"You see those two mountains over there?" Tier gestured with his chin toward two rocky peaks that seemed to lean away from each other.
Seraph nodded. After several days' travel she knew Tier well enough to expect the start of another story, and she wasn't wrong.
Tier was a good traveling companion, she thought as she listened to his story with half an ear. He was better than her brother Ushireh had been. He was generally cheerful and did more than his fair share of the camp work. He didn't expect her to say much, which was just as well, for Seraph didn't have much to say - and she enjoyed his stories.
She knew that she should be planning what to do when they reached Tier's village. If she could find another clan, they'd take her in just for being Traveler, but being Raven would make her valuable to them.
If Ushireh had been less proud they would have joined another clan when their own clan died. But Ushireh had no Order to lend him rank; he would have gone from clan chief's son to being no one of importance. Having more than her share of pride, Seraph had understood his dilemma. She'd agreed that they would go on and see what the road brought them.
Only see what the road brought, Ushireh.
There was no reason now not to find another clan. No reason to continue on with this solsenti Bard to his solsenti village. There would be no welcome for her in such a place. From what Tier said, it lay very near Shadow's Fall. There would be no clans anywhere near it.
But instead of telling him that she would be on her way, she continued to ride on his odd-colored gelding while Tier walked beside her and amused them both with a wondrous array of stories that touched on everything except his home, stories that distracted her from the shivery pain of Ushireh's death that she'd buried in the same tightly locked place she kept the deaths of the rest of her family.
Arrogance and control were necessary to those who bore the Raven Order. Manipulation of the raw forces of magic was dangerous, and the slightest bit of self-doubt or passion could let it slip out of control. She'd never had trouble with arrogance, but she'd had a terrible time learning emotional control. Eventually she had learned to avoid things that drew her temper: mostly that meant that she kept to herself as much as possible. Her brother, being a loner himself, had respected that. They had often gone days without speaking at all.
Tier, with his constant speech and teasing ways, was outside of her experience. She wasn't in the habit of observing people; it hadn't been a skill that she'd needed. But, if truth be told, after journeying with Tier only a few days, she knew more about him than she had most of the people she'd lived with all her life.
He wasn't one of those soldiers who talked of nothing but the battles he'd fought in. Tier shared funny stories about the life of a solder, but he didn't talk about the fighting at all. Every morning he rose early and practiced with his sword - finding a quiet place away from her. She knew about the need for quiet and let him be while she did her own practice.
When he wasn't talking he was humming or singing, but he seldom talked of important things, and when he did he used far fewer words. He didn't make her talk and didn't seem uncomfortable with her silence. When they passed other people on the road, he smiled or talked as it came to him. Even with Seraph's silent presence, a moment or two of Tier's patter and the other people opened up. No wonder she found herself liking him - everyone liked him. Isolated as most Ravens were kept, even within the clan, she'd never paid enough attention to anyone outside of her family to actually like them before.
"What are you smiling at?" he asked as he finished his story. "That poor goatherd had to live with a wealthy man's daughter for the rest of his life. Can you imagine a worse fate?"
"Traveling with a man who talks all the time," she replied, trying her hand at teasing.
Thankfully, he grinned.
It was evening the first time Seraph laid eyes on Redern, a middling-size village carved into the eastern face of a steep-sided mountain that rose ponderously from the icy fury of the Silver River. The settling sun lent a red cast to the uniform grey stones of the buildings that zigzagged up from the road.
Tier slowed to look, and Skew bumped him. He patted the horse's head absently, then continued at his normal, brisk pace. The road they were on continued past the base of the mountain and then veered abruptly toward a narrow stone bridge that crossed the Silver at the foot of the village.
"The Silver is narrowest here," he said. "There used to be a ferry, but a few generations ago the Sept ordered a bridge built."
Seraph thought he was going to begin another story, but he fell silent. He bypassed the bridge by taking a narrow track that continued along the river's edge. A few donkeys and a couple of mules occupied a series of pens just a few dozen yards beyond the bridge.
He found an empty pen and began to separate Skew from the cart. Seraph climbed down and helped him.
A boy appeared out of one of the pens. "I'll find some hay for 'em, sir," he said briskly. "You can store the cart in the shelter in the far pen." He took a better look at Skew and whistled, "Now that's an odd one. Never seen a horse with so many colors - like he was supposed to be a bay and someone painted him with big white patches."
"He's Fahlarn bred," said Tier. "Though most of them are bay or brown, I've seen a number of spotted horses."
"Fahlarn?" said the boy, and he looked closer at Tier. "You're a soldier then?"
"Was," agreed Tier as he led Skew into the pen. "Where did you say to put the cart?"
The boy turned to look at the cart and his gaze touched Seraph and stuck there. "You're Travelers?" The boy licked his lips nervously.
"She is," said Tier closing the pen. "I'm Rederni."
Tier was good with people: Seraph had every confidence that the boy wouldn't make them move on if she left Tier to talk to him.
"He said to put the cart in the far pen," murmured Seraph to that end. "I'll take it."
When she got back to Tier, the boy was gone, and Tier had his saddle and bridle on his shoulder.
"The boy's gone to get some hay for Skew," he said. "He'll be in good care here. They don't allow large animals on the streets - the streets are too steep anyway."
He didn't lie about that. The cobblestone village road followed the contours of the mountain for almost a quarter of a mile, with houses on the uppermost side of the road, and then swung abruptly back on itself like a snake, climbing rapidly to a new level as it did so. The second layer of road still had houses on the uphill side, but, looking toward the river, Seraph could see the roofs of the houses they'd just passed.
Stone benches lined the wide corner of the second bend of the zigzagging road, and an old man sat on one of them playing a wooden flute. Tier paused to listen, closing his eyes briefly. Seraph saw the old man look up and start a bit, but he kept playing. After a moment, Tier moved on, but his steps were slower.
He stopped in front of a home marked by sheaves of wheat carved into the lintel over the doorway and by the smell of fresh-baked bread.
"Home," he said after a moment. "I don't know what kind of welcome to expect. I haven't heard from anyone here since I left to go to war - and I left in the middle of the night."
Seraph waited, but when he made no move to continue she said, "Did they love you?"
He nodded without looking away from the door.
"Then," she said gently, "I expect that the men will bluster and the women will cry and scold - then they will feast and welcome you home."
He laughed then. "That sounds about right. I suppose it won't change for putting it off longer."
He held the door open for her and followed her into a largish room that managed to be both homey and businesslike at the same time. Behind the counter that divided the room in half were tilted shelves displaying bread in a dozen forms and a burly red-headed man who looked nothing like Tier.
"May I help you, good sir?" asked the man.
"Bandor?" said Tier. "What are you doing here?"
The big man stared at him, then paled a bit. He shook his head as if setting aside whatever it was that had bothered him. Then he smiled with genuine welcome. "As I live and breathe, it's Tier come back from the dead."
Bandor stepped around the counter and enveloped Tier in a hearty embrace. "It's been too long."
It was odd to see two men embracing - her own people were seldom touched in public outside of childhood. But Tier returned the bigger man's hug with equal enthusiasm.
"You're here for good, I hope," said Bandor, taking a step back.
"That depends upon my father," Tier replied soberly.
Bandor shook his head and his mouth turned down. "Ah, there is much that has happened since you left. Draken died four years ago, Tier. Your sister and I had been married a few years earlier - I'd taken an apprenticeship here when you left." He stopped and shook his head. "I'm telling this all topsy-turvy."
"Dead," said Tier, his whole body stilled.
"Bandor," said a woman's voice from behind a closed door. The door swung wide and a woman came out backwards, having bumped open the door with her hip. Her arms were occupied with a large basket of rolls. "Do you think I ought to do another four dozen rolls, or are the eight dozen we have enough?"
The woman was taller than average, thin and lanky like Tier. And as she turned around, Seraph could see that she had his dark hair and wide mouth.
"Alinath," said Bandor. "I believe you have a visitor."
She turned toward Tier with a polite smile and opened her mouth, but when her eyes caught his face no sound left her lips. She dropped the basket on the ground, spilling rolls everywhere, then she was over the top of the counter and wrapped tightly around him.
"Tier," she said in a muffled voice. "Oh, Tier. We thought you were dead."
He hugged her back, lifting her off the floor. "Hey, sprite," he said, and his voice was as choked as hers.
"We kept it for you," said Alinath. "We kept the bakery for you."
Alinath pulled back, tears running freely down her face. She took a step away from him and then punched him in the belly, turning her shoulder to put the full force of her body into the blow.
"Nine years," she said hotly. "Nine years, Tier, and not even a note to say that you were still alive. Damn you, Tier."
Tier was bent over wheezing, but he held up three fingers.
"We received nothing," she said angrily. "I didn't even know where to send you word when Father died."
"I sent three letters the first year," he said, huffing for breath. "When I had no reply, I assumed Father washed his hands of me."
Alinath put her hands to her mouth. "If he ever got your letters, he didn't say anything to me. Darn my fiendish temper. I'm sorry I hit you, Tier."
Tier shook his head, denying the need for apology. "Father told me that someday I'd be sorry I taught you how to hit."
"Come with me," she said. "Mother will want to see you." She tugged him from the room, leaving Seraph alone with the man at the counter.
"Welcome," Bandor said after a long awkward moment. "I am Bandor, journeyman baker, and husband to Alinath of the Bakers of Redern."
"Seraph, Raven of the Clan of Isolda the Silent," Seraph replied with outward composure, knowing her words would tell him no more than his eyes had already noticed.
He nodded, bent to right the basket Alinath had dropped, and began to collect the rolls that had fallen on the floor.
When he was finished he said, "Alinath will be busy with Tier; I'd best get to the baking." He turned on his heel and headed back through the door that Alinath and Tier had taken, leaving Seraph truly alone.
Uncomfortable and out of place, Seraph sat on a small bench and waited. She should have left on her own as soon as Tier had killed the nobleman who pursued her. She'd have been safe enough then. Here in Tier's village she was as out of place as a crow in a hummingbird nest.
But she stayed where she was until Tier returned alone.
"My apologies," he said. "I shouldn't have left you here alone."
She shrugged. "I am hardly going to come to harm here, nor do I have a place in your reunion."
He gave her a faint smile. "Yes, well, come with me and I'll make you known to my sister and mother."
She stood up. "I'm sorry that your father was not here as well."
His smile turned wry. "I don't know if I'd have been welcomed here if my father were still alive."
"Maybe not right away, but you're persuasive. He'd have relented eventually." She found herself patting his arm and stopped as soon as she realized what she was doing.
Tier's mother and sister awaited them in a small room that had been arranged for a sick person. Alinath sat on a stool next to the bed where Tier's mother held court. The older woman's hair was the same dark color as her children's, though streaked with spiderwebs of age. She wasn't old, not by Traveler standards, but her skin was yellow with illness.
Both women looked upon Seraph without favor as Tier made his introductions.
"Tier tells us you have no home, child," said Tier's mother, in a begrudging tone - as if she expected Seraph to impose on her for a place to stay.
"As long as there are Travelers, I have a home," Seraph replied. "It only remains for me to find them. Thank you for your concern."
"I told them that I would escort you to your people," said Tier. "They don't come near Shadow's Fall, so it might take us a few months."
"So we are to lose you again?" said his mother querulously. "Alinath and Bandor cannot keep up with the work - every week they toil from dawn to dusk for the bakery, which is yours. When you come back in a few months, I will be dead."
It was said in a dramatic fashion, but Seraph thought that the older woman might be speaking truth.
"I can find my people on my own," said Seraph.
"Do you hear that, Tier? She is a Traveler and can find her own way," said Alinath.
"She is sixteen and a woman alone," returned Tier sharply. "I'll see her safe."
"You were younger than that when you went off to war," said Alinath. "And you weren't a witch." She bit off the last word as if it were filthy.
"Alinath," said Tier in a gentle voice that made his sister pale. "Seraph is my guest here and you will not sharpen your tongue on her."
"I can take care of myself, both here and on the road," said Seraph, though his defense touched her - as if the words of a solsenti stranger could hurt her.
"No," said Tier, his voice firm. "If you'll house us for the night, Mother, we'll start out tomorrow morning."
Tier's mother and sister exchanged a look, as if they'd discussed the situation while Tier had left them alone to retrieve Seraph.
Tier's mother smiled at Seraph. "Child, is there a hurry to find your people? If you cannot tarry here until I pass from this world into the next, could you not stay with us as our guest for a season so that we might not lose Tier so soon after we've found him?"
"A Traveler might be harmful to business," said Seraph. "As I said, there is no need for Tier to escort me. I am well capable of finding my people by myself."
"If you go, he'll follow you," said Alinath with resignation. "It may have been a long time since I've seen my brother, but I doubt that he has changed so much as to go back on his sworn word."
"Stay, please," said his mother. "What few people who will not eat from the table where a Traveler is fed will be more than compensated for by the new business we'll get from the curious who will come to the bakery just to catch a glimpse of you."
Seraph was under no illusion that she'd be a welcome guest. But there was no doubt either that they wanted her to stay if that were the only way to keep Tier for a while.
"I'll stay," she said reluctantly and felt a weight lift off her shoulders. If she were here then she wasn't fighting demons and watching people die around her because she hadn't been able to protect them. "I'll stay for a little while."
"Where is my brother?" Alinath's voice sounded almost accusing, as if she thought Seraph had done something to Tier.
Seraph looked up from sifting the never-ending supply of flour, one of the unskilled tasks that had fallen to her hands. She glanced pointedly at the empty space next to her where Tier had spent the last three weeks mixing various permutations of yeasted bread. She raised her eyebrows in surprise, as if she hadn't noted that he hadn't taken his usual place this morning. Then she looked back at Alinath and shrugged.
It was rude, but Alinath's sharp question had been rude, too.
Alinath's jaw tightened, but she was evidently still intimidated enough by Seraph's status as Traveler not to speak further. She turned on her heel and left Seraph to her work.
Tier didn't return until the family was sitting down for lunch. He brushed a kiss on the top of Alinath's head and sat down across from her, beside Seraph.
"Where were you this morning?" Alinath asked.
"Riding," he said in a tone that welcomed no questions. "Pass the carrots please, Seraph."
The rhythms of the bakery came back to Tier as if he'd not spent the better part of the last decade with a sword in his hand instead of a wooden spoon. He woke before dawn to fire the ovens and, after a few days, quit having to ask Alinath for the proper proportion of ingredients.
He could see the days stretching ahead of him in endless procession, each day just exactly like the one before. The years of soldiering had made him no more resigned to spending the rest of his life baking than he'd been at fifteen.
Even something as exotic as his stray Traveler didn't alter the pattern of life at his father's bakery. She worked as she was asked and seldom spoke, even to him. Only his nightly rides broke the habits of his childhood, but even they had begun to acquire a sameness.
He ought to sell the horse, his mother had told him over dinner yesterday, then he could use the money as a bride price. There were a number of lovely young village women who would love to be a baker's wife.
This morning he'd gotten up earlier than usual and tried to subdue his restlessness with work - to no effect. So as soon as Bandor had come in to watch the baking, Tier left and took Skew out, galloping him over the bridge and up into the mountains until they arrived at a small valley he'd discovered as a boy. Once there, he'd explored the valley until the lather on Skew's back had dried and his own desperation loosened under the influence of the sweet-grass smell and mountain breeze.
Part of him was ready to leave this afternoon, to take Seraph and find her people. But the rest of him wanted to put the journey off as long as he could. Once it was over, there would be no further escapes for him. He wasn't fifteen anymore: he was a man, with a man's responsibilities.
"You're quiet today," said Seraph as they worked together after lunch. "I was beginning to think that silence was a thing that Rederni avoided at all cost. Always you are telling stories, or singing. Even Bandor hums all the time he works."
He grinned at her as he kneaded dough. "I should have warned you," he said, "that every man in Redern thinks himself a bard and most of the women, too."
"In love with the sound of your own voices, the whole lot of you," said Seraph without rancor, dumping hot water in the scrubbing tub where a collection of mixing bowls awaited cleaning. "My father always said that too many words cheapened the value of a man's speech."
Tier laughed again - but Alinath had entered the baking room with an armful of empty boards in time to hear the whole of Seraph's observation.
"My father said that a silent person is trying to hide something," she said as she dumped the trays in a stack. "Girl, get the broom and sweep the front room. See that you get the corners so that we don't attract mice."
Tier saw Seraph stiffen, but she grabbed the broom and dustpan.
"Alinath, she is a guest in our house," Tier bit out as the door closed behind Seraph. "You don't use that tone to the hired boy. She has done nothing to earn your disrespect. Leave her be."
"She is a Traveler," snapped Alinath, but there was an undercurrent of desperation in her voice. "She bewitches you because she is young and pretty. You laugh with her and you'll barely exchange a word with any of us."
How could he explain to her his frustration with the life that so obviously suited her without hurting her feelings? The bakery was smothering him.
When he said nothing, Alinath said, "You're a man. Bandor is the same - neither of you see what she is. You think she's a poor familyless, defenseless woman in need of protection because that's what she wants you to see."
A flush of temper lit Alinath's eyes as she began to pace. "I see a woman who looks at my brother as a way to wealth and ease that she'll never have when she finds one of those ragtag bands of Travelers. She doesn't want to go to her people - even you must see that. I tell you that if you just give her the chance, she'll snatch you into a marriage-bed."
Tier opened his mouth and then closed it again. He tried to see Seraph as his sister described her, but the image didn't ring true.
"She's a child," he said.
"I was married when I was her age."
"She is a child and a Traveler," he said. "She'd no more look at me that way than she'd think of marrying a... a horse. She thinks of all of us as if we were a different species."
"Oh and you know so much about women," his sister ranted, though she was careful to keep her voice down so she couldn't be heard in the front room where Seraph was. "You need to find a good wife. You always liked Kirah. She's widowed now and would bring a fair widow's portion with her."
Tier put the dough in the greased bowl he'd set out for it, covered it with cheesecloth, and then scrubbed his hands in Seraph's tub of cooling water. He shook them dry and took off his father's apron and hung it on the hook. Enough, he thought.
"Don't wait dinner for me," he said and started to leave. He stopped before he opened the door to the front room. "I've been counting too heavily on manners and the memory of my little sister who saw me leave without telling anyone because she understood me enough to know that I had to leave. I see that you need a stronger reason to leave Seraph alone. Just you remember that, for all of her quietness she has a temper as hot as yours. She is a Traveler and a wizard, and if she takes a notion to teach you what that means, neither your tongue nor your fist will do you a bit of good."
He left before she could say anything, closing the door to the baking room firmly behind him.
Seraph glanced his way as he stalked past her, but he said nothing to her. She'd be all right; his warning would keep Alinath away from her for a while.
He couldn't face Seraph right now, not with his sister's accusations ringing in his ears. Not that he believed what Alinath had said about Seraph for a moment - but Alinath'd opened the way for possibilities that made him uncomfortable. He'd never thought much about the peace that Seraph's tart commentary and quiet presence brought him: he'd just been grateful for the relief from the demands of his family. He didn't want to examine what he felt any closer. So Tier nodded once at Seraph and also to Bandor before leaving the bakery.
Once outside, his steps faltered. He'd worn Skew out this morning, so it hardly seemed fair to take him out again. He could walk - but it wasn't exercise he needed, it was escape.
The Hero's Welcome was a tavern and an inn, a conglomeration of several older buildings, and the first building on the road through Redern. It was seldom empty, and when Tier entered it there were a number of men sitting near the kitchen entrance gossiping with each other while the tanner's father, Ciro, coaxed soft music from his viol.
It made Tier think of his grandfather and the grand concerts he and Ciro, who had been the tanner himself then, had put on. If Seraph ever heard the old man play, she'd know why Tier would never consider himself a bard in any sense of the word.
He seated himself beside these men he'd known since he was a child and greeted them by name, older men, all of them, contemporaries of his grandfather. The younger men would come in later, when they were finished with their work and chores.
One of the men had been a soldier in his youth, and Tier spent a little time exchanging stories. The innkeeper, noticing that there was a newcomer, offered Tier ale. He took it, but merely nursed it because the oblivion he sought wouldn't come from alcohol.
Ciro gradually shifted from playing broken bits and pieces into a recognizable song, and an old, toothless man began humming, his tone uncertain with age, but his pitch absolutely true. One after the other the old men began to sing. Tier joined in and let the healing music make the present fade away.
They sang song after song, sometimes pausing while one man tried to hum enough of something he'd heard long ago for Ciro to remember it, too - that man had a memory for music that Tier had only seen his grandfather equal.
It was the first time that he was happy to be home.
"Boy," said Ciro, "sing 'The Hills of Home' with me."
Tier grinned at the familiar appellation. It no longer fit as well as it had when he'd tagged along after his grandfather. He stood and let the first few notes of the viol pull him into the song. He took the low part of the duet, the part that had been his grandfather's, while the old man's warm tenor flung itself into the more difficult melody. Singing a duet rather than blending with a group, Tier loosed the power of his voice and realized with momentary surprise that Ciro didn't have to hold back. For the first time, Tier's singing held its own with the old musician's. Then the old words left no more room for thought. It was one of the magic times, when no note could possibly go astray and any foray into countermelody or harmony worked perfectly. When they finished the last note they were greeted with a respectful silence.
"In all my wandering, I've never heard the like. Not even in the palace of the Emperor himself." A stranger's voice broke the silence.
Tier turned to see a man of about fifty, a well-preserved, athletic fifty, wearing plain-colored clothes of a cut and fit that would have done for a wealthy merchant or lower nobleman, but somehow didn't seem out of place in a rural tavern full of brightly dressed Rederni. His iron-grey hair, a shade darker than his short beard, was tied behind his head in a fashion that belonged to the western seaboard.
He smiled warmly at Tier. "I've heard a great deal about you from these rascals since you returned - and they didn't lie when they said that your song was a rare treat. Willon, retired Master Trader, at your service. You can be no one but Tieragan Baker back from war." He held his hand out, and Tier took it, liking the man immediately.
As Tier sat down again, the retired master trader pulled a chair in between two of the others so he sat opposite Tier at the table.
Ciro smiled and said in his shy speaking voice, so at odds with his singing, "Master Willon has built a fine little store near the end of the road. You should go there and see it, full of bits and things he's collected."
"You are young to be retiring," observed Tier. "And Redern is an odd place to choose for retirement - these mountains get cold in the winter."
Master Willon had one of those faces that appeared to be smiling even in repose - which robbed his grin of not a bit of its effect.
"My son made Master last year," he said. "He's got a fire that will take him far - but not if he spends all of his days competing with me for control of the business. So I retired."
Willon laughed quietly and shook his head. "But it wasn't as easy as that. The men who serve my house had been mine for thirty years. They'd listen to my son, nod their heads, and come to me to see if I liked their orders. So I had to take myself out of Taela, and Redern came to mind."
He raised his tankard to Ciro. "My first trip as a caravan master I came by this very inn and was treated to the rarest entertainment I'd ever heard - two men who sang as if the gods themselves were their audience. I thought I'd heard the finest musicians in the world in Taela's courts, but I'd never heard anything like that. Business is business, gentlemen. But music is in my soul - if not my voice."
"If it's music you like, there's plenty here," said Tier agreeably as a small group of younger men came through the inn door.
"Well look what decided to drop by at last," said one of them. "You wiggle out from under your sister's thumb, Tier?"
Tier had greeted them all since he'd returned from war, of course, but that had been under different circumstances, when they were customers or he was. The tavern doors made them all kindred.
Too much so.
With the younger men came less music and more talk - and they must have been talking to his mother because most of the talk had to do with his upcoming marriage. The question was not when he was going to marry; it was to whom.
Tier excused himself earlier than he had expected to and found himself leaving with Master Willon.
"Don't let them fret you," Willon said.
"I won't," Tier said. He almost stopped there, but couldn't quite halt his bitterness - maybe because a stranger might understand better than any of his friends and kin he'd left behind in the tavern. "There's more to life than wedding and breeding and baking bread."
He started walking and Willon fell into step beside him. "I've heard as much praise for your baking as I have for your singing. You don't want to be a baker?"
"Baking..." Tier struggled to put a finger on the thing that bothered him about his family's business. "Baking is like washing - the results are equally temporary." He gave a half-laugh. "That's arrogant of me, isn't it? That I'd like to do something that means more, something that will outlast me the way these buildings have outlasted the men who built them."
"I hadn't thought of it that way before," said Willon slowly. "But immortality... I think that's a basic instinct rather than the product of pride. It goes toward the same things that they were trying to push you into. How did you put it? Wedding and breeding. A man's immortality can be found in his children."
Children? Tier hadn't been aware that he'd thought about the matter at all, but the need was there, buried beneath the "I can't breathe with the weight of my family's wishes" tightness in his chest.
"So what do you want to do, if not bake?" asked Willon, betraying his foreignness with the question. No Rederni would have suggested that he do anything else. "Would you go back to fighting if there were a war to be had?"
"Not soldiering," Tier said firmly. "I've killed more than any man ought - the only product of warmaking is death." Tier took a deep breath and closed his eyes briefly as he thought. Maybe it was seeing his little valley again on his morning ride, but something inside of him vibrated like one of Ciro's viol strings when he finally said, "I'd like to farm."
Willon laughed, but it was a comforting laugh. "I'd not think that growing crops would be much more permanent than baking bread - just takes a bit longer to get to the final product."
But it wasn't. It was different. Tier stopped walking so that he could encompass that difference in words that didn't sound as stupid out loud as they did to himself, stupid but true.
"I've known farmers," he said slowly. "A lot of the men who fought the Fahlarn were farmers, fighting for their lands. They are as much a part of their lands as flour is a part of bread." He shook his head at himself and grinned sheepishly because it sounded stupider out loud. "The land is immortal, Master Willon, and a farmer has a part of that immortality."
"So are you going to be a farmer?" asked Willon with interest.
"And marry and breed?" Tier said lightly over the longing Willon's words produced. "Not likely." He began walking again, though they'd passed the bakery a while back. He had no desire to go home yet. "There's not a woman in Redern who'd marry me and let me go farming. I know the money farming brings in and that bakery brings in ten times as much - and it would break my family's heart."
"Farmers don't make much," agreed the master trader. "But if you look around you might find a woman who'd rather be a farmer's wife than live in the village under the tyranny of her neighbors."
That night Seraph got up out of her cot in the small room they'd given her and climbed out of the window into the garden that backed the house, her blanket serving as a cloak. The solid walls made her feel closed in and trapped. Most of her nights had been spent in tents rather than buildings.
She found the bench that had served as her bed on more than one night since she'd chosen to stay here and lay down on it again to look up at the stars.
She needed to go. These people owed her nothing, not the food she ate or the blanket she wrapped herself in. She did not belong here. She hadn't heard the argument that Tier and Alinath had while she swept the front room, but she'd heard the raised voices.
Tomorrow, she would go. In two weeks or three she would find a clan that would take her in.
Resolute, she closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep. A long time later, exhaustion had more success than her will and she relaxed into slumber.
A rotten tomato hit Arvage's shoulder while the solsenti boys bounced with nervous bravado. Didn't they know that the old man could kill them all with a touch of the magic he knew? Didn't they know that he and Seraph had spent the better part of the past two days banishing a khurlogh, a demon spirit, that had been preying on nighttime visitors to the town well?
Instead her teacher's arthritic fingers touched the mess on his shoulder and transformed it into a fresh, ripe tomato.
"My thanks, young sirs," he said. "A rare addition to my dinner."
The scene faded as Seraph stirred restlessly in protest of the old memory. She quieted and her dream took up again at a different point in time.
Her father's fingers petted her hair as she leaned against his knee, half-asleep in the aftermath of a full meal and the warmth of the nearby fire.
"The entire clan gone?" her father said, a small tremor in his bassy voice. "Are you certain it was the Imperial Army?"
Their visitor nodded his head wearily. "As far as we've been able to determine, the last village that they passed through complained to the commander of the imperial troops stationed nearby. Told them that the Travelers kidnapped a pair of young women. The troops came upon the clan and massacred them from grandfather to day-old babe. Turns out that the women were taken by bandits - the imperial troops found them on their way back to the village."
They buried Arvage in a wilderness glen, just as he had wanted. Seraph herself had thrown in the first, symbolic, handful of earth. He'd died trying to work magic that he could no longer harness because the pain in his joints broke through his fearsome control. He'd known the risk.
In one of those things possible only in dreams, Arvage stood beside her while her father and brothers buried him.
"It is our task to take care of them or die," he told her. "Our purpose is to keep the shadows at bay for the solsenti who are helpless against them. This is a Raven's task before us, and I am Raven - as are you. You aren't old enough and I am too old, but we do as we must."
Tier hadn't lived in the comfortable safety of the village long enough to sleep through small noises in the night. He'd heard Seraph go out, as she often did, and he'd gone back to sleep afterward. But he'd awakened again.
He waited for the noise to repeat itself, and when it did he pulled on his pants and slipped out his window to the garden where Seraph whimpered in the helpless throes of a nightmare.
The man was from the Clan of Gilarmist the Fat, running a message to another clan. He'd flirted with Seraph's oldest sister and died in the night. Her sister died the next morning, drowning in the fluid that they couldn't keep from filling her lungs.
By the time four days had passed only Seraph and her brother Ushireh were left to bury the dead. Ushireh worked until he passed out. She'd been so afraid that he was dead, too; it had taken her a long time to convince herself that he was only unconscious. She'd dragged him away from the dead they'd gathered together in the center of the camp, then she'd burned it all - camp and bodies alike. It had been weeks before she could work enough magic to light a fire.
When she managed it at last, Ushireh's body sat up in the pyre, and his head turned until he could fix his glowing eyes on her. Seraph shrank back and tried to close her eyes. As if in death he'd acquired the magic he'd so envied her in life, his will kept her from looking away from him.
"You left me," he said. "You left your duty. You cannot run forever, Seraph, Raven of the Clan of Isolda the Silent."
She awoke with a gasp and a cry and was gathered into warm arms and rocked gently.
"Shh," said Tier, "it was a dream. You're safe."
She buried her head in his shoulder and gave up a lifetime of self-control to sob raggedly against him. "I can't do it," she said. "I don't want to be a Traveler. They all die, and I have to burn them and bury them. I'm so tired of death and duty. I want... I want..." What she wanted was tied away from her in strands of guilt and duty, but she found a fair approximation of it in the safety of Tier's arms.
"Shh," he said. "You don't have to go if you don't want to."
His words passed over and around her, the sense lost to her grief and guilt, but the sound of his voice comforted her.
From the third of the three windows that looked out into the garden, Alinath watched her brother hold the witch he'd brought home and she clenched her fists before she turned away.
When the worst of it had passed, embarrassment made Seraph turn away and wipe her face with the corner of the blanket.
"Sorry," she muttered. "It was a nightmare."
"Ah," said Tier as he let her pull away from him. "It sounded worse than that to me."
She shrugged, not looking at him. "Memories make the worst nightmares, my father always said."
"You don't have to go find another clan," he said. "You can stay here."
She tried to stifle her involuntary laugh. It wouldn't be polite to disparage the hospitality of his family. "No, I can't. Thank you. But no."
"I can't leave now," said Tier. "But I fear it won't be long. Mother complains and frets until it's hard to believe that she's sick at all - but she's losing weight and her color is much worse. Can you wait?"
Seraph held herself still. Could she wait to take up her duties? Oh, yes. Wait forever if she could. But was it the right thing to do?
At last she nodded. "I'll wait."
"Good."
Tier sat with her a bit, while the sweat dried on her back. With the air of a man coming to a decision, he took something from around his neck and put it into her hands.
"This came with me into war and kept me safe enough through any number of battlefields. As I am unlikely to need it now, I'd like you to take it."
She fingered the collection of large wooden beads carefully.
"They're not much to look at," he said hastily, and with a little embarrassment, she thought. "But they carry the blessing of our priest. You've met Karadoc?"
She nodded. The priest had sought her out to give her his sympathies on the death of her brother. The only Rederni aside from Tier who had. She hadn't been quite sure how to deal with a priest - Travelers had little use for the minions of the gods - but he'd seemed like a good person.
"Karadoc gave me that for helping him tend his garden after he broke his wrist one summer."
"It must have been more than that," Seraph said thoughtfully. "People don't give gifts like this lightly."
He stiffened, "It's just a bunch of wooden beads, Seraph."
She put them against her face and rubbed against them like a cat, soaking in the warmth that emanated from the battered wood. "Old wooden beads," she said. "I can't tell exactly how old, but they've been given in love and worn that way for a long, long time. They comfort me - did they comfort you while you were far from your home?" She didn't wait for his answer, "Tell me the story of your gardening for Karadoc?"
"I was young," he said finally. "Karadoc is... well, you've met him. He always took time to talk to me, listening to me when my father and I fought."
His voice hadn't fallen into the cadences of storytelling; he told this story hesitantly. "Karadoc broke his wrist; I told you that. His garden is his pride and joy, and it started to get overgrown almost immediately. I suppose being the priest of the god of green and growing things has a certain influence on your garden."
"He hired a boy to tend it, but when harvest season came the boy had to help his father in the field, and Karadoc couldn't find another one. So I started getting up a little earlier in the morning so I could work on it a bit."
Seraph smiled a little; the beads and Tier's company had worked their own magic. "He didn't know you were doing it."
"Well, I wasn't certain that I would do it more than once or twice. A baker gets up early to miss cooking in the heat of the day. I didn't want to promise something I couldn't do."
"And Karadoc found you out," said Seraph. "When you wouldn't take any pay, he gave you these."
He nodded.
Seraph put the necklace around her throat. Gifts could not be returned, only appreciated. She would find something she could do to repay him for his kindness to her and his gift. A Traveler's blessing could be a useful thing.
"Thank you for this," she said. "I will treasure it as long as it remains in my hands and pass it on as you have, as Karadoc did."
They lapsed into a comfortable silence.
"A man asked me today what I'd do if I could do something besides baking and soldiering," he said at last.
"What did you answer?"
"Farming," he said.
She nodded. "The land gives back everything you put into it and a little more, if you have the knack."
"If you could do anything, be anything, what would it be?"
She stilled. She knew about villages, knew that most men's fates were set in stone when they were little more than children and apprenticed to a trade - or else they were cast off never to be more than itinerant workers or soldiers. Women's lives were dictated by their husbands.
Travelers were a little more free than that usually. A bowyer could decide to smith if he wanted to, as long as he continued to contribute to the clan. There were no guilds to restrict a person from doing as he willed. And women, women ran the clan. Only the lives of the Ordered were set out from the moment a Raven pronounced them gifted at birth.
No Traveler would ever have asked a Raven what she wanted to be.
The silence must have lasted too long because he said, "That question took me aback, today, too. But I learned something. What would you do?"
"Ravens don't marry," she said abruptly. He was easy to talk to, especially in the dark. "We can't afford the distraction. We don't do the normal chores of the clan. No cooking or firewood gathering. We don't darn our own clothes or sew them."
"You cook well," he said.
"That's because Ushireh couldn't cook at all. I learned a lot when we were left on our own. But being a Raven's not like being a baker, Tier. You could leave it and become a soldier. You can leave it now and become a farmer if you want. But I can't leave being a Raven behind."
"But if you could - what would you do?"
She leaned back on her hands and swung her feet back and forth, the bench being somewhat tall for her. In a dreamy, smiling voice she said, "I would be a wife, like the old harridan who runs an inn in Boarsdock on the western coast. She has a double handful of children, all of them taller than her, and they all cringe when she walks by. Her husband is an old sailing man with one leg. I don't think I've ever heard him say anything but, 'yes, dear.' "
She caught him by surprise and Tier gave a crack of laughter that he had to cover his mouth to suppress.
Smiling her satisfaction in the dark, she thought that the oddest thing about her statement was that it was the truth. That old woman ran her inn and her children and their wives and husbands and they all, every one of them, loved her. She lived in the daylight world, where shadow things wouldn't dare show their faces and the children in her family had no more responsibility than grooming a few horses or cleaning a room could provide.
But the thing that Seraph envied the most was that one winter evening, when Seraph's uncles entertained the boisterous crowd that gathered beneath the great fireplace and told them stories of haunts and shadow-things, that wise old woman shook her head with a laugh and said that she had better things to do than listen to tales of monsters fabricated to keep children up all night.
So it was that she stayed when she should have gone. But a week or a month would make little difference to her duties - a lifetime or two would make little difference as far as she could tell. So she stayed.
"Don't pull that up. That's an iris bulb, trimmed down now that it's bloomed," said Tier's sister several weeks later. "Don't you know how to weed?"
Seraph released the hapless plant unharmed, straightened, and almost groaned at the easing in her back. "No," she said, though she'd told her as much when Alinath had set her to the task. How would she have learned to weed? The herbs and food plants she knew, but she'd no experience with flowers at all.
Tier had stormed off at lunch, beset by both his sister and his mother, who had gotten out of her bed only to try and push him into finding a wife. Since then Alinath had been picking at her as if it had been Seraph who'd sent Tier off to seek peace. Seraph had been set to half a dozen tasks, only to be sent to do something else because of some inadequacy in her work, real or imaginary.
"Well leave off then," said Alinath. "Bandor or I will have to finish it, I suppose. You are utterly useless, girl. Cannot sew, cannot cook, cannot weed. The baking room floor needs cleaning - but mind how you do it. Don't let the dust get into the flour bins."
Seraph stood up and dusted off her skirt; she'd left off wearing her comfortable pants when she'd noticed that none of the Rederni women wore anything except skirts.
"It's a shame," she said finally. "That Tier, who wears courtesy as close as his skin, should have a sister with none at all."
Before Alinath could do more than open her mouth, Seraph turned on her heel and entered the house through the baking room door. She regretted her comment as soon as she'd made it. The womenfolk in the clan were no more courteous in their requests than Alinath was. But they would have never turned their demands upon a Raven.
Moreover, Seraph knew the solsenti well enough to know that Alinath's rudeness to a guest was a deliberate slight. Especially since, except for that first time, she was careful to soften her orders around Tier.
Seraph had done her best to ignore the older woman. She was a guest in Alinath's home. She had no complaint with the work she was asked to do - which was no more work than anyone else did, except for Tier's mother. And, by ignoring Alinath's rudeness, Seraph bothered her more than any other response could have.
There was a more compelling reason to ignore Alinath's trespasses.
Seraph let her fingernails sink into the wood of the broom handle as she swept with careful, slow strokes. A Raven could not afford to lose her temper. She took a deep, calming breath and sought for control.
The door opened and Alinath walked in. When she started to speak her voice was carefully polite.
"I have been rude," she said. "I admit it. I believe that it is time for some plainer speech. My brother thinks you are a child."
Seraph stared at her a moment, bewildered, her broom still in her hands. What did Tier's opinion have to do with anything?
"But I know better," continued Alinath. "I was married at your age."
And I killed the ghouls who killed my teacher when I was ten, thought Seraph. A Raven is never a child. But she saw where Alinath was headed.
"I told Tier what you are up to, but he doesn't see it," said Alinath. "Anyone who marries my brother will have this bakery."
Anyone who married your brother would be safe for the rest of their life, thought Seraph involuntarily, and envied his future wife with all of her heart.
"But you will never have him."
Seraph shrugged. "And he will never have me."
She went back to sweeping - and longing to be an old innkeeper who thought that ghouls and demons were stories told to frighten children. She crouched to get the broom under the low shelf of the table where Tier kneaded his bread.
"Where did you get those?"
Alinath lunged at Seraph. Startled, Seraph dropped the broom as Alinath's hand clenched around Tier's bead necklace; it must have slid out of her blouse when she crouched.
"Dirty Traveler thief!" shrieked Alinath, jerking wildly at the necklace. "Where did you get these?"
Seraph had heard all the epithets - but she'd been fighting her anger for weeks. The slight pain of the jerk Alinath gave the necklace was nothing to the outrage that Alinath had dared to grab her in the first place.
She heard the door to the public room open and heard Tier's voice, but everything was secondary to the rage that swept through her. Rage fed by her clan's death, Ushireh's death, her desperate, despairing guilt at surviving when everyone else died, and lit by this stupid solsenti woman who pushed and pushed until Seraph would retreat no more.
Alinath must have seen some of it in her face because she dropped her hold on the necklace and took two steps back. The necklace fell back against Seraph's neck like a kiss from a friend. Just before the wave of magic left her, the warmth of Tier's gift allowed her to regain control. It saved Alinath's life, and probably Seraph's as well because magic loosed in anger was not choosy in its target.
Pottery shattered as the stone building shook with a hollow boom. Cooking spoons, wooden peels, and baking tiles flew across the room. The great door that separated the hot ovens from the baking room pulled from its hinges and flew between Seraph and Alinath, hitting the opposite wall and sending plaster into the air in a thick white cloud as Alinath cried out in fear. Flour joined plaster as the door fell to the ground, taking two tables with it and knocking a barrel half-full of flour to its side.
Closing her eyes to the destruction and Alinath's frightened face, Seraph fought to pull back the magic she'd loosed. It struggled in her grasp, fed by the anger that had engendered it. It made her pay for her lack of control, sweeping back to her call, back through her like shards of glass. But it came, and peelers and tiles settled gently to the floor.
Seraph opened her eyes to assess the damage. Alinath was fine - though obviously shaken, she had quit screaming as soon as she'd begun. The wall would have to be replastered and the door rehung, the jamb repaired or replaced. The jars of valuable mother, used to start the bread dough, had somehow escaped, and the number of broken pots was fewer than she'd thought. Neither Tier, nor the four or five people who had followed him into the room, had more damage than a coating of flour and plaster.
Shame cut Seraph almost as rawly as the magic had. It was the worst thing a Raven could do - loose magic in anger. That no one had been hurt, nothing irreplaceable broken, was a tribute to Tier's gift and a little good luck rather than anything Seraph had done and so mitigated her crime not a whit. Seraph stood frozen in the middle of the baking room.
"I told you that she had a temper," said Tier mildly.
"This was an ill way to repay your hospitality," said Seraph. "I will get my things and leave."
Tier cursed the impulse that had led him to invite the men he'd spent the afternoon singing with to try out an experimental batch of herb bread he'd been working on. That he'd opened the door to the baking room when he - and everyone else - heard Alinath cry out had been stupidity. He'd been warning his sister not to antagonize Seraph for the better part of a week.
"Mages aren't tolerated here," said someone behind him.
"She said she'd leave," said Ciro. "She hurt no one."
"We'll leave in the morning," said Tier.
"Strangers who come to Redern and work magic are condemned to death," said Alinath in a tone of voice he'd never heard from her.
He looked at her. She should have appeared ridiculous, but the cold fear-driven anger on her face made her formidable despite the coating of white powder settling on her.
Someone gave a growl of agreement.
The ugly sound reminded Tier of the inn where he'd rescued her - or rescued the villagers from her. He realized that unless he managed to stop it, by morning his village might not be in any mood to let Seraph go.
An odd idea that had been floating in his head since he'd talked to Willon and then held Seraph in the wake of her night terrors crystalized.
"She is not a stranger," lied Tier abruptly. "She is my wife."
Silence descended in the room. Seraph looked at him sharply.
"No," said Alinath. "I'll not have it."
She was in shock, he knew, or she'd never have said such a ridiculous thing.
"It is not for you to have or not have," he reminded her, his voice gentle but firm.
"I won't have her in this house," Alinath said.
"We would have had to leave in any case," said Bandor, who'd pushed through the crowd and into the baking room. He walked over to Alinath, and put his hand on her shoulder. "Once Tier had chosen his wife, whoever she was, we'd have had to leave. I've made some inquiries in Leheigh. The baker there told me he'd be willing to take on a journeyman."
"There's no need," said Tier. Now that his choice was made, the words he needed to convince them all flowed easily. "There's a place I intend to farm about an hour's walk from here. I'll have to get the Sept's steward's permission, which won't be difficult to obtain since the land is not being used. There's time to build a house before winter. We'll live there, but I'll work in the bakery through the spring when planting season comes. Then I'll deed it to Alinath."
"When were you married?" whispered Alinath.
"Last night," lied Tier, holding out his hand to Seraph, who'd been watching him with an expression he couldn't read.
She stepped to his side and took his hand. Her own was very cold.
"Yes," said Karadoc, coming forward and putting a hand on Tier's head as he used to when Tier was a boy. "There have been Rederni who were mages before. Seraph will harm no one."
The crowd dispersed, and Bandor took Alinath to their room to talk, leaving only Karadoc, Tier, and Seraph.
"See that you come by the temple tonight," said the priest. "I don't like to keep a lie longer than necessary."
Tier grinned at him and hugged the older man. "Thank you. We'll stop by."
When he left, Tier turned to Seraph. "You can stay here with me and be my wife. Karadoc will marry us tonight and no one will know the difference." He waited, and when she said nothing, he said, "Or I can do as I promised. We can leave now and I'll go with you to find your people."
Her hand tightened on his then, as if she'd never let it go. She glanced once around the room and then lowered her eyes to the floor. "I'll stay," she whispered. "I'll stay."
