Exclusive Excerpt: Starling’s Weave

I’d not seen so many outsiders in my life. The handful of traders who had arrived at our borders tended to come on foot, and those men had been rough and frightening—gaps or wood for missing teeth, faces pocked with the ravages of illness. Bloated bellies that said the men were not well.

By contrast, these men looked well-fed and healthy in their baggy pants tucked into long leather boots and held up with brass-buckled belts. Several of them sported striped shirts rolled up to the elbows, revealing deeply tanned arms. Their leathery faces were hidden beneath short caps.

Just then, a tall figure rounded a stack of crates. He was the image of a raven, dressed all in black with a sweep of black hair, and like no trader I’d seen before as he leaped from the boat and strode toward the headsman like they were old friends. His fitted leather coat rode all the way to his calves, where it flicked up in the breeze and shone like tail feathers in the late afternoon sun. All I was able to see of his face was pieces of gold glinting at his ears and a thin, perfectly straight nose. The rest of the raven was garbed in tailored pants and black boots that stopped above the ankle. His shirt was made from a simple cotton that swooped down at the neck, all the better to show off sun-kissed skin. Not dressed like Talin—but the raven gave Harald the Talin traditional greeting, meeting hands to elbows.

Strangers on our shores, like they’d popped straight out of one of my soap dreams.

But he, the raven, most of all. Harbinger of death. In the oldest of our stories, the raven caws at your window as you approach death, then swoops down to usher your soul to its new existence in the land of the dead. I shivered, wondering if this raven was another story come to life.

As though he’d overheard my thoughts, the man turned and fastened his sharp gaze on me, raking me from head to toe. Harald swiveled and beckoned me. “Nieve, come over here.”

I pushed off from the tree, my legs numb with the strangeness of at all. Harald’s face was unreadable as I walked toward them. What would the headsman have me do—meet the stranger? It was unthinkable.

But then there I was, before the raven’s cool, unblinking stare. Whatever or whoever he was, he wasn’t handsome in a traditional way. His face was too chiseled, too lean. His gaze was magnetic, though, and his high cheekbones could easily mark him as someone with at least a little Talin ancestry.

But that wasn’t possible. Talin didn’t leave their villages. They didn’t interact with the world of strangers. And this man was clearly a stranger.

“Nieve, please greet Keir Manseray, trader of the seven seas.”

I bowed my head and offered my forearm. The raven paused for a moment before taking it, as though he had to come to a decision first. Under my fingertips, the leather of his coat was like warm skin, surely the softest leather I’d ever felt. Blinking up at him, I discovered that the trader’s eyes weren’t a raven’s gold at all, but a curious mix of brown and blue, earth and sea. He studied me, as silent as a black-winged bird carrying the souls of the dead.

“You’ll take Manseray to the community house and ensure his comfort. He is a guest of honor in our village. Extend to him every hospitality.”

My head swiveled to Harald’s. I had to have heard him wrong. There were no rules about unmarried Talin women showing strangers around on their own, but I was pretty sure that was only because no one could have imagined it. I was about to ask him to repeat himself when one of the sailors called for Keir Manseray, trader of the seven seas, who nodded and took himself a few feet away to confer.

“I must have had the sea in my ears, Harald. You didn’t just tell me to—”