A Murder of Crows

II | Ravenscourt Manor (Part 1)

Time is an odd thing. In the days leading up to a funeral, time can drag so slowly that you doubt it's moving at all, and then, suddenly, there's no time to even breathe. It starts passing so dizzyingly fast – a flying frenzy of packing and planning and repacking and cleaning and yelling at your little brother because he won't stop touching your stuff, and more packing, until before you know it, your entire house is stuffed into storage boxes or wrapped under sheets, and all the rooms have been stripped bare. Within a week, our entire tiny house had been clipped, cleared, and cleaned, and we were leaving. Mother piled our scant suitcases on the stoop of the house ('nothing more than you need,' she'd said. 'It's not as if we won't be coming back, after all'), and after cutting off the gas lamps, she locked the door, and that was that.

A buggy brought us to the station. We settled into our compartment, and while Mother paged through her worn copy of Wuthering Heights and William amused himself swiping matches from the snack trolley every time it passed, I watched the grey mountains of Caledonia sink outside our windows, turning into the moors and rolling hills of Anglica. Towns raced by in blurs of colour, and clouds grew thick overhead, a storm gathering as we sped towards a place I had never heard of in my life.

'What's it like?' I asked, at last. 'Ravenscourt?'

Mother paused her reading, looking up to meet my eyes. 'It's where your father grew up. It's where we met.'

I blinked at that. Before this moment, I'd never heard either of my parents talk about where they'd met or how they'd grown up – which was strange, even though I hadn't realized that it was strange until now. Mother looked peaceful, almost nostalgic, fingering the metal locket that she was wearing under the collar of her travelling jacket as she thought back. 'It's built in the middle of a forest called the Blackwood,' she continued. 'Some of the trees are older than humanity itself. I remember, we used to walk by the lake in summer...' She sighed. 'And the house is something else altogether. I think you'll like it. Your father certainly did.'

'If he liked it so much,' I said, turning back to the window, 'then why did he leave?'

Mother pursed her lips but said nothing, and our compartment fell back into silence.

By the time the train pulled into the station at Eboracum, the sky was dark with storm clouds, though the storm hadn't broken yet. Mother hurried us through the station, its roof built like the nave of a great glass cathedral, all steel and smoke-stained glass arcing above us. William kept getting distracted – and of course it was up to me to make sure he didn't get tripped over while ducking down to tie his shoe, or get caught swiping sweets from the overcrowded candy stalls, or get lost because he'd stopped to watch one of the street magicians floating balls and fruit and candles in mid-air next to the ticket stalls.

It wasn't really magic of course, which was why the man wasn't worried about Inquisitors. The tricks were all thread and distraction and sleight of hand. Magic might be useful for a great many things, most of them fairly evil, but floating apples was not one of them.

The way Dad had always explained it was this: the real world was really two worlds. There was the world of things – of apples and oranges and wooden balls and lit candles – and that world was ruled by the laws of physics, which were simple and immutable and easily reasoned out if you knew what to watch for.

But then, there was another world – the world of ideas. And that was where you had to watch out for magic. The reason magicians were so dangerous wasn't because they could create flame or shoot lightning from their fingers, but because they had studied how to control minds. A skilled magician could trap a person in an Illusion of their worst fears or drive them mad with a Curse – but if he wanted to create so much as a spark in the world of things, he would've had to use phosphorus and gunpowder, just like the rest of us.

Maybe it would've been better if magic weren't invisible. If it left bruises or burns, you'd be able to see the danger and avoid it. But thoughts are trickier things, and that's why the Inquisitors insisted that we needed them to protect us.

The 'magician' made a show of turning his floating apple into an explosion of colourful sparks, and the gathered crowd clapped. A trio of passing Inquisitors didn't even spare him a glance.

'Think he'd let me borrow a firework?' asked William before I managed to drag him away.

Uncle Edward's coach (apparently, he was rich enough to have his own coach, coachman included) was waiting for us outside the station. After the coachman had loaded both us and our luggage into the carriage, there was yet another hour of sitting in silence while the world passed us by, dark, bare-fingered trees scraping the carriage windows as the rain broke over us, the horses' hooves and our wheels clattering over the rough roads. William started to shiver, and I gave him my scarf to keep out the chill.

Finally, the rutted roads gave way to a cobbled drive, and in the distance, light flickered from the window of a high tower. The trees grew thicker, and a brass fence loomed out of the half-dark. As we passed under the gate that marked the boundary of the manor grounds, an icy chill ran under my skin, cold enough to make my bones rattle. I looked out to see the gate passing over us, strange shapes twisted into the wrought metal.

A Ward.

I twisted the ring on my finger, focusing my First Defence until my teeth stopped chattering, but the feeling refused to fade. Whatever Ward we had just passed through, it was even stronger than the Graveward at the cemetery, and it didn't quite like the idea of us being there.

Why ever would Uncle Edward need a Ward like that?

Dark things flitted in the murk outside – but when I leaned forward to see what they were, there was nothing: just the rain and the leafless trees passing beyond the window, and my breath leaving a cloud of fog on the glass, until Ravenscourt House came into view.

♠

We're very excited to be posting the entirety of A Murder of Crows on Wattpad over the next few months! Follow the link to find out more about the world of The Ravenscourt Tragedies, and if you just can't wait for the next installment, go ahead and buy the book at www.dyingartspress.com/tbr!