Master of Crows (7 page)

“Was she a help or a hindrance?”

Her head snapped up.  Hindrance?  Her fingernails dug into her palms.  There were many things she could be rightfully accused of—plainness, shyness, sometimes cowardice—but never laziness or incompetence.  She clenched her hands into fists, stopping short of lashing out at him.  She was slave-bound and had mastered the art of submissive behavior at an early age, yet there was something about the Master of Crows that made her forget all her training, her low place in the world.  He was no more imperious or overbearing than any other landed noble, but he struck an angry chord in her every time he spoke.

Gurn motioned with his hands, his bald head nodding in time with his enthusiastic gestures.  Martise felt vindicated.  At least one person here was pleased with her performance so far.

The mage grunted and walked away to rummage through an empty crate.  Whether he accepted Gurn’s silent assessment of her morning’s work or not, no compliment was forthcoming.  She stiffened when he returned.

“Are you afraid of heights?”

“No,” she said softly, schooling her features into a placid expression.  “I’m not.”

“Good.  You can help me in the grove while Gurn prepares our midday meal.  Put on your satchel.”  He waited while she adjusted the bag on her shoulder.  “If I remember correctly, the bishop grows olives on his land.”

When had Silhara ever had occasion to visit Cumbria at Asher?  She'd never seen him there, and she had served the manor and its master since she was seven years old.  But he was correct.  The olive groves at Asher were many times the size of Silhara's small orchard.

“Does he still bring Conclave novitiates to harvest as unpaid labor?”  His mouth turned up in a faint sneer, which changed to a grudging smile.  “He’s a skinflint, but a shrewd one.  If I employed the same technique, Gurn would be able to feed me grapes all day.”

Martise clenched her teeth harder, this time to suppress a laugh.  Whatever his faults, the Master of Crows knew much about the High Bishop’s miserly ways.  Each harvest season Cumbria brought novitiates to his groves to help harvest the crops. He used the excuse they could practice their motion spells to shake the trees free of their fruit and gather them in the waiting cloths.

“That custom remains.”

He snorted.  “I thought so.”  His expression darkened.  “I don’t hold with the practice.  Magery has its place in the world, but not as a means to an easy life.  And whether Cumbria acknowledges it or not, those spells damage his trees.  I’ll have none of that here.  We do it the hard way—as the nongifted do—with ladders, bags and sore backs.”   He raked her with a glance.  “There isn’t much to you, apprentice.  I doubt you’ll be any help.”

She stiffened, indignant at his assumption.  “I’m stronger than I look, Master, and I take direction well.”

He didn’t look convinced.  “We’ll see.”  He slapped Gurn on the shoulder and walked away to retrieve another ladder lying on the ground near the crates.  “I’ll take her now, Gurn.  Signal when lunch is ready.”

Gurn patted Martise on the arm and strode back to the house.  She froze at Silhara’s forbidding stare.

“You’ve gained my servant’s trust.  Don’t abuse it.”

Apprehension ran cold in her veins.  The warning was a thinly veiled threat, ominous in its promise of deadly retribution if she took advantage of Gurn. Whether Silhara felt some affection for his servant or demanded his loyalty at all costs, she knew her interaction with Gurn was crucial to her survival here at Neith.

“I am not an unkind woman.  I like Gurn as well.”

His cold gaze didn’t warm.  “Keep that in mind, and any sense of self-preservation you may harbor.”

She swallowed and hurried after him as he took the second ladder and carried it to another tree farther down the row.  He leaned the ladder against the drooping branches, and a fluster of crows bolted upward, cawing in protest at being chased from their shaded haven.

“You’ll find a pair of gloves in your satchel.”  He raised his hands, displaying well-worn gloves with thinning patches and stains on the palms.  “Orange trees sport thorns as long as your fingers, and they’re wicked sharp.”

She reached into the satchel and found an equally worn pair.  They were too big, but not so large that they made her clumsy.  Silhara came to stand in front of her, and Martise almost forgot to breathe.  This close to him she was bombarded by a multitude of sensations—the scent of citrus and orange blossom laced with the musky heat of perspiration, the quiet rhythm of his breathing as he helped her adjust the gloves, and above all, the tingling flow of his Gift, pouring off him like water from a fast-running stream.

Silhara tightened the leather straps that held the gloves in place at her wrists.  His motions slowed when Martise ran the tip of her tongue over dry lips.  She blushed at his arrested expression, one which turned calculating.

“I make you nervous.”  The rasping voice was quiet, almost caressing.

She had no reason to lie save pride, and that was a poor reason indeed.  “Yes, Master.”  She lowered her gaze to stare at his scar.  “It’s said you are a dangerous and powerful mage.”

A faint huff of laughter whispered above her.  “It’s also said I raise the dead, talk to the dead and eat the dead.”  He tilted her chin with a fingertip so she must look at him.  He was so close she saw the fine lines fanning out from his black eyes and the hollows beneath his cheeks.  His sensual mouth curved into a mocking smile.  “What do you believe?”

“I believe in learning for myself instead of relying on the hearsay of others.”

A glimmer of approval darted through his eyes before he lowered his hand and stepped away from her.  Martise sighed, relieved.  The Master of Crows was an overwhelming presence, frightening, annoying and fascinating.  Being so close to him, with her senses inundated by the force of his Gift and his very maleness, made thinking difficult.

She stiffened at his touch on her elbow, then followed him to the ladder and her assigned tree.  The spark of warmth from moments earlier was gone.  His voice was dispassionate, instructive—that of the teacher imparting the lesson to the student.

Silhara cupped one of the oranges hanging in clusters from a low branch and reached into an outside pocket on his satchel.  He withdrew a pair of small clippers.  “Clip the fruit gently.  If you prefer to use your hands instead of the clippers, pick like this.”  He demonstrated by carefully twisting and pulling the orange from the limb, leaving a scrap of stem and the button of the fruit.  “You still need to use the clippers to cut the stems down or they’ll pierce the fruit you’ve left and cause them to spoil.”  He snapped the remaining stem off with the clippers.  “Now you.”

The oranges were cool to the touch, and she did as instructed, twisting and pulling one orange off with a careful tug.

He gave her the shears.  “You can use these.  I’ve an extra pair.”

When she demonstrated her competency to his satisfaction, he moved onto her next lesson, lifting her satchel so she could see the drawstring ties at the bottom.  “When your bag gets too heavy, release this cord.  The bottom will open, and your fruit will roll out.  I’d prefer you take them to the crates to drop them, but you’ll lose a lot of time walking the rows, so just come down the ladder and make a pile by the tree.”  His eyes narrowed.  “Don’t open the bag when you’re high on the ladder.  You’ll bruise the fruit if you let them drop that far.”

“Where should I start on the tree?”

Once more that derisive smile graced his mouth.  “As close to the top as you can reach.  Are you certain you aren’t afraid of heights?”

He was goading her again.  His morning lessons had given her gray hairs, but even if they had instilled a sudden fear of heights in her, Martise wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of letting him see it.  There were some things her pride commanded she do, slave or not.

She gripped the clippers with tense fingers.  “Very certain.”

“Good.  Then there’s no reason to delay.  Get up the ladder—that is if you can climb in those skirts.”

She wordlessly handed him the clippers and dropped her orange into her bag.  In moments she had her skirts twisted around her legs like makeshift breeches, with the ends tucked securely into her cyrtel.

This time his small smile was genuine.  “I admire a practical woman.”  He returned the clippers to her and walked away.  “Remember my instructions,” he said over one shoulder.  “Twist and pull carefully; cut the stems; don’t drop the fruit.”

Or what?
  She was tempted to ask in a rare moment of rebellion.

Silhara kept walking.  “Or I’ll add a special twist to tomorrow’s incantation lesson, apprentice.”

Her fallen clippers almost pinned her foot to the earth.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A crow landed on the window ledge and eyed Silhara as he dressed for the morning.  The light streaming into the room silhouetted the bird in shadow, creating a spot of darkness against the backdrop of orange trees and summer sky.

He ignored his visitor and scrubbed away blood and the last vestiges of sleep.  The light hurt his eyes but kept him from falling back to the bed in the hope of catching a few hours of nightmare-free slumber.  Corruption had tortured him through the night with sinister dreams of a world burdened by the god’s dominance.  In those visions, he lived a life of decadent privilege.  Wealth untold, armies to do his bidding, women to fulfill any carnal whim, every luxury and desire satisfied with a snap of his fingers.  All possible for the price of his humanity.  Most tempting of all was limitless magic.  The ability to move mountains, divert rivers, attain a near immortal life—this was the greatest gift the god offered, and it poured a tantalizing stream of such power into the sleeping mage.

A taste, Avatar, of what I can give you if you yield to me.

The voice waned, replaced by a new dream—a nightmare that still made Silhara shudder.  He stood on an endless beach made of ash instead of sand.  Above him, a night sky devoid of stars and moon bled into an equally black ocean.  Only the dull light of Corruption’s star provided any illumination, and its reflection danced across the rolling water in nacreous paths.  A steady wind, smelling not of spindrift or fish, but of burnt bone, fluttered his hair, sent the ash swirling softly over his feet, a caress of cool, dead fingers across his toes.

Before him, the ocean stretched into a limitless horizon.  No gulls flew overhead; no fish leapt from the water; no ships sailed the waves.  He knew, with the certainty of all dreams that, if he stepped off the beach and into the water, there would be no bottom to touch, only a vast well of liquid blackness into which he’d drown.

The waves pitched and receded, unceasing in their hollow lullaby.  Their music was broken abruptly by a curve of darkness rising out of the depths.  The shape sank beneath the water only to rise again.  Whales didn’t swim these lifeless seas.  He knew what rode the waves and stalked these dead shores.  A leviathan, immortal and pitiless, with a gaping maw that swallowed souls.  The steady break of the waves kept time to the wind’s rhythms as the creature swam closer.

Terror rooted him to the spot, and he waited.  Waited on a beach whose ash was the cremated remains of creatures that traversed a once-living world.  Waited for the monster to surface, stretch wide a black mouth and suck him down into an eternal nothingness.

Corruption whispered in his dreams once more.

A taste if you do not
.

He’d had awakened to a bloodied pillow and hands that tingled from the god’s touch.  He’d been tempted to stumble down to the kitchen and filch some of Gurn’s Dragon Piss.  Only the thought of his servant’s expression and his apprentice’s watchful gaze kept him from it.  He had no wish to explain the blood on his face or why his hands shook so badly he’d be challenged to hold a goblet steady.

He finished his ablutions and stared at the crow who still watched him.  A large bird.  Larger than those normally nesting in the grove’s shady canopy.

“Come,” he said, and gestured.  Lightning sizzled down his arm.  The crow’s eyes bulged, and it screeched a final caw before bursting into a scattered pile of smoking feathers and charred bones.

Cradling his burning hand to his chest, Silhara stared at the smoldering mound on the ledge. Corruption had left its mark on him from the previous night.  The spell, a gentle summons which should have coaxed instead of coerced, had gone horribly wrong.  He held up his hand.  Blemished by nothing more than hard calluses and ink stains, his fingers and palm now held a warped power, one that made his magic unpredictable.  He growled.  This wasn’t good.  Power uncontrolled and unknown was useless.  For the moment, unless he chose to cast any spell regardless of consequence, the god had rendered his magery impotent.

Still, he didn’t deny the surge of euphoria coursing through his blood.  His fingers twitched, and points of light shot off their tips.  Such power was more seductive than a beautiful, willing woman.  Silhara knew his weaknesses.  So did the god.

He lowered his hand and approached the window.  The warm morning breeze sent scorched black feathers whirling out over the grove.  “My apologies, friend.  Killing you wasn’t my…”

The scent of magic, neither his nor Corruption’s, teased his nostrils.  He knew that scent, both familiar and loathed.  The bird reeked of Conclave.  He swiped his hand against the remains in a sharp gesture, clearing the ledge.  They fell in a thin black rain to the ground below.

Another spy for the priests.  His apprentice might well have brought the bird with her, or it might have lived amongst his crows for months, flying home occasionally to tattle to its masters.  His regret at destroying the bird vanished.

He finished dressing and left for the kitchen.  As usual, tea and oranges awaited him on the table.  Gurn and Martise sat across from one another carrying on a conversation made up of hand signals and Martise’s lyrical voice.  Silhara paused in the doorway, content to observe unnoticed.

For all that he disliked having her entrenched in his household, he’d grown to admire Cumbria’s spy.  Tenacious and resolute, she’d suffered through his morning lessons without faltering.  Her Gift had yet to manifest, but she hadn’t fled in terror.  Silhara despised admitting failure, but he considered abandoning the morning exercises.  They’d accomplished nothing so far besides giving him a sick feeling in his gut.

Most surprising of all, Martise was a good harvester.  What she lacked in strength, she made up for in speed and thoroughness.  He only had to instruct her once on the proper technique of harvesting the fruit.  Heat, ant bites and the occasional sting from a wasp drunk on fermented oranges didn’t deter her.  After a week, she was almost as quick as Gurn and ruined fewer oranges.

He admired the play of sunlight on her russet hair and the timbre of her amazing voice.  She rarely smiled, and never for him, but he was often amused by the brief flashes of wit she revealed.  The dull servant who had faded into the shadows of his study was slowly vanishing.  The woman emerging in her place fascinated him a little more each day.

Cumbria was more subtle and shrewd than he first credited him.  There was more to this woman than her plain façade indicated.  On the surface, she was dismal in her role as spy, but he never trusted surface appearances.  Martise possessed something unique, something Cumbria could use for the purpose of bringing his most hated adversary down.  The trick was to find it before she successfully cornered him with some damning treason that would bring about Conclave’s brand of justice.

Cael, stretched out under the table, saw him first.  He wuffled a greeting but didn’t rise, content to lie beneath Martise’s foot as she methodically rubbed the length of his belly with her heel.

“Lazy mutt,” he muttered as he took his place next to Gurn at the table.  He eyed Martise who greeted him with a bland look and softly spoken “Master.”

“You’ve ruined my dog.”

Cael’s protesting snort revealed Martise had halted her massage.  She gave Silhara a wary look.  “Forgive me, I don’t understand.”

The oranges in the bowl looked bright, lush and unappetizing this morning.  He took one and leisurely peeled the skin in a continuous spiral.  “If I hear another apology from you, I think I’ll drown you in the well.”  He swallowed a laugh when she paled.  “Martise, you must bear a terrible burden of guilt over past sins.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard a person say ‘sorry’ as often as you do with so little provocation.”  He popped an orange segment into his mouth and conquered the urge to retch as the juice burst on his tongue.

Martise went crimson but said nothing.  Silhara swallowed the bite of orange and sipped his tea to cleanse his mouth.  He peered under the table and frowned at Cael.  The hound ignored him and rolled under Martise’s foot in an obvious request to resume her caress.

“You spoil him.  I now have a mage-finder who spends his days lolling with the swine and begging caresses from a woman.”  Gurn snorted into his tea cup, and Silhara raised an eyebrow.  “Not that I blame him for the last.”

“I’m confused, Master.  Do you speak of the failures of men or dogs?”

He almost choked on the second piece of orange and spat it onto the floor.  Martise’s face blurred as his eyes watered.  Gurn chuckled.  His apprentice watched him, her copper gaze steady.  For a moment Silhara caught a gleam of teasing humor in her eyes before it vanished.

“Does it matter?  We’re often one and the same.”  He let her finish her porridge while he and Gurn made plans for market day in Eastern Prime.

“We’ll take what we have now and deliver it to Fors the day before market opens.  He’ll try and charge a storage fee.”  Silhara poured another cup of tea.  “You’d think he’d learn after all these years of trade that I’m not an easy mark.”

Gurn’s hands sketched patterns in the air while Silhara watched and answered.

“Martise will be traveling with us.  The two of you can buy supplies while I negotiate with our greedy little merchant.  The sooner we’re done, the better.  There’s more to harvest, and I don’t want my fruit rotting on the trees before we can pick it.”

He waited for Martise to eat her last spoonful of breakfast.  “Have you ever been to Eastern Prime?”

“Not since I was a child.  It’s too far from Asher to bother.  The High Bishop sends his factor to Calderes, though it’s a smaller town and market.”

“But well known for its luxury goods and rich patrons.”  He traced a Calderan trade symbol on the scarred tabletop.  “You’ll accompany us when we travel to Eastern Prime in ten days.  Be prepared.  You may not remember, but Prime is a port city.  Bigger and far less genteel than Calderes.  They run the slave markets there, and the whoremasters are ever on the prowl for young women.  When we’re there, stay close to Gurn.”

Silhara frowned, puzzled by her sudden somber cast.  “It’s not a wish, Martise.  It’s a command.”

She rose to clear her place, flinching as her free hand held the table edge in a white-knuckled grip.  She shuffled to the sink, moving more like a half-dead crone than a healthy young woman.  A gray pallor washed her skin, and she couldn’t hide a wince when she faced him.

“Should I await you in the hall for our lesson?”

The image of the destroyed crow played across his memory.  Silhara had set Martise on fire once during their lessons.  Brutal both in purpose and execution, the spell had been one he’d controlled through its entirety.  His apprentice had come away from the experience reeling with shock but no injuries save a burnt hem.  While he felt it fading, the god’s touch still lingered in his hands, made his fingers spasm in short intervals.  Despite his wariness of her, Silhara had no wish to mete out the same end, or something worse, to his apprentice.  If he had to kill her, he’d do it on his terms with his magic firmly under control.

She stood patiently before him, awaiting his answer.  He raked her with his gaze.  Martise always carried herself erect, with a quiet dignity he’d grown to admire.  This morning she slouched, right shoulder sloped a little lower than the left.

“I think we’ll forego the lessons today.”  Surprise widened her eyes.  Even Gurn stared at him, puzzled.  “You walk like an old woman.  Why didn’t you tell Gurn you’re sore from harvesting?”

The flush rising from her neck to her cheeks chased away the gray.  She glanced at Gurn who frowned his disapproval at her secrecy.  “I didn’t think it important.  My work hasn’t suffered for it.”

Silhara rose to stand before her.  She stiffened and winced.  He liked her scent, redolent of sunshine and Gurn’s rosewater soap.  “No, not yet.  But it will.  You aren’t much good to me on a ladder when you can hardly walk or hold yourself upright.”

“I can work well enough…” she argued before snapping her mouth closed in mutinous silence.  “What would you have me do, Master?” she finally asked.

“You can look at me instead of my feet.”

She met his eyes, her expression blank.  Silhara shook his head.  “That might fool others, but not me.”  He addressed Gurn over his shoulder.  “I need her in the library today anyway.  We’ll harvest tomorrow.  Are there candles in the stillroom?”

The servant nodded and began clearing the breakfast remains from the table.  He waved a hand at Martise, frowning even harder.  Silhara sighed and looked back at her.  “Gurn believes you’re a fragile thing, deserving of my delicacy.”  He smiled faintly when she held up her palms, revealing a wealth of calluses, blisters and a scar or two.

“These are not a delicate woman’s hands.  I need no special treatment.”  She peeked around him to wink at Gurn.  “Though I appreciate Gurn’s concern.”

Silhara stared at Gurn.  His servant shrugged, unapologetic over his obvious friendship with Conclave’s puppet.  Martise’s expression mirrored Gurn’s, a flicker of rebellion dancing in her eyes for a moment, as if she dared him to forbid such a relationship.