Voice of Crow (6 page)

Half a dozen had babbled throughout the night near Filip’s hospital window. With the first light of day, another set of nerve-jangling chirps and tweets penetrated his ears.

Soon the twittering was joined by another bird’s rapid rata-tat. It felt like an awl against Filip’s skull.

He drew the pillow over his head and squeezed. How could such a quiet place be so loud?

“You can’t kill yourself that way,” Zelia said at the door. Her feet scuffed the floor’s wooden planks on the way to the bed. “As soon as you faint from lack of air, you’ll let go of the pillow, and wake up alive, with a nasty headache. Ready for breakfast?”

He grunted and forced himself up onto his elbows. The healer watched with a dispassionate gaze as he raised himself to sit against the wall.

“Talkative today, I see.” She set a basin of steaming water on the nightstand. “I thought you might like to have breakfast outdoors with your fellows, get out of this stuffy room. But you need a bath first.”

“I’ll stay inside.”

“No, you won’t. It’s a lovely cool morning, and your room needs cleaning. The other Descen—I mean, the other men have been asking after you.”

“I don’t want to see them.”

“Well, it’s all about what
you
want, isn’t it?” She turned the covers down, exposing his bare torso. “Are you this contrary with your own mother?”

“Don’t say
are,
as if I’ll see her again.”

“Excuse me.
Were
you such a little wasp with her, too?”

“Yes.”

A smile tugged the corners of Zelia’s mouth as she handed him a soaking hot cloth. “And did it work?”

“No.” He cleansed his chest and arms, feeling only a shadow of pain in his shoulder from the two-week-old arrow wound. Either it had been shallower than he’d thought, or there really was something to this Otter healing power.

“It’s too loud outside to think,” he said, “much less eat.”

“Loud? Whatever are you talking about?”

“Those stupid birds.”

She drew in a breath, and he congratulated himself on finding a way to shock her.

“All night,” he continued, “at least five or six outside my window. Chirping and calling to each other, even though it sounded like they were sitting on the same branch.”

Zelia took the cloth and motioned for him to turn on his side. “That wasn’t five or six birds. It was one bird with five or six songs. A mockingbird.”

“Oh.” Now he was the stupid one. “We don’t have those in the city.” He shifted so she could wash his back.

Pain drove through the sole of his left foot, as if he had stepped on a spike. He grunted and clenched his hands against the blankets, imagining them grasping the neck of the man whose sword had ruined his life.

The healer reached over to touch his knee, then closed her eyes and murmured a soft chant. Filip wanted to punch her, as if he could relieve his pain by delivering it to someone else.

Within several moments, the agony dulled to an insistent ache under her touch. She did have magic, he had to admit, though not enough.

“Thank you,” he told Zelia with a full exhale. “It’s better.” Filip hoped the others hadn’t heard him cry out. He grabbed a clean shirt from the bedside table and slipped it over his head. “How can it hurt so much when it’s not even there?”

“It’s up here.” She touched her temple. “One day your mind will accept what’s lost.”

“I can feel it.” He closed his eyes. “I can wiggle my toes.”

“No, my boy, I’m afraid you can’t.” The healer’s voice was soft but strong as she touched his arm. “Come outside now.”

He jerked away from her. “I won’t.”

“You will, or you don’t eat. Breakfast is in the yard today and nowhere else.” She stepped briskly to the door. “I’ll fetch my apprentice to carry you.”

“No!” He threw back the blanket, knowing he was playing into her mind games. “I’ll crawl before I let them see me cradled like a baby.”

“You won’t need to crawl if you can use these.” She reached past the doorway into the examination room and brought out a pair of wooden crutches. The handrests were padded with brown fur. Zelia placed one on either side of him.

With more effort than he thought it would take, they got him standing for the first time since the battle. Though the crutches provided stable support, he found himself wanting to put his other foot down. He tried not to think where that foot might be. Perhaps it shared a mass grave with his brother and hundreds of other dead “Descendants.” Knowing the Asermons, they’d probably fed it to their dogs, or prepared a feast of body parts for the hideous crows they worshiped.

Filip crossed the floor, his shoulder wound flaring from the effort. He welcomed that pain, since it came from a place that actually existed.

He passed through the exam room, then the waiting room at the front of the building. Filtered sunlight patched the floor with shifting yellow spots. He quickened his pace at the sight, longing to feel that sunlight on his own skin. He stumbled across the front threshold, then looked up at his surroundings.

Asermos. The village he had come to conquer for his country. For his gods.

Such a small, innocuous-looking place. From the hospital doorway he could see to the southern end of the village as it curved around the banks of the VelekonRiver. Modest buildings of stone and stucco sat adjacent to the sandy main road. Narrow streets branched off this road, leading three or four blocks up the riverbank. The entire village could have held no more than a few thousand people, including those on outlying farms.

They should have been easy to trample.

With Zelia’s arm to steady him, he crutched himself off the porch, careful not to slip on the dew-slick grass. She led him around the building to the right.

A wooden fence extended from the side of the house at about the height of Filip’s chest. On the other side lay a garden bulging with herbs and flowers. A flagstone path led through the garden and curved toward the back of the building.

Mother would have liked this, he thought as Zelia opened the gate. Her own garden had crammed their apartment’s balcony, the flowers and ornamental plants leaving little room for people to sit and enjoy the view of the city below. Filip’s mind veered from the memory of this view and the emptiness it carved in his gut.

Voices and laughter came from the back of the garden. He stopped in midstride, wavering. “How many?”

“Seven,” Zelia replied. “All your people. The Asermons are at another healer’s. We thought it best to separate the two sets of soldiers, seeing as you were trying to kill each other not so long ago.”

He considered asking for a transfer to the other hospital. Better to be surrounded by enemies who scorn than friends who pity.

Zelia laid her hand against his back. “They’ll be glad to see you.”

“You don’t understand.”

She sighed. “And I’m a busy woman, with no time for your explanation.”

Filip forced his leg and arms to move. He and Zelia came around the corner of the house, and the yard went silent.

He lifted his chin and looked straight ahead as he approached his fellow soldiers. With each step, the cuff of his half-empty trouser leg scraped the stone paving.

One of the figures stood. “Sir!”

Filip scanned the faces of the men around the long wooden table. Most were older than he was, in their mid-to late twenties. Rough-looking, brawny, with short hair. None would meet his eye; they studied the ground or the treetops or some fascinating object they had just picked out of their teeth. Only one didn’t share their aggressive indifference.

Kiril Vidaso was saluting him. The earnest young second lieutenant, right arm in a sling, held his left fist to his breastbone in a backward image of the customary gesture.

Filip almost stumbled from the shock of being spoken to, much less honored, in his wretched state. Though he appreciated the show of respect, it was technically a breach of protocol. They weren’t in uniform, which Filip would never wear again.

He cleared his throat. “At your ease.”

Kiril pulled out the chair he’d been sitting in at the far end of the table and offered it to Filip. He seemed to be trying to keep his glance away from his approaching superior’s obvious injury.

“Thank you.” Filip focused on keeping his balance while he turned to lower himself into the chair. His shoulder throbbed, but his stump bore only a dull ache. He wondered when Zelia’s magic would wear off and the shooting pains would return.

Kiril took the crutches and sat beside him. “It’s good to see you, sir.”

Filip gritted his teeth. He had been promoted from second to first lieutenant only a month ago, and barely outranked his comrade, who was less than a year younger. “You don’t have to call me
sir
anymore.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I do,” Filip said, then regretted his harsh tone. He gave his friend a curt nod. “Thank you, though.”

Kiril’s posture relaxed a little, but he rapped his fingertips on the table in an unsteady rhythm. “I see you cut your hair short,” he said after several uncomfortable moments.

“I’m not an officer anymore. No sense in looking like one.”

“Right.” Kiril touched the ends of his own dark brown, shoulder-length hair. “Can I get you anything, s—Uh, Lieutenant?”

Filip slid a wary gaze over the soldiers at the other end of the long table. They had begun conversing again, ignoring the two lieutenants. “Who are these men? Some look familiar.”

“Infantry, second battalion.” Kiril’s lip curled a bit, and he lowered his voice. “All enlisted ranks, so they should have saluted you. Southerners, mostly. But they’re all we’ve got.”

“Got for what?”

“For escaping.”

Filip looked around the garden, empty except for the patients. “I don’t see any guards.”

“Trust me, they’re there. Corporal Addano, the one with the bandaged head, he tried to run two nights ago and came this close to getting an arrow in the foot.” He held his thumb and forefinger apart to illustrate. “You should’ve seen his face.” Kiril smirked. “Needed a clean pair of trousers after that, too.”

“I can’t go home and you know it.” When Kiril tried to protest, Filip cut him off. “My wound can’t be hidden, much less healed. If I go back to Leukos, I’ll bring shame on my family and my city, remind everyone of the humiliation of their invincible army.” He glanced at the enlisted men and lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “My own parents will turn away, like these soldiers. I don’t know why you’re even speaking to me.”

“I speak to you out of brotherhood. Not even death can take that from us.”

“Death can’t.” Filip angled his chin toward his left leg. “But this can.”

Kiril glanced down at his own feet, as if to confirm they were both there. “What will you do if not go home?” He glared at their surroundings. “Stay in this godsforsaken hole of a town?”

“Yes, and you should, too.” Filip beckoned his comrade closer. “Live among them, see and hear everything. When they let down their guard, steal a boat and go home. Take what you’ve learned for the good of Ilios.”

“I can’t stay any longer. This place is making me—” Kiril hunched his shoulders and threw a furtive glance at the others.

“Making you what?”

“Crazy,” he whispered.

“It’s not like Leukos, that’s for certain.”

“I don’t mean
crazy
as in I’m having trouble adjusting. I mean,
crazy
as in—” He flapped his hand next to his head.

“Crazy.”

Kiril nodded, fidgeting with the frayed end of his shirtsleeve.

Filip didn’t know how to respond. He’d been trained to handle his troop’s battle shock on the field and in the barracks, but never expected to find himself a prisoner of war in a backwater bog like Asermos. “Crazy how?”

Kiril scratched the side of his jaw and didn’t look at him. “I can do things.”

“Breakfast!” Zelia appeared from around the side of the building, followed by two food-laden young male apprentices. She seemed at ease as the sole female in the company of ten men. In Leukos a woman would never risk such an insecure situation.

A yellow cur paced at her side.

“They let a dog come to the table?” Filip asked Kiril.

“That’s Sunlight. She picks up things if we drop them, alerts Zelia if one of us falls or has a problem. Plus, she’s good for morale.” He smacked his lips and said the dog’s name in a high-pitched voice. The beast trotted over, sat on its haunches, and lifted a front paw, which Kiril clasped. He flashed a smile at Filip. “I taught her that yesterday.”

The dog leaned onto one hip and scratched vigorously behind its ear.

“Outstanding,” Filip said. “It’s got fleas, and soon we will, too.”

Kiril chuckled. The dog shifted its weight, started to scratch its other ear, then grunted and returned to a sitting position. It looked up at Kiril, eyebrows twitching.

“Help,” a female voice said. “I can’t reach the top of my head.”

Filip turned to Zelia to determine what, by the gods, she was talking about.