”
“You won’t,” she said. “I swear it, Joe Felz. I won’t leave you.”
But you can’t make me stop loving him, too.
The householders told him he would find Jessamy up in the high sheep fields where they buried the crow. He left the crow king at the bottom of the terraces, the skinny old man turned somber, his keen eyes watchful. Crae turned Hero and pushed him for the hard climb up the terraces, letting his horse take his time. At the House, he dismounted and let the grooms take the horse; with the help of his walking stick, he climbed the rest of the way by himself.
A cold wind blew across the hill, zigzagging through the grass. Close-cropped grass hugged the contours of the land. Rocks poked through everywhere, white and streaked with moss. The burial cairn looked like one of the ancient rocks, except for the uneven tower it made. A vine of pink and yellow flowers trailed over it. Crae had never seen that weed before. A curlew called, and another answered, the birdsong lonely and sweet in the high upland pasture.
Jessamy sat on a rock looking out over the distant lands. The mountains of Kenery were blue in the distance, and far below the silver line of the Aeritan River curled off toward the sea. She turned at his approach. She had her kerchief in her lap, and her brown hair flew around her face, catching the sunlight with strands of red and gold mixed with the brown. Her lips and cheeks were red, but her eyes, usually so filled with spirit and drive, were narrowed with strain. Crae sat down next to her, and she didn’t move away.
Finally, he said, “Tell me what happened.”
She sighed. “We brought him home. We buried him next to our mother and father. Favor was a dreadful place. I had forgotten all the ghosts we lived with. I thought, I will not raise my children here. So I came home.” She looked at him challengingly. “I will not be driven from my home again.”
“Never again,” he agreed. “How are the children?”
“Well. Tevani misses you.” She smiled a little sadly. “She isn’t as lively as she once was. Perhaps when she sees you, some of that will come back.”
He thought he would do anything he could to make that happen. But could he return? “Did Alarin bring you my letter?”
She nodded and pulled the chain from around her neck. “Here.”
He reached out and held her wrist, stopping her. “No. It’s yours. I gave up my lordship to save Trieve from the Council’s wrath. You are Lord of Trieve now.” He added roughly, “They will not attack Trieve for my crime if I am no longer lord here.”
To his surprise, she laughed and sobbed together. “Oh, the Council. First they take Trieve from me, and now they take Trieve from you. It is a wonder they do not throw up their hands and let it all go back to the grass god.”
He grimaced. “They may well try,” he said. “But I will not let Trieve go without a fight. If you will still have me, Lady Jessamy, I will be your consort and serve you well.”
He waited, heart hammering. She was lord now. She could dissolve their marriage and take another man to husband if she wished. He couldn’t blame her if she did, but he hoped she wouldn’t.
Jessamy didn’t speak for a long time, and the only sound was that of the curlews and the wind. At length she poured the chain from hand to hand, the silver links running like water between her slender fingers.
“When I was eighteen and my parents died, Jori married me to Stavin. When Stavin died, the Council married me to you. My life was never my own to dispose as I will.” She looked into the distance, and now her gaze was hard. “Trieve is mine now, and no one will take it from me. Let the Council fight over Favor, not Trieve. This House is mine, and I will hold it for my children.” She turned to Crae and smiled thinly. “Since you are on speaking terms with the high god, tell him for me I am lord here, not you.”
The high god was silent on the matter; probably, Crae thought dryly, he knew when he was bested.
“As for the other,” she said, and breathed out a sigh. “You are an upstart, disreputable captain. Yet you are the only person who never treated me as if I were a chess piece. Not my mother and father, not my brother, not even Stavin.” She tried to keep back tears but failed, and her voice cracked. “All I ask is that you keep crows from my kitchen, please.”
He pulled her close, tucking her under his chin, and resting his cheek on the top of her head. After a moment she lifted her face to his, and they kissed, the taste of tears salty on his lips and tongue. Crae lost himself in the kiss, his heart hammering.
He was no longer a lord. He might even be crow. But they both deserved another chance to make things right, if not for themselves then for Trieve. Jessamy deserved all of him, as captain and husband both. He would strive to give her all he could. Crae let himself think one more time of Lynna and then let her memory go.
Elms lined the avenue approaching the House of Terrick. Allegra and Hotshot clomped steadily toward it, and even though the house was unfamiliar, their pace increased. They knew what houses meant: water and grain and a comfortable loose box.
Kate took it all in. It was drawing on toward evening, the sky was gray, and the air was raw and chill. She was grateful they would be out of the weather soon. Her body ached, she was bruised, hungry, and filthy, and she thought with longing of her careful pack of supplies they had left behind at the trailhead. She supposed the sooner she adjusted to her new life the better, but a toothbrush would have been nice.
She swallowed against the thick lump in her throat that hadn’t moved since she watched from a distance as Marthen was cut down by gunfire. She was safe at last, and her parents were safe, and the price she had paid was that she would never see them again.
When her rescuers reached her, Colar had thrown himself from the saddle and taken her into her arms, and she had cried at last, all the tears coming after being pent up for so long. She had freed herself after a moment and went over and looked at Marthen. A tall soldier tried to hold her back, but she shrugged herself loose and stood over the body.
He was covered with blood and dirt, and his sightless eyes stared at the sky. His hair had gray in it. Colar came up behind her and took her hand, closing his fingers around hers.
“He let me go,” she said, her voice thick and wobbly. “He looked really tired and sad, and he just said, ‘Take the horse.’ ”
“He turned crow,” someone said, but she shook her head.
“Not at the end.”
They took the body away, and then the tall soldier, who turned out to be a lord, gave them some of his supplies for their long journey to Trieve.
First they had gone back to the gordath, though, but Lynn and Joe had already gone through, and the hole between the worlds was closed up tight.
Tears burned in her eyes at the memory. She glanced over at Colar. He looked calm, but his hand tapped his jeans in a nervous tattoo. Their circumstances had reversed. Now she was foster daughter. Her stomach tightened nervously amid her sadness and homesickness. She wondered when she would stop missing her parents. The tears welled up again, and she blinked them away, looking around at her new home.
The house rose in front of them, a stone keep with a high wall and narrow, slotted windows. It was a small castle, built for defense. Fields stretched out all around it, planted with hay. There were plenty of haystacks dotting the field, not the round rolls of a mechanized field but uneven stacks that had been put in place with human labor. Even as she watched, a team of four heavy horses drew a hay wagon towering with its cargo toward the castle.
“I forgot how much I missed the haying,” Colar said, wistfulness in his voice. She glanced at him, startled.
“You helped?” she exclaimed, feeling foolish. A lord’s son .
. .
He grinned. “Everybody helps. We have to get the hay in, or it will get rained on and ruined, and then all the horses will die. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
She felt herself go pink at his teasing.
“And you’ll have to help, too, you know. Even my mother and sister help, though my mother is so busy, and my sister is so little, she mostly gets in the way.” His voice trailed off. “She’ll have grown, I bet.”
“I’ll help,” Kate said a little nervously. She wasn’t afraid of hard work. She had mucked plenty of stalls when she helped pay for Mojo’s board. But this was different. She knew how hard life would be here. This was Aeritan.
I’ll be welcome here, and I’ll work hard, she told herself. But I won’t lose sight of what I want to become, even if it means I lose Colar. She didn’t have his same sense of assur ance that his parents would agree to let them marry, let alone allow her to study to become a doctor. And that would be down the road. She couldn’t marry anyone, not yet, not for a long time.
They had caught attention from the people in the fields now, and they turned and pointed. Kate could hear faint cries of surprise. Colar kept their gait steady and slow, but he reached out and held Kate’s hand. He looked at her.
“I had it easier,” he said, and his mouth quirked. “I was unconscious. It will be all right. I promise. They’ll be so happy I’m back, they won’t even notice you right away.”
He was teasing again to reassure her, and she tried to smile, but she was too frightened. I want to go home, she thought, then she took a deep breath and straightened her back.
A great stream of people poured from the house, all running toward them. Kate saw three kids in front, two boys and a girl. His brothers and sister, running as fast as their legs would carry them, the girl almost keeping up with her brothers. She scanned the crowd and halted Allegra as the nervous horse snorted and tried to backpedal from the onrush. The voices came clearer now, the high-pitched voices of the kids rising above all.
“Colar! Colar! He’s home!”
Allegra rose on her hind legs, and Kate rode it as if the mare stood still, crouching on her back till the horse came down. She drew back, giving them distance, as the people of Terrick swarmed around Colar. Hotshot took it better than Allegra did, but even he crouched slightly and his eyes rolled wildly.
There was Colar’s mother. She had on a red dress and an apron over it, her dark blue kerchief hiding all of her hair. Her face was tan and freckled, as if she spent a lot of time outside, and her eyes were brown and bright. Colar looked like her; it was there in his mouth and nose and the shape of his face. She scanned the crowd from her perch on Allegra’s back. There was Lord Terrick, looking more gray and sour than she remembered. He waded through the crowd to his son, and he and his wife reached out to the boy. Colar dismounted and knelt before them; they knelt as well and took him into their arms. The brothers and sister waited in a circle around them, bright-faced and solemn.
The crowd fell silent and drew back a little. A few people looked over at Kate, and she busied herself by dismounting and running up her stirrups, tucking them neatly against the saddle flaps. This was Colar’s moment. All she wanted to do was disappear. Nervous butterflies quivered in her stomach.
First Lord Terrick and then Lady Terrick rose and tried to raise up their son, but he stayed and put out his arms to his brothers and sister. They practically jumped on him, and Kate laughed and cried both, putting her hand over her mouth.
The crowd let out a huge “Huzzah!” and Allegra freaked again, so that she had to get her under control, walking her in circles to calm her down, the mare’s long-legged walk carrying her smoothly. When she had her settled, Kate turned.
Lord Terrick was looking at her, his expression unreadable. She steeled herself and walked over to him. She held her hand out, and to her surprise, he took it.
“Mr. Terrick,” she said, as her parents had taught her. “I’m glad to see you again, sir.”
He regarded her silently for a moment, and then he smiled. It made him look years younger, and she smiled back.
“I am also glad to see you, child,” he said, his voice still peremptory as ever, but kind at the same time. “My thanks. My thanks from all of my heart that you have returned my son to me.”
Lady Terrick came over now, and Kate felt her butterflies increase. She knew nothing about this woman. For all she knew, she could have been told terrible things about Kate. Like that I was the general’s whore, she thought. She raised her chin.
“Mrs. Terrick.” She tried, as bravely as she could, but her voice faltered.
“Kate Mossland, is it?” Lady Terrick said, her voice sure and strong. She cocked her head, looking Kate over. “I have heard a great deal about you from my husband.”
Oh shit, thought Kate.
“I was sad indeed that I never got a chance to meet you before now, but my husband assured me that our son was in good hands. Are your parents well?”
Kate burst into tears.
It turned out it was the best thing that she could have done. Someone took Allegra from her while she covered her face and tried to get her composure, and Colar came over and stood by her, putting his arm around her and holding her close.
“Everyone, away, away,” Lord Terrick said testily. “Give the girl room.”
“Why isn’t she happy? Doesn’t she like us?” Colar’s little sister stage-whispered, and again Kate laughed and cried. She wiped her face with the back of her hands and dried them on her jeans.
“I’m Kate Mossland,” she said to the girl, who looked to be about ten. “What’s your name?”
“Erinya,” the little girl said, wide-eyed. Colar gestured to his brothers, making a get along movement. One after another the boys stepped forward.
“I am called Yare,” said one, and bowed.
“I am Aevin,” said the other.
“I am very pleased to meet you,” Kate said. She looked back at Colar’s parents. “Really, I am. It’s just, a lot has happened.”
“And you will tell us all about it,” Lady Terrick said firmly. She took Kate by the arm. “Kate Mossland, the House of Terrick gives you guesting. Now come, both of you, to wash up and eat.”
Colar sipped his vesh and felt unfamiliar warmth course through him. He lifted his eyes in surprise. His father had spiked it with some of the regional brandy. Lord Terrick gave him a look that was half smile, half grimace.
“You looked as if you needed that,” he said, his voice a growl.
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
His father grunted and sipped his own vesh. They sat in front of the fireplace in his father’s writing room, where he handled Terrick’s accounts. The hearth was bare, the fire unlit. It was high summer after all, though in Terrick the summers could be gray and cloudy and not much warmer than the winter months. It was no colder, at any rate, than the Mosslands’ air-conditioned house. Colar stretched his legs out, then hesitated. He wore jeans, not good trousers. He saw his father give his strange clothes a look.
“So you led a dozen men in pursuit of Marthen,” his father said, and there was a glint of approval in his eye.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m surprised Lord Tharp handed them over to you.”
“Lady Sarita made him.”
His father gave a crusty laugh. “Well. It was a good deed and a necessary one, though what a waste. The general wasn’t always mad. Once he was the greatest strategist in Aeritan.” He shook his head.
“It wasn’t her fault,” Colar said quickly, and his father shot him a look.
Colar almost quailed, but his father said only, “Looks as if you’ve grown a hand since you’ve been away.”
Colar had. He towered over his father now. It had both pleased and saddened him. His father’s hair had thinned over the last year, and his beard had come in gray. He was younger than Mr. Mossland, but Kate’s father used something on his hair to keep it growing, and he still played games. He w
as the one who had nudged Colar into lacrosse and basketball. Colar thought that maybe he had wanted a son, and he felt a pang. He hoped the man was all right. He had been good to Colar, as had Mrs. Mossland.
As if he knew what his son was thinking, Lord Terrick said, “Were you a good foster son?”
He thought so, right up to the end, when he promised his foster mother that he would rescue Kate, and disobeyed his foster father. Colar sipped his brandy and vesh. His lips had gone slightly numb. This wasn’t the first time he had sampled Terrick’s famed brandy, but it was the first time he had taken so much. “Yes, sir,” he said at length. He had done what he promised, after all. Kate was safe, and she would be a part of Terrick now.
“Were they good foster parents?”
Colar looked up and blinked. His father’s voice was un-characteristically uncertain.
“Yes,” he said firmly. “Father, they treated me well. They treated me like a son.”
Lord Terrick looked down at his cup. “I never thought we would see you again. I thought you would die. I never thought—” His voice broke. “I thought I had lost you.”
Colar looked away. The old man never cried, not even when Colar’s littlest sister had died of a fever when he was ten. He cries, he corrected himself. Just not in front of anyone. He cast about for a way to change the subject and let his father recover.
“I should show you my scars,” he said. He set down his vesh and stripped off his jacket and shirt. It was dim, the only light from the windows overlooking the Terrick lands, but there was enough light to see. Colar was skinny, and the scars were clear, the long, fading red lines where his wounds had been stitched up etched across his stomach and back. His father caught his breath. Surgeons in Aeritan would have been hard-pressed to repair the damage. “They saved my life,” Colar said awkwardly. He was getting cold, but he let his father take a long look. “So it was the right decision.”
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