Stories of Kings

Move Forward

[Author's Note: This story takes place after "The Raven and the Dragon."]

The thing Kit liked best about the Raven Isle, he decided, was the ocean. It was the same deep blue-gray as the ocean in the town where he'd been born. His first full day there, he waded out waist deep into the cold water and stared out to the south. The sun bounced on the water; it wasn't quite the weather for fog yet.

That was all right. The fog would come back. Alicia had told him so. It would feel just like home then. He was sure of it.

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The Queen Regent was a severe woman, harsh-eyed and pale-skinned. She looked like she had been carved from white stone. But she never expected Kit to speak, so he decided he liked her. He wouldn't want to cross her, but he liked her all the same.

She was the one who had appointed him a knight and given him a title. It felt strange to have a title longer than his actual name. Him being an orphan meant that he had no surname—whatever it may have been once, it had died with them—and they didn't give their bastards or orphans new names in Sierdan. He had only ever been Kit, maybe Kit the Huntsman if people wanted to be sure he was the right Kit. Now he was Sir Kit the Huntsman, Solider of the Queen's Guard and Protector of the Raven Isle.

He asked Alicia if everyone was going to call him all of that now. She said only if he was being introduced in a very formal setting. He would be Sir Kit to people who didn't know him, and just Kit to people who did.

"Will I have to talk to anyone?" Kit asked.

"Not if you don't want to," Alicia said. "Just stay close to me and keep us safe. That's all you have to do."

That he could do. He was sure of it.

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They called it the Raven Isle for a reason.

Kit had seen ravens before but never so big as the ones around the castle. They worried him at first, with their size and their eyes watching him so sharply. It was almost as if they had powers of thought—as if, at any moment, they might open their beaks and tell him some grave omen.

They never did, but he always felt they might.

One tried to steal some of his bread as he sat outside to eat his midday meal. Kit gave it the crust willingly. He hated how hard crusts felt in his mouth and could never eat them unless he soaked them in wine first. But the raven seemed to like them, so much so that it kept coming back in the mornings.

Kit knew it was probably only coming back for the bread, but it was nice to think that he had another friend here. He hadn't had too many back home—mostly just Llewyn, the older huntsman's son and the other younger huntsman.

He wondered if Llewyn had looked for him after he'd been taken. Maybe they thought he'd been eaten by wolves or the wild men that still lived in the mountains, or taken by the elves. The ones who thought he was a changeling probably took his disappearance as proof, but Llewyn hadn't thought that. Not even for a second.

Kit wondered if Llewyn missed him.

He kept giving bread to his new friend the raven and tried not to think about it.

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Bo could do a lot of magical things, but in Kit's opinion, being able to read was one of the most magical ones.

No one had taught Kit how—he was an orphan, and an orphan who "showed no promise in anything but physical labor" as the old headmistress had said. That meant no schooling, no reading or writing beyond knowing how to write his own short name and spell the few words that didn't have their own signs but that he needed to know.