Before I could instruct Scalini to let the subject drop, he announced, “Your sister was always highly thought of among my folk. She never overworked any demon she invoked—” here he gave me a meaningful look—”and her pronunciation of our names was flawless. That sort of thing means a lot to us. By all unholy, I hereby vow upon the left hoof of Vadryn the Venomous that I will take a horrible vengeance upon the one who encompassed her death! Yea, upon him and all that is his, I swear it!”
And with that, he vanished in a puff of bloody smoke that reeked of sewage and rotten apples.
I did the only thing that I could do, under the circumstances: I went over to my friend Pella’s house and had a cup of tea.
“Murdered?” Pella echoed after I had recounted the whole affair. “Are you sure of that?”
“I am now,” I replied. Pella was not a witch—though she was a bit of a sorceress when it came to baking tea cakes—so I often had to explain professional matters to her. “Vadryn the Venomous is the most puissant prince of the Underrealm. When a demon takes an oath on his left hoof, its validity is instantly reviewed by the demon lord himself. If Vadryn decides it’s just silly, he tears the oath-maker limb from limb.”
“My!” Pella was impressed. “Not too well known for his patience, is he?”
“Nor for his forbearance nor forgiveness, but they’re not demonic virtues, are they? On the other hand, if he finds that the vow in question serves his idea of justice, he grants the oath-taker full immunityfrom all other obligations until the pledge is fulfilled. The fact that Scalini was able to vanish from my sight, despite the binding spells laid on him when I first summoned him to my service, means that Vadryn approved his oath of vengeance.”
Pella laid one finger to her lower lip in thought. “Which in turn must mean that your sister was murdered. Oh, Alisande, I’m so sorry!”
“Not as sorry as I’ll be if Scalini’s not stopped. He thinks that Kopp killed her, which is bad enough, but his oath includes vengeance on Kopp and on all that is his>”
Pella’s hands flew to her face. “The children!”
I nodded. “Scalini never thinks things through. He certainly didn’t when he made that oath. Not that it matters now; he’s bound to it.”
“Um…” Pella toyed with her teacup, looking ill at ease. “Are you sure Kopp didn’t kill Magda?”
“Oh, please. He adored her.”
“But that letter he sent you, the one you showed me just now. It was so—so cold.”
I shrugged. “What if we judged every soul by how well they poured their heart’s blood out on parchment?”
“But he fled the country!”
“And his grief, I’ll wager. I’m thankful for that. Scalini abhors salt water. It comes from all that slug blood on his mother’s side of the family. He can’t touch Kopp until he returns to Ferdralli.”
“But the children! The children are still there. Won’t he—?”
“He swore to destroy the murderer and all that’s his. In that order. I’ve dealt with demons long enough to know that they set unnatural store by the letter of the law. Niko and Mira are safe enough while their father stays out of Scalini’s reach.”
“Yes, but when he does come home again…”
“Well, by that time let’s hope the real murderer’s identity has come to light.” I smiled, but there was no joy behind it. “I’ll be most grateful for a box of your tea cakes for the road, Pella, and a couple of loaves of your best bread. It’s not a long journey to Ferdralli, but it’s hungry going nonetheless.”
I made my first visit to my late sister’s house in my own guise, just to get the lay of the land. The children were overjoyed to see me, poor lambs. I found Lady Ulla to be less than welcoming, with a shiftiness inher eyes that made me suspicious. Perhaps Scalini’s melodramatic ravings weren’t so far off the mark, after all. The otherwise impoverished governess wore a gold locket around her neck. When I admired it aloud, she opened it readily and showed me the painted face of her great-niece, a lovely girl living in the same genteel poverty afflicting Lady Ulla and all highborn Tyrshenese refugees. Even if the governess herself had no designs on a newly single Kopp, could I swear she did not covet him and his wealth for her pretty kinswoman? The lady would bear watching, but I was not in a position to do it effectively if I remained under that roof as a human houseguest.
A cat, on the other hand…
As soon as I left Magda’s house, I ducked down an alleyway, shucked my clothing, and assumed a cat’s shape and seeming. I took care to dirty and draggle my white coat by rolling around in the muck of the alleyway before showing myself to anyone within, the better to elicit pity. I even called up a short cloudburst so that when I climbed the ivy vines outside and scraped my claws against the window of my niece Mira’s room, she would have no choice but to take me in. It worked like a charm.
It was the last thing about the job that worked well at all.
I had been nosing around the house for the better part of five months, turning up nothing but Joram’s hostility. A cat may prowl where she will, so I made it my purpose as often as possible to slip into Kopp’s office, Magda’s library, Lady Ulla’s chamber, and any other room of the great house that might contain written records of a revealing nature. I could have saved my breath to cool my porridge. Kopp’s records were all business, Magda’s journals spoke only of domestic joys, and Lady Ulla had apparently devoted her free time to the writing of a wench-and-wizard romance. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t proof of murder, either.
Time was running out. One morning, as I sat on the doorsill, I caught the scent of sewage and rotten apples tainting the briny tang of the Ferdralli harbor air. Scalini was lurking nearby. Demons have an uncanny way of knowing when their prey is nigh. Kopp’s ship must have been due to dock any day, and once it did—
Once it did, Scalini would slay him and then turn his attention to Niko and Mira.
I had failed in my self-appointed task to discover the true identity of Magda’s killer, but I refused to fail in protecting what was left of her family. That very night, with Scalini’s reek still strong in my nostrils, I padded up the stairs to the children’s room and leaped onto each of their beds in turn, purring loudly in their ears and kneading furiously at their sleeping bodies with claws fully extended. They awoke grumbling, but they woke.
“Snowball?” Mira sat up, rubbing her eyes. She was eight, just two years older than her brother, but already I could see that she’d favor Magda when she was full grown. “What is it, puss?”
I mewed insistently and raced to the door, then back to the foot of her bed, then to the door once more. Short of standing up on my hind legs and announcing, “This way and hurry!” I couldn’t have done anything more to demonstrate what I needed them to do.
The children exchanged a puzzled look, but they followed me. I scampered down the steps, bringing them to the kitchen. At the far end of that capacious chamber stood the entrance to the wine cellar. It would provide me with the best possible place to use my arts to conceal the children or, if it came to that, to defend them. I planned to lay a shape-change spell on the pair of them down there. Better a live wine cask than a dead dog, or something like that.
Of course the wine cellar door was locked, so without thinking I used a minor spell to cause it to unlatch and swing back on its hinges. That was a mistake: the children were not expecting their beloved stray to work magic. Niko whimpered and clung to Mira, who gasped and goggled at me.
“Children, come with me,” I said. “You must. Your lives depend on it.” The pair of them continued to regard me in trepidation. A witch’s children knew enough to fear the presence of unknown magic.
Mira was the first to recover herself. “Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you? Keep away from my little brother, I’m warning you!” She shook off Niko’s grasp and thrust her hands out at me. I saw the first faint tinge of magic illuminating her fingertips. She was all bravery and bluff, Magda’s girl: she didn’t c
ommand enough magic to hold off a mouse, yet she stood ready to face demons.
“Mira, it’s me, your Aunt Alisande,” I said. I would have cast off my disguise, but that would leave me standing before her naked as an egg.
On hearing my name, Niko stopped crying. He squatted down and brought his nose up close to mine. “Prove it,” he said.
“I’m talking to you,” I replied. “I’m a cat and I’m talking to you. Isn’t that proof enough?”
“Maybe.” He sounded doubtful. “But all shape-shifters can talk, and Lady Ulla says there’s lots of things out there that can shape-shift. She says some of them are all right, like witches, but some you better not trust, ‘cause they’re up to no good, like—like demons and werewolves and some wizards when they get all—all—I forget. Mira, what did Lady Ulla say about some wizards?”
“They get power-mad,” my little niece replied. Her hands dropped to her sides, the twinkle of magic at her fingertips went out. Something wasn’t right; her boldness had vanished. Niko had gotten over his initial fear of me (even if he was insisting that I produce proof of my identity; he’d make a great law-speaker someday), but Mira was shaking, and I didn’t much care for the glassy look of apprehension in her eyes.
“Mira?” I said gently, taking a step toward her. “Mira, love, what’s the matter?”
“Power-mad,” she repeated to the air. “They thought that because they knew how to do some tricks, there wasn’t anything they couldn’t do. Lady Ulla said that was bad. Worse than bad; that it was evil of them. That only terrible things could come of—of overreaching yourself, of trying to be more than who you were, of—of forgetting your proper place.”
“Yes, I’m sure that someone like Lady Ulla would be rather insistent that people remember their proper places, as long as hers stayed on top of the heap,” I said dryly. “She can’t help saying stupid things like that, darling: she’s an aristocrat.”
“She said that people who tried to get—to get above themselves were proud and that pride is always punished.” Mira was taking two steps away from every one I took toward her. It lasted until she backed herself into Joram’s big worktable in the middle of the kitchen floor. “She said that pride—pride would out, that the guilty would suffer, soon or late, that they might think it was over and their secret was safe, the price was paid, but when they thought they’d bought safety—”
“Hogtwaddle!”
The kitchen resounded with the thunderous echo of steel strikingwood. The three of us jumped halfway out of our skins. My eyes flashed sparks, and I spat out a kindling spell that caused all the oil lamps to flare into life.
There, by the butcher block in the corner, stood Joram. He’d struck the thick beechwood tabletop a mighty blow with a cleaver the size of an eagle’s wing. “Hogtwaddle!” he roared again, striding forward. “Hogtwaddle and catpiss!” Before I could react, he scooped little Mira up in one arm and cradled her to his hairy chest like a babe.
“I thought we’d settled your mind on that, m’ladylove,” he said to her. His voice crooned sweetness, and my niece buried her face against his shoulder, gulping back dry sobs. “There, there, my nestling, you mustn’t hold fast to blame. She’d never have wanted that. It was an accident, was all.”
“An… accident?” I echoed, leaping up onto the butcher block, the better to see my niece and her ferocious guardian. My guts felt cold. “What’s all this talk of accidents and blame?”
“Aye, an accident!” Joram rounded on me, shaking the cleaver a finger’s span from my whiskers. My gift of speech had not flummoxed him for an instant; he knew me for who I was, and I don’t think he liked me any better than when he’d believed I was an ordinary cat. “Care to pretend you never had one? Or did you come to the witch’s trade when you were already old and full of wisdom, eh?”
“If you’re speaking of my craft,” I said coolly, “then you know that my sister and I were both nine when we were first tested and admitted to the study of—oh!” A terrible thought touched me.
We were tested. We were brought before the local Gather and examined closely to determine whether we had what was needful for the making of a good witch. We had the brains, but it took more than brains to become one of the Knowing Ones. It took courage and patience and empathy, and above all, it took self-awareness. You had to know yourself: how much ambition you really had; how far you were willing to drive yourself, and for what cause; how much or how little pain, despair, and outright terror you could swallow and suppress if holding it in check meant the difference between a spell that you could harness or a spell that escaped your control and—
“What was it?” I asked Joram. “What kind of spell?” I tried to meet Mira’s eyes, but she kept her face hidden. I wanted to let her know thatit was all right—or as all right as such a thing could ever be—that accidents did happen, even world-shattering ones.
Even accidents that kill someone you love.
“It wasn’t her fault,” Joram said, still my niece’s staunch defender. “That Lady Ulla, she ought to have her tongue tore out for her, the kind of notions she put into this poor infant’s head. All her fine, high tales of witch-queens, spell-castin’ girls done up in armor usin’ sword and staff to win kingdoms!” He sighed and gazed at Mira’s sleek, dark head. “How was she to know the fool was just romancin’? Mira loves her. She believes in her. Between those mad tales and Lady Ulla’s harpin’ on all she lost when her kin was forced to flee Tyrshen, the child thought to make her a gift of something that might win her back the family holdings.”
What was the one thing strong enough to win back a kingdom where wizards battled one another with demon armies?
Another demon. A demon so great, so powerful, so exalted in the hierarchy of the Underrealm that he could clear the battlefield of lesser fiends with one casual sweep of his hoof.
His left hoof.
I erupted from my disguise without a second thought, too blinded by red rage to care about my nakedness. “Ulla, you idiot!” I shrieked loud enough to wake the dead.
“Hush, you rude creature.” Lady Ulla stood in the kitchen doorway, her scrawny frame wrapped in a thin cotton night-robe, her hair done up in curling rags. “I hear you. The entire neighborhood hears you. What is the meaning of this untoward uproar?”
I couldn’t put my fury into words. Instead, I lunged for the old harpy, my fingers curved like cat’s claws, ready to tear that sour face clean off the front of her head. And I would have done it, too, if Joram hadn’t set Mira down and hooked his meaty arm across my waist, knocking the wind out of me as he reeled me in.
“There’ll be none of that in my kitchen?” he instructed us.
“Bitch!” I shrilled at the governess. “Brainless bitch, what were you thinking of, filling my poor nieces head with nonsense?”
Lady Ulla sniffed disdainfully, very much upon her dignity. “Stories are not nonsense if you’re dealing with sensible people,” she informedme. “I took great care to teach these precious children the difference between tales and truth.”
“If that’s so, then why did Mira decide to use magic to give you back your ancestral lands?” I countered.
“What?” Lady Ulla laid one bony hand to her equally bony breast. “I never heard the like!”
“Don’t play games with me, Ulla. I know what happened: Mira called up a demon to serve your selfish ends—the demon lord Vadryn the Venomous, no less!—only she didn’t have the knowledge, the power, or the endurance to lay strong enough bondspells on him once he appeared. She was helpless against him, trapped, sure to die at his hands. The only question was how slowly he’d destroy her, how much he’d enjoy doing it. Magda must have heard the noise he made, must have come running down here to see what was wrong. She threw down all her craft as a fire wall between her daughter and the demon lord, shielding Mira and banishing Vadryn at the same time. Only there wasn’t enough shielding magic left to save herself. That’s what happened, that’s how Magda died, and it’s all your fault!”
Almost,said a voice like a thousand chirring locusts. It seeped from the walls and the floors and the ceiling; it oozed up out of the darkness beyond the wine cellar door and echoed inside my head. Vadryn the Venomous, grand demon lord of the Underrealm, stepped out of shadow and smiled.
Hail, Alisande,he said, inclining his horned head toward me with awful grace. As your sister, as great a fool. She perished for her foolishness over that brat of hers. So shall you all. His eyes, bright with blue flames, surveyed the five of us, and his tongue, which was itself a serpent, passed hissing over his upper lip.
It is true that the child summoned me and then lacked the skill to master me, he went on. But she did not do so at that hag’s bidding.
“Young man, that remark was uncalled-for,” Lady Ulla said huffily. “When you speak of me, I will thank you to keep a civil snake in your head!”
“You don’t mean she decided to do it on her own?” I couldn’t believe that in a million years.
Children are creatures that dwell even more outside of human law than demons,Vadryn said. They are born to nose about, to explore, to experiment, to dabble. Even when you tell them not to touch a harmful thing, half may heed you, half will ignore your words, and the other half will regard your ban as an open invitation to embrace what you’ve forbidden.
“Lovely,” Lady Ulla muttered. “There goes this week’s mathematics lesson, shot to the Underrealm.”
“Are you telling us that Mira raised you because she was… experimenting?” I asked.
The fiend-king nodded. She watched her mother at her craft and wanted to be like her. A shame that the girl did not have the woman’s talent for clear pronunciation. She’d heard her mother complaining of the summer heat and was trying to perform a spell to make snowfall out of season.
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