Ravenwood

by Andrew Peters

  Petronio was instantly awake, feeling for the blade under his bed.

  “Shush!” came a soft voice. “You do not need to defend yourself against me!”

  Petronio sat up. “My lady!”

  “The Councillor hasn’t appreciated your true capabilities!” The voice kept quiet as Fenestra silently slipped toward the edge of the bed and sat down.

  “Well …,” said Petronio, unsure how to continue.

  “Well, nothing. I admit to you that he is a useful pawn, but no more.” The moon caught her eyes, daring him to defend his father.

  Petronio was happy that at least one person in this miserable damp excuse of a city had the guts to stand up to Councillor Grasp. “I thought he’d be pleased, but all he could do was go on about the guards.”

  “My dear boy. You have what he lacks. Initiative. For one so young, your cunning is surprising!”

  “Thank you!” Petronio was glad she could not see his blushing face. She was wearing some kind of perfume. It filled his nostrils like a drug.

  “Oh, don’t thank me. It was you who came up with the plan, then executed it. We do not have such giant birds in our country. These creatures are evolution’s concept of a killing machine. In a way, I admire them. Are you sure they will not let him go?”

  The question was pointed. “The religionists think the ravens are death’s henchmen. Personally, I don’t believe in that superstitious claptrap. But throwing away a free meal isn’t in their nature.”

  “Good. Our little friend has proven to be somewhat slippery.”

  “Not this time,” Petronio assured her, closing the subject. “What happens now?”

  “The future, of course!” She was playing with him.

  Petronio knew it and the thought made him bitter. “Right. Thanks for letting me know,” he said with an edge in his voice.

  Fenestra ignored the sarcasm. “And you have played your part well. Go to sleep now, my clever boy.”

  Boy. That’s all he was to her. He wanted more. Much more. It was humiliating being left out. His father had recently met with Flint, but all the Commander did when he passed Petronio on the stairs was grunt an acknowledgment. He had changed from negotiator back to messenger boy in one blink of an eye. And now Fenestra was not letting him in on the details, despite her praise. He looked up and she was gone.

  After that, sleep was impossible. There was only one thing that would relax him. Petronio quickly dressed and stole from the room. The whole house was in slumber now, the only sounds the creaking of wood in the wind as the house gently swayed. Fenestra had no doubt retreated to whatever hidey-hole she had made for herself.

  Petronio crept downstairs, hoping his father’s study door had been recently oiled. The hinges were on his side and within seconds, he stood by the Councillor’s desk. There was the box that started it all. As he lifted the lid and sniffed the expensive cigars within, he realized that, thanks to him, the spy had been uncovered. Who said smoking was bad for your health? He lifted one of the cigars and rolled it between his stubby fingers. A little celebration.

  He went to the balcony doors, undid the latch, and let himself out. The rain had long gone, leaving a chill in the air. The half-moon was lower now, the dawn not far away. Even the stars were losing their brightness. Petronio lit the cigar, dragging the fragrant smoke deep into his lungs and letting it stream out through his nose as he leaned on the edge of the wrought-iron railings. Below him, the crowns of the trees stirred in the breeze like a dark green cloud, already browning at the edges. Soon, all this would change.

  As he reentered the study, a thought struck him. His father was meticulous when it came to paperwork. If there was a plan, he would have written it down, despite Fenestra’s warning that paper was incriminating. Now, where to look? The desk was too obvious, as was the filing cabinet backed against the wall. Even Grasp wouldn’t be stupid enough to file it under T for Treason. What did that leave? Maybe he’d secreted the files behind the tapestries?

  The answer when it came was both obvious and unintelligent. Grasp had commissioned a portrait of himself from one of the best painters in Arborium. Petronio remembered the month of sittings. Woe betide anyone who interrupted the head of the house as he posed. Petronio walked over to the painting, in which the Councillor sat on an ornate, jewel-bedecked chair surrounded by hunting dogs. He wore a demigown with long, hanging sleeves, the facings turned back to show the inner white fox fur. Underneath, Grasp wore a black velvet cote over a pink satin doublet. The painter had created a remarkable resemblance, turning the Councillor into the pompous, preening bore that he really was. However, Petronio was not searching the darkened study in order to improve his appreciation of art. He carefully lifted the gilded frame off its hook.

  Yes! The vanity of it! The best place to hide your secrets? Behind yourself, the great Councillor Grasp! In a hidden alcove sat a thin, hinged box. Petronio quickly lifted it out of its hiding place. Inside lay a scroll. Petronio took the parchment over to the windows and unrolled it, trying to decipher the script in the predawn light. Fenestra had mentioned the future. Here it was in black-and-white. Pure treason, enough inked evidence for a spate of hangings all around. Petronio shuddered at the thought of it.

  The day was known already. Sunday. The Harvest Festival. And here were the dark details. A population drunk on good wine wouldn’t know what hit them. As for King Quercus? Petronio read on, appalled but delighted. Who would suspect their very own army and its dearly trusted leader? At the peak of celebration, in a country filled with the noise of feasting, the King would be asked by his faithful bodyguards to leave the feasting area, and all possible witnesses. Once the paid-off men had the King where they wanted him, the deed would be done. Time for the soldiers to move in. Virtually no blood would be shed as the country changed hands. All that Fenestra had done was offer the right amount of gold and whisper in a few ears.

  As Petronio rolled the scroll up and placed it carefully back in the alcove, he heard footsteps coming toward the study. Loud footsteps of two people: It could only be Salix and Alnus. The picture still leaned against the wall. If anyone came in, it would be the first thing they noticed. There was no way out. Petronio shrank back into the shadows like a trapped rat. This time, there would be no sewage worker to blame, and the guards might choose to attack first, ask questions later.

  26• THE RAVENWOOD

  One second Ark was in the drenching mist of thick cloud. The next he was pulled up by beat of wing into the sudden space of stars and night. The moon looked as if it had been ripped in half by the same claws that now held him tight in a curved cage. Ark’s teeth clattered in their sockets. His clothes were woven for Arborium, protected as it was by leaf and branch. Up here, the wind scoured his skin. Yet the cold was the least of his worries. The warning squawks of the raven might as well have been kirk bells ringing out his death.

  He couldn’t believe that Mucum had somehow managed to follow him. Why didn’t he stay down in the roots with Flo? At least he would’ve been safe. Ark’s last and fleeting hope was that Mucum gave Petronio what he deserved.

  But all that had vanished, a long way behind him now, as he swooped over the forest, covering miles in minutes. Ark was dimly aware how rare this sight was, Arborium laid out like an undulating tapestry of leaf and shade. A real bird’s-eye view. His mind recalled the map he’d seen on Jobby Jones’s wall, and here it came alive, rising and falling beneath him. To the east, he could see the nighttime lamps encircling Hellebore, the castle at its center rising up like a budding flower. But they were flying west, where the lit-up roads and small platform villages soon petered out.

  However, he wasn’t a passenger out for a ride but a parcel of meat in transit. As soon as these claws let go, he was going to be ripped into very small gobbets of flesh. His father had always said to keep a lookout in the woods, in case he fell victim to the raven-gift. Well, that’s what he was now. Sugar and spice, gristle is nice. A gift for some animal’s guts. His goddess was
a long way away now, and feebly whispered prayers, no protection.

  Maybe he’d imagined the mealworm’s purr. For a moment, he tried to feel his way into this other creature’s mind. But all he saw was a shunning blackness. He even thought about the feather in his bag, but what good was a feather against a whole bird? His arms and legs were squeezed tight in this tiny cage. The stench of his captor was overwhelming, a foul animal stink of decomposing tissue that seeped into his nose.

  The wound slashed across his chest began to throb.

  The bird paused, hovered for a second.

  Ark peered through the claws, his eyes trying to comprehend the sight ahead of them as the bird then began to climb. The trees had vanished, beaten back in a long straggly line. He could make out a rocky wilderness that sloped up and up again. Oh! A chill began to invade Ark’s bones. Mountains! Great soaring crags that towered over the forest, curving away both north and west in a gigantic circle. They were bare places, treeless, like a Dendran without clothes! The raven’s black wings carried him over ice- and snow-covered summits that looked sharper and more dangerous than any claws. Then, at last, they began to spiral downward, down out of the night and toward the forest on the other side.

  Ark remembered the far tales from his childhood. The West was where the sun rested its head. If you didn’t say your prayers, sleep would carry you there, to the land of nightmares. Once upon a time, there was a forest that the ravens returned to at night. A place of twisted trees, ruled over by a dark queen. The Ravenwood.

  Then they were over the trees, descending so quickly, Ark only saw streaks of branch and leaf reaching up to him. He closed his eyes, waiting for the sharp stab of beaks, as the claws that held him retracted and he tumbled into what felt like the inside of a goose down bedstead. Feathers tickled his nose and he was unable to hold back a sneeze.

  The sound of the bird’s flapping wings vanished into the dark. Abandoned, he stood and stared around him. He had been dropped to the bottom of an enormous nest in the crown of a tree. Moonlight filtered through the massive leaves: The nest was empty except for a small scattering of bleached white bones. He had to get out of here! Ark tried to scramble up the sides, but the feathers lining the branch-built construction were slippery and the edge of the nest too high.

  Suddenly, he heard a slithering sound followed by a soft hiss somewhere up above. His beating heart told him that this was a wild wood. Nothing known. Nothing safe. In panic, he burrowed under the feather lining, intending to pick a hole in the nest and wriggle through. Plumber’s instincts. He pulled enough feathers out to see the structure of the nest. This was no flimsy pigeon roost. The branches were torn, bent around, and woven into ropes thicker than his arm. Without a saw, this open-air nest was a wicker prison and he was bait in waiting. But whatever it was that crawled along the branch up high must have lost interest. It slid away, its rough skin rasping against bark.

  Ark breathed a sigh of relief. He looked up into the starry night. There was the familiar Plow, digging the furrows of the heavens, and Orion the hunter stared down at him. Ha! And he was the one hunted. He sat back in the nest, feeling lost. Why had he run straight to Grasp’s place? He was in such a righteous rush to save his sister, he hadn’t paused to think. He should have smelled a trap! Now it was all over, or would be as soon as that raven returned with its cronies. But apart from the lonely call of a nightjar, the forest remained strangely silent. The softness of the feathers finally soothed him. It had been a long night. Had he really only left the Rootshooters a few hours ago? His eyelids were heavy and he began to drift off into strange dreams where eyes stared at him from the shadows.

  A voice broke into his sleep. “Well, well, well, what have we here?”

  Ark woke suddenly, aware of a sharp branch sticking into his back. His shift had dried and stuck to his wound and his whole body ached. The light had changed, night swapped for a cold, predawn mist. The hours had flown. Ark licked dew off his lips as he looked up, wondering for a second if rescue was at hand. However, the face that peered over the top of the nest did nothing to reassure him. Its owner was an old woman. Her skin was dark as if competing with night itself, but her eyes were as green as vivid moss. Her thin form reminded him of a snake. Was that what had slithered above him in the dark?

  Suddenly, the woman slid over the edge to land feetfirst right in front of him. As she towered over him, Ark saw a body bent with age, clothed in a cloak of raven feathers and long black petticoats. A dead fox curled round her neck, perhaps waiting to wake up.

  In total terror, he scrabbled away from her to the farthest part of the nest.

  “I speak, and yet your mouth does not respond. I say again, what have we here?” The eyes stared, unblinking, like an owl’s.

  “Why do you care?” said Ark, as boldly as he could muster. He felt sure he had heard the voice before. And the eyes were strangely familiar, the way they bored into him.

  Who was this shadow woman with her tumbledown nest of raven-black hair? Was he still dreaming? Perhaps the tales his mother had told him when he was little were true. Could this really be Her? Impossible! Stories didn’t come to life.

  A hand reached out and gripped him by his jerkin, pulling him up to eye level as if he weighed no more than a button. Her arms were bare, muscles tight as grasping tendrils. “It speaks.” Now there was amusement in her eyes. “My children brought you to me. Not many survive. So once again I ask you what you are.”

  A rush of air raced around his system, his nerves spread like nettle rash across his body. Ark knew he was awake and that this was no normal Dendran. He stared at her in shock. The hand that held him suspended in midair was all wrong, fingers and fingernails fused together to make a honed set of sharpened claws. One swipe with her other hand and Ark was sure his head would be sliced from his body.

  And what the holly did she mean about her children? Ark felt compelled to answer. “A boy.”

  “Yes. Indeed. And one who drops coins in shrines, trying to buy hope with mere metal.”

  He shivered. “How do you know that?”

  The woman didn’t bother answering, finally dropping Ark back onto the floor of the nest. “Tell me more, boy,” she said.

  “My name is Arktorious Malikum, a plumber’s apprentice, son of Mr. Malikum.” And here, up high in this strange tree, he was out of place. His panicked eyes briefly took in the wood that soared above the nest, still wreathed in dawn mist. The branches that crisscrossed the sky were gnarled and twisted like arthritic fingers, the leaves spotted as if autumn had already infected them.

  “Your words cover up truth. You are a sewage worker, a delver in dark places. I thought I could smell something foul.” The taunting tone reminded him of Petronio.

  “It’s a job.” His hands clenched and unclenched.

  “A job. Yes. That is what you are. A job now completed.” The woman had obviously decided his fate. “My curiosity is dulled. You are a thin snack with too much gristle. Sometimes my birds bring me treasure. Sometimes they don’t. I have too many important things on my plate to bother with the likes of you.” The woman let her eyes slide away. “I have found you wanting, and the conversation tedious. My children are welcome to you.” The woman snapped her fingers.

  Out of the shadows and from the surrounding treetops, a thousand pairs of eyes suddenly winked at him. There were more ravens than he had seen in a lifetime, a city of feathered monsters. Ark looked again, and the woman had turned away, dismissing him as if he were a wearisome tick to be plucked from the folds of her wrinkled black skin.

  The nest he crouched in was no more than a serving bowl. The birds clacked their beaks, screeching their dawn chorus as they prepared for a feast.

  27• CURIOSITY KILLS

  The portrait on the floor, the big gap on the wall, Petronio shrunk into the shadows all spelled out one word: Thief! The footsteps paused outside the door.

  “You checked this earlier?”

  “Do I look stupid, Salix?” came a
grunted reply.

  “Yeah. Every shift I have to work with you!”

  “Ha-buddy-ha!”

  Petronio heard the sound of a cork being pulled out and then several glugs.

  “Give us some of that before I die of boredom!”

  If they knew who was on this side of the door, he’d be in trouble. But the footsteps faded away down the corridor.

  “You fool!” Petronio whispered to himself, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. Salix and Alnus doing their rounds, dumb as clockwork, easily evaded. Crazy! He’d been more frightened of a couple of inept thugs than a Dendran-devouring raven. He hung the picture back up, making sure it wasn’t crooked.

  Five minutes later, he made his way, step-by-step, up the stairs, trying to avoid the creaking treads, falling at last into his bed and a deep, dreamless sleep.

  The next morning came, fresh and clear after the dawn mist dissipated into the leaves. His hand was still sore from the punch he’d delivered to Mucum’s guts. Though not as sore as the boy’s stomach would be. He was tempted to go down to the dungeon for a bit of taunting. Maybe later. The boy, and Ark’s sister, were right where he wanted them.

  In class, the teacher droned on about the vein structure of the body — the transport system for blood. As Petronio sat at the back of the lecture room, he thought about Ark’s blood spilling into soup for the ravens.

  His mind fell back to the night before: the satisfaction of seeing Ark’s terrified face as the claws plunged toward him. The whimpering scream as the boy was plucked from the branch like an insignificant weevil. But then came his father’s unenthusiastic response, and worse, Fenestra’s dismissal.

  The sudden anger sharpened his mind. After the lecture, instead of joining the others, he decided to head for the woods. When he’d helped Fenestra with the injection that saved her life, there was one question that had remained unanswered. Where was she going? One way to find out. In his mind, he traced the path they had taken that afternoon and his feet quickly followed, soon leaving the crowds of Hellebore behind as he threaded the thinning byways. At last, he stood at a sign, which pompously read: