by Sara Holland
I turn my back to them and run.
20
I follow Stef’s directions as closely as I can in the dark. Luck finds me—the night is cloudless, and the moonlight shines down on me, illuminating the crude map she made.
Finally, after an hour’s walk, I reach an area of patchy farmland, the earth newly turned in neat rows. It reminds me of the little plot of land where Papa and I lived in Crofton, and my throat tightens. In the moonlight, I make out the shape of a small, decrepit cottage, the light of a single candle glowing behind a canvas-covered window.
Nervousness fills my throat as I raise my hand to knock. When no one answers, I gently push on the door. It isn’t latched and swings open easily beneath my touch.
Inside, the air smells of bitter, burned herbs and wet earth. I stop for a moment in the blackness, listening. The only light inside comes from one candle in the center of the room at waist level, sputtering faintly.
Cautiously, I step into the darkness. The moonlight disappears, a candle flame blown out.
As my eyes adjust, I see that someone has created a shrine in the center of the room: an artful arrangement of herbs, colored-glass potion bottles, the single burning candle. Vaguely, I recall similar shrines arranged at the hedge witch’s in Crofton, all requested and paid for with blood-iron by a mourning relative. The only difference is that the assortment of offerings in front of me looks more genuine somehow—more purposefully arranged—though I can’t put my finger on exactly how I know this. Maybe it’s just the fear circling around me now, or my yearning to find meaning in this trip, to trust in Stef, despite Liam’s insistence that such a venture is misguided.
I step farther into the room. At this distance, I can see that the shrine is dusted faintly with something that shines like powdered gold. The shimmer draws me forward, and I reach out my finger to gather some of the dust. The flame warms my palms as I stretch my hand toward it, though an odd, unexpected chill passes over my skin.
Then, someone clears their throat behind me.
I spin around.
It’s a man—tall and broad-shouldered, but with a starved air about him. It’s impossible to tell how old he is. With wild black hair and a pale face etched with wrinkles, he could be anywhere from thirty to fifty. His shirt, which looks filthy even in the dim lamplight, hangs off him. The smell of alcohol washes out when he leans over to light the lamp on a rough-hewn kitchen table.
This must be Joeb.
A small knot of fear forms in my stomach when I register that he’s standing between me and the door.
Joeb peers at me with bleary, red eyes and takes a step forward. “Who are you?” His voice is slightly slurred, but still has a low gravity.
“A-an apprentice hedge witch,” I stammer, holding out the carved stone Stef gave me. I hope that he’s too far into drink to recognize me from the drawings Ina distributed, if he’s seen them. “A distant relative of yours. I heard about Althea’s death, and . . .” I spread my hands, hoping that he’ll fill in the blanks himself, but he says nothing. “I wanted to pay my respects.”
Joeb squints at me, scarcely glancing at the stone. “I’ve never seen you before.”
My heart gives a quick twist, as I remember the days just after Papa’s death, just how gone from the world I was. I relax slightly. I didn’t try to drink my grief away, but I understand why someone would. The man could be kind, I tell myself as I swallow the urge to run. I don’t want to risk upsetting him further before I learn anything from him.
“I never met Althea,” I say softly. “Though she might have known me.”
“Well, she’s gone,” Joeb says harshly. He casts his eyes on the shrine, then back at me. “You’ve brought no offering. So what do you really want?”
I gesture lamely to the shrine, already lost in my lie. I grasp for anything that will help me get on better ground with him, figure out what he knows about the weapon without angering him. “To honor her and . . . learn about her.”
He strikes a match, reaching past me to light a bundle of herbs. The incense immediately begins to burn, filling the air with sweet-smelling smoke. Blue-gray blooms in the air between us. “No one honors hedge witches in Sempera anymore. Not since the old days, and those have long since passed. So you intend to steal from her.” He pauses, letting a grin creep into his features. “But there are people who steal for good, and others who steal for ill. Which are you?”
Steal for good? Is that a veiled reference to the Alchemist? His gaze is too direct, heavy, and yet it reveals nothing. With a lurch of my stomach, I fear that Liam was right. This is all a waste of time, dangerous, and I’m talking to a mad drunk—though his speech is unnervingly focused. I consider leaving right then, calculating whether I’m fast enough to freeze time and dart around him, through the door.
But I can’t, not yet; not before I’ve found out if Althea knew anything about defeating Caro. I make myself meet his eyes, and speak a version of the truth. Bold, to get answers out of him.
“I think I know who killed Althea,” I say. His eyes widen and he takes a step back. “And I want to know why.”
The man holds my gaze, confrontational, for a moment longer, then something goes out of him and his shoulders relax. “Sit down,” he says gruffly, his voice low and suddenly full of grief. He sits down at the table, grabbing a small bottle from a bag that hangs from his belt.
Again, my feet itch to run. I’d come to the door expecting some hidden ally, despite Stef’s uncertain warning, but this man’s grieved tone—his nonreaction to being told that I might know his mother’s murderer—is far more unnerving than physical violence. I came all this way, I remind myself, ran from Liam. And the Huntsman may be still searching the dormitories at Bellwood—I can’t go back now. Steeling myself against doubt, I follow the man’s outstretched hand and take a seat at the table.
“Your name is Joeb, isn’t it?” I ask gently, sitting down.
It takes the man, now slumped over with grief, a moment to nod, like he has to reach down into memory for the movement. As he pushes up his sleeves and pulls the cork out of his glass bottle, it’s easier to see the wrinkles that crawl over his skin. The lines start between his knuckles, and are etched all the way up his arms until they disappear under his rolled-up sleeves.
I have to stifle a sharp intake of breath when I realize that they are not wrinkles but impossibly thin scars.
He follows my eyes. “She used my blood every so often.” He takes a swig from his bottle. “She always said it was for me. To make me great with magic, as she was once, and her mother before her.”
“She was trying . . . to give magic to you?” I ask. Something stirs in me, whipping in my chest like a serpent’s tail. “You can do that?”
His laugh is brief and bitter. “If you’re powerful, you can do anything. If you’re not . . .” He gestures at himself. “I’m afraid my mother’s efforts were in vain.”
Joeb looks older now that he’s not standing over me. A feeling of pity mingled with déjà vu stabs through me—the tiny, cramped cottage, the slowness of the man’s movements and words. For an instant, it’s like I’m back in my own cottage, a shrine to Papa burning in a dark corner.
I push the thought away, swallowing. I need to focus on getting information out of him. As the orange light from the lantern reveals the room, I look around, squinting to see the details in better light. It’s simpler than the setup of the false hedge witch Caro, Ina, and I visited in Laista when we were together at Everless. A small table laden with glittering vials and jars and a wooden scale sits in one corner, and brown bunches of dried herbs still hang over the fire. The air is thick with smoke and incense, the metallic scent of blood-iron and something else I can’t name.
Power, a voice in me whispers. Faint, but there.
Joeb speaks, startling me. “Why is it,” he says, his voice flat and empty, “that it’s only after my mother died we’ve had this parade of well-wishers? When in life she had to scrabble for every bloo
d-iron?” His words still blur together at the edges, but the meaning—the feeling—comes through perfectly. As he speaks, he sprinkles something into his mug—I recognize the red-gold sheen of blood-irons, but they’re not coins, just shavings. My stomach clenches. Is Joeb a bleeder?
“Who else has come?” I ask carefully.
“All sorts,” Joeb says indifferently. “Other hedge witches and timelenders, soldiers and madmen. They all leave when they realize there’s nothing left to take. Or when they figure out that I don’t have her talents.”
My heart falls. Stef said Joeb had Althea’s papers, which might contain a clue to destroying the Sorceress. My mind spins, trying to think of the combination of words that will help me get information without angering Althea’s son. I cast my eyes around—
And it’s then I notice the small figurine of the Sorceress propped up against her shrine. Cold seeps into me. “Did your mother worship the Sorceress?”
Joeb spits, then laughs softly. “No. But the Sorceress is a part of our legacy.”
“Legacy?” I find myself drifting toward the table, trying to hide my fear while appearing to hang on his words. “What do you mean?”
“There are hedge witches in my family back to the time of the Sorceress. Real hedge witches, not the imposters you find with a sign hanging over their shops,” he spits. “My mother’s great-great-grandmother walked with the Sorceress and Alchemist. Althea was gifted. But not me, and I’ve no children,” he says bitterly. “Though surely you know some of that already, if you know who killed my mother.” Joeb states it so plainly that at first, I don’t recognize the danger in it.
My voice comes out hoarse. “I—I’m not sure. I think it was the Queen’s handmaiden. A girl a little older than me—dark hair, green eyes—” My stammering dies when I see Joeb stiffen, his eyes sharpening.
“Both,” he says slowly. “Both. The dead Queen and the girl.”
My breath catches. “You—you saw it?”
“I saw them leaving, when they were finishing with her,” Joeb says excitedly. The apathy is gone from his voice, and his eyes are now glinting like steel. “I was too late to save her. She had been speaking ill of the Sorceress again.” He leans in, his long nails digging into the table. “I was always telling her not to spread those tales, but she never listened.”
“Sp-speaking ill of her?” It’s nearly impossible to keep the stammer from my voice.
I stop. He looks at me with a canniness that I don’t like. At my indrawn breath, he half rises from his seat.
“You know something, don’t you?” he says, animated now. He pounds the table. I jump at the sound. The flame of the lamp flickers, then burns bright again.
My heart is beating fast with the surety that some knowledge, some truth lies here in this cottage, if I can only put my hands on it. “The girl who murdered your mother—she was the Sorceress,” I say all in one breath. “And I’m searching for a weapon that will kill her.”
I stop abruptly, realizing that I’ve said too much. Calling the Queen’s handmaiden an ancient goddess, claiming that I want to strike the Sorceress dead—I must sound mad, despite what Stef told me about Joeb’s history.
Slowly, as if trying not to disturb a deer in the woods, I pull the ancient journal onto the table and open it to the page that bears my blood. Seek the river of red. “I was hoping you could help me figure out what this means.”
I look up to see that a smile is spreading slowly across Joeb’s face, a smile I like less than his drunken snapping. When he speaks, his voice is crystal clear. “The river of red, red with blood,” he recites, like a twisted child’s rhyme.
“Red with blood?” My head swims. “What does that mean?”
He shrugs. “Whose blood has been spilled across Sempera?”
I don’t have to answer out loud. The Alchemist’s. Mine. My gut is screaming at me to leave . . . but I’ve come so far, only to leave with nothing. “And the weapon? Have you ever heard—”
“To kill the Sorceress? What could kill someone as powerful as her?” His lined face splits in anger, then resolves to a beatific smile. My head is spinning with his shifts in mood. “She’s nothing but hunger, isn’t she?”
“She’s nothing but evil.” The words spill out of my mouth, unbidden. Dangerous.
Joeb shifts in his seat, and my hands flex unconsciously, my pulse speeding, stomach turning.
“She wants more than her heart back now,” Joeb says. “She needs the Alchemist’s soul too. Then nothing will be able to stop her—she’ll be able to do things that I can only imagine. Brew immortality. Even control time itself. Not just survive it, move back and forth through it. Take life away with the touch of her hand. She’ll rule Sempera for thousands of years, and sit on the throne long after I’ve turned to dust.”
“No, that’s impossible.” I don’t know why I’m trying to convince Joeb of this, but I can’t stop the words, or take the pleading edge out of my voice.
“Nothing is impossible.” He’s risen now, the lamplight making his shadow bleed over the floor. “The Sorceress told me herself. I hear her whisper. In my sleep. In my dreams.”
Suddenly, his movements are no longer slow, no longer unfocused. A knife has materialized in his hand, his voice turning cold and authoritative. And yet something in his words makes me obey when he demands that I come forward.
I stand and, trembling, walk to the shrine, Joeb close behind my back. I open my palm with the knife, not even feeling the pain. I hold it out so blood drips over the flickering candle.
The flame shoots up with a brilliant light, a beacon of magic pointed directly at me.
And he lunges for my neck.
21
My blood leaps in my veins, rallying to my defense before my mind can catch up, raging heat flooding my body. I fling my hands out, and the cottage shakes with the force of it.
This time, I don’t hold my magic back.
Joeb barrels toward me, hands outstretched for my throat, but I grab his bottle from the table. He cries out as it strikes his head, the blow of it knocking him over and away from me. He crashes to his hands and knees on the floor.
I advance on him, blood roaring in my ears. Now I can feel the time flowing through my hands like a physical thing. As changeable as water and strong as steel. I feel like I’m growing, my strength pressing at the walls and roof, like I could flex my fingers and blow this cottage to pieces—and Joeb with it.
Joeb recovers quickly, exploding to his feet with a feral growl. Maybe he has more magic flowing through his veins than he let on. He throws himself again at me, and my time can’t stop him. His whole weight hits me, bringing us both to the ground with a world-shaking crash. Stars burst around me when my head hits the ground. Impossible light floods my vision even though I’ve shut my eyes, followed by blinding pain.
A scream sticks in my throat. My hands find Joeb’s wrists and force them away from my neck, my legs kicking wildly at air. I grasp at the magic in my veins, scouring my whole body for it, but Joeb is too close, too heavy, triggering an animal panic in me that causes time to slip from my grasp.
“Why are you doing this?” I snarl, trying to scatter the panic with fury. “Your mother followed me, she—”
“The Alchemist’s days are over. Don’t you understand? The Sorceress will spare me,” Joeb grunts, winding his fingers tighter around my neck. The smell of alcohol on his breath mixed with the scent of incense, now acrid and poisonous, fills my nose and throat. I almost pity him. Almost.
I land an elbow to Joeb’s ribs that knocks the breath from him, and he rolls away, wheezing. I haul myself up by the table and find my grip on time again. Though he staggers to his feet and crashes toward me, I raise my hands, gathering the time around me into my palms as a seamstress might gather fabric and thread.
The smoke hangs still in the air. The flames of the candle stop moving. Joeb’s chest freezes, though his eyes still glow with life. With fear. I focus on slowing the expansion of hi
s lungs, the beating of his heart, while I let the rest of time advance—and hear nothing but silence as his jaw moves, trying to find breath where there is none.
Suddenly, I know that I could kill him, if I wanted.
Then I let time go. Joeb clattering to the ground. He lands flat on his back, clutching his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he chokes out. I almost believe him—but it doesn’t matter if he’s sorry. “She knew you’d come looking. She said she’d let me live—if—”
He grabs something from his belt, flashing silver, and throws it. The blade misses my face by inches, I feel the rush of air in its passage, and all thought of restraint flees from me. I close my eyes and let time flow freely from my hands, wrap around Joeb as he writhes on the floor. He screams.
Somewhere that feels far away from me, a door slams open, Elias yells my name. But I can’t stop, can’t even force my eyes to open. Joeb is crying out, his voice changing strangely as I drag him forward through time, aging him so rapidly his breath can’t keep up. On and on and on. It’s not in my control any longer.
Hands grip my arms, just as Joeb’s wail cuts out. Finally, I wrench open my eyes to see Elias in front of me, face painted with terror. His hands still curled around my arms, squeezing. Behind him, a crumpled form lies still on the cold stone floor.
Shock pours into me as I see how far I’ve gone—what I’ve done. Joeb is dead, I know right away: his skin is loose and gray, his eyes saucer-wide and swirling with a cloud of filthy white, a color like soiled cloth. As I stand there, my heart pounding a war drum through my veins, his head lolls to one side. Ashes trickle in a steady stream from his mouth. Thick and gray and plentiful.
Then I’m crawling away, away from the body and the overturned table. I take off running—where, I don’t know. Around me, it seems the whole world has slowed, and I’m not sure if it’s my doing.
