Patricia Briggs - Raven's Shadow

“That farm will go to Lehr, sooner or later. Jes will be a burden upon it and upon Lehr for as long as he lives,” said Alinath. “Tier will not be able to give Rinnie a decent dowry and without that, with her mixed blood, no one will have her.”

Calm, Seraph told herself. “Jes more than carries his own weight,” she said with as much outward serenity as she could muster. “He is no burden. Any man who worries about Rinnie’s mixed blood is no one I want her marrying. In any case, she’s only ten years old, and marriage is something she won’t have to worry about for a long time.”

“You are being stupid,” said Alinath. “I have approached the Elders on the matter already. They know that scrap of land you have my brother trying to farm is so poor he has to spend the winter trapping so you have food on your table. It doesn’t really matter that you have no care for your daughter; when the Elders step in, you’ll have no choice.”

“Enough,” said Seraph, outrage lending unmistakable power to that one word. No one was taking her children from her. No one.

Alinath paled.

No magic, Tier’s voice cautioned her, none at all, Seraph. Not in Redern.

Seraph closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to cleanse herself of anger, and managed to continue speaking more normally. “You may talk to Tier when he returns. But if anyone comes to try and take my daughter before then…” She let the unspoken threat hang in the air.

“I agree,” said a mild voice from the kitchen. “Enough badgering, Alinath.” Bandor entered from the baking room door with a large bowl of risen dough. “If any of Seraph’s children want to apprentice we’d be glad to have them here—but that’s for their parents to decide. Not you or the Elders.” He nodded a greeting toward Seraph.

“Bandor,” managed Seraph through her rage-tightened throat. “It’s good to see you.”

“You’ll have to excuse Alinath,” he said. “She’s been as worried about Tier as you are. I’ve told her that it’s not fair to expect a man trapping in the wild to come home on time every year. But he’s her brother, and she frets. Tier’s only a few weeks late. He’ll show up.”

“Yes,” Seraph agreed. “I’d best be going.”

“Didn’t I hear you say you had some honey?” he asked.

“Jes found some in the woods last week. I brought a few dozen jars with me,” she answered. “But Alinath didn’t seem interested in it.”

“Hummph,” said Bandor, with a glance at his wife. “We’ll take twelve jars for half-copper a jar. Then you go to Willon up on the heights, and tell him we’re paying a copper each for anything you don’t sell to him. He’ll buy up your stock for that so he can compete. Yours is the first honey this spring.”

Without a word, Seraph took out her pack and pulled out twelve jars, setting them on the counter. Just as silently, Alinath counted out six coppers and set it beside the jars. When Seraph reached out to take the money, the other woman’s hand clamped on her wrist.

“If my brother had married Kirah”—Alinath said in a low voice that was no less violent for its lack of sound—“he’d have had no need to go to the mountains in the winter in order to feed his children.”

Seraph’s chin jerked up and she twisted her wrist, freeing it. “It has been near to two decades since Tier and I married. Find something else to fret about.”

“I agree,” said Bandor mildly, but there was something ugly in his tone.

Alinath flinched.

Seraph frowned, having never seen Alinath afraid of anything before—except Seraph herself on that one memorable occasion. She’d certainly never seen anyone afraid of Bandor. Alinath’s face quickly rearranged itself to the usual embittered expression she wore around Seraph, leaving only a glint of fear in her eyes.

“Thank you, Bandor, for your custom and your advice,” Seraph said.

As soon as the door was closed behind Seraph and she’d started up the narrow, twisty road, she muttered to her absent husband. “See what happens when you are away too long, Tier? You’d better get home soon, or those Elders are in for a rude surprise.”

She wasn’t really worried about the Elders. They weren’t stupid enough to confront her, no matter what they thought should be done for Rinnie’s benefit. Once Tier was home, he could talk them out of whatever stupidity Alinath had talked them into. He was good at that sort of thing. And if she was wrong, and the Elders came to try to take Rinnie before Tier was home… well, she might have failed in her duties to her people, but she would never fail her children.

She wasn’t worried about Rinnie—but Tier was another matter entirely. A thousand things could have delayed Tier’s return, she reminded herself. He might even now be waiting at home.

Even hardened by farmwork, Seraph’s calves ached by the time she came to the door of Willon’s shop near the top edge of the village. When she opened the homey door and stepped into the building, Willon was talking to a stranger with several open packs on the floor, so she walked past him and into the store.

The only other person in the store was Ciro, the tanner’s father, who was stringing a small harp. The old man looked up when she came in and returned her nod before going back to the harp.

Willon’s store had once been a house. When he’d purchased it, he’d excavated and built until his store extended well into the mountain. He’d stocked the dark corners of the store with odds and bits from his merchant days—and some of those were odd indeed—then added whatever he felt might sell.

Seraph doubted many people knew what some of his things were worth, but she recognized silk when she saw it—though doubtless the only piece in Redern resided on the wall behind a shelf of carved ducks in Willon’s shop.

She seldom had the money to shop here, but she loved to explore. It reminded her of the strange places she’d been. Here was a bit of jade from an island far to the south, and there a chipped cup edged in a design that reminded her of a desert tribe who painted their cheeks with a similar pattern.

Some of Willon’s wares were new, but much of it was secondhand. In a back corner of one of a half dozen alcoves she found boxes of old boots and shoes that still had a bit of life left in them.

She took out the string she’d knotted and began measuring it against the boots. In the very bottom of the second box she searched, she found a pair made of thinner leather than usual for work boots. The sole was made for walking miles on roads or forest trails, rather than tromping through the mud of a farmer’s field. Her fingers lingered on the decorative stitches on the top edge, hesitating where the right boot was stained with blood—though someone had obviously worked to clean it away. Traveler’s boots.

She didn’t compare them to her son’s feet, just set them back in the box and piled a dozen pairs of other boots on top of them, as if covering them would let her forget about them. In a third bin, she found what she was looking for, and took a sturdy pair of boots up to the front.

There is nothing I could have done, she told herself. I am not a Traveler and have not been for years.

But even knowing it was true, she couldn’t help the tug of guilt that tried to tell her differently: to tell her that her place had never been here, safe in Tier’s little village, but out in the world protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves.

“I can’t sell those here,” she heard Willon say to a stranger at the front counter—a tinker by the color of his packs. “Folk ’round here get upset with writing they can’t read—old traps of the Shadowed still linger in these mountains. They know to fear magic, and even a stupid person’s going to notice that those have Traveler’s marks on them.”