Read Online Copper Ravens by Jennifer Allis Provost - Free Book Online

know (though I’m not so sure I believed him), I yelped, “But I don’t want any support!” Who did these people think I wanted support against? Another of copper? Whoever that person was, they could have the job. I did not want it. The silverkin freaked at my outburst, but I calmed them down…again. After we had opened the bazillionth package, I left Shep and his flock to sort out the gifts on their own. As for me, I continued on my quest for breakfast. This “support the ruler” fiasco wasn’t going to get resolved any time soon, at least not before I talked to Micah, and I had other fish to fry. Before I got to the kitchens, I found Sadie in the parlor, sipping something warm from a delicate silver cup.
    â€œHow do the silverkin manage espresso?” she murmured. I pictured the manor’s rustic kitchen with its large, open ovens and well-worn surfaces, and had to admit that I hadn’t the foggiest. “And the foamed milk?”
    â€œMagic?” I offered with a shrug. I took a seat beside her and was promptly presented with my own frothy concoction. Really, I didn’t care what steps were necessary to create cappuccinos in a medieval kitchen, so long as those steps worked.
    â€œAnd the muffins,” Sadie continued, now enamored of a basket of baked goods that had appeared alongside my cappuccino. Maybe the silverkin were really angels, sent to earth in order to watch over dry throats and empty bellies. “I never knew something this bready could be so delicious.”
    I laughed and recalled that Sadie had spent her last few years subsisting on school food, which was little more than cardboard compared to what I had been getting from the Promenade Market and Mom’s garden, and had likely forgotten what real food tasted like. It was amazing that she had been able to complete two-thirds of her master’s degree while eating only government rations.
    Sadie and I sat together for a while, sipping our drinks and talking about nothing, before I got up enough courage to ask, “Want to come to the village with me?”
    â€œI—” she began, then she clamped her mouth shut. She knew that I knew she didn’t have anything better to do. “What for?”
    â€œI need to hit the apothecary.”
    â€œFor what? To replenish your cauldron?”
    â€œSomething like that.” She pursed her lips and turned away. “Listen, I know it’s freaky out there, but you have to get used to it. It looks like we’re going to be here a while, and you’re the Inheritor. The Metal Inheritor . You can’t be seen as weak.” I left off the rest of my thought, that if Sadie was deemed incompetent, others of metal were likely to murder her, in the hopes that their own offspring would take her place. Her blanched face told me that she already knew that.
    â€œJust the apothecary?”
    â€œJust the apothecary.” I tossed back the rest of my cappuccino and stood, just as Shep appeared bearing our walking shoes. These silverkin do think of everything.

    Whispering Dell, the village, was located at the opposite end of the valley from the Silverstrand manor. It was a short enough walk, though I hadn’t planned on walking. Under Micah’s tutelage, I’d gotten pretty good at traveling along the vein of silver that runs the length of the dell, just underneath the grassy surface. The vein was how Max and I had gotten to the village and back yesterday, but since Sadie had never traveled by leaping from metal to metal, I didn’t even bring it up. I was just happy she’d agreed to set foot outside the manor.
    Gods, but I missed my car.
    Still, it was a lovely day and a lovely walk. I’d worried that Sadie would invent reasons to run back to the manor, such as a possibility of rain or a woodland creature looking her way in a menacing fashion, but she seemed to enjoy being out in the fresh air as much as I did. If only I