Strangers and new surroundings were exactly the distraction that Cordelia needed to get her mind off her own fears. Her triplets followed Tilda’s directions to sit and wait by a small, flickering campfire surrounded by blankets where half a dozen other children slept. Cordelia, though, followed Tilda through the camp, soaking up every new sight and sound along the way. It was all so different from her forest!
Adults bustled and clustered on all sides, talking in worried groups, comforting cranky babies, or—in the case of four of the men—arguing in heated undertones. As she watched, the grouchy one called Hal threw up his hands in visible disgust and stomped off, ducking under the low-hanging branches of the closest tree and disappearing into the deep shadows beyond.
“Where did you all come from?” Cordelia asked, trying in vain to peer after him. Human eyes were so useless when it came to seeing in the dark! “Or do you live here normally?”
“Live here?” Tilda snorted as she slid between two groups of women sitting on the open ground, holding her own empty jug close to her chest. “Does this look like a home to you?”
It didn’t look like Cordelia’s castle, or even Lady Elianora’s cottage. But then, no one here looked the way she was used to. Their clothes weren’t the tunics or armor of the dukes’ soldiers, but they weren’t made of the richly colored fabrics that Alys and Mother had always sewed with, either. They looked rough and plain, and the people who wore them looked as if they’d been tired and worried for a long time.
“No, our homes were stolen by those dukes.” Tilda snapped out her last word like a curse as she came to a halt by a pile of baskets.
The red-haired older girl who sat guard by the baskets, wrapped in a fraying shawl, frowned up at her. “You’ve already taken your share for your family.”
“She hasn’t.” Tilda pointed at Cordelia.
The girl wrinkled her nose in distaste. “They’re not locals.”
“And we’re not dukes or duchesses. We care about people who aren’t our own, remember?” Tilda put her hands on her hips as the older girl hesitated. “They’re children, Margery. Look at them! We can’t let them go hungry.”
“We’ll all go hungry soon enough if we aren’t careful,” Margery muttered. Still, she shifted aside to make room. “Just don’t give them any of our meat. We don’t have enough of that to spare on outsiders.”
Tilda sighed, but she didn’t argue. “Here.” She reached into the closest basket and ripped off a thick chunk of bread. “You can carry this.” She handed it to Cordelia, then bent to fill her cracked china jug from the tall bucket of water that stood by the baskets. “This’ll have to do for now.”
It took all of Cordelia’s patience to wait until they had left the other girl behind before she let more of her questions pour out. “What do you mean, the dukes stole your homes? Don’t they have their own homes to live in?”
“Oh, they wouldn’t dream of living in our little farms! But they wanted somewhere to house their armies. And according to them …” Tilda let out a humorless laugh, her stride lengthening. “They were doing it all for our own good. The duke of Lune’s woman told us we were honored to pack up our things and begone so we could provide them with a safe base to invade the forest and protect us all from the wicked enchantress.”
“What? Why?” Cordelia scowled, hurrying to keep up. “She wasn’t attacking you.”
“Of course not!” Tilda lowered her voice to an angry murmur as they neared the campfire where the other children slept and where Giles and Rosalind sat, chatting softly to each other. “We’re not fools. We’ve always been safe from her as long as we didn’t venture into her forest. They don’t care about our safety. It was just a useful excuse. And that duke’s messenger may have promised all sorts of rewards if we catch any of the witch’s terrible demons trying to escape”—she rolled her eyes meaningfully—“but we all know what’s really coming.”
She handed the water jug to Rosalind, her free hand fisting by her side. “Now their armies are sprawled across our fields, ruining all of this year’s crops, and we’ll never get our own homes back again. They’ll be divided among the dukes’ knights as rewards for their loyalty.”
Rosalind straightened with outrage. “That’s not fair! They can’t just steal people’s farms and livelihoods! A true knight would never—”
“A true knight? Who’s ever seen one of those?” Tilda let out a scornful laugh. “I don’t know what strange country you three come from beyond that awful forest, but the men and women who rule this kingdom don’t give a turnip for knightly honor. All they care about is power … and none of us has enough of that to fight back against them.”
She sighed as she sat down, folding the coarse skirts of her smock around her. “My mother said, in the old days, they all had to listen to the king or queen … but that ended decades ago, back when the Raven Crown first broke. Now it doesn’t even matter which duke or duchess grabs the throne for their family. The others are always ready to knock them off and start the bloodshed all over again. We’re just the pieces that get smashed along the way.”
A look came over Giles’s face that Cordelia knew only too well. He was coming up with a new song, no doubt something grand and hopelessly melancholy, his very favorite type. “So the dukes of Arden and Lune”—he glanced sidelong at his sisters—“are fighting together for one possible heir to the Raven Throne? But the duchess of Solenne and the dukes of Breville and Mordaunt all want a different heir so that they can seize power for themselves instead? And it’s all doomed to epic tragedy forever?”
Cordelia glared at him through slitted eyes. “Don’t even think about singing,” she hissed.
There was nothing grand or ballad-worthy about a war that broke apart the land and stole people’s homes to fight over a throne. More than that—
“Our father was killed in one of those battles,” she muttered, “before we were even born. Our older brother’s father was killed in another.”
Both of her triplets jerked around to gape at her. She hunched her shoulders against the look of shock on Giles’s face. She hadn’t been keeping Connall’s story a secret from the others; she simply hadn’t had the chance to share all of it with them yet.
Wings itched to explode from her shoulder blades and fly her away. She dug the fingers of her left hand into her legs to hold herself down as she shoved the bread at Giles to share. “What about Raven’s Nest?” she asked Tilda. “Where is that?”
“That wasn’t just a strange jest earlier?” Tilda’s frowning gaze lifted from her hands. “Raven’s Nest is a fairy tale. A legend.”
“Oh, really?” Giles perked up, stuffing a chunk of bread into his mouth and handing the rest to Rosalind. “Please do tell us, then. I love legends!”
“You only want to write more songs.” Rosalind ripped the remaining bread in half. “But if this means we don’t actually have to go questing after mythical nonsense—”
“No,” said Cordelia. “It’s a real place. We just need to find it.”
“Hmm,” said Tilda. “Well, in all of the stories people tell, it’s hidden near the top of Mount Corve, surrounded by clouds and unnatural mist and barred against anyone without magic or royal blood. It holds all the mysteries and secrets of the past, and the Raven Crown is waiting there to be mended one day by its true and rightful heir.
“And if you think no one’s ever tried to make that come true—!” She let out a dismissive huff of air. “Those nobles have been shedding everyone’s blood for decades, and they have plenty of magic on their sides.”
Cordelia leaned closer, ignoring the piece of stale bread in her hand. “Which mountain is Mount Corve?”
“Oh, the tallest of them all, of course, smack-dab in the center of the range. That’s probably what made the legend stick in the first place.” Tilda shrugged. “It looks like the sort of place that ought to be magic, if you’re the sort of person who believes in pretty fairy tales and lost legends. I’ve certainly never known anyone with magic to help anyone besides themselves.”
Her eyes narrowed as she leaned forward, too, until she and Cordelia were almost nose to nose. “But why do you even want to know? And where did you three come from, anyway? People were telling each other that tale long before any of us were born. How could you never have heard it before—especially when you’re so determined to go there?”
Before Cordelia could answer, there was a shout from one of the women who stood guard by the edge of the trees. “Soldiers coming!”
The camp erupted into chaos. Cordelia leaped to her feet along with everyone else. Voices rose in confusion and fear as adults raced to gather up the other children from their rest.
Tilda called out urgently, “Are they coming from the forest? Is the enchantress with them?”
“No, they’re coming from the farms, seven men-at-arms together—wait! Hal’s with them. He’s leading them here!”
“What?” Tilda’s mouth dropped open. “But why—? Oh no. How could he be so foolish—and so cruel?”
“What’s going on?” Scooping up her sword-stick, Rosalind took up a martial stance just ahead of Cordelia and Giles.
“He’s told the soldiers about you three!” Tilda groaned. “They asked us to watch out for demons, and he swore he’d seen your sister transform from a bear—but how he could really believe—argh! He must have thought, if he only pleased them, they would give him back his farm. That fool!”
“Hurry. They’ll be here any moment!” A fair-haired older woman hurried up, a whimpering baby pressed firmly against her shoulder. “Can we hide these three?”
“Not if Hal’s here to find them. They could run—”
“They won’t get away. Not now.” The silver-haired man who spoke was holding a spade raised and ready in his knobbly brown hands, but his shoulders sagged as if they’d already been defeated. “Tilda … if we try to protect these poor children, who will protect our grandchildren?”
“Don’t try to protect us.” Rosalind glared into the shadows beyond the trees, where faint clanking sounds could already be heard. She raised her sword-stick threateningly. “We’ll take care of ourselves.”
Giles was shivering visibly, but for once, he didn’t disagree. “We’re truly sorry for any trouble we’ve brought upon you.” His voice wobbled, losing all its vibrant performing strength. “None of us ever wanted that to happen.”
“But … no!” Tilda shook her head fiercely, wrapping her arms around her chest. “I can’t bear it. We’ve let them take so much already. To just stand here and watch children be stolen, without even trying to protect them—!”
“We won’t be taken.” Cold certainty formed in Cordelia’s chest as she stepped back, finding a clear patch of ground. “No one here needs a battle,” she told her triplets. “They just need us gone for their own safety.”
“How?” Tilda demanded. “Even if you run back toward that awful forest, you’ll never outrace them. You’re only half their size!”
Cordelia looked up at Tilda’s desperately braced body … and at the hungry people all around them, with nothing more than spades and plant hooks to defend themselves from the dukes’ armed soldiers.
… Her family’s soldiers, whether she liked it or not.
Rosalind was right: none of this was fair.
“We’ll lead them away from you,” Cordelia promised, “and we will help you if we ever can.”
Rosalind jerked a nod. “We certainly will.”
Giles gave Tilda a weak smile. “You’ll be in my songs, too, from now on—and you won’t ever be forgotten.”
Cordelia turned horse in a single, violent lunge of power. The ragged group around her gasped and stumbled back in shock.
The big muscles in her haunches flexed. She shook back her thick mane and let out a high, trumpeting neigh that echoed across the landscape in furious challenge to all attackers. Her triplets scrambled swiftly up onto her high black back …
And she lunged forward, breaking through the last of the shadowy trees to gallop past the marching soldiers and across the wide, flat fields beyond, with shouts and angry clanks of armor pursuing them into the night.