Caine, Rachel-Short Stories

by Rachel Caine

The blond one -- Silence -- signaled for the wench again, and mimed eating. She nodded, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, and hurried away to cut them pieces of the roasting lamb. Tatya's stomach rumbled at the thought of fresh, hot meat, rich with spices. She'd had nothing but old bread and thin soup for the better part of a week.

  "They call you Witchkiller," Silk said. "Is there truth to it?"

  Tatya Witchkiller sipped her wine and cocked a single eyebrow. "Have I killed a witch? Aye. More than one. You need not worry -- unless, of course, you be witches."

  Those same, unsettling smiles. "Mistress," Silk said politely, "that, too, is part of the tale."

  She nodded without speaking. Silk opened his mouth to begin, but was halted by his blond friend, who seized his arm and shook it gently. Tatya watched in fascination as Silence's long, pale fingers danced in complicated, mesmerizing patterns. Almost she could understand... almost ...

  Tatya blinked and stood, tipping the bench over with a loud thump while her hand found the hilt of her sword. "What spell is this?" she barked, and showed three cold inches of steel in outright threat. "Speak!"

  Silk flung out a hand, alarmed, and said, "He cannot! He speaks with his hands. It is no spell, only a language learned by those who have no voice. A language! It was taught to us at the great university in Padua."

  Tatya frowned. The serving wench, undeterred, delivered a platter of thick-sliced roast lamb, redolent with rosemary, in the center of the trestle table. "Not magic," she said. "You're certain of this."

  Silence spread his eloquent hands, still smiling.

  After a black second, Tatya righted the bench she'd overturned and grudgingly took her seat again. "Continue," she ordered, and speared a slab of meat upon which to gnaw.

  "In the mountains above this town lives a witch," Silk said. "No ordinary spell-caster, Lady Witchkiller; no simple mumbler of spells such as you might have faced before. He is rich in the currency of death."

  "I have no use for poetry," she mumbled around the first delicious mouthful, grease running down her chin. "I deal in odds and swords."

  "Then I will make myself plain." Silk's dark eyes took on an unholy glow -- passion and hatred, she recognized the look well. "Know you of the tale of a succubus, who draws forth a man's seed by night in dreams?" She nodded for him to continue, still chewing. "A succubus can then turn incubus, take male form and deliver the stolen seed into another, unwilling vessel."

  "A succubus is a demon, not a witch."

  "Witches use demons for their own purposes," he said. "And witches can neither quicken a woman, if male, nor bear their own children, if female."

  Old news, tales long since spread. She nodded for him to continue.

  "The child of an incubus grows quickly within the vessel the witch chooses for it. There are certain rituals the witch completes, but before the child can be born, he performs his cruelest ritual of all: he buries the mother alive, still swollen with child."

  Tatya stopped eating, frowned again, and washed down a mouthful of meat with muddy wine. "Why should he go to such trouble to simply do murder?"

  "Not murder," Silk said. "Sacrifice. For every fifty women who go into cold graves, one child is born living, though the mother perishes. Such children are valuable to witches, as they contain the power of death passed to them from their unfortunate birth."

  She said nothing. Her lips were compressed, her eyes bright and fierce. Silk avoided the look and raised his mug to sip wine. He wore gloves even in the heat of the tavern, she saw. All of his skin, save his face, was covered. He continued, "This particular witch has through the years created two such children in this manner. His ... pets, you might say. But those dogs have slipped his leash."

  "Have they." She surveyed them through half-closed eyes, leaning forward with elbows on the table. "Yet perhaps they have come sniffing at the gates, whining for their lost master."

  Silence's fingers, which had been relaxed and elegant, tightened on the edge of the table until they looked bone-white. All of Silk's charm and good humor drained away. Ahhh, there, she marked them now for honest men. Honest in their hatred, at least.

  "Say that again," Silk whispered, "and there will be blood."

  "It strikes me that there will be blood whatever I say," Tatya shrugged. "Do you not hear the voices outside?"

  He did not understand for a moment, and then his gaze slid away from her, fast, and she heard the creak of the outer door and another harsh howl of wind, with harsher mens’ voices shouting above it. More travelers, but no honest ones. She had a sense for such things. Silk's expression didn't alter, but she became aware of the small things in him — the muscles of his arms tensing, the seemingly casual way he moved his hand to be close to his sword, which was lying in a pile with a thick leather belt on the bench beside him.

  "Perhaps we should settle our matters some other time," he said. "It appears there will be trouble."

  Tatya turned her head when she heard a loud crash, and a frightened yelp. Four drowned rats in the doorway, as miserable as might be expected, of much poorer status than either of the two boys across her table, or even Tatya herself — ragged clothes, patched leather, no mail. Only one of them had a sword, and it was of Caldish workmanship far too fine for the scarecrow carrying it.

  One of them asserted his rights by kicking over a bench and an inoffensive old man sitting on it, spitting insults. The others laughed.

  The innkeep hopped to his duties with the fervor of fear. He hustled a sturdy, dark-haired girl out of the corner and loaded her with wine and stew and sent her in the direction of Tatya's table. Trying, Tatya thought, to get the wench out of reach and put her between three armed guests, as if said armed guests had any obligation to protect her.

  Any road, the girl never arrived. One of the four newcomers — the one with the sword — lunged and caught her arm and swung her around. Wine and stew splattered the floor and a couple of unlucky bystanders, who quickly wiped themselves off without objection and took themselves to a safer spot.

  "Aye," Tatya shrugged. "Trouble for someone. Not for me."

  "Do you know them?" Silk asked.

  "Such men are of a type, as a single louse is of lice. I don't need to know them."

  Silence bent forward, catching her eye, and then Silk's in turn. His fingers moved. She needed no help to understand his meaning. "No," she said. "It's not my business. Let the man fight his own battles, if he can. She's his daughter, not mine."

  "I see," Silk said. "I wonder just how much it takes to move you."

  The girl was screaming. Her father stood, whey-faced and shaking, and around the tavern no one else had moved. All this, Tatya noted with no more than a tactical interest. "Move me? Gold, friend. Little else."

  Silence rapped his knuckles sharply on the table, frowned, and stood in a swirl of thick gray robes. Silk grabbed his arm and tugged, sharply. "No," he said. "This is not the place for either of us to be foolish, and you know why." Silence shook him off, face hard and jaw set, but hesitated. He reached into a fold of his robes, withdrew a leather purse, and flung it to the table in front of Tatya.

  It landed with a heavy metal thump. She eyed it curiously, but did not move to take it. Silence reached over, opened the bag, and spilled gold out in a thick river before her.

  Across the room, the girl's shrieking rose to a frantic pitch. So did the rough sawing laughter.

  "It's your coin," Tatya said, and stood up. She drew her sword in the same motion, and the musical chime of metal sliding free sounded loud even over the scuffle.

  "Then give us our money's worth," Silk shrugged.

  She bared her teeth and went to work.

  Two of them were sharing the girl, one groping her exposed breasts, the other with hands up her skirts. The others were waiting their turn, laughing and spitting on the helpless innkeep. They continued to laugh as Tatya walked toward them. All ugly, all made faceless by the eroding forces of poverty, malnutrition and malice. She cared nothing for the g
irl, nothing at all; women made their own way in the world, or the world had its way with them. She had long ceased to feel any pity, and as for justice, it was a word to fools.

  But revenge, ah, revenge was breath and life and blood, wasn't it?

  She needed a starting point. Her gaze fixed on one of the laughing men, a scrawny, ill-kept specimen with stringy, filthy hair and a hillman's beard. He swiped hair back from his eyes to give her a lewd assessment.

  His eyes were gray, a light and piercing gray, and the instant she saw them her world turned red. No words, no warnings, no quarter. She attacked without delay, but not that man, no, the one beside him, the stupid-looking brown-haired slug. Her first victim was taken by shock. She simply took a final step and plunged her sword straight through his guts, yanked it free in a dark spray, then drove an elbow into the next man's throat that crunched bones with a dry crackle. He went down gagging, eyes bulging, and she gave him one fast brutal kick to the chin, then ripped him open from neck to waist in one slash. His guts boiled out, slick and red and foul, and he began screaming in a high, breathless whisper.

  That left two. She killed the first with a slice across the throat and a lunge to the heart, then whirled and took the gray-eyed man's first cut on the turned blade of her sword. The steel sang and trembled in desire for the fight, and she saw the stupid malice in the man turn to fear.

  His responding slash was a clumsy cut at her right side, nearly laughable, had she not been consumed by a red, flickering fury that allowed for no such possibility. She parried with a sharp move of her forearm, tossed his blade far out of line, and slammed her steel home in his chest with such violence it went in to the hilt, shattering bone as it sliced through his body and emerged bloody-streaked and dripping from his back. He sagged, mouth open, eyes wide. She grabbed his filthy jerkin as his knees folded and he fell dying, and followed him down, straddling him. She crouched atop him, staring intently, waiting.

  Pale, wide gray eyes. Tatya watched them flicker with terror, saw herself reflected in them. Watched them go blank and the dark pupils expand to consume the gray. She came back to herself with a shock when it was done. Not him. Not the right eyes pair of gray eyes at all. She had wasted her fury, and not for the first time.

  She stood up and wiped her steel on a marginally cleaner corner of his filthy clothing. She was breathing hard, bathed in a light, sweet sweat, and there was a kind of wild euphoria in her that she knew would take time to pass.

  The inn was completely silent. She looked up and saw that Silk and Silence were still sitting where she'd left them. The girl had taken shelter in her father's shadow, but peered around him to stare at Tatya with huge blue eyes. Terror burned in them. Terror, and wonder.

  Tatya met the innkeep's stare. "I'll take them out."

  He nodded convulsively. She grabbed the gray-eyed one by his booted feet, and dragged him out the door through mud and rain, all the way to what smelled like a midden heap. She went back for the other three, one by one. Their miserable possessions and clothing were of no use to her, but someone in this wretched village would gladly rob them in the night. When she was finished she was soaking wet again, boots clotted with mud, and the fight's magical elixirs chased out of her skin by the chill. She went back into the stifling warmth of the inn and sank back on her bench with a guarded sigh of relief. The innkeep's wench was already scrubbing at the bloody streaks near the door. The life of a woman, Tatya thought in weary disgust. Serve men. Endure them when necessary. Clean up their mess when they're gone. It was a matter of contempt to her that so many chose to accept it.

  The proprietor brought them more wine, stew, and an entire loaf of fresh-baked bread, probably meant for his own table. He did not look at Tatya at all. When he was gone, she took a deep drink of wine that she no longer craved, and found Silk was studying her.

  "You have something to say?" she demanded. He drank a thick mouthful of stew, chewed tough mutton, swallowed.

  "Subtly done," he said. "Now they're more afraid of you than they are of anyone else."

  Silence smiled at her and made an open-handed gesture.

  "He says thank you," Silk shrugged. "No need to offer thanks, brother, you already paid her for her troubles."

  Like a whore. Tatya felt the returning hot tingle of fury, and let it slip into her answering fierce smile. Silk found it prudent to focus on his mug of ale.

  "Continue your story," she said, and stuffed her mouth with the soft, gritty bread.

  Silk finished his stew in four huge mouthfuls and attacked the thick bread crust that served as bowl. "Story's finished."

  She pointed her dagger at him, its tip still slimed with grease. "Not quite. If you want to employ me, you'll tell me why you can't climb the mountain and deal with this witchmaster yourselves."

  This time, Silk did not so much smile at her as bare his teeth in a snarl. "Perhaps we don't wish to risk our own lives. Isn't that why you put yourself out for hire?"

  It was deliberate provocation, again, and she ignored it. "Why do you wear the gloves, Silk?"

  "I'm prone to chills."

  "You tell me a tale of two children born in the witchgrave, each with power over death. Tell me, Silk, what is your power? What taint do you bear?"

  He was silent for a time, his eyes gone dark and lifeless. The remains of the food he had attacked with such relish grew cold between them. Abruptly, he said, "The midwife who drew me from the witchgrave died shrieking from the touch of my skin. My master, thus warned, never touched me himself. Others who did either went gloved and hooded, if he wished them to live, or came to me without warnings if he wished to test the limits of my -- venom. As he did regularly, to assure himself it was something that would not pass with the years, or grow less lethal."

  "Your touch kills."

  "A single fingertip on bare skin," he said.

  She turned to Silence. "For you, it must be either breath or voice."

  Silence's fingers flashed. "Voice," Silk translated. "He can't speak even so much as a whisper without destroying all who hear it."

  Two children, grown to manhood, who had been created by the witch for his own purposes. Assassins, yes, most definitely. Cold and flint-hard, for all their smiles and beauty, and yet wounded, too. Tatya thought of her own childhood, rough and lonely, but with at least one person's love and warmth to ease it. How cold might she now be if she had been born poisoned, and so robbed of any such kindnesses?

  "Why not kill him yourselves, then?" she asked. "Seems a waste of gold to hire me, if you're so good at the art of death."

  "Spells. Our father -- " Silk spat the word. " -- is many things, but a fool he is not. He has protected himself all his life from us, knowing how bitter our hatred is for him. We have many times tried to bring about his downfall, but he is well guarded against our particular ... talents. And one of us was always hostage for the other. We are all we have, lady. One acts, the other was punished, and the witch was ever more brutal in his torments. Even now, we cannot be sure we're beyond his reach. We can no longer risk direct opposition, but we know he must be stopped."

  "Why now?" she asked, and sopped up the last of the gravy with a crust of bread. The trembling exaltation left by the fight was well and truly gone, leaving her burned ash-gray within. She'd need to sleep soon. "Why not just leave him behind?"

  Silk and Silence regarded her for a long moment -- two pairs of eyes, different in color, alike in their flat, strange appraisal. Silence's fingers moved, but Silk did not glance toward them. "Would you do that?" he asked. "Walk away and leave him like a knife pointed at your back?"

  She knew full well that she wouldn't, but she let her shoulders raise and lower indifferently just the same. Her reasons were unimportant. Theirs could get her killed. "I might," she lied. "But in any case, you have another reason."

  The two young men regarded each other in the unspoken way of siblings. Silence's eyebrows rose. Silk sighed. "Very well," he said. "Our father -- the witch -- having lost his two
prized weapons, is determined to create himself a still greater one. A true heir to his legacy. I told you that one child like us will be born in the witchgrave for every fifty women buried there." Tatya nodded impatiently. "There is a legend -- no one knows whether or not it is true -- that a greater ritual using the witchgrave could bring about a child with power over life, not death. A child who could create life, could even grant it to that which never lived. How would you fight a statue, my dear warrior lady? Or a living sword? Or an army of the dead raised against you? All this, such a child might do."

  And a child the witch could raise as his own, teach his spells and conjures, twist into any shape. "You said it was a legend."

  "It is said to have been done, once. Our master aims to do it again. His -- legacy. And we think he is close. Very close. More than a hundred women and girls have vanished from this district in the past year."

  "You said one child was born in fifty."

  "For our ritual," he said. "For this, it could be hundreds. Or thousands. No one knows. He is simply willing to continue to kill until he succeeds."

  Tatya felt a slow, fierce fire building in her guts. The two boys sitting across from her, with their cold beauty and colder eyes. They were masters of killing, and yet they feared the birth of this child. Of course. With such an heir at his disposal, the witch might no longer need these two alive.

  Silence rapped the table again, drawing their attention. His gesture and expression needed no translation from his brother. Well?

  "I shall think on it," she said, and shoved her bench back to stand. "For now, I need sleep."

  The boys thought she was a fool, she supposed, but that was all to the best; Tatya knew at least that they had not lied to her in any particular that mattered. Still, she was not overconfident of her odds of living through the day; not one witch in this, but three at least. For all the boys protestations, they were witches, clearly, and the most dangerous sort: witches she had no choice but to trust. For now.

  She was waiting downstairs in the early darkness, lit only by the low-burning fire in the hearth, when her two young employers slipped down to join her.