Chapter 1.28 - In which Percy gossips about the Raven Queen

Percy

Month 11, Day 28, Saturday 7:00 a.m.

After breakfast, Viv left, and Percy went to his room to get changed into clean clothing and put away his emergency backpack. Its interior was now smeared with meat sauce and drippings from the kebabs they had never eaten. He sighed deeply. He wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and succumb to his exhaustion, but instead he set about cleaning everything.

He would need to replace the potion of moonlight sizzle, as that had come in handy. Also perhaps to come in handy at some point was the battle wand he had found lying in the dark and salvaged. It had an unknown number of spell charges remaining, but even if the wand itself was empty of magic, it was still valuable. And an artificer could fill it up again, for a price. Percy knew it was illegal to own it, technically, since he didn’t have a license. But maybe he could geta license. And even if not, there would be no record that it belonged to him if he ever needed to use it and then dump it. For instance, in a situation like the one he had just, somehow, survived.

He kept it tucked at the bottom of his pack, just in case one of his parents looked inside.

Over the next few days, Percy did not mention the shift in his tattoo to Dad. First, because he couldn’t be sure that anything had actually changed. Second, because he didn’t want to cost the man more worry and gold for something that no one seemed to be able to do anything about. Third, Percy’s normal, everyday luck had returned, meaning that he could continue working at the Kaiseki Ryori. While he knew that this didn’t mean everything would be perfect forever, not after having been proven wrong twice, he still didn’t want to give up at least the chance of normal days.

He was almost certain that the ink had shifted slightly. Just in case it continued to do so, he clumsily drew out its likeness on a sheet of paper that he hid under his mattress. He could have taken a photograph, but didn’t want to waste any coin.

He had originally thought that the tattoo—the talisman—was helping to mitigate his bad luck. While it might not be strong enough to protect him from everything, and its power would surely run dry at some point, he had hoped to enjoy it while it lasted.

Now, he wondered if there might be more to it than that.

He speculated, but despite all the experts his parents had talked to and all the examinations Percy had been put through, he was no expert, and even less so with anything involving good luck rather than bad. Most importantly, he recognized that, despite the occasional horrible day, his life was better now than it had been before.

If he brought attention to the tattoo, he could almost see what would happen. It would be just like his childhood, with his parents talking in worried tones behind closed doors, taking him to one expert after another who didn’t believe them when they tried to explain the problem and couldn’t help even then. They would waste coin they didn’t have to spare. Coin that should have been used to create a future for Lysander, Aethelwulf, and Gideon.

Percy didn’t want to be a burden, but he knew his decision to keep this secret was actually motivated by selfishness, and it weighed on him.

He couldn’t forget about it, either, because gossip about the events that Percy had gotten peripherally entangled with spread quickly. Apparently, the Morrows had been fighting against the Verdant Stags. Along with his coworkers at the Kaiseki Ryori, several of his neighbors talked about it.

“She’s called the Raven Queen,” Percy’s neighbor Mara said, tucking a basket of bread under her arm as they walked back from the market together.

Percy deduced quickly enough, and to his horror, that this Raven Queen was the same woman who had run into him on the day he met that hag. She was the one who had fought the coppers and escaped with whatever treasure she stole from the University. The Crowns had declared her guilty of practicing forbidden magics and put out a reward for capturing her alive.

Now her wanted poster warned people to “flee on sight,” and the reward had grown to a massive five hundred gold crowns even just for information leading to her arrest.

Apparently, she had come to the aid of the Verdant Stags that night, but the rumors only grew wilder from there.

“My cousin is a copper, and he heard all about it from his colleagues at one of the other stations. The Raven Queen is a free-caster,” Mara said, lifting her chin with pride and excitement as she shared her inside knowledge. “And I heard she performed some kind of blood magic on some of the Verdant Stag people. So I know people are saying she went there to rescue them, but if that were true, why would she do blood magic on them?”

“What kind of blood magic? I mean, what exactly did she do?” Percy asked.

Mara dithered, opening and closing her mouth before saying, “Well, I’m not sure exactly of the details. But it’s blood magic. It can’t have been anything good, right?”

This was true. Percy nodded.

“She attacked the coppers when they arrived on the scene. Can you imagine?” Mara asked, wide-eyed. “But this is the best part. She has some sort of companion made of shadows. It’s nine feet tall and it wears a tattered cloak of darkness. It has no face, only a huge beak poking out from under the hood. And she also controlled ravens made of shadows. Supposedly, a few of the men who tried to fight off the shadow creatures have been cursed with nightmares. And the healers…”

She paused dramatically. “The healers can’t figure out what’s wrong with them. There is no treatment.”

“Surely, if it is a curse, there will be some cursebreaker out there who can help them,” Percy said, though he was less sure than he would have liked.

Mara shrugged, looked both ways, and then leaned in. “And—keep this to yourself, Percy—but my cousin told me she broke into Harrow Hill again. Not physically. She sent a raven, and spoke through its mouth. They tried to find her—scrying magic—but she apparently detected the danger and made the raven drown itself. And the scrying attempt failed. They’re trawling the canal for the raven, but they don’t think they’ll actually find it.”

“Which means she got away again,” Percy muttered.

Mara grinned, obviously delighted by this scandalous information. “Yes! I wonder what she’s going to do next?”

“Hopefully nothing too dangerous.”

“Yeah. Say, where do you think she learned her magic? She’s a free-caster, which means she must be pretty old and powerful, but no one is talking about her past. Do you think she came from Osham or Silva Erde? Maybe she’s an agent from another country, sent to sow discord and wreak havoc.”

This seemed outlandish to Percy. “Who knows?”

“Or, what if she’s a dropout from the Red Guard?”

“How would that work? All of their people take oaths to protect the world. Magical, binding oaths that they have to abide by for the rest of their lives, even if they leave the Red Guard.”

Mara pursed her lips petulantly. “I guess. So what do you think she stole? I mean, I heard it was a book. But what kind of book? Probably something with a spell in it, right? It could be anything. Something to raise corpse puppets, or the perfect contract to bind a dragon familiar, or, like, to open a portal to the Plane of Fire and burn the whole city alive. And then she could harness the power of all our Sacrificed lives to take over the world.”

Percy shuddered. Mara seemed entirely too enthusiastic about this idea, and he could only deduce that she didn’t actually believe any of those things were likely. Because if she did, surely she wouldn’t be speculating about them so gleefully?

“Or what if it’s some kind of spell that she could use to threaten the Crowns? ‘Bind yourselves to me or die,’” Mara intoned, pointing her finger at some imaginary noble. “And then she would take over as the High Crown and paint Pendragon Palace black.”

Percy may have wanted to live a normal, peaceful life himself, but he couldn’t help but be somewhat morbidly fascinated by the Raven Queen and the horrible fate he might have narrowly avoided.

It seemed increasingly plausible that his lucky tattoo had actually been working the whole time, even if it didn’t seem like it in the moment.



Author Note: Thanks to everyone for your naming help!

The winner: Azalea's Arcane Alcove.

The Alcove should be open (early access to patrons only) by the end of the month, and we'll get the first of this coming week's 2 character cards this weekend.