938 ASF

Jayne had been right. I was a little doe, and had unwittingly drawn in the wolves.

The evening, I confronted Dallyn in the barracks, after he had locked up Jayne in a cell overnight. The first thing out of his mouth was an apology. He found deception and trickery distasteful. Not distasteful enough, I pointed out sourly. Dallyn laughed—a booming, boisterous noise that was beginning to get beneath my skin—and demanded what better recourse I could offer. Did I wish to set the bird, unpunished, free into the sky? A folly. Nothing would change. No matter what I wanted to believe, Jayne was a person—capable of harm, lawbreaking, and evil, just like the rest of us.

And yet, what would Dallyn do about it all? Nothing. Even though the local lord had granted him leave to settle this however he wished, Dallyn would let the townsfolk—the victims—do the honors. At dawn, they’d tie Jayne up and dangle her off the side of the town’s namesake bridge. For one day and one night she’d suspend over the water, facing the judgment of the rivers and ravens. If she survived, she’d be reeled up and set free—something that had never happened in the town’s history.

I gawped at Dallyn. Some parts of Rivona, it seemed, had yet to change from the brutal days of Rugon the Ruthless. Was this what had happened to the town’s previous riverbird? Dallyn glanced away. It hadn’t been him who had levied that sentence, but the Guard Captain before. This was how Angler’s Arch dealt with rogue riverbirds in hopes of keeping them away, he explained. It wasn’t law, but it was tradition.

I tried to protest, but Dallyn cut me off, pointing into the record room behind me. After nearly a week’s work, I had transformed it from a paper hell into a small archival oasis that would make my old friend proud. Upon one of the desks was a stack of papers—I had been reading the story of Kerraguard-Captain Harland, Dallyn observed. Good. He reached into his desk and pulled out an old, battered tome: Kerraguard Exemplar. He’d been wondering where those loose pages went. As my final task—and before I argued any further—he told me to fit those loose pages back in and then finish the story of Harland, the Somber King, and Bloodhawk.

I spent the evening doing just this—and did not get much sleep.

Harland and the White Crow combined forces to stop whatever sinister plans Dessiri had for the king. They lacked evidence—without which the king would fail to see reason, too enraptured by her charms—but they planned to change that. Harland couldn’t play games of shadows, but he was no fool. Sifting through his observations over many months with the White Crow, a gap emerged in Dessiri’s story: where was her river hut? They’d never passed by it in river walks, and the riverbird rarely spoke of it. The White Crow shrugged, saying that Dessiri didn’t have a hut—agents had followed the riverbird home to a meager camp a few times.

Harland refused to let go of this fact. Unlike the White Crow, he had grown up in Angler’s Arch and knew the ways of riverbirds. Namely, that each one had a hut. Where was Dessiri’s? And why was she hiding it? This convinced the White Crow. She and her agents went out to sweep the river and surrounding country while Harland kept vigil over the king. After several days of thorough searching, the Crow found Dessiri’s hut, little more than a neglected pile of sticks tucked away in the back of a marsh. More importantly, they found a foreigner, a Khorven man, hiding out there.

The full moon was out, bathing the clear night in a shade of cold silver, when the Crow brought the Khorven man back to the castle. Hearing the news, Harland rushed to the dungeon. Together, with the Crow, they tried to pry information about of him, but he wouldn’t talk. Not until Harland offered him a clean death with his sword, as opposed to the Crow’s preferred way of dealing with people: turning them into ravenfood. At this, the man finally gave in. He had been waiting for Dessiri—to escape Rivona after her mission was complete.

What mission, the Crow demanded? But Harland sprinted from the dungeon, pounding up through the castle to the royal quarters. The hall outside smelled faintly of moss, turned earth, and blood. The two Kerraguard standing sentinel had collapsed against the wall, their throats slit. Then someone screamed from the children’s room. A moment later came the wailing of infant babies. The three royal children. Harland shoved through the door—and what he saw next would stay with him for the rest of his life.

The Queen lay lifeless on the floor, blood bubbling from the gash in her neck. Dessiri stood by the window, flung open into empty air. Her frazzled hair stuck to the blood on her shoulders, arms, and hands. One child screamed from its crib. One. With a nauseating turn of his stomach, Harland realized the other two cribs were empty. When he looked back to Dessiri at the window, a primal rage boiled up from within him. Sword drawn, he lunged at the riverbird, but was too slow. She darted for the window, intending to climb out and scale down the side of the tower.

But as Dessiri started to climb out, an arrow struck her in her breast. She stumbled back into the room, falling at Harland’s feet. She looked at him, opened her mouth to say something, but never got the chance. In one great double-handed swing, the Kerraguard-Captain beheaded her.

Heaving breaths, Harland staggered to the window and spotted the lucky archer: the White Crow, perched atop of a nearby tower. He nodded to her. She nodded back, and disappeared into the tower. At that moment, Rogar finally burst into the room, drawn by the commotion. When his eyes fell upon the body of Dessiri, he let out a horrendous shriek and collapsed over her. Harland, barely able to speak himself, tried to explain what Dessiri had done, but Rogar heard none of it, sobbing over the body of the riverbird. All was lost, he declared, beholding the bloody scene around them.

No! All was not lost. One child yet lived. Harland hurried over to the crib and was relieved to see the babe was unharmed. He turned to share the good news with the king—and his blood turned to ice. Rogar had climbed up onto the windowsill. Without another word, without even looking back at the Kerraguard-Captain, the king stepped out into open air and plummeted into the night.

So ended the life of the Somber King.

Not succumbing to wounds after fighting off an assassin, as some songs claim. Not from the traitorous talons of Dessiri, as his grave declares. No—according to Kerraguard Exemplar, it was by his own hand. That blood-soaked tower would soon become known as the Talon, the events within known as the Bloodswoop. And Rivona would never be the same.

With all this and more on my mind, I rose to face the morning—the day that Jayne was set to be sentenced. I found Dallyn before he went out into the town and told him I’d read about the Bloodswoop, that I understood a little better now. But—and this was a very important but—I had one question: did he wish for things to change? For Angler’s Arch to be free of rogue riverbirds? If he did, then it had to start with him. He couldn’t treat Jayne as a rogue riverbird, not with all the curdled history and cycles of revenge behind that word. She was a person, wasn’t she? Treat her as that instead.

Then I handed him back Kerraguard Exemplar. I had read enough.

Dallyn glanced down at the book, then back at me. Something changed on his face. He did not speak again until he stood before the townsfolk gathered just outside the barracks. Half of Angler’s Arch had showed up, eager for Dallyn to release Jayne from her cell and into the hands of the mob. I lingered at the edge of the crowd, rattling like a leaf, unsure if I could watch what would unfold.

Dallyn raised a hand to quiet the crowd. Then he announced that, according to the laws of Angler’s Arch, Jayne would return all that she had stolen. Then she would be chained up and sent to the dungeons of Great Forks, where she would remain for five years—as could be expected for anyone with her roster of crimes. Let it be known, Dallyn said, that Angler’s Arch dealt with criminals justly and fairly.

There was an uproar, of course. Some people were quite passionate about their bloody traditions. But Dallyn would hear none of it, telling them to complain to the local lord instead. And while he controlled the situation and dispersed the crowd, things were far from over—as he explained later, when he found me in the barracks. Things would probably get worse with the townsfolk before it got better—but at least that was a straight path forward, rather than circular. It would be some time before Jayne was sent off, and he intended to ask her a few questions.

Still a bit jittery from the sentencing, I thanked him. He waved it aside, saying I had earned myself his gratitude, a week’s pay, and unofficial exile from Angler’s Arch. The townsfolk would soon suspect I’d had a hand in Jayne’s sentence (if they didn’t already). The sooner I left, the better, and I couldn’t help but agree. As I turned to pack my things, he handed me back Kerraguard Exemplar.

Go and keep reading, he told me. The story didn’t end with the Bloodswoop.

In the world of tirkerras, few things are as traumatic as the death of a tirkerra queen. Her male knights will deal with the loss in different ways. Some will defend her body, refusing all sustenance until they, too, succumb with her. Others will roam the open lake, searching for a losing fight, even throwing themselves at creatures five times their size. Several swim down into the deep darkness, never to return to sunlit waters.

Doubtless such thoughts crossed Harland’s mind as he beheld the bloodbath around him. He had failed in every way imaginable. Kerraguard were supposed to die before their king. Not the other way around. In Harland’s mind, the only acceptable alternative—the only just reward, the only suitable punishment—was to follow his king into death. He stepped up onto the windowsill of the tower.

Wait! The White Crow cried out as she rushed into the room, pleading him to stand down. Harland shook his head. Why should he? After this massacre? The White Crow glanced around, silent, her expression hidden in the darkness of her hood. She edged closer to him, her hands up. Because, she said, the Somber King had needed something that a White Crow or Kerraguard-Captain could not give him.

The cool night air brushed over Harland, still on the windowsill. It didn’t matter, he said. From the king to fellow soldiers to his wife and child, he had failed to protect people he cared about all his life. Let someone else take his place and do a better job than him.

The White Crow was almost within arm’s reach. Pain, suffering, and regret are life’s constant companions, she said, and too easy do they convince a person they are their entire world. Think instead, she urged Harland, of all the people he had saved. Think instead of how he rose from tragedy to become one of Rivona’s finest swordsmen. Think instead of what good he can still do. Think of the tirkerra knights that, after their queen perishes, swim on to find another one to protect. The White Crow pulled down her hood, gently placed a hand on Harland’s arm.

“The line need not end here.”

What Harland saw on the White Crow’s face, we do not know—quite literally, for I do not have any descriptions of the woman. Whatever it was, it finally convinced him to step down from the windowsill. Even if, for many reasons, he could not be Kerraguard-Captain anymore. That was fine, the White Crow said. Their duty was to Rivona now—and it would start with the only survivor of the Bloodswoop.

Harland and the White Crow approached the crib. Within was a little girl who had cried herself back to sleep, untouched by tragedy. Her name was Relga Craythe. And with the help of the two people standing over her in that tower, she would rise to become one of the greatest women in Rivonan history, changing the world forever and earning herself a name and title still spoken with reverence to this day.

Reclaimer.