Moreover, Seraph knew the solsenti well enough to know that Alinath’s rudeness to a guest was a deliberate slight. Especially since, except for that first time, she was careful to soften her orders around Tier.

Seraph had done her best to ignore the older woman. She was a guest in Alinath’s home. She had no complaint with the work she was asked to do—which was no more work than anyone else did, except for Tier’s mother. And, by ignoring Alinath’s rudeness, Seraph bothered her more than any other response could have.

There was a more compelling reason to ignore Alinath’s trespasses.

Seraph let her fingernails sink into the wood of the broom handle as she swept with careful, slow strokes. A Raven could not afford to lose her temper. She took a deep, calming breath and sought for control.

The door opened and Alinath walked in. When she started to speak her voice was carefully polite.

“I have been rude,” she said. “I admit it. I believe that it is time for some plainer speech. My brother thinks you are a child.”

Seraph stared at her a moment, bewildered, her broom still in her hands. What did Tier’s opinion have to do with anything?

“But I know better,” continued Alinath. “I was married at your age.”

And I killed the ghouls who killed my teacher when I was ten, thought Seraph. A Raven is never a child. But she saw where Alinath was headed.

“I told Tier what you are up to, but he doesn’t see it,” said Alinath. “Anyone who marries my brother will have this bakery.”

Anyone who married your brother would be safe for the rest of their life, thought Seraph involuntarily, and envied his future wife with all of her heart.

“But you will never have him.”

Seraph shrugged. “And he will never have me.”

She went back to sweeping—and longing to be an old innkeeper who thought that ghouls and demons were stories told to frighten children. She crouched to get the broom under the low shelf of the table where Tier kneaded his bread.

“Where did you get those?”

Alinath lunged at Seraph. Startled, Seraph dropped the broom as Alinath’s hand clenched around Tier’s bead necklace; it must have slid out of her blouse when she crouched.

“Dirty Traveler thief!” shrieked Alinath, jerking wildly at the necklace. “Where did you get these?”

Seraph had heard all the epithets—but she’d been fighting her anger for weeks. The slight pain of the jerk Alinath gave the necklace was nothing to the outrage that Alinath had dared to grab her in the first place.

She heard the door to the public room open and heard Tier’s voice, but everything was secondary to the rage that swept through her. Rage fed by her clan’s death, Ushireh’s death, her desperate, despairing guilt at surviving when everyone else died, and lit by this stupid solsenti woman who pushed and pushed until Seraph would retreat no more.

Alinath must have seen some of it in her face because she dropped her hold on the necklace and took two steps back. The necklace fell back against Seraph’s neck like a kiss from a friend. Just before the wave of magic left her, the warmth of Tier’s gift allowed her to regain control. It saved Alinath’s life, and probably Seraph’s as well because magic loosed in anger was not choosy in its target.

Pottery shattered as the stone building shook with a hollow boom. Cooking spoons, wooden peels, and baking tiles flew across the room. The great door that separated the hot ovens from the baking room pulled from its hinges and flew between Seraph and Alinath, hitting the opposite wall and sending plaster into the air in a thick white cloud as Alinath cried out in fear. Flour joined plaster as the door fell to the ground, taking two tables with it and knocking a barrel half-full of flour to its side.

Closing her eyes to the destruction and Alinath’s frightened face, Seraph fought to pull back the magic she’d loosed. It struggled in her grasp, fed by the anger that had engendered it. It made her pay for her lack of control, sweeping back to her call, back through her like shards of glass. But it came, and peelers and tiles settled gently to the floor.

Seraph opened her eyes to assess the damage. Alinath was fine—though obviously shaken, she had quit screaming as soon as she’d begun. The wall would have to be replastered and the door rehung, the jamb repaired or replaced. The jars of valuable mother, used to start the bread dough, had somehow escaped, and the number of broken pots was fewer than she’d thought. Neither Tier, nor the four or five people who had followed him into the room, had more damage than a coating of flour and plaster.

Shame cut Seraph almost as rawly as the magic had. It was the worst thing a Raven could do—loose magic in anger. That no one had been hurt, nothing irreplaceable broken, was a tribute to Tier’s gift and a little good luck rather than anything Seraph had done and so mitigated her crime not a whit. Seraph stood frozen in the middle of the baking room.

“I told you that she had a temper,” said Tier mildly.

“This was an ill way to repay your hospitality,” said Seraph. “I will get my things and leave.”

Tier cursed the impulse that had led him to invite the men he’d spent the afternoon singing with to try out an experimental batch of herb bread he’d been working on. That he’d opened the door to the baking room when he—and everyone else—heard Alinath cry out had been stupidity. He’d been warning his sister not to antagonize Seraph for the better part of a week.

“Mages aren’t tolerated here,” said someone behind him.

“She said she’d leave,” said Ciro. “She hurt no one.”

“We’ll leave in the morning,” said Tier.

“Strangers who come to Redern and work magic are condemned to death,” said Alinath in a tone of voice he’d never heard from her.

He looked at her. She should have appeared ridiculous, but the cold fear-driven anger on her face made her formidable despite the coating of white powder settling on her.

Someone gave a growl of agreement.

The ugly sound reminded Tier of the inn where he’d rescued her—or rescued the villagers from her. He realized that unless he managed to stop it, by morning his village might not be in any mood to let Seraph go.

An odd idea that had been floating in his head since he’d talked to Willon and then held Seraph in the wake of her night terrors crystalized.

“She is not a stranger,” lied Tier abruptly. “She is my wife.”

Silence descended in the room. Seraph looked at him sharply.

“No,” said Alinath. “I’ll not have it.”

She was in shock, he knew, or she’d never have said such a ridiculous thing.

“It is not for you to have or not have,” he reminded her, his voice gentle but firm.

“I won’t have her in this house,” Alinath said.

“We would have had to leave in any case,” said Bandor, who’d pushed through the crowd and into the baking room. He walked over to Alinath, and put his hand on her shoulder. “Once Tier had chosen his wife, whoever she was, we’d have had to leave. I’ve made some inquiries in Leheigh. The baker there told me he’d be willing to take on a journeyman.”

“There’s no need,” said Tier. Now that his choice was made, the words he needed to convince them all flowed easily. “There’s a place I intend to farm about an hour’s walk from here. I’ll have to get the Sept’s steward’s permission, which won’t be difficult to obtain since the land is not being used. There’s time to build a house before winter. We’ll live there, but I’ll work in the bakery through the spring when planting season comes. Then I’ll deed it to Alinath.”

“When were you married?” whispered Alinath.

“Last night,” lied Tier, holding out his hand to Seraph, who’d been watching him with an expression he couldn’t read.

She stepped to his side and took his hand. Her own was very cold.