Tiny Raven

“You’re swaying,” Dionys said, low enough that only Alessia heard it. He stepped closer, his shoulder brushing hers, blocking Lauthen’s view with his back. “Don’t fall here. Not in front of them.”

He extended his forearm, horizontal and steady, not asking permission.

“Take it. Or I carry you. Your choice, but we’re leaving.”

His other hand hovered near her elbow, ready to catch if her knees buckled. The charcoal dust on her fingers stained his chiton as she gripped his arm.

Outside, the late morning glare hit harshly. Dionys shifted, putting his bulk between Alessia and the camp’s staring eyes.

“Three days,” he reminded her. “Till then, you heal. No more councils. No more charcoal. Just sleep and that willow bark Patrian keeps forcing down your throat.”

She was colder than she should be.

“Stella’s waiting,” he added, softer. “And I told her I’d bring you back in one piece. Don’t make me a liar.”

Alessia leaned into his shoulder heavier than she meant to, the coarse wool of his chiton scratchy against her cheek.

She didn’t let go.

“Promising Stella, are you?” she rasped, the words scraping out. “That’s a dangerous precedent, Dio. Next she’ll have you sworn to honeycakes for breakfast and ponies for her nameday. You’ll be wrapped around her tiny finger tighter than Askarion’s fancy knots.”

She stumbled when her ankle rolled on a loose stone, the shackle grinding hot against bone, and she hissed through her teeth, catching herself hard against his side before he could fully grab her. She shook her head sharply when he tried to slow their pace.

“Don’t. If we stop moving, I won’t start again.” She tipped her head back, letting the harsh sun bleach her vision, trying to clear the grey spots dancing at the edges.

Her free hand drifted down, patting the leg that held the bronze shackle. “Three days. Then this comes off. Then I walk on my own feet without leaning on kings or walls or… or anything.”

She forced her eyes open to look up at him, trying to find his face through the haze. Her voice dropped, losing its barbed edge, becoming something scraped raw and honest.

“But… thank you. For the arm. For not letting me fall.”

She paused, managing a ghost of her usual smirk, tired and bloodless. “Even if you do smell like seaweed and poor decisions.”

“Odrian’s the one who smells like poor decisions,” Dionys grunted, adjusting his grip on her forearm as she stumbled again. “I smell like weapon oil and sand. And blood. Mostly yours.”

He felt the tremor running through her ribs, the wet warmth where fresh blood seeped through the stitches. His jaw tightened, but he kept his pace steady, matching her limp, his hand firm against the small of her back to keep her from tilting toward the dirt.

“You’re in shock.”

Alessia huffed out a breath that came out shakier than she intended, the cold settling into her bones despite the harsh sun overhead. Her grip tightened on his arm. She forced her chin up despite the grey spots multiplying at the edges of her vision.

“I’ve had worse. Remember the whole ‘sewing myself up with thread’ incident? This is just… post-council fatigue. Very dramatic. Very boring.”

“You’re bleeding through the linen.” His voice was flat, stripped of any humor. “Cold, shaking, leaking. That’s shock. Not fatigue. Keep walking.”

He adjusted his hold when her knee buckled again, his hand at her back shifting to press upward, taking more of her weight, half-carrying her when her ankle rolled on the shackle and she hissed.

“And stop thanking me,” he added, staring straight ahead at the healer’s tent rising up through the camp’s dust, his throat working around the words. “You want to thank me? Keep those stitches closed. Stay alive. Be there when we melt that shackle down. That’s payment enough.”

They took a few more steps before he added, “If Stella stabs Odrian with it afterward, that’s between the two of them.” She shivered against his shoulder, cold despite the sun, and he shifted closer, letting his body block the wind off the sea. His hand drifted down, briefly, to cover hers where it gripped his arm.

“Stella’s already got me promising honeycakes ’til Solstice,” he muttered. “Don’t you start adding to the debt with thanks I don’t need. You don’t have to do it alone.”

The words hit her, settling somewhere between her ribs where the stitches pulled.

She’d spent seven years learning that dependence was just another chain with better lighting.

  Alessia swallowed hard, forcing her chin up against the grey spots blooming at the edges of her vision.

“Honeycakes ’til Solstice,” she echoed, aiming for dry and landing somewhere closer to raw. “You’ve made a terrible bargain, Dio. That child has the appetite of a besieging army and the ethics of a dockside shark. She’ll have you bankrupt before the new moon.”

She shifted her weight, meaning to straighten, to prove she could stand without anchoring herself to him. Her knees buckled instead, and she ended up closer to him, not farther.

“… I’m not used to the ‘alone’ part being optional.”

The admission tasted like blood and salt, but she forced it out anyway. “Doesn’t mean I’m not… learning. Slowly.”

His arm tightened around her waist, hauling her closer until her weight settled fully against his side. No hesitation, no permission sought. He adjusted his stride to her limp, each step deliberate.

“Then learn while you’re walking,” he grunted, his voice low. “Not alone. Not today.”

His eyes cut toward the healer’s tent, now close enough to smell the yarrow and burnt linen. “And if you call me ‘Dio’ again while you’re bleeding on my chiton, I’m telling Stella you hugged me.” His hand pressed firm against her hip, fingers digging in just enough to keep her upright as her knees buckled again. “One foot, then the other. I’ve got you.”

Stella saw them coming from the tent flap, Alessia leaning hard on Dionys, one hand fisted in his chiton and the other pressed flat against her ribs. Her face was the color of old ash, and she was walking like Admiral Snip, all sideways and wobble.

She dropped Lieutenant Pebble and scrambled to her feet, sand falling out of her lap where she had been sorting the rock army by rank.

“Uncle Dio!” she shouted, running at them with her arms out like she was going to intercept a falling tower. She skidded to a stop just before she crashed into Alessia’s legs—careful, careful, don’t hurt—and she craned her neck up to look at her face.

“You brought her back,” she said to Dionys, pointing at him with a sandy finger. “Nose-touch promise kept. Good.” Then she narrowed her eyes at Alessia, putting her hands on her hips just like her mother did when she was being stern. “But you got worse. You got greyer. And you’re leaning.”

“Sorry,” Alessia said automatically.

“You’re supposed to lean!” Stella argued back. “That’s what Uncle Dio is for.”

She reached out and touched the edge of Alessia’s chiton where it pulled tight.

She frowned.

“You need to lay down,” Stella declared. “Right now. On the cot. With blankets. I’ll guard.” She looked up at Alessia, her lower lip starting to wobble despite how hard she bit it. “And you gotta stop getting greyer, Mama. You promised. Both feet. Nose touch.”

She shoved a grey rock into Alessia’s free hand, pressing it hard so she had to take it. It was warm from her hands.

“Here. He’s for holding while you walk. Makes you steady.” She glared at Dionys, in case he was thinking of letting go too fast. “We help her together. One on each side.”

She wrapped her small arm around Alessia’s hip, not tight, just there, and looked up at her with her most stubborn face.

“Now bed,” she demanded as she helped Alessia take a single step. “… and maybe one honeycake. For strength.”

Alessia looked down at the grey rock pressed into her palm, warm and smooth from Stella’s grip. She smiled despite the grey spots still swimming in her vision. She closed her fingers around it, feeling the weight anchor her trembling hand.

“One honeycake,” she agreed, her voice rough as gravel but gentler than she intended. “For strength. And only because Admiral Stonebelly’s second-in-command requisitioned it.”

She shifted her weight, letting Dionys bear more of it than she would normally allow, letting Stella’s small arm brace against her hip. Each step sent a hot pulse through her ribs, but the bronze at her ankle ached duller against the promise of its removal.

She sank onto the cot with a hiss she tried to swallow, her fingers tightening around the rock Stella had given her.

Dionys waited until she was sitting, then he nodded once.

“Stay.”

He left before she could thank him again.

Alessia huffed something like a laugh and reached out to pull Stella into a hug.

“Nose-touch promise kept,” she murmured to Stella, pressing a kiss to her dark curls.

The grey rock rested between their hands, warm from Stella’s grip.

Alessia closed her eyes.

─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─

Stella was arranging General Stonebelly’s promotion ceremony on the dirt floor when the tent flap snapped open. She grabbed Captain Sparkle and whirled around, ready to throw him if it was a bad man, but it was just Odrian with a smug expression and something flat and scroll-like tucked under his arm.

She put her free hand on her hip and pointed the rock at him with her best scary face, the one she’d learned from Dionys.

“That better not be more maps,” she announced. “Mama can’t do more maps. She’s still grey. Maps make her frowny.” She narrowed her eyes to slits. “If it’s work, you gotta pay the toll. Two honeycakes. One for me, one for Mama. That’s the price.”

She scooted sideways a little, placing herself between Odrian and the cot where Alessia was pretending to sleep. “Also, if you wake her up with your dramatic entrance noises then Admiral Stonebelly is gonna throw you in the dungeon. He’s very fierce now. I promoted him.”

Odrian froze mid-stride, one hand still on the tent flap, his theatrical entrance thwarted by the fiercest military authority he had encountered all week. He looked down at the rock, then at Stella’s slit-eyed glare, and something dangerously close to respect softened his smirk.

“Admiral Stonebelly,” he repeated, bowing low, the scroll crackling under his arm. “My apologies, General. I had no intelligence suggesting the local command structure had undergone such… drastic reorganization.”

He straightened, reaching into his belt pouch with exaggerated stealth and produced two honeycakes. Slightly crushed from being jostled against his hip, but still sticky with glaze.

“Your toll,” he murmured, extending them palm-up like a supplicant. “One for the Admiral’s quartermaster—” he nodded to Stella. “—and one for the commanding officer, to be administered when she wakes and not a moment sooner, lest Admiral Stonebelly order my execution.”

He tucked the scroll under his other arm, stepping carefully around Stella’s rock formations. “As for the scroll, fear not. No maps. No charcoal. Just linguistic reconnaissance.” He tapped it with one finger, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I need someone with an ear for Mother Tongue to tell me if they’re discussing herring prices or harbor patrols. But—” he held up a hand, solemn as a priest “—only if the Admiral permits shore leave for linguistic duties. Otherwise, it waits until the tides turn.”

He glanced toward the cot where Alessia lay, his expression shifting from theater to something softer, checking the rise and fall of her breathing, the color in her face. “How’s the grey?” he asked Stella quietly, genuine concern breaking through the smirk. “Has she eaten? Properly, I mean. Not just the honeycake bribes.”

Stella crossed her arms and squinted up at Odrian, making sure he was taking her seriously. Admiral Stonebelly was watching, she had to be tough.

“She ate some bread this morning,” she reported. Alessia had torn off a little piece and fed the rest to her when she thought Stella wasn’t looking. “And Uncle Dio made her drink the yucky tea twice. She made faces, but she drank it.” She frowned, remembering the grey look on Alessia’s face when she thought Stella was asleep. “She’s less grey than before. But she’s still… ghosty.”

She took the honeycakes carefully, like they were important documents, and she put one in her kolpos for later and held onto the other one tightly.

“She can do your spy-talk when she wakes up. But if she gets frowny or starts hissing, you gotta stop. That’s the rule. Mama hissing means stop.”

She stepped closer to the cot, putting her back against it like she was guarding a castle gate. “And you gotta be quiet. She’s doing the thing where she’s awake but pretending not to be. She does that when she’s tired of being brave.”

Alessia kept her eyes closed for three more breaths, letting Stella’s fierce pronouncement settle into her chest. She was too perceptive by half. She saw the cracks in Alessia’s performance more clearly than any of the kings did.

She shifted, deliberately, letting the rough wool of the blanket scratch against her bandaged ribs as she pushed herself up on one elbow. The movement pulled a sharp hiss from between her teeth before she could swallow it, and she felt fresh sweat break at her hairline.

Still grey. Still running on spite alone.

“Admiral Stonebelly’s second-in-command accepts your tribute,” she rasped, voice rough from sleep and dehydration. She held out her hand, not to Odrian but to Stella. “But the toll’s changed, Starlight. General gets the first bite. Lieutenant’s share comes after.”

Stella huffed, outraged by the revised terms, but she broke the honeycake carefully, pressing the larger half into Alessia’s hand with sticky fingers.

She took it, letting the sweetness hit her tongue, grounding herself in the sugar and grit of crushed almonds as she finally looked at Odrian.

He was watching her with his spymaster’s gaze, stripped of theater. 

She hated how easily he read her.

She took another bite of the honeycake, savoring it for a heartbeat before holding out her hand.

“Give me the scroll,” she said, wiping crumbs from her lips with the back of her hand. “But if it’s more maps, I’m feeding it to Admiral Stonebelly.”

She took the scroll from him, letting her fingers brush his just long enough to steady her grip, and unrolling it across her knees. The script swam for a moment, black ink blurring into cream parchment, but she blinked hard, grounding herself in the pain of the stitches and the sweetness on her tongue, and the words clicked into focus.

Merchant pidgin.

Dockside cant.

Salted herring.

Lamp oil.

Rope.

Her brow furrowed. The weights didn’t match. She went back to the first line and read it again.

“…No.” She traced the line again with her thumbnail. “Either herring has gotten extraordinarily heavy, or Marko’s moving something heavier than fish. These numbers are wrong by a third. He’s padding the manifests to cover the real tonnage.”

She looked up at Odrian, sharp despite the exhaustion dragging at her eyelids. “It’s not harbor patrols. It’s inventory. He’s counting what’s coming in so he knows what to report missing. Someone’s skimming from Walus’s own operation.”

She rolled the parchment closed and tossed it back to him. Gently, because sudden movements made the room tilt.

“Might save us a hull to intercept if Marko’s already bleeding his own master dry.”

Odrian caught the parchment and turned to leave, stopping halfway to the flap to turn and give her a simple nod.

Then he was gone.

Alessia settled back against the pillows, suddenly heavy, and offered Stella her hand.