Murder of Crows (The Twenty-Sided Sorceress Book 2) (14 page)

“Send them away? He was killing them.” I couldn’t believe she was still talking around his crimes.

“Enough. What is done is done. This is not for you to know, not for you to be a part of anymore. We cannot forgive you, but for your atonement in killing Not Afraid, we will allow you to leave.” As she spoke, the shadow of wings unfurled at the corners of my vision and I knew that Shishishiel was with her. My mother, the new Sky Heart. I hoped she would be a gentler dictator.

“What about my father?” I asked. I didn’t need to clarify I wasn’t talking about Jasper.

“His secrets are not mine to reveal. If he wants you to know him, he will find you.” She came toward me, the mantle of Shishishiel’s power fading back, leaving only my mother’s familiar form behind.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Go,” she said, but this time the words were a plea more than a command. “We must take care of our own.”

I had no strength left to argue. Emerald would get to stay in her home. That was something at least. I wanted to warn Pearl about Samir, but realized that Shishishiel had likely already done so. There was nothing here for me.

“Goodbye, mother,” I said.

I used Alek’s sink to wipe the worst of the blood off my chest and changed my shirt. The wound was closed already, but I knew I wouldn’t be eating delicious pork products with quite the same gusto for a long while. Black and purple bruising were already spreading over my whole chest, creating a nebulae pattern that would make Hubble fanatics jealous.

Then I climbed into the truck and Alek drove us away from Three Feathers. We were silent until we had made it well out of sight of the camp.

“Where is Carlos?” I asked to break the tension.

“They had hidden his car when he disappeared. He went to retrieve it after Pearl said that Not Afraid was dead. She said you were hurt. That was when I went to find you.”

“Ah,” I said. The long night, the longer day, and sheer exhaustion slammed into me. My father, the man I had thought was my father, was dead. Samir had tried to wipe out my entire bloodline.

I had almost played right into his hands. I had maybe almost died.

I had let a man be murdered. A terrible man, true, but his blood was as much on my hands as on Not Afraid’s.

I started shaking and curled up in the seat, wrapping my arms around myself and taking quick, shallow breaths. Deep ones still hurt too much to manage. Fat tears leaked down my cheeks.

Alek looked over at me but said nothing.

“Aren’t you going to ask if I’m okay,” I stuttered through my tears, trying to crack a smile. I feared it looked more like a grimace.

“No,” he said with a look that made it clear he knew I wasn’t okay. A look that said we weren’t okay.

We left it at that. I turned my head and stared out the window, watching the land go by in a green blur through my tears.

I had stopped Not Afraid and Blood Mother. I had even mostly thwarted Samir’s plan to wipe out the People.

I didn’t know the cost yet, not fully. I had only learned how little I really knew about my past and my heritage, about how the world really worked. This was a Pyrrhic victory, at best.

But one truth I did know was that there was no going back. Eventually the tears dried up and I faced forward. Toward the future. Toward home.

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This book is wholly a work of fiction. However, I did borrow a little from the language and traditions of the Apsaalooké, or Crow, people who are alive and well today in the United States. Jade’s Crow people are quite different and I took many fictional liberties, of course, but I wanted a foundation in reality since sometimes the best fantasy stems from the world we already know.

If you are interested in learning more about the actual Apsaalooké and the modern Crow Nation, please visit their website as a starting point:
http://www.crow-nsn.gov/

Annie Bellet lives and writes in the Pacific NW. She is the author of the
Gryphonpike Chronicles
and the
Twenty-Sided Sorceress
series, and her short stories have appeared in over two dozen magazines and anthologies. Follow her at her website at
“A Little Imagination”
(
http://overactive.wordpress.com/
)