Raven's Strike (Raven #2)(31)

"Here is the bakery," Seraph said, with something like relief. She'd always been a practical Raven, especially after her teacher died and she became her clan's only Raven. Whatever it took to survive was not a moral line she expected Hennea would approve of.

They found Tier elbow deep in dough. He listened as Seraph explained what they were going to do.

"I'll follow you in a couple of hours. We've a lot of hungry folk to feed."

Seraph leaned over and kissed him lightly, careful to keep out of the flour. "You'll do no such thing. I won't have you climbing the mountainside with your knees still healing. When you're through here, why don't you wait for us at the tavern?"

He thought about arguing, she saw it in his eyes. "Fine," he said instead. "Just you be cautious up there. I don't want to have to trek up there and find our Jes as a frog."

"Can't do frogs," said Jes seriously. "Can't do horses either. Only animals with fur and fangs."

They started back up the streets. Since Redern was dug into the side of a mountain, new buildings had to be built above the rest of the village, and Volis's temple was the newest building in Redern.

"Maybe Jes shouldn't be here," Hennea said. "There's a lot of people."

Seraph had been keeping an eye on him as well. She'd have left him home, but he wouldn't stay without them. He wasn't paying attention to them now, just staring at the ground with a distracted air.

"If you wrap a sprain for too long, you ruin the joint," said Lehr.

"What?"

"I mean," Lehr explained, "if Jes doesn't ever come to town - pretty soon he won't be able to."

"Jes," said Seraph, touching his sleeve.

He looked up with a jerk.

"Do you need to go home?" she asked. "Are the people too much for you?"

"No, Mother." Jes shook his head. "I'm all right. Everyone is so excited today it feels like I have bees in my head. But we think it wouldn't be a good thing to leave you alone in the new temple."

He used "we" just as the priest had. Lehr started to speak, and Seraph held up a finger for quiet so she could solidify her first, nebulous thought. There was a connection between shadowing and the way the Guardian Order worked, she could almost see how it was so.

Ellevanal had shadowed the priest. Was that the same kind of magic that caused the Orders to attach themselves to Travelers? She closed her eyes and thought, trying to work her way through an instinctive affirmative. The binding between the priest and Ellevanal had been temporary, but the Orders were permanent.

"I can see the Orders," she murmured out loud to clarify her thoughts. "But I can't see shadowing. I wonder if Lehr or Jes would have been able to tell that the forest king was riding inside Karadoc's skin? Or is it the evil of the Stalker's presence that they sense." That felt right.

"You think there is a connection between the Orders and shadowing?" said Hennea.

Seraph nodded and opened her eyes. "I think they are similar magics. Not twins or complements, but certainly in the same family of magics. Maybe, when you and I try to study the Order-bound gems again, we need to study the shadowing that the Elder Wizards did. There are books about shadowing in most of the mermori libraries. Isolde had four or five I've glanced through."

Hennea stared into the summer sky for a moment. "Yes, you're right."

Perhaps Hennea meant it to come out as if she'd just come to the same conclusion. But to Seraph, it sounded suspiciously as if she'd known all along.

"How long have you known?" Seraph snapped.

Seraph, Hennea, and Brewydd had spent days trying to discover what the Path had done to bind the Orders to their gems. There was nothing in any of the libraries on the Orders; they had been created after the Colossae wizards had left and were no longer writing down their studies. If Hennea had known there was a connection between shadowing the Colossae wizards had used and the Orders, she should have told them.

Hennea met Seraph's gaze. "A while. But I couldn't find anything specific. The wizards wrote a lot about how to get themselves into another person's mind and how to shield themselves from such abuse perpetrated by another wizard. Nothing useful in our situation."

"But you didn't mention it to Brewydd or me."

"No."

"Why not?"

"It was not useful."

"Or so you thought," Seraph said icily.

There was a connection, she could feel it; but that wasn't what bothered her. Tier liked to tease her about the secretive nature of Ravens, but Seraph had never had that facet of her Order turned on her before. She didn't like it. She'd become a Rederni - people who kept secrets couldn't be trusted.

Tier's suspicions of Hennea rattled around in Seraph's head, but she couldn't see any pattern to them. "Tier thinks you are older than you look."

"Why should he think that?" It was Hennea's turn to speak coldly.

It wasn't an answer, and Seraph had been a parent too long not to hear the evasion and the attempt to divert the conversation away from Hennea and direct it onto Tier.

"Mother?" said Jes.

He was swaying from one foot to another as he watched Seraph's face unblinkingly.