Nobody wanted to be near a raven these days. They were seen as bad omens, too similar to the monsters the Acolyte’s army rode to war.
But Ezer saw them for what they were.
Cunning, clever little beasts.Survivors, in a world so ridden by death.
‘Prison master came knockingthree timesfor word of you,’ Ezer said now to the raven, as she ran her ink-stained fingertips across his silken feathers.
He was wet from the fog, and smelled something fierce, but she didn’t balk at him.
Nor did he balk at her.
Ezer was not beautiful.
She’d always known it, and perhaps that was why she loved the birds. They didn’t fear her, not even for the enormous trio of scars that marred the entire right side of her face and had speckled her right eye with flecks of darkness.
They were awful, the scars. Three slash marks of gnarled skin that had healed wrong, so each was raised upon her face. And so dark they looked like stripes of black paint.
The scars had been there for as long as she could remember, stretching diagonally from her temple to her chin.
People often thought her cursed because of them.
And perhaps she was.
She didn’t even know who her mother and father were.
She didn’t know their names, nor their faces. Ervos, to his credit, had searched for years, but in the end, he came up empty.
Such was the way of war.
She had little memory of the beasts that marred her … but sometimes, if she closed her eyes, she saw a dark and shadowed snout. Sometimes, she saw the flash of teeth beneath the moonlight and remembered the sound of her mother’s scream.
A sound that had cut off like a snuffed candle.
A slammed door.
A bird screeching before it flew away into the night.
‘Is that what brought you here past sunset? It’s dangerous to be out after dark, you know,’ Ezer said, as the raven closed its eyes and leaned in to her touch. ‘They say the moon makes the wolves hunger for blood.’
Its inky black beak clinked against the old ring she wore upon her thumb. It was all that remained of her mother, a tarnished silver hammered with five tiny symbols to signify the gods –one god for each element. She often stared at the ring and wondered which of the Five her mother prayed to most. ‘Not that the gods paid any mind to her when the wolves came,’ Ezer mused aloud. The raven ruffled its feathers. ‘Well. At least you made it here safely.’
All sorts of breeds had gathered to Ezer since she was a child. Anything winged seemed to trust her, to see her as one of their own. But ravens were her favorite, as clever as they were beautiful, and she’d never dared believe the lie that they wereomens.
For how could an omen give a person so much joywhen they were near? They were still the main choice of bird for passing messages across the kingdom, far wiser than pigeons. And all the doves had been placed in pretty cages; they represented the animal shape of Avane, god of the wind, and people truly believed owning acooing dove might give them some glimmer of the god’s protection should the front lines break, and the war fall to the south.
Thank the gods that the Acolyte’s army could only come out at night.
They turned to ash in the sunlight.
‘Come on, then,’ Ezer said to the raven. ‘Let’s see what you’ve brought me.’
Another yawn, and she began her work of untying the small scroll attached to the raven’s leg.
The wind howled, furious as ever, but inside the Aviary, it was calm.
Ordinary.
Across the tower, another raven cawedand dipped its beak into the small copper dish of seeds and nuts she’d laid out hours ago. An owl hootedand turned its head around as if to avoid the raven altogether. The two had never gotten along. A small starling chirped and a pair of tiny little white finches – only here because they liked Ezer’s presence, and not because they were useful at all for delivering messages – fluttered to one side of the tower and back again, playing a game of chase.
