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I’d celebrate the end of the curse over my forms with Ari when he woke. It was a thought I clung to as we descended the rickety steps in the tenement.
The halls were dank and cold. Holes patched with burlap sacks and clay did nothing to fight the morning breeze. Each door to other flats held a brass knob of a raven in flight. Old, tarnished, but a raven that seemed to call to me every time I looked at them.
“We’ll take the back way,” Stefan said, holding open a crooked door that led into a dim alley.
Stefan did not look a great deal like his sister. Where Calista was lanky, he was broad, where she smirked, he frowned. He didn’t say much as we made our way down the staircase, but often cast me strange glances, a look like he had a secret to tell me, but chose not to. That or he didn’t trust me.
Likely the latter.
Stefan held out an arm at the door. “I’ll go first, Cal.”
Calista rolled her eyes. “I’ve already been out this morning, and there is no one out there snatching me.”
“I know,” he snapped. “Andyouknow how I feel about me going first.”
“Like my own personal guard.” Calista tipped the brim of her hat and whispered over her shoulder, “He’s forgotten I’m not a tiny girl anymore.”
She was malnourished and bony, but the fierceness in her eyes would be enough to frighten Lord Gorm, maybe even the forked-tongued Bjorn.
Calista snatched hold of my arm. “One thing you’ll need to learn about this place, is folk keep their noses out of your business if you keep your nose out of theirs.”
“Who rules here?” It was the first time the thought had crossed my mind. Odd. I couldn’t recall a moment, even in my hazy past, where I’d truly wondered about the mysterious ruler of the West.
“Some say the mad king wears the crown, but I’m convinced he doesn’t exist.”
Stefan snorted. “How do you explain the royal house then, Cal?”
“A place where the sleepy council meets and pretends we have a throne.” She nodded as if she’d proved her point. “They don’t want trouble from the other kingdoms, you see. So they keep spouting off legends of our vicious mad king who’s lived for centuries longer than anyone else.”
“What about guards, or warriors, orlaws.” I tilted my chin when the blue dawn cast its dreary light over sulking street vendors and staggering folk returning to their hovels after a night of games and ale. I knew nothing of this place. The Western Kingdom was as foreign as the forbidden sea kingdoms.
Called a kingdom, but if Calista was right, a kingdom with no king? No queen? Even the East, with its once-empty throne, at least had a tyrant.
Calista blew into her fists to chase away the damp chill. “No one cares about drunkards and gamblers, Raven Queen. We have the basics, don’t steal unless you want to be robbed. Don’t kill unless you’ve got good reason and the proof to go with it. We’re not a threat. A few of our folk can twist fate, sometimes ships come to steal us away to other kingdoms. We keep our heads down, we survive. Don’t need endless laws, I suppose, when all we’re doing is surviving.”
Calista cleared her throat and took a step away. A habit of hers when she wanted to end conversations. Usually whenever talk turned onto her, or something near to her. Like her home.
The storyteller flicked a steel blade with a roughly carved wooden hilt in her palm like she expected the shadows to leap out and attack. With a glare sharp as broken ice, she slipped around me and stepped into the muddy tracks of the road.
Stefan held out an arm in front of his sister. He glanced side to side, then together they scrambled across the street. Why be so cautious? There were so few folk out and about. Here and there a woman in rags might step out and toss a bucket into the road. Maybe a man, stumbling and drunk, would collapse in a puddle.
The whole of Raven Row was dingy and rotten, but I did not need folk of esteemed morals or honor. I needed the sort who dabbled in seidr, or rune magic. I needed seers and vagabonds who didn’t care to risk a game with fate.
I needed folk who dared go as dark as Davorin, but still had a bit of light in their hearts.
Cobblestones were slick with mud and forced me to keep my eyes focused on every step as I crossed the alleys and roads, until my boots collided with a cracked, stone pillar. I lifted my gaze. Heat scorched through my veins in the next breath, a brisk flash of power, of the same feeling of knowing something deep in my mind but being unable to bring it forward flooded my senses.
What was this place?
A black, stone pillar carved in endless runes and glyphs of the tree of the gods, at the base were the Norns and their threads of fate. Mists hovered over a long, winding, muddy path, but through the haze I could make out a crooked structure. Half longhouse, half palace with three levels. Made of wooden laths with curling bits of whitewash from turns of wear. Shredded satin banners sagged like wet parchment, and the once-vibrant material had grown discolored from too much sun and dust.
The lower half was oddly narrower than the upper floor. Both panes of the entrance door sagged on broken hinges, and above an unbalanced balcony extended out from a gaping hole where, if I had to guess, a door much like the one on the ground level once stood.
A tattered wooden sign jutted out on a filigreed iron post from the rune pillar:Hus Rose.
“Not there, Raven Queen,” Calista said, a little breathless. Apprehension lined her features as her eyes raked over the dust and broken beams. “We don’t go there.”
“What is this place?”
