Crow Jane - D. J. Butler Page 0,14

was Shet who was staring at her, wide-eyed, when she awoke.

“They found Abil,” her younger brother said. “And your clothes.”

She stood, dropping the last of the uneaten carcass and the tiny, guilty blade.

Then came Father, the sternness of his brow trembling in hint of softer feelings behind the facade, and with him a company of Messengers. She expected them to bring Swordbearers, but there were only the blue-white, six-winged giants she had always seen. She searched the faces of the Bearers of the Word—the first time she had ever really done so—wondering whether she might see Azazel and almost hoping that she would. She had witnessed terrible things in his eyes, a rage to possess and to destroy, but at least when she had looked into his eyes she had seen something, and not just the blank tables on which were inscribed the long list of Heaven’s mandates.

But she was disappointed; Azazel was not among them.

“I’m sorry,” Father grunted, grabbing her by her shoulders and throwing her down.

“I deserve it,” she said. She didn’t really mean it, but she hadn’t intended to cause Father grief.

“This world is a hard and fallen one,” he said, tears streaming down his cheeks. “That is not your fault.”

The foremost of the Messengers bore down upon her, a clay pot in his hand. Qayna stared at the Messenger’s face, imprinting it upon her memory. “This dye,” the Messenger thundered, “is the blood of Abil. His blood cried to heaven to witness your guilt, and now it will cry to all your family and their descendants as an eternal witness.”

The Messenger dipped a shard of bone into the pot and scraped its jagged edge across Qayna’s face. She screamed and twisted, and Father held her down.

“This stylus is the bone of Abil,” the Messenger continued. “You would not make an acceptable sacrifice, and instead sacrificed your own brother’s flesh and bone. Now the bone records your sin.”

The Messenger continued scratching her, running curving lines about Qayna’s face and all over her body. Qayna bucked and screamed and stared at each Messenger, memorizing their faces. One day, she swore, it would be her turn to witness, and the Messengers would be the ones screaming in pain.

Father wept, but did not relent.

Shet only stared.

“These words that I write upon your face,” the Messenger finished, “are all the names of Abil. “As you have blotted out his name from among your family, so shall your name be blotted out. As you have taken from him his life, so do I now take from you your death. You shall be a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth, until the end of time.”

The Messenger arose and stood away, but the pain did not subside. As Father stood and turned away also, pulling Shet with him and abandoning Qayna to her pain, she rolled over and curled into a ball, sobbing.

She lay a long time. There was no one to find her or to be disturbed.

When she was done weeping, hours had passed and her pain had subsided into a stinging that covered her entire body. She stood gingerly and picked up the bloody knife where she had dropped it. She picked it up because she needed a tool of some kind in the great empty world into which she had been cast, and she picked it up because was hungry to someday, somehow, get her revenge.

And then she saw, perched on an outcropping of stone above her, a large black crow.

***

Chapter Four

Millennia later, Jane leaped through the Wild Turkey mirror behind the bar in Wellman’s.

She landed in the Outer Bounds expecting to hear its usual soft-swishing silence. Instead, the halls and arches echoed to the sounds of shouting.

“Let go of her, damn you!” The voice belonged to the guitar player, Eddie. He sounded like he was just around the corner, but Jane knew that sound could carry a long, long way in the Mirror Queendom. Especially in the Outer Bounds.

“She’s an Outcast in violation of the terms of her exile!” squeaked an excited fairy voice that might have belonged to Foxtail. “You have no right to talk to the Queen’s Rangers like that, and you have no permission to be here!”

“We don’t need permission, cagado!” That would be Mike. “We have guns.”

“And don’t go imagining our bark is worse,” the organ player snarled, “et cetera. We also have fireballs.”

Jane pulled her knives from her own body, carefully wiping each on her duster before sheathing it. The hoof was as long