The Crow God's Girl by Patrice Sarath Page A

when I came to Aeritan. She didn’t say it out loud. She ducked her head so that no one could see her expression, but she knew that the grass god’s daughter heard her as clearly as if she had spoken the words.
    Way to go, Kate, pissing off the gods.
    “It’s best not to think of it,” Lady Beatra said with finality. “Look, the weather has cleared.”
    Outside, the rain continued to drip, but golden afternoon sunlight opened up in the sky, illuminating the rain-wet garden. Everything glowed. The fresh scents of the late-summer hayfields wafted in from the open window, and a bird began to sing.
    With the end of the rain, the brief leisure hour was over. The spinning party broke up as the village women gathered their things. Callia stood with great good humor, cackling her laugh.
    “You’re full of surprises, young fosterling,” she said, waving a finger at Kate. “No one will ever know what you’ll do next! Be queen of the world, if we’re not careful.”
    Samar looked pained; Thani, scornful. Some of the villagers laughed, and one said, “Come now, Callia, leave the girl be. Time for you to be coming home with us and not making any more mischief.”
    “You tell the grass god’s daughter, Kett Mosslin. You tell her you’ll have babies when you choose and not before. Hah!”
    She let herself be drawn away, and Kate stood and waited with Lady Beatra and Eri.
    “Well,” Lady Beatra said finally when the women had made their deep bows and left, and Samar and Thani went off to see about dinner. “You will soon be spinning as well as any girl your age, Kett.”
    “Thank you, ma’am.”
    “Please take Eri and have her clean up before dinner, will you?”
    “Yes, ma’am.” Kate held out her hand to Eri and they went up the stairs, leaving Lady Beatra alone with her thoughts in the pretty little solarium.
     
    Kate led Allegra through the one street of the little village, accepting greetings from smallholders and giving them the items that Lady Beatra and Samar had charged her with. It seemed she could not just go for a ride in Terrick but must have an errand to make it proper. Well, if she must, she must. And she really didn’t mind. It was a relief to get away from the oppressive house and its disapproving householders. After the last spinning session with Callia and the villagers, she imagined that she had garnered even more dislike. Thani especially made no bones about sneering at her. No doubt the soldiers and male householders had all heard that she knew how to have sex without getting pregnant.
    Just like being considered General Marthen’s woman, she thought, and the nervousness that roiled in her belly intensified.
    It was early evening, and the air had a crispness about it, hinting at autumn to come. The sun was lowering, the rays a lustrious gold against an almost purpling sky. Allegra’s hooves crunched along the well-trodden pathway with a steady, muffled cadence. At the last house, Kate handed over a packet of dyed thread from Samar to her daughter, a starched, stiff younger version of the housekeeper who nonetheless smiled at Kate.
    “It’s a pretty color,” Kate said, a little awkwardly. Samar oversaw all the dyework at the House. Even the thread that Kate spun, now as good as any Eri turned out, was added to the vats. She had become quite proud of her skill.
    “My mother is a skilled dyer,” the woman said. “Thank you, miss.”
    “You’re welcome. Do you need me to carry anything back to the House?” she added hopefully.
    “Oh no, miss. You don’t need to be carrying errands for the villagers.”
    Kate almost said she didn’t mind, but held her tongue. Oh, she was learning, though it had come hard. She had her place, and part of her problems with the householders was that she hadn’t kept to it right off the bat. She wanted to get it right with the smallholders. So she just smiled and said, “Have a good afternoon.”
    The woman bobbed a curtsey and Kate nodded back, and with