As the Crow Flies: An Epic Fantasy Adventure

by Robin Lythgoe

  I could not help but laugh in surprise at the spectacle. “Enough,” I said, and the wind broke apart, skittering here and there up the street, snatching at skirts and cloaks and hair, chattering, strangely agitated.

  Tanris watched with a perplexed frown. “Did you do that?”

  I gave him a disparaging look. “The wind is my fault now?”

  “That was passing strange,” he murmured.

  I glanced back over my shoulder. The youths hurried away down the street, casting glances back over their shoulders, faces white. “Passing,” I agreed, and urged Horse into motion. We rode on again. The dragon creaked and bumped about for a few more minutes, then fell quiet. Asleep, I hoped.

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  The three of us did agree on one thing: we did not want to spend any more time in Irfan than strictly necessary, an opinion only strengthened by interactions with the people living there. While Tanris went to secure us passage on one of the riverboats, Girl and I purchased a suitable means of conveyance for the dragon. We ended up in possession of a small crate with narrow slits in the sides, which hid more than the bars of a cage would. For our return to civilization—or Girl’s introduction to it, as it happened—I purchased new clothing. Ours bore a distinct resemblance to rags and, worse, had assumed an odor I much doubted would ever surrender to soap and water. Irfan was not a town where fine made apparel saw much use, so I settled for some practical things—shirts, tunics, pants, stockings, and even new coats, fairly sure that the season promised more horrible weather, though we perched on the very edge of spring at last. In an expansive mood, I even bought Girl some scarves. She modeled them for me, giddy with pleasure, an attitude I had not enjoyed since Tarsha had—Well. Better not to go there. Tarsha was a lying, scheming scab. A very beautiful scab…

  But Girl’s smiles and delight kept my mind off the wicked past, and the surly shopkeepers kept me on my mental toes. I haggled prices only enough to appear disgruntled without venturing into “livid.” They portrayed well-practiced outrage, and the dealers took on particularly smug postures as they baldly cheated us, which bothered me not the slightest, as I cheated them right back. One shirt turned into three, two pair of stockings into four, and a new belt as well as a pair of gloves made their way into our parcels without any additional exchange of coin.

  Keeping watch over our horses and possessions complicated the entire operation, but we took turns. Girl was at first shy about picking out new items, but after she’d done so the first two times and we traded places so I could go inside the store and pay for them—and come out with nicer and more numerous items—she recovered quickly. One of the shops had a little closet in which we exchanged old for new, and in spite of the dregs of illness, I found myself much cheered. None of this kept Girl from looking at me from time to time with a mystified expression on her face, and twice she made so bold as to look into my purse.

  I laughed at her antics. “Our employer is paying us well for this trip,” I explained.

  She held up the bag and shook it. I bent close to murmur confidentially in her ear. “I don’t keep my coin where any pickpocket could easily make off with it.”

  She regarded me quite seriously, then tapped a finger against my chest, pointed to her eyes, held up a coin, and then gave me a look so sly and conniving that I nearly laughed out loud.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head.

  She gave me a greatly exaggerated frown nearly as comical as the sly look had been, then her fist thumped her chest.

  “You want to learn the trade?”

  A nod.

  “Why?” I asked.

  She plucked at her clothes, pointed at the pocket where I’d tucked away my purse, then mimicked eating.

  “For a livelihood?”

  Another nod.

  “You could just get married.”

  Her face pinched a little more, and she looked… afraid. Felt afraid. Then her mouth bent into an expression of exasperation and she held her hands out and looked around.

  “Choices will be better in Marketh,” I pointed out.

  She digested that for a moment, then brightened and tapped my chest again, smiling.

  “What?”

  A repeated gesture between the two of us made my brows lift. “You and me? Oh, no. No.”

  She held her hands out and gave me a questioning expression.

  “I’ve sworn off women. Besides, you’re too young.”

  She shook her head, then mimicked sewing and cooking and kissing, the latter of which nearly prompted another smile from me.

  “Can you count? How old are you?”

  All ten fingers, then seven.

  “Too young,” I repeated. She’d never been so animated. She almost looked pretty. “Besides, you’re already cheating me, and that’s a poor way to start such a relationship.”

  She grabbed my arm as I turned away, her brows knit in puzzlement.

  Her action brought us very close. I looked over her unprepossessing features and let my gaze settle on a mouth that could be surprisingly mobile and appealing. “I believe you have a voice, little chick,” I murmured to her, deliberately pitching my voice low and cool. “Refusing to use it is robbing me. Idle chitchat I can live without, but sometimes—” I touched my finger to her lips. “Sometimes you keep critical information from me, and where you might be helpful you are instead a dangerous burden.”

  Shock rippled through her. Tears abruptly filled her eyes.

  “Don’t,” I said, glaring a warning.

  Her mouth quivered, but she nodded and drew herself up.

  Rejoining Too, I proceeded to toss the old, ugly, stinky clothes out onto what passed as a boardwalk and replace them with our new things.

  Girl puzzled me. She was a strange creature at a strange time of my life—and I didn’t need any more riddles to solve. Could I use her in my war against Duzayan? Possibly. Would I use her? If something useful came to mind, yes, without a second thought. I had been cast out on the streets at a much younger age than she, and I had managed just fine, even prospered. Survival on the streets required strength and cunning. My strength, my cunning. I worked hard and sported the lumps to prove it. I owed no responsibility to a girl foisted on me by Tanris’s misplaced sense of duty and a wizard’s abuse! I coveted my talent and my knowledge. Why teach her my methods? Let her learn for herself the pain and loneliness involved in such a life. I wanted none of it! I needed no cook—I cooked just fine for myself.

  Why, then, I asked myself, had I bothered to buy her new things with my own coin? She was nothing to me. Nothing, I repeated to myself.

  I kept an eye on those around me as I worked, buckling buckles and retying ropes. The entire thing would need repacking when we had time; Tanris would do it, necessary or not. Busy work, in my estimation, but if it kept him happy I didn’t care. I looked in on the dragon, and I saw his little sides move as he breathed, so I fastened the bag again and went to untie the horses from the post.

  “If you can ask me properly,” I said, handing Girl the reins to her mount and then moving to climb up on Horse, “I’ll consider it.” I struggled to drag myself into the saddle. Thank the gods of transportation, sitting was a necessity in this particular form of locomotion and I needn’t exert myself. I tugged on Too’s lead rope as I set off, and he gamely followed along.

  I was aware of Girl standing behind me still, staring. Likely, she had her mouth open, which was not at all attractive or useful. Joy burst through her completely out of proportion to my insane offer, and a moment later she trotted along beside me, smiling like a fool.

  Tanris pushed himself off the side of the ramshackle building where he was sunning himself and waited for us to approach, one hand lifted to shade his eyes. “It’s about time you got here. I found a buyer for the horses, but he’s not going to wait around much longer.”

  “Why do we need a buyer?” I inquired, perfectly happy to remain sitting for a little longer and not at all oppo
sed to watching Tanris squint in the light of the glorious sun.

  “To pay for our passage on the Empress of the Le’ah.” He gestured toward the end of the wobbly dock and a boat that looked at least as dilapidated as the building.

  Empress? The thing looked more like a fat old washerwoman with most of her teeth missing. The hull listed to one side, and the masts went the other. “If that’s an empress, then I’m a butterfly, and if you’re going to risk your life on that death trap you’re crazier than I thought.” I turned a curious look on him. “And you’d sell the horses? Our friends?”

  “You don’t have any friends, Crow.” He rubbed his forehead.

  “Of course I do.”

  “They’re horses, not friends.”

  “We’ve been through a horrendous ordeal together, how can you say that? I have slept with Horse, eaten with her, crept through a long and terrible cave with her, run for my life with her, and dangled off a cliff with her. If you ask me, that’s a pretty intimate relationship.”

  “Says the man who killed my cat.”

  “I did no such thing!” I retorted, then paused. “It’s dead?”

  “She was trapped in a burning building, what do you suppose happened to her?”

  I almost blurted that I’d last seen her in lower reaches of the temple. Truly, I thought it was probably alive and well, much too lucky to get eaten by dragons, and with at least six more lives to go through. It would have made a very small and unappetizing mouthful anyway. “What about that boat over there?” I asked, pointing to one that looked sturdily built and probably six hundred years younger.

  Tanris heaved a sigh. “I told you, this is the best we can afford, and only if we sell the horses. Crow? Where are you going?”

  “To make a better deal.”

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  The captain of the River Star clearly did not hail from Irfan. He was clean, and a pleasant enough fellow, even if he did overcharge us for passage. “It is a hazardous trip at this time of year. The spring floods make it a high risk,” he explained, which fooled me not one bit. If it was so chancy, neither he nor any of the other six or so ships’ captains docked in Irfan would be plying their trade this far upriver so soon in the season, but it gave me a good way to strike up a conversation about risks and challenge him to a game or two of cards.

  By the time I rejoined the others, Tanris had had time to notice Girl’s new clothes and to rifle through the admittedly sloppy packs. When he laid eyes on me in my new gear, I feared he might burst a blood vessel.

  “What is this?” he asked, flipping his fingers against my nice new quilted coat with a high collar to keep rain off my neck. No silk, to be sure, but the color was a nice forest green I liked. “A coat.” I waved at Too, who apparently didn’t mind standing about with heavy packs and a small crate on his back. “We got you one, too, and some clothes to replace those awful things you’re wearing.”

  “And how did we pay for it?” he inquired in a voice peculiarly tight.

  “In the usual way.” Usual for me, anyway. “I got the colors you like. Boring black and gray and brown and such.”

  His jaw worked. The vein in his forehead throbbed. “Where,” he said, and “tight” went to “strangled,” forcing him to start over again. “Where did you get the coin to pay for all this? And the passage, too, I gather?”

  I smiled reassuringly at him. “From the coin the baron gave us.” And the jewels and artwork and such that he and his guests and subsequent bystanders had donated at the beginning of our trip. No need to go into vulgar detail.

  “We spent all the coin on the horses and supplies,” he said in a rough, low voice. Girl hovered nearby and watched us with a typically worried expression. Tanris doubted, Girl worried. It was just the way they were.

  “I went back, and he gave us more.” In a roundabout way. “You wouldn’t remember, you were drunk.” I clapped him on the shoulder and went to collect Too’s lead rope.

  “And now you’ve just spent all that, haven’t you? We still need to get from here to Marketh City, in case you’ve forgotten your geography.”

  “I am keeping that in mind, my friend. I have traveled once or twice before in my life.” I started off to the River Star with Horse and Too in tow and Girl hurrying to keep up. If Tanris handled most travel arrangements this way, it was a wonder he got anywhere, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why Duzayan had given him that misplaced authority. Granted, Tanris knew about horses and packing and roving through the wilds, but he had absolutely no concept of comfort.

  Once we’d stowed the horses and Tanris survived the extra cost of ensuring that they were properly fed, we retired with saddle bags and crate to our cabin. The River Star was just a river boat, and didn’t have the generous rooms one might expect on a sea-going vessel, so we were, perforce, required to share the space. Girl claimed an upper bunk and stretched out with a happy sigh. I set Not-an-Egg’s crate in the corner, then chose the lower bed opposite Girl’s and sat down gratefully. The shopping trip and haggling for our places on the boat had completely worn me out. Mindful of my head, I removed coat and boots, tucked my pack up against the wall, and laid down.

  “What are you doing?”

  Tanris either liked annoying me, or the simple things escaped him. “Lying down,” I replied with deliberate patience.

  “We have work to do.”

  “Yes.” I sucked in a breath and let it out in a sigh, tucking my arms behind my head and closing my eyes. “And such a trial it will be, lying right here and only moving to take care of necessary bodily functions.”

  “What about all that—that rubbish you bought?”

  “I don’t buy rubbish, but I assume you’re talking about our supplies. What of them?” I knew exactly what he was getting at, and I had no intention of dealing with it right now. I had, bless the gods of miracles and fortunes, recently survived practically dying, and fully intended to take the opportunity given to me in which to recover.

  “They’re a mess. We need to reorganize them.”

  I shifted so I could rearrange the bed’s itchy wool blanket to cover me, which required opening my eyes again. “Do you like sick people, Tanris? Do you like cleaning up after them, providing for them, and carrying them around because they’re too ill to move themselves?”

  He had elevated his glowers to an art form, and he possessed an entire set. This one expressed the opinion that I was harassing him unjustly and perhaps attempting to hoodwink him. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. In an effort to stave off certain death and the likelihood of even further distressing you by becoming grossly ill again, I am going to sleep. I don’t know about you, but I have had exactly two good nights’ sleep since we left Marketh months ago. If you will take a moment to recall your geography, you will know that it will take us approximately three days to travel the length of the river. We sail in the morning. If you would like to square away the packs now—” I waved one hand, “then by all means, help yourself, but I feel confident that our things will travel quite nicely just the way they are, and they won’t mind at all if we take a well-deserved rest for a day or two.”

  “You’re very smug about this.”

  “Smug? No, I’m tired. I have been sick for days. My head hurts, and I still need to figure out how to deal with Duzayan. You want your wife back. I might die any moment. Let me do it in peace.” Yanking the blanket up over my shoulder, I turned my back to him.

  “And the thing?”

  “He’s not a thing.”

  A moment’s silence, and then, “I suppose you’re going to give it a stupid name, too.”

  “Yes,” I said waspishly, “that’s quite high on my list of important things to remember. Now go away.”

  Much to my surprise, he did.

  — 27 —

  Because We Weren't Wet Enough

  “Like this. Use the fleshy part of your thumb to hang onto it, see?” I gestured casually at
Girl and then flipped a few of the cards lying on the bed, using the hand with the coin tucked in my palm. “You need to relax your hand, not hold it stiffly, or everyone will know there’s something wrong. The more you practice, the more natural it will look. Do other things while you’re holding it, so you get used to having it there.”

  I held my hand out as though to shake hers, and when she took it she came away with the coin. A smile tugged at her mouth and she nodded. Setting it down again, she copied what I’d shown her, her face intent with concentration. Her fingers were stiff and she looked like she was having a cramp of some kind, which made her giggle.

  “Practice,” I said, and picked up the cards, tapping them into a stack. “Have you ever played Blind Path?” I asked, shuffling the cards and then laying them out in a solitaire pattern. She shook her head. While she practiced palming the coin, I played a few games, and then I showed her how to turn her one coin into two. It was a silly parlor trick, but it provided a basic foundation for learning further skills, and in the meantime it entertained us both.

  I’d slept through the first day and most of the second, and Tanris saved his repacking until I could help him, so we worked on that for a good part of the afternoon. He probably hoped he was inflicting some form of torture, but I asked questions and he showed me how to economize on space and how to balance a load. It was very much like what I did on a regular basis during my own work, but on a much larger scale. When we finished I rustled up a game of cards with a couple of the crew members and came away with a modest amount of coin to offset the cost of our passage.

  My stomach continued to threaten biliousness. My muscles ached like I’d taken a beating, but the sickness didn’t grow worse. I didn’t take the drops.

  The third day gave me more of the same but with less sleep, and I replaced lessons in packing techniques with teaching Girl tricks with coins and cards. “Put the hand with the coin over theirs like so, and use the other to pretend to pull a coin out of the air,” I demonstrated. “Waving your hand around dramatically will hold their attention. They’re not expecting you to have a coin in your other hand. You point as you drop the coin in their hand and then poof, there’s two.”