Witch's Pyre

by Josephine Angelini

  We’ve already lost.

  “Just wait,” Lily said aloud. The last mindspeech had definitely come from Rowan, and he was right. Her coven was dusted with Workers. Without a pyre she’d never be able to give them enough strength to survive the stings.

  Lily felt a Worker crawl across her bare throat. She looked at the nearest Sister, trying to pierce through the rainbow sheen covering her bulbous black eyes, and trained every nerve in her body to fight the urge to slap the Worker away. The Sister flicked her whip and shivered her wings in agitation, but she made no move forward.

  “I’ve stopped,” Lily said to her.

  The Sister’s monstrous head swiveled lightning fast atop her stalk neck, but her tense posture didn’t change. Lily had no idea if she understood or not, or even if this particular Sister was their leader. There was no distinction among them that Lily could see. Lily had chosen her simply because she was closest.

  Everyone stay still. Lily—you can’t just behave as if you’re calm. You have to be calm, Rowan said in mindspeak.

  She brushed his presence from her mind, annoyed that he felt like he had the right to advise her. She grudgingly followed his instruction nonetheless because she knew he was right. As Lily relaxed, so did the Hive. The Workers lifted off the coven’s skin and the Warrior Sisters moved back, their wings still.

  With one more lightning-fast twitch of her head, the closest Warrior Sister leapt into the air. The rest of the Hive followed her, vacating the ballroom as swiftly as they had entered it.

  Lily looked around the ballroom. Chairs and tables were knocked down in a blast pattern that formed a circle around Lily. All the guests were on the floor, too terrified to move or make a sound.

  “You’ll have to get ahold of your temper.” Grace’s voice was raspy as it broke the stunned silence. “The Hive won’t allow that a second time.”

  Lily found Grace watching her, a mixture of understanding and reproof in her look.

  “I didn’t mean to—” Lily stopped and looked around. There was broken glass everywhere, and some people were bleeding from superficial cuts. She felt hot with embarrassment. “I apologize.”

  “So do I,” Grace replied thoughtfully. She spread her hands between Rowan and Lily. “I thought that you’d been separated, and that this would be a happy reunion.”

  Rowan furrowed his brow at Grace, but he held his tongue. The guests started to rise up off the floor and assess their injuries. Lily and her coven offered their assistance, but Ivan declined.

  “It’s fine, really,” he said. “There are a quite a few people here who can heal, and it’d probably be better if you left. Toshi?” Ivan craned his head until he found his student. “Why don’t you take Lily and her coven back to their apartments?”

  Toshi nodded and turned to Lily. He gestured with his head at Rowan. “Is he coming with you?”

  Lily turned to Caleb. “Is he?” she asked him.

  I don’t like it, but right now the more protection you have the better, Caleb answered in mindspeak.

  Everyone in this room looks like they want to take a piece out of you, Una said in mindspeak, by way of agreement. Tristan, Breakfast, and Juliet gave their grudging assent.

  “He can come,” she said, avoiding Rowan’s eyes.

  As they passed on their way out, Mala hawked Lily’s every step.

  . . . and the piece she’d like to take is your head, Una added.

  Toshi came alongside Lily while they crossed the courtyard. “I could find another place for him,” he said quietly, gesturing to Rowan, who was lagging behind the rest of the coven.

  “It’s okay,” Lily said. “Distance doesn’t make a difference.” She smiled ruefully. “I put a whole continent between us and that still didn’t help.”

  Toshi frowned. “Is that why you came west? To get away from an ex?”

  “Not exclusively.” Lily looked up at him. “And how do you know he’s my ex?”

  “Experience, unfortunately.” Toshi looked sheepish. “I’ve made one or two girls angry enough to throw things at me. Never had a girl try to throw a whole ballroom at me before, though.”

  Lily’s shoulders shook with a silent laugh, and Toshi watched her with an indecipherable look. “What?” she asked.

  “I like making you laugh,” he said, surprised. His face suddenly clouded over. “Grace wasn’t kidding about the Hive not allowing another show of aggression from you.”

  “I know,” Lily replied.

  “But will you be alright with him?”

  “I’ll be fine. I can control myself,” she said. She hoped. She gave him a weak smile. “I fought the Hive once, and I’m in no hurry to do it again.”

  Toshi stared at her for a moment. “Incredible. No one fights the Hive,” he whispered under his breath, and then left her at the door to the guest suite.

  Lily and her coven went straight to the men’s sitting room to have it out. She could feel them already arguing in mindspeak, although they hadn’t included her yet. The silence was like a scream.

  Lily sat, waiting for someone to engage her while she stared at anything but Rowan. Someone had brought fresh flowers into the rooms while they’d been away.

  She reached out to Lillian again, craving some kind of counsel. Rowan’s back, she said.

  Good. You need him, Lillian finally replied. Forgive him and count yourself lucky that you have him back.

  I don’t have him. He left me, remember?

  He’ll always be yours—and you his. Stop wasting time. Lily sensed sweeping, jaw-grinding pain before Lillian quickly severed contact.

  “Lily!” Tristan said sharply.

  “What?” she replied, snapping back to the here and now.

  “You’ve been blocking us all out again,” he said, his eyes narrowed.

  “Oh.” Lily hadn’t been aware. That was the second time she’d barricaded them out of her head without realizing it.

  “Who were you mindspeaking with?” Rowan asked with narrowed eyes. Lily didn’t respond.

  “Do you want to chime in here, Lil?” Breakfast asked. “There’s a lot going on.”

  She kept her face neutral, which wasn’t hard to do. Now that the excitement had passed she felt exhausted. “There isn’t much for me to say, is there? Rowan followed us, probably on Alaric’s orders, and he got taken by the Hive just like we did. That’s the why of him being here settled. Now, as to what he intends to do, it doesn’t really matter, does it? He’s too far to contact Alaric through mindspeak and I have no intention of allowing him close enough to me to be a threat.” She stood and smoothed her kimono, not looking at him. “If he tries to get too close, I’ll make him suffer. What was that he told me about Scot and Gideon? Claim your enemies. Well, I’ve already claimed him, and he may have surprised me once, but it won’t happen again. So that’s settled. Am I missing anything?”

  “You don’t want to say anything to him or ask him any questions?” Juliet asked. Her big eyes were round with worry and a whispered name ghosted across her mind. Like Lillian.

  Lily turned to her. “No. I really don’t. I’m going to bed.”

  She felt the pull of him as she walked away—a heavy bending of space around his body that threatened to drag her to him. But every step got easier, and by the time she reached her room she didn’t feel Rowan’s weight at all.

  Carrick waited patiently for someone to come to him. He’d been here for a day and a half and so far he’d only met lackeys. Lackeys never knew what to do with him. Whenever Carrick had visited the fancy homes of the powerful people who needed his talents, like Gideon and his father, the lackeys could never figure out if they should treat him as a guest because their masters needed him, or like scum because that’s what their masters thought of him.

  The woman who came to get him that morning, Mala, was no different. She wasn’t stupid. She could sense what Carrick was, and she had no idea why her master—an Outlander named Governor Grace Bendingtree—would want to house a killer.
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  “Big party last night,” Carrick said. “I couldn’t see from my window, but I could hear it. There was a fight. Breaking glass and a witch wind.”

  “Yes,” Mala replied. She kept her body angled slightly away from Carrick, like half of her was about to run away. “You’re not one of them, are you?”

  “I know who they are. I know the witch, Lily. And she knows me,” he replied.

  Mala swallowed, unnerved by the way he said Lily’s name. “Grace said you were following her.”

  Carrick stared at Mala. There was something she wanted, but she was too afraid to ask. He started with the obvious. “You don’t seem to like Lily too much.”

  Mala’s mouth trembled with all she wanted to say. “Do you like her?”

  Carrick shrugged, noncommittal. “The things I do don’t leave much room for liking.”

  “What things? Following people?”

  “Sure,” he said. If she wanted to pretend that’s all he did, he’d let her. She knew better, though. But let her pretend for now.

  “She’s staying in another wing of this building. Would you follow her for me?”

  Carrick tipped his chin at the door. “There are no locks on the doors.”

  Mala didn’t understand. “And?”

  Carrick sighed. Maybe she wasn’t as smart as he’d thought, and if she wasn’t smart, maybe she wasn’t all that powerful. He didn’t care if she was dumber than a pickax. All he needed from Mala was someone influential enough to make sure he could come and go as he pleased, do as he pleased, and that was it. If she could handle that, then they had a deal.

  “No one leaves me in a room without a lock on the door, unless they got something better to watch me,” he said.

  “We don’t need locks here,” Mala said. “The Hive prevents violence.”

  Carrick stood. Mala didn’t shrink from him. That was a good sign. She had some backbone. “Then if you want me to do what you can’t, you’re going to have to figure out how to keep the Hive away from me, aren’t you?” She nodded slowly, finally understanding him. “Until then, I’ll just follow.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  Dappled light brightened the other side of Lily’s eyelids, and for a moment the whole world was warm and rosy red. The swaying of the trolley passed her head back and forth between invisible hands, lifting her up and out of her body. Warmth cooled, and the rosy light darkened to gunmetal gray. An old friend met her in the Mist. Someone sad and lonely. Someone lost.

  She was in pain.

  Lily saw an army sprawled out before her. She saw banners snapping in the wind and the acrid taste of struck iron made saliva gush under her tongue.

  “Lily?” Toshi’s voice startled her from her near sleep. “Sorry,” he said, grimacing at her stricken expression. “But we have to hop off in another few blocks.”

  Lily looked around, reorienting herself in the spangled sunshine of Bower City. Lillian? She called to her in mindspeak, and got no answer.

  “Are you okay?” Toshi asked.

  Lily nodded. “Strange dream,” she said, shifting the packages on her lap.

  They’d been shopping half the day and stopping at cafés for cool drinks and tapas. Now, nearing the end of the day, Lily found herself alone with Toshi. Una was getting the pedicure she’d been longing for, Juliet a massage, and the guys sat for proper haircuts that were done with scissors instead of belt knives.

  Rowan wasn’t with them. He’d said he’d had a witch shower him with gifts before and that it hadn’t ended well. Then he wandered off on his own, leaving the rest of them to take a little less pleasure from the pampering.

  Lily looked down at her packages with an odd detachment. After months on the road, saying no to new clothes was not practical. It felt wrong to be out shopping, but if the clothes were a little less fine, or the surroundings a little less opulent, it wouldn’t make the dead come back to life. Lily looked out the window at the sparkling day. It was easy to forget about death here. Bower City didn’t do gloomy or rainy or sad. It didn’t dirty its head with the ashes of mourning. It had one bright cheery note, and everyone was forced to sing it.

  Toshi and Lily stepped off the trolley and he led her into a scent bar. Lily figured if she was expected to wear perfume, she might as well pick out something she liked enough to wear every day. An elegant woman, dark skinned and dressed in a sari, stood behind the bar waiting to be of assistance but too refined to inject herself into their browsing.

  “Do you have those a lot?” Toshi asked as he slid a glass rod out of a crystal bottle filled with a honey-colored liquid.

  “A lot of what?” Lily asked.

  “Strange dreams.” He dabbed one drop of the liquid onto a strip of paper, let it dry, and waved it under Lily’s nose. She breathed in bergamot and blood orange.

  “All the time.” She shook her head at the scent. “Too sweet.” Toshi moved down the bar and lifted a glass rod from another jar.

  “After what you’ve been through—” He broke off. “I can’t imagine it. To go out among the Woven, into the unknown. No map. No idea of what’s out there—mountains, deserts, uncrossable rivers.” He waved the strip under Lily’s nose. Lemon and verbena quickened her thoughts.

  Ah, actually, we sort of knew how to get to California. I’m not exactly Sacajawea, she thought, suppressing a grin. But there was no one to tell that joke to. Tristan would have gotten it.

  “You’re sad again,” Toshi noticed.

  Lily didn’t reply and moved down the row. She lifted the next rod for herself. It was a powdery grandma smell. She dropped it immediately and decided to follow Toshi’s cues instead.

  “Have you always been adventurous?” he asked, dabbing another strip of paper with scent.

  “Not at all! In fact most of my life I couldn’t go anywhere. The most exciting thing that happened to me was a trip to the hospital.” Lily breathed in Christmas. Gingersnap and snow. “I like this one,” she said about the scent, “but it’s not for me.”

  “What’s for you?” he said musingly. “You’re a woman who goes from happy to sad in a second. A woman who claims to be unadventurous, who’s just had the adventure of a lifetime. You’re a powerful woman who I could toss into the air with one hand.” He shifted closer, his face dipping toward hers. “What’s for you?”

  Lily looked down and shook her head. “I’m not who you think I am, Toshi.”

  “No one’s who we think they are,” he said, waving a dismissive hand in the air.

  He drew a rod out of a tiny glass jar that had only a few drops of a dark and unctuous liquor. The sales woman stiffened, about to say something, but Toshi smiled and nodded at her.

  He didn’t waste any of the precious liquid on a strip of paper, but waved the rod under Lily’s nose. Smoke and spice. Bruised-to-sweetness sap bled from a young tree. Salt. And something underneath it all—something animal and almost revolting that she couldn’t place and couldn’t stop smelling. She inhaled it over and over, unable to pull herself away.

  “Now tell me why you’re sad.”

  Lily opened her eyes and saw Toshi watching her with concern. She swallowed. “I lost someone.” The grief and guilt trembled right behind the words, which she spoke as plainly as possible to keep herself from bursting into tears. “He died to protect me.”

  “Did you love him?” Toshi whispered.

  “Of course.”

  “Then lucky him.” He tore his gaze away from Lily and looked up at the saleswoman. “We’ll take a twenty-fourth of this,” he said crisply.

  Lily cocked her head at him. “You do that a lot,” she remarked.

  “Do what?”

  “End the moment before it gets old. Or out of your control.”

  Toshi nodded pensively. “I’ve learned not to wait for applause. For anything.”

  “You’ve got a story,” Lily said, half smiling.

  “Some other time,” he replied, his expression darkening.

  “Oh, great. You’re
soulful.” Lily said, rolling her eyes.

  He looked hurt. “You don’t give anyone a break, do you?”

  Lily made an effort to soften her tone. “No, I don’t,” she admitted. “But I actually like soulful. It was a compliment.”

  He dropped his eyes so Lily couldn’t read him. The saleswoman came to his rescue, returning with a tiny vial that she placed carefully inside a tissue-paper-lined bag. She looked anxious.

  “It’s okay,” Toshi reassured her again as he took the bag. “Thank you.”

  Lily waited until they were outside to speak. “I’m guessing I picked the scent that costs a fortune?”

  “Yes, but money’s not the issue,” Toshi said. “Only one other person in the entire city wears that scent.”

  A chuff of a laugh escaped Lily. She knew who it had to be. “Grace.”

  “Yup.”

  “Interesting,” Lily said. “I know why I like it,” she added, thinking of the smoke, the tree sap, and the salty animal smell of her own sweat sizzling in the pyre—thinking of the power and the rush of pouring herself into another person. “But why would she if she doesn’t have mechanics?” Lily stopped and turned deliberately to Toshi. “Are you her claimed?”

  “No,” Toshi said, genuinely shocked.

  “Look, I’m not the smartest person in the world, but I know one thing.” She jabbed a finger at the little bag in his hand. “That scent is something a witch only becomes acquainted with by firewalking, and it’s a scent she learns to crave only by giving the Gift. You know, there’s been a lot of talk about how claiming is slavery, butI don’t buy it.” She smirked at him. “Don’t tell me the people of Bower City are so pure that they’re not tempted to claim.”

  “They’re more than tempted,” Toshi said hotly. “It happens—of course it happens. And when it does, it’s a huge scandal and there’s always a public trial. It’s very, very messy. Claiming is the only crime that gets committed here, and it’s punishable by banishment.”

  Lily stuck out a hand to stop him. “Wait, did you just say that it’s the only crime in Bower City?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at him, perplexed. “But you have laws against murder and rape and all that stuff?”