The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher Page A

wasn’t going to do any good, so then she just tried to get her hand out of the way.  
    She threw up.
    He stopped.  
    She was furious and frightened and also embarrassed. It was stupid to be embarrassed about throwing up on someone when you had just been picked up and manhandled against your will, but she was anyway.  
    The red-faced man slung her off his shoulder and tossed her to the ground.  
    There was no snow to cushion her fall, only hard earth. She landed badly and the air went out of her.
    What little she could see, in between wheezing, was a hard packed courtyard and a building like a pigeon coop. It looked shabby and half-falling down.  
    “Goddamn, Marten,” someone said over her head. “What have you done?”
    The red-faced man—Marten?—said, “She was in the woods.” His voice was very deep.
    “People are allowed to be in the woods.”
    “She was nosin’ around. Looked to walk right in here.”
    “So you decided to make absolutely sure she found us. How useful.”
    The speaker walked into Gerta’s line of sight.
    She was tall and lean and not much older than Gerta herself. Her skin was dark brown and her hair was blacker than Mousebones’ feathers. She wore a bright scarf around her shoulders.
    Gerta recognized her immediately.  
    The girl reached down a hand and pulled Gerta to her feet.  
    “It’s you,” said Gerta stupidly, still clutching her hand. She was aware that she was streaked with vomit and her hair was hanging in rags and she felt embarrassed again, because she would have wanted to make a better impression.
    The other girl turned her head slightly, suddenly wary. “Do we know each other?”
    “From my dream,” said Gerta. She could feel the blush coming on because what she was saying was dreadfully stupid, but the words kept coming out and there was no stopping them. “The grapevine dream. I saw you. You were in it, with the wood-pigeons.”  
    This is not something normal people say to strangers. Now you’ll have to explain about the witch and then explain that you were stupid enough to be enchanted for months and incidentally you’ve sort of been kidnapped, and probably you should worry about that instead—
    Her face was burning, clear to the tips of her ears. She wiped her hand across her mouth, feeling unutterably foolish, and yet this was without a doubt the woman that she had seen in the dream given to her by the grapevines.  
    “Wood-pigeons,” said the girl slowly. “Yes. I keep wood-pigeons.”
    “She’s got money,” said Marten. “Or a little jingly pouch, anyway. And her pack’s full and we could kill her and nobody’d hardly know.”
    “Sure,” said the girl. “And then the farmers wonder why one of their daughters have gone missing and they go looking and they find us and they say “Oh, look, bandits wintering over!” and wipe us out. Because there are five of us, Marten. Have you forgotten?”
    “…lot more of us…” mumbled Marten, staring at his feet.  
    “Yes. There are. And they’re currently either south lying low or they’re rotting in jail because my father took it in his head to—”
    She stopped and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Never mind,” she said. “Never mind that. The milk is spilled, and I should stop crying over it.” She took Gerta’s arm. “Come with me. My name is Janna, and I suppose you’re my prisoner now.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

    “No!” said Gerta. “That’s—no, I’m sorry, that won’t work.”
    Janna looked at her. She blinked a few times, slowly, and then said, “Being my prisoner isn’t going to work for you?”
    Gerta took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I have to keep going. I’m looking for someone. He’s been missing for a long time now, and—look, I didn’t mean to come here. You can have my money. But I have to go.”
    Now that she was standing, Gerta could see that the pigeon coop was probably not where Janna and Marten were staying. There was an earth-house there, a