Bloodwitch

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  “No,” I answered, “I’m fine. What time is it?”

  “Nearly sunrise, sir.”

  It had been past midnight when I had returned from the stables. I knew I should sleep more, but I needed to clear that dream from my mind first.

  I didn’t want to go outside alone at night, and the walls here were too close for me to feel comfortable in my quetzal form, so I traveled the halls absently, stretching my legs.

  Heavy strides took me toward what Jaguar called the west wing. I hoped to see a friendly face but doubted I would. I knew that vampires could be awake during the daytime, like Lady Brina when she was desperate to finish a painting, but most of them preferred to fall asleep at sunrise.

  “Vance!”

  Hearing my name spoken by one of the last voices I expected to hear caused me to whirl about. Malachi was standing in the middle of the hall, his silver hair and mostly white clothing making him stand out like a shining diamond.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded, bracing myself. Jaguar had said that Malachi was allowed to be here but that he chose not to be. He had his reasons to leave, just as I have my reasons to stay. I hadn’t expected—or wanted—to see him again.

  “Looking for you,” Malachi answered. “I tried to talk to you in your dreamscape, but other magic pushed me away.”

  Good, I thought. “Last time I saw you, you threatened to kill me. Now you’re following me. The last thing I want is you harassing me in my dreams!”

  I glanced at the guards at each end of the hallway. Their eyes were on Malachi, too, but they hadn’t jumped forward to throw him out.

  “Actually, I saved your life.”

  “Either way, I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Then you can listen,” Malachi said. “Even better, you can look. Come with me.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” I protested.

  “You don’t need to leave the building to see what I want to show you. We’re just going to the east wing—have they shown you that yet?” Malachi asked almost politely, despite the hard look in his pale eyes.

  “No.” I hadn’t even thought to wonder whether there was an east wing.

  “I think you should see it,” Malachi said. “Then we will talk.”

  He led the way. I remembered what Jaguar had said about this being a working building, and that there were some places I was not allowed to go because I would get in the way. I followed Malachi anyway, because I was curious now, and I knew Malachi couldn’t hurt me or abduct me while guards watched from every exit.

  THE GUARD AT the end of the hall glared at Malachi but did not challenge his right to be there, or to open the heavy door that stood between the north wing and the east.

  Beyond that door, the world changed.

  Gone were the frescoed walls, the plush carpets, and the elaborate candelabra. Simple tin lanterns hung at intervals, bathing the gray stone in flickering light and illuminating open archways all along the left side of the hall.

  “Take a minute. Look around,” Malachi instructed me. His voice had gone soft and flat.

  I approached one of the doorways and peered inside—then quickly looked away, because the men and women I saw there all seemed to be in the process of changing their clothes.

  “Sunrise marks the change of shifts,” Malachi explained. “They’re readying themselves to work until sunset.”

  “What kind of work?” I asked.

  Malachi shrugged. “Cooking, cleaning,” he answered vaguely. “Some of them are skilled laborers—tailors, herbalists, and the like—but mostly the morning shift is responsible for the general drudgery required to keep a manor like this functioning.”

  “It needs to be done,” I replied defensively. When I had lived at the greenhouse, I had helped maintain the grounds. There was no shame in working.

  “Look here,” he said, gesturing to one of the next rooms.

  Inside, a woman was leaning over a small, railed crib. When she saw us peering in, she pulled the infant she had been holding to her chest, then knelt.

  “Sirs,” she murmured.

  One child near her, a little girl with wide eyes, was old enough to stand and walk on her own. When she saw us, she didn’t speak a word, but huddled near the kneeling woman.

  “Go about your business,” Malachi instructed. Shooing the toddling child away, the matron stood and set the infant down in its crib.

  The woman’s coarse brown hair, which was tied back with a piece of cloth, had strands of gray in it. There were lines around her eyes and mouth, her hands had a fragile, wrinkled quality to them as she bundled the infant, and the skin at her throat bunched loosely at the black collar that marked her status. She was barely my height and looked as if she might blow away in a strong wind, but her footfalls were heavy compared to those of anyone with a bird’s hollow bones.

  She repulsed me a little. I had never seen anyone like her. Was this what humans turned into when they got older?

  “These children will grow up here,” Malachi said to me. “Slaves from cradle to coffin. That’s the expression, anyway. It would be a waste of time and land to give them coffins and bury them when a pyre is so much more efficient.”

  The small room was dim and gray, but the same runes that warmed the rest of the building glowed on the mantle. One child was sucking on a pacifier and another gripped a rattle; the broken rhythm it made as the child idly played with it was like rain.

  “Do they go hungry?” I asked Malachi. It wasn’t the question he expected, obviously. I couldn’t imagine this fragile-looking woman or these infant children struggling in the harsh outside world that both Calysta and Malachi had described. When Malachi just blinked at me owlishly, I asked the old woman, “Are you cold, or hungry?”

  She looked at me with a puzzled frown before she answered, “No, sir.”

  “What is your job here?”

  “I tend the second generations until they are four, sir.” When she saw the question still on my face, she elaborated. “I see that they are fed and kept clean, watch for illness, and teach them to mind their manners. I also speak to them, so they learn their language as well as a child of that age can.”

  “Notice she didn’t mention playing with them,” Malachi said under his breath.

  “She’s no different from the nanny who tended to me as a young child,” I replied, indignant. “Taro wasn’t always with me. I was taught to mind my manners, too.”

  “Can you really look at this and see nothing wrong with it?” Malachi demanded. “Most of these children will never see the sun. They will never play. They will never be free to decide what they want to do with their own minds, bodies, and souls. They will never be allowed to love, or …”

  His voice trailed off and his fair skin paled even more as a woman with golden hair and eyes stepped lightly down the hallway. Her simple gown was made of rich velvet, and though she wore a collar around her throat, it was made of wine-red leather.

  She stopped to speak to someone in one of the cells at the opposite end of the hall, her voice too soft to carry. When she turned to go, however, she caught sight of us.

  Her eyes widened as she looked at Malachi, and her body tensed.

  “Alasdair?” he called.

  Without reply, she turned and fled, her bare feet soundless on the stone floor.

  Malachi collapsed, as if all the strength had gone out of him at once. His back struck the wall and he closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.

  “I am not a good person, Vance,” he said. “I have spent most of my life doing whatever I needed to do to survive from one day to the next. That’s what I learned in these cells. You see, I was born here. I would have died here, too, if it hadn’t been for a man named Farrell Obsidian, who decided a six-year-old child deserved a chance to live.”

  The words brought into focus why Malachi might be putting so much effort into me. He had been “rescued,” and probably thought I deserved the same treatment. I could see the parallels; we wer
e both shapeshifters, theoretically we both had magic, and we were both born in Midnight. Malachi had been taken away when he was six and had obviously been raised by someone who had filled his head with stories of Midnight’s evil.

  “I don’t need rescuing,” I said, trying to be patient with him now that I thought I understood his point of view.

  “Yes, you do.” He drew a deep breath and straightened his back. “The vampires don’t know it yet, but they will never be able to make use of your power,” he said. “That’s what the pochteca told me in the market, and why they are willing to let Midnight keep you. That means Midnight has spent a lot of time and money on something it will not be able to get from you. I don’t know what they will do once they know, but I doubt they will keep you in conditions as comfortable as those you are used to.”

  Malachi was genuinely frightened for me. As long as he didn’t try to kidnap me again, I was determined to be kind—but firm. I challenged the logic of his statement, trying to convince him that he didn’t need to worry for me. “As old and powerful as Midnight is, do you really think they wouldn’t already know anything the pochteca could have told you?”

  “Not this.” Malachi shook his head sharply. “Most witches’ power is essentially instinctive. They have it and will use it even if they never have any formal instruction. Midnight has never had a bloodwitch, so they have every reason to believe your magic works the same way. But the pochteca say that a bloodwitch is different. There is absolutely no way for you ever to use your magic unless you are trained by a blood relative.”

  “Then maybe I won’t have magic,” I said. “I don’t need magic.”

  “A quetzal can’t survive in a cage, Vance,” Malachi reminded me. “What will you do when they decide you’re not useful enough and toss you in one of these gray cells?”

  The words made my stomach clench, but I said aloud, “I’m not human.”

  “Neither was the woman we saw a few minutes ago,” he said. “The beautiful one with golden hair. She is a hawk, and she was royalty before she came here, and now she is a slave.”

  “How?” I asked. Jaguar said that Calysta had been a criminal before Midnight gave her a second chance. I wanted Alasdair’s whole story before I jumped to conclusions about her.

  “Alasdair was sold,” Malachi answered. “Shapeshifters are born freeblood. That means Midnight isn’t allowed to pick them up and make them slaves on an idle whim. A shapeshifter can only be enslaved if he or she is sold in by their own kind … or born in, of course, as I was. The child of a slave is a slave, even if that child is a falcon, or a bloodwitch.”

  “If shapeshifters can only be sold by their own kind, then it’s Alasdair’s kind who put her here,” I argued. “You say I should blame the vampires and call them evil, but it seems like Midnight’s laws would have protected Alasdair unless other shapeshifters thought she didn’t deserve freedom. You told me before that the princess of the serpiente would like to get rid of you the same way. You lay evil at Midnight’s feet, but you’ve made it clear that the world beyond Midnight’s walls is no different.”

  “It’s … Vance, it’s complicated,” he said.

  “Jaguar says you’re allowed to be here,” I said. “If they were so evil, why would they let you speak freely?”

  “Because I’m not stupid,” Malachi retorted. “Midnight doesn’t care if I speak my mind because they know I won’t overstep the line. I will warn you, but I won’t help you out of here, because a man who steals a slave or harbors a stolen slave loses his freeblood status. He and his kin are forfeit. I won’t endanger my people that way.

  “I just came here to tell you this: I will find a way to buy you out. Once Midnight realizes they cannot use your magic, you won’t have any value beyond what they can sell you for. All you need to do is survive.”

  “I am not in danger!” I protested, the last of my patience gone. “And I’m not a slave. I keep telling you—”

  “It’s fine if you don’t believe me now,” Malachi said. “But when they give up on you, and you find yourself in a cage, and every fiber of your being says the only thing to do is to dash yourself against the bars until your body breaks, you will remember my words. Survive, and I will get you out.”

  “How noble.”

  I had been so focused on Malachi that I had completely missed the arrival of a strange man. I should have sensed him even if I hadn’t seen him; he was a vampire, and a cranky one, by the look of it. He was wearing trousers, a half-buttoned shirt, and a scowl that would have made me cringe if it had been focused on me.

  Instead, I knelt. Malachi snatched at my arm, and I had to slam an elbow into his rib cage before he would release me and let me do what I knew I was supposed to do. This wasn’t Taro or Jaguar or anyone who had given me permission to be informal.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the nanny doing the same. She reached out to the toddling child and encouraged her to kneel as well as she could. The parallel between us was, suddenly, more disquieting than anything Malachi had said to me.

  “Alasdair told you I was here?” Malachi asked the new vampire.

  “She did,” the vampire answered. “You frighten her.”

  “I frighten her,” Malachi echoed. “So she runs to you, Gabriel? You’re the one who—”

  The vampire, Gabriel, took another step forward and Malachi broke off. His hand was clenched in a trembling fist at his side, but he didn’t raise it.

  “How is your sister faring these days?” Gabriel asked. His tone was courteous, but I could hear the sharp edge it held.

  Malachi’s body rocked as if from a blow. He didn’t reply, except to turn stiffly and start toward the front of the building. He spoke not another word to me or the newcomer, who chuckled as Malachi fled.

  I had forgotten until then the conversation I had had with Malachi about his family—specifically his brother, who had died “in a cell with no windows.” One of these cells?

  It was too late to ask now.

  “And who do we have here?” Gabriel murmured as he reached down to tilt my chin up.

  “Vance Ehecatl, sir,” I answered. I bit back an explanation for my presence here. He hadn’t asked for anything but my name, and as far as I knew I hadn’t actually done anything wrong.

  “Taro’s and Jaguar’s project,” Gabriel replied, unsettlingly jovial. “Did Jeshickah’s hybrid have an entertaining story to tell?”

  I tilted my head, confused. It seemed that there were others besides Jaguar who were perfectly comfortable forgetting Mistress Jeshickah’s title, even inside these walls. Beyond that, I wasn’t sure what he was saying. “Sir?”

  “Malachi,” he said with an impatient sigh. “What did he say to you?”

  Why? I wondered. Do you want to make sure you can explain it all away?

  What had Malachi said, though? That shapeshifters could be slaves. That was something I wanted to think about, along with how I had felt when I realized that Malachi was standing tall while I knelt with the human slaves, but I didn’t want to discuss any of that with this stranger.

  “He said a lot of things,” I answered. “Most of it was nonsense.”

  Liar! It was the first time I had ever looked one of them in the face and flat-out lied. I didn’t agree with everything Malachi said, but none of it had been senseless.

  I doubted that Gabriel believed me, but he let me go anyway.

  “Stay out of the east wing,” he said as he circled back toward the south. “There’s nothing for you here.”

  I held my breath until he was gone. All around me I heard the cautious ruffling of slaves as they went about their business, freed of a vampire’s presence.

  I returned to my room and my bed, wondering if the stranger would report to Taro or Jaguar about the visit. If they brought it up, I decided, I would be honest. It would be interesting to learn more about Malachi. Had he really been born there, in one of those dim gray cells? If neither Taro nor Jaguar asked, however, I would keep the memory
to myself. I could decide what to make of it on my own.

  DETERMINED TO PROVE both my independence and my competency to myself—and too restless to do anything else—I reported to Felix around noon, well before any of the vampires were awake for the day. I had done my best to sleep but finally decided it just wasn’t to be. Refusing to let a night of poor sleep get the best of me, I threw myself into the work Felix assigned. I wasn’t weak. I wasn’t clutter. I was competent. I wasn’t strong yet, but I could grow stronger.

  At first the chores seemed menial, and I considered them nothing but a means to an end—a way to add muscle to my frame, as Jaguar had put it. I swept, then scooped ash onto patches of ice, before I was allowed near the horses. I reminded myself what Jaguar had said: even Mistress Jeshickah was willing to dirty herself with these essential tasks. Jaguar had been joking at the time—Why does Jeshickah sometimes smell like a stable?—but the words hung very seriously in my memory.

  My diligence was rewarded. After a long hour of brushing, rubbing, and talking to Dika, “acquainting myself” with the horse, as Felix put it, I was finally allowed to saddle her and taught how to mount and dismount. I tried to strike up a conversation with Felix, but his attention never wandered from his task. He was constantly in motion, one eye on me so he could draw my attention to important details or make a rapid correction and the other continually roving the stables.

  I was returning from my first loop around the corral when I heard a familiar voice. Even the bitter winter cold couldn’t pierce my excitement as Lady Brina glanced back and saw me entering the stable, riding proudly.

  She was riding sidesaddle, a style Felix had mentioned dismissively because Mistress Jeshickah did not favor it. The smart bodice and full skirts of her riding habit were what I would have expected from Lady Brina. I wouldn’t have known what to do with myself if she had shown up in breeches like Mistress Jeshickah wore!

  “Help me down,” she said to her companions as I approached and dismounted, somewhat disappointed that she wasn’t watching.

  I looked around for Lord Daryl and was grateful that he wasn’t with his sister this time; I knew I was likely to see that vampire again someday, given that I was living at the heart of Midnight, but I wasn’t looking forward to it.