Patricia Briggs - Raven's Shadow

The door to his room was open. Some of the boys would stop in at night, so nothing struck him as odd until he saw who it was.

“Myrceria?”

Sitting on his bed, her legs folded neatly underneath her, she smiled at him brightly. “I hope that you don’t mind that I came here this evening.”

“Not at all,” he said.

She looked away. “Play something for me, please,” she said. “Something to make me laugh.”

He closed the door and sat on the foot of his bed, taking the lute off the hooks he’d had installed in the wall. He played a bit of melody on the lute, tuning automatically until it was acceptable.

“How do you do it?” she asked. “Collarn doesn’t like anyone—and they generally return his feeling with interest. The only thing he loves is music. He works so hard at it, and he is never good enough. He hated the thought that because of your magic you would play better than he, no matter what he did or how much he practiced. I saw you take his hatred and turn it to hero worship in less than an hour. Telleridge said that you can’t use your magic on us.”

“It’s not magic,” Tier said. “Collarn loves music, and that is more important to him than all the hurts the world has dealt him. I just showed him that I loved music, too.”

“What about the rest?” she asked. “The Passerines follow you around like lost puppies.”

“I like people,” said Tier with a shrug. “I don’t think most of these boys are used to dealing with someone who likes them.”

Unexpectedly she laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “The Masters are very concerned with what you have done to their control of the Passerines. Be careful.”

She turned her head and he saw that there was a bruise on her jaw.

“Who hit you?” he asked.

She picked up a pillow and began straightening the fringe. “One of the Masters told Kissel that they were worried because Collarn was spending so much time away from the Eyrie. They told Kissel that he was to remind Collarn where his loyalties should lie—and Kissel refused them. He said that you would not approve of him picking on someone weaker than himself.”

Tier stilled his strings. “I don’t suppose it even crossed his mind to agree and then either fake it—or tell me about it. Ellevanal save me from honest fools. Why couldn’t they have gone to Toarsen?”

Myrceria stared at him, her hands stilled. “You’ve done it on purpose, haven’t you? You’re taking control from the Masters on purpose. A month ago Kissel would have been happy to please the Masters, to win the fear of the other Passerines. How did you do it?”

Tier played a few notes of a dirge Collarn had played for him on a violin—it sounded odd on a lute.

“They are trying to ruin those boys,” he said at last, “to turn them into something much less than they could be.”

He’d been certain that she was a spy for Telleridge, and that might still be true—but his instincts told him that it wouldn’t take a lot to turn her against the Masters of the Path. He would just have to find the right words.

He played a few more measures. “What happens to the ones who don’t play their little game, Myrceria? Boys like Collarn who would never agree to the kinds of real damage the Path metes out? Or ones like Kissel, who is discovering that protecting someone weaker than he is makes him feel better about himself than tormenting them ever did?”

She didn’t say anything.

“There aren’t as many Raptors as there should be,” he said gently. “Not for the numbers of Passerines they have.”

“That’s how they progress in the Path,” she whispered. “The boys who would be Raptors are given the other boys’ names—the ones like Collarn. They have to bring back proof that they have killed the bearer of the name they were give before they are Raptors.”

She set the pillow aside. “How do you do that?” she said. “If they knew what I told you, they would kill me.”

“You know it is wrong,” he told her. “You know they must be stopped.”

“By whom?” she said, her incredulousness fueled by anger. “You? Me? You are a prisoner in their power, Tier of Redern. You will die as they all do at the end of their year. And I am as much a prisoner as you.”

“Evil must always be fought,” Tier said. “If you don’t fight—then you are a part of it.”

She rose to her feet and walked without haste to the door. “You know nothing of what you face, or you would not be so arrogant, Bard.”

She shut the door tightly behind her.

Well, thought Tier, that was unexpected. Whores learn early that survival means that they have to look out for themselves. Myrceria had been a whore for a long time, but she wasn’t talking like a whore who cared for no one else.

She cared about those boys. She wasn’t happy about it, but she cared.

Tier slapped one of the scrawny first-year Passerines on the shoulder after the boy finally executed the move Toarsen had been struggling to teach him for days.

“Drills,” Tier called. There were groans and half-hearted protests, but they formed up in three ragged lines, lines that straightened at his silent frown.

“Begin,” he called, and worked with them. Drills were the heart of swordplay. If a man had to think about his body and how to move his sword, he’d be too slow to save himself. Drills taught the body to respond to information from eyes and ears, leaving the mind to plan larger strategy than just how to meet the next thrust.

The sword he held wasn’t the equal of the one he’d taken from some nobleman on the battlefield, but it was balanced. Myrceria had brought it to him when he requested it.

Tier’d continued to work with his sword over the years, but the past weeks had sharpened him until he’d almost reached the speed and strength he’d held while he was a soldier. His left shoulder was always a bit stiff until he worked it out, but otherwise he hadn’t lost much flexibility to age.

He drilled with the boys until sweat made his shirt cling uncomfortably to his shoulders, then he brought his sword around in a flashy stroke that ended with it in its sheath.

“Pools!” shouted the boys in one voice, and they dashed, swords in hands, to the washroom to play in the cold pool.

Tier laughed and shook his head when Collarn stopped to invite him to the waterfight. “I’ve no wish to drown before my time,” he avowed. “I’ll wash up in my rooms.”

Loyalty, he thought, watching the last of them disappear into the hall, was won by sweating with them.

“They’ve improved,” said Telleridge.

Tier hadn’t noticed the Master, but he’d been concentrating on the boys. He took a glass of water from a servant.

“They have,” he said, after taking a long drink. “Some of them had further to go than others.”

“I knew that you were a soldier, but you were more than that—I’ve been looking into it,” Telleridge said. “Remarkable that a peasant boy, no offense, could be set to command soldiers. Are you one of the old Sept of Leheigh’s by-blows?”

“Do you know where I’m from?” asked Tier with a lazy smile as he handed the empty glass off to one of the silent waiters.

“The Sept of Leheigh,” replied Telleridge.

Tier shook his head. “I’m from Redern, the first settlement the Army of Man created after the Fall of the Shadowed, named for the Hero of the Fall, Red Ernave. We are farmers, tanners, bakers…” He shrugged. “But scratch a Rederni very deeply and you’ll find the blood of warriors. If you’ll excuse me, I need to wash up and change clothes.”

When Tier reached his cell, he closed his door and washed quickly with water from the basin left there for that purpose. Once he’d changed into clean clothes he lay down on his bed.