by Karen Nilsen
"Stop it, you bitch."
"Your endearments always have left something to be desired. I don't think you've ever said you loved me, not once."
"Probably because I never have. Ours was a union of convenience." My arms began to ache, and I shifted Safire's weight.
"Hah--convenience was the furthest thing from your mind. You may have never said it, but we both know it." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "When my handmaids pushed me into the chamber that night, I was so scared I was shaking. You were writing a letter at the desk, and when you heard the door, you looked up, put down your pen, and corked the inkwell, as if I was merely part of your schedule. That comforted me, how methodical you were. You always seemed to know exactly what you were doing. We watched each other for the longest time, me trembling so hard my teeth rattled. Finally you motioned to me and said 'come hither' and I had no choice but to come. Those were the only two words you spoke that night. It was later I realized it was your way of jesting me, that ridiculous 'come hither'--your wit is so dry sometimes it evaporates before one comprehends what you've said."
"Charming story, but you've left off the end."
"What, Gaven?" She laughed. "Gaven wasn't the end--he was a small incident in the middle that you've fixated on for too long. Merius is yours, Mordric."
"No." I shook my head. "No, I don't believe you."
"I never had another man besides you."
"He seduced you . . . you yourself told me."
"Did you ever actually see us in bed together?"
"No, but that doesn't mean a damned thing. You're lying again, you viper. I know your games."
"I only played them to amuse you."
"Bitch." I lunged forward, still clutching Safire. Instantly, the cold enveloped us like a sodden cloak, and Arilea's laughter echoed through the courtyard. Safire began to struggle, whimpering. I fell back, out of the chill.
"Oh, bring her back." Arilea's voice held a petulant note. "The fun was just beginning."
"You baited me with Gaven. All you wanted was for me to lunge and bring her closer. Conniving . . ."
"I'm just trying to protect our son, Mordric."
I glanced down at Safire, pale, gasping for air, a slight weight in my arms. Then I glanced up at the doorway again. There was a shimmer there, a wavy distortion of the light that was gradually materializing into something more solid--the slender figure of a long-haired woman. Arilea. I blinked. For an instant, her hair seemed to twist like snakes, slithering down the steps. Then the snakes dwindled and vanished into the yellow reflection of candlelight from the doorway. The figure faded as well, leaving only the hint of a shadow. But I had seen enough. I took a deep breath, my arms tightening around the witch.
"Merius is a man now, Arilea. Leave him alone."
"What, like you do? You're manipulating him constantly. Now, this witch comes along, a catastrophe for him, and you sit back and twiddle your thumbs. Fool," she hissed. "She'll ruin his career, his life--is that what you want? Don't you want to protect him?"
"That's what I'm doing." I turned around and walked away from the house, away from her. A wail of rage filled the courtyard, so high-pitched the window panes rattled and almost cracked. The sound of it was like ice water down my back, and I shivered. Then, suddenly, it was gone. I shook my head, feeling groggy as if I'd just awoken from a long sleep. My arms ached from holding Safire for so long.
Selwyn and Dagmar were there, gaping at me. Dagmar held a limp scrap of linen in one hand, presumably a bandage. "Sir," Selwyn began, stepping forward.
"Yes?"
"Sir, shouldn't we . . ." he hesitated. "Maybe we should take her into the house."
"No." I walked to the end of the courtyard and stepped on to the gravel drive that led to the gatekeeper's cottage, just past the orchard.
Selwyn hurried behind me, followed by Dagmar. "Sir, she needs bandages . . . maybe . . ."
"Bring the bandages then."
"But where are you taking her?"
"To the gatekeeper."
"But the house is closer," he sputtered.
"She can't go in the house."
"Sir, surely you don't believe . . ."
I stopped him with a stare. "What I believe and don't believe is none of your affair."
He swallowed. "Yes, sir. But . . ."
"Go back to the house, Selwyn."
Selwyn stopped and just stood there, gaping as Dagmar and I continued down the track. Dagmar had had the presence of mind to grab a lantern from the stable. The weak circle of the light wavered on the gravel in front of us. After a few moments of silent walking, Dagmar cleared her throat. "Sir?"
"What?"
"My sister, what she says sometimes, about spirits . . . well, she's a little odd that way. There's really no reason to take her to the gatekeeper's cottage simply because she had a fit. She has them sometimes, and there's no rhyme or reason to them, so she'll be fine in the house, once we get her in there and she realizes there's nothing to be afraid of."
"Dagmar?"
"Yes?"
"Do you see the cuts on her arms, the marks on her neck?"
She spared a glance at Safire. "Yes."
"Where did they come from?"
"I don't know. Maybe someone in Calcors attacked her before you found her. Maybe . . ."
"She had no marks on her when I found her. And who did you think I was talking to in the courtyard a moment ago? Not to you or Selwyn surely."
"Well, to be honest, sir, I thought you were talking to yourself."
"That would make me crazy. You think I'm crazy?"
"N-no."
"Don't be so quick to assume your sister is, then."
The wind blew through the orchard, the flower-laden boughs creaking. We were almost to the cottage when Safire stirred. "Let me down, please?" she said.
I set her on her feet. She staggered forward a few steps. "Be careful," Dagmar exclaimed, grabbing for her arm. "You've lost blood."
"I know." Safire shook off her sister's hand. "Sorry," she continued, sounding cross. "It's just I feel a fool."
"Why?"
"Well, for one thing, you think I have fits for no reason, that I'm slightly off kilter."
"You heard that?"
"I heard everything."
"I'm sorry, Safire, but I just can't believe . . ."
"You don't have to believe it," Safire snapped. "I suppose you never believed Mother, either."
"Mother never screamed bloody murder and collapsed for no reason."
"That's because Mother never met up with anything like what's in that house." Safire nodded in the direction of Landers Hall. "If it would do any good, I'd tell you never to go in there again, but you won't believe me."
"There's nothing in that house . . ." Dagmar trailed off.
Safire looked at me, her eyes gleaming in the lantern light. "You know. You talked with her, saw her there at the end."
"Come on." I took her wrist.
"Get a priest," she continued as I knocked on the door of the lit cottage. "I don't know if it will do any good, but get a priest. He might be able to exorcise her."
"I don't believe in priests."
"That's an odd statement from a high courtier," Safire retorted. Dagmar cleared her throat and poked Safire in the side, but the witch ignored her warnings, continuing "Do the king and his bishops know you're a skeptic?"
"I do what is proper in chapel, no more, no less."
"So you're a hypocrite?"
At that moment, the door opened. Young Orlin, the gatekeeper, stood there, his wife hovering behind him. He was in his mid-thirties, black-haired and strong, a former fighter under Herrod. His bastard nephew, actually, though the relationship was but a whisper among the servants. "Yes, my lord?" he said.
I thrust Safire forward. "Guard this girl."
Orlin's brow furrowed. "Sir Whitten's wife?"
"That title is in dispute," Safire said.
"You have a spare bed chamber, Orlin?"
"Yes."
"Keep her there. She's of noble birth--treat her as such in the house, but do not let her roam freely without escort. She is not to leave the estate grounds."
"Understood." Orlin opened the door all the way, and I pushed Safire ahead of me into the oak-paneled sitting room. A long settle had been pulled close to the fire crackling on the stone hearth.
Orlin, his wife, and Dagmar trailed me into the room, and with five of us, it was overflowing. Safire whirled around as soon as the door slammed shut behind us, her gaze narrow.
"So I'm to be a prisoner, then," she said.
"No, my lady, prisoners live in dank cells with fleas and rats for companions."
"Prisoners are also kept against their will. What else would you call this?"
"Disputed marriage or not, you're a ward of the Landers, which means you'll do as I say. Would you rather be a ward of the Baras?"
Her eyes glittered, never leaving mine. If I believed in such things, I would have sworn she was casting a curse. "No," she said finally.
"Good. Now, Dagmar, see to her cuts."
"Could you bring a bowl of hot water and a clean rag?" Dagmar asked Orlin's wife, who scurried from the room, a quiet, nervous mouse of a woman.
Safire examined her arms. "The cuts are on the surface, mostly. I don't need bandages."
"Sit down, sister," Dagmar ordered.
Safire rolled her eyes, but she sat and bared her arms. "As if bandages could stop that hell spirit," she muttered.
"Orlin," I said. "Leave us for a moment."
He nodded and ducked through the door after his wife. "Now, listen you," I said, turning to Safire. "You're not to mention what transpired in that courtyard tonight or what happened in my study two months ago."
"But that house is dangerous. She's dangerous . . ."
"Not to anyone but you."
"You don't know that."
"Do you see any cuts on my arms? Throttle marks on my neck?"
Safire shook her head. "She may not be able to hurt you as she hurt me, but she's an angry, powerful spirit. Anyone could suffer from the slow poison of her presence. She could whisper in your ear in a quiet moment, creep into dreams at night . . ."
At that instant, Orlin's wife returned and silently deposited a steaming bowl of water and a cloth on the side table. She disappeared through the doorway as swiftly as she had entered it, leaving us alone again. Dagmar picked up the cloth and dipped it in the soapy water. She wrung it out before she turned to Safire and began to wash the cuts. The witch winced but bore the sting in silence.
"What's this prattle about dreams?" I found myself saying. "You're mad."
"Don't you dream?"
"No. It's a waste of sleep."
One corner of Safire's mouth turned up in a half smile. "Everyone dreams. Some just don't remember."
"I don't dream, either," Dagmar announced. "Now, be still. You're wiggling too much."
"You do dream--I've heard you talk in your sleep," Safire said.
"I told you to be still."
"If I had dreams, I would remember," I said, pacing over to the window. The iron chandelier in the center of room swayed, light bouncing against the dark mullions. I stared at the opaque glass. There was no outside to be seen. Yes, I had dreams of Arilea, though hell would open under my feet before I admitted it to this fool girl. They were but sleeping memories of a dead woman, nothing more than a fleeting aberrant weakness on my part. After all, we had been married fourteen years. I could hardly help but have memories of the bitch, and not all were bitter. She had been a beautiful woman. Nothing supernatural about that. But what of the times I had awakened with her rose water choking the air, her silken shifts in my bed? How could those have been dreams? I could hardly have conjured actual scent, much less real silk, from the recesses of memory only. I shook my head, pressed my palms on the window sill as I leaned my brow against the glass. The solid oak under my hands, the cold glass, seemed suddenly no more real than my memories. Spirits, hell.
I fumbled in my cloak pocket, searching for my flask. Instead I pulled out a crumpled bit of parchment. Safire's drawing, the one I had picked up from the street earlier when she had dropped her portfolio. I smoothed out the wrinkles, my fingers shaking as I swore under my breath. A simple thing really--a sketch of some dock children rolling a hoop on the wharf, being chased by a dog. Well done, detailed without losing the sense of movement or action. If she’d been born male, the witch would have made a good battlefield artist. I and my men had had a few who trailed us here and there like camp whores, artists sent by the king to record the glories of his battles. Poor bastards--most had lost their lives or been taken hostage to rot in foreign prisons. There had been no gold in the royal coffers to waste on lowborn painters' ransoms. Lowborn or not, one still had to admire their ability to capture an entire battle on a scrap of parchment.
I glanced at Safire. She and Dagmar were talking quietly as Dagmar wrapped the bandages around her arms, neither paying me any mind. She didn't look a witch, certainly. Merely a young noblewoman, fairer than most but otherwise no different. I again examined the sketch I held. For a moment, the figures seemed to be actually moving. There was the clack of the hoop over the cobbles, the yells of the children, the dog's pant as it loped across the page. Then I blinked, and all fell motionless, back to the illusion of movement rather than the movement itself. I stared at the picture, hypnotized. It was a spell.
"What are you?" I said then, still staring at the picture.
The two sisters were giggling over some silliness, and Safire was the first to look up. "What was that, sir?" she asked breathlessly, tucking a loose curl behind her ear. It was a natural female gesture, so natural that I doubted myself. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the sketch begin to move again. The parchment felt warm between my fingers, stirring like something alive.
"What are you?" I thrust the drawing at her. "A witch?"
She straightened at the sight of the drawing, the laughter dying on her lips. "Where did you get that?" she demanded sharply.
"You don't deny it . . ."
Her eyes flared. "I'm naught but a woman, sir. I simply see more clearly than most." She snatched the drawing from me.
"Safire, be careful of your bandages," Dagmar exclaimed, reaching for her sister's shoulder.
I retreated to the window, my arms clenched together as I watched Safire. "What woman draws like that?"
"A skilled one," she retorted.
"A devilishly skilled one, to make the figures in that sketch move. I even heard the sound of the hoop on the cobbles."
Her brow furrowed. "Merius said something like that about one of my sketches. He thought it was a trick of the moonlight." She glanced down at the drawing as if seeing it for the first time. "How odd."
"How odd indeed," I said icily. "The magistrate burns witches, my dear."
She gazed at me, not blinking. "I've sold many drawings, sir, and no one besides you and Merius has ever seen anything out of the ordinary about them. I'd say the witchery lies with you, not with me."
"It's not just the drawing." I found myself shaking and cursed as I began to pace. "God damn it, it's everything. My dead wife, the smell of roses, the way you seem to pluck my secret plans from the very air, even how you look at people, as if you were seeing through them . . . God damn witches, God damn Arilea, God damn you all!" I grabbed the back of a chair to steady myself, but the chair began to jerk about violently, drumming against the floorboards.
Instantly, Safire was up and across the chamber. She rested her hand on my arm, her touch cool. "Shh, it's all right."
I snatched my arm from her grasp. "How dare you touch me?"
She grabbed my other arm with both hands. "Damn witch!" I swore and raised my palm to slap her away, but then I froze, my hand in midair. A strange sensation was running up my arm from her hands, a tingling warmth that moved through the veins to my heart and then to the rest of my body. All my muscles loosened, as if I'd just
had several shots of the best whiskey, and the shaking stopped. "What the hell?" I muttered. "What in God’s good name was that?"
"Shh. It's all right." She looked up at me, her grip on my arm slackening. Her eyes were clear and bright as green glass, her voice low and soothing. I found myself staring down at her as if in a trance. What sort of pact had Merius made with the devil for this creature?
"You've cursed me," I said flatly, though the words seemed to be another's, not mine.
"No, sir. I can no more curse anyone than you can, though I wish I could sometimes."
"What was that, then? That warmth?"
"Certainly not a curse. Do you feel better?"
I nodded slowly. "I'll not send you to the stake just yet."
"Oh, Safire," Dagmar breathed. She staggered backwards against the side table, gripped it with white-knuckled fingers. "Safire, what have you done now? They're going to burn you this time for certain . . ."
Safire ignored her. "It must be well nigh impossible, to be forced to believe in something after believing in nothing for so long."
"Save the platitudes for the priests." I took a step back, crossed my arms. "They mean nothing to me."
She shrugged. "Platitude or not, it would be a shock for anyone, what you heard and saw in the courtyard tonight."
I bent down, picked up the poker, stirred the fire before I threw more kindling on the flames. Sparks shot up the chimney, and I straightened, rested my hands on the mantel. "I joined the king's guard when I was sixteen. I've killed men in every country marked on our maps, seen depravities you couldn't even begin to comprehend. I'm well accustomed to shocks."
"In other words, you think me presumptuous?" She moved to the corner of the hearth and into my field of vision.
"Yes." I glared at her. Her tangled curls burned in the firelight, and her skin had a faint shimmery sheen to it, pale as a pearl. There was something not quite human about her. "Changeling," I spat. "I should by all rights cast you out, let the magistrate burn you."
Safire lifted her chin. "You should, but you won't."
"Safire, for God's sake. Sir, please," Dagmar said. "Sir, she doesn't know what she's saying. And she's never hurt anyone. She's a little odd, but that shouldn't condemn her to . . ."
