She nodded slowly and then turned away, announcing, “I will be in the study if you require me.”
Could she not stand to see them this way, either?
We all watched her leave. In her absence a hush fell.
Jeshickah was so close, only in the next room. She might be able to hear anything we said, which meant I still couldn’t tell Kadee our plan or ask the questions I wanted to ask.
I said only, “Can I help in any way?”
“In a minute,” the witch answered. “Let me do this.”
He turned from us and back to the vampires, putting a hand on the blond vampire’s chest and closing his eyes. His expression was deeply thoughtful. His head tilted as if he were listening.
Something inside me broke. I went to sit next to Taro and Jaguar. I put a hand on Taro’s and discovered that his skin was clammy. He had raised me in a beautiful cage, and I still wasn’t sure if I should thank him or curse him for that. There had always been a world outside that cage—a vast world, which I had only just started to understand and wanted to explore—but it was also harsh and cold and cruel.
As cruel as what we were doing now.
The deathwitch opened his eyes and drew an odd dagger from his belt. Instead of metal, the entire knife—including the blade—was made of wood.
“It’s a tool for my kind of magic,” he explained when I looked at it quizzically. He gestured for me to come closer. Taking my hand in his, he stretched out my arm as he continued to lie about what he was doing. “I’m bleeding them so I can link my magic to theirs.”
He touched the knife to my skin and then paused, looking me in the eyes as if asking permission. I nodded; I could guess what his plan was. I bit my lip to make sure I would not cry out as he pulled the blade across my forearm and then turned it to coat both sides of the wood.
Kadee’s eyes went wide as she watched us, her expression unbelieving.
Still holding the knife in one hand, the witch put a palm over the wound on my arm. My eyes watered as searing pain shot up and down from that spot, but I managed not to make a sound. When he moved his hand at last, all evidence of the wound was gone.
When he held up the knife again, the blood had disappeared, as well.
“The blade doesn’t hold blood,” the witch said, “but it holds power. I can use it to make a link. Vance, please take this to Mistress Jeshickah. I can link with her power if she lets the blade taste her blood. The wound should be as deep as is possible without damaging her. If what I’ve heard is true and her kind can survive even a knife through the heart, then heart’s blood would be best. She will know how much she can heal.”
He held the knife out to me.
Why couldn’t he do it? Or send Kadee to do it?
I knew the blade was poisoned. I had just watched him link the magic—the disease—in my blood to it. Now he wanted me to take that disease to Jeshickah.
Traitor. Traitor. Traitor.
Yes, I was.
I found Jeshickah where she had said she would be, in her study.
“I heard,” she said as I walked in.
She held out one fair hand for the knife.
My body moved, handing the weapon to her without hesitation. I didn’t want to give her any more reason to be suspicious. Surely she could hear my pounding heart, smell my anxious sweat.
She must have attributed my distress to concern about the trainers. She wasn’t suspicious because she knew I loved them and didn’t realize that I had decided to kill what I loved.
She flipped the blade around in her fingers and touched the tip to her chest, lining the poisoned dagger up with her heart. Could she really survive that?
For the first time I wondered if Lady Brina had been infected, as well. Was she lying somewhere on the floor, perhaps next to a palette of drying paints, wondering why no one had come for her?
My heart choked me.
I didn’t say a word.
Jeshickah made a hissing sound as she drove the blade into her body. Her back arched, her eyes shut, and her jaw clenched, but she did not hesitate.
She trusted me.
This woman who was hated by so many, whom I had just killed—though she did not know it yet—trusted me enough to take a knife and pierce her own heart.
An interminable amount of time went by before she let out a breath and slowly, carefully withdrew the blade. It clattered to the floor as she slumped forward, body trembling.
“Mistress,” I said instinctively.
“Go,” she commanded. “I will recover. Take the blade back to the witch so he can heal my men.”
I leaned down to pick up the knife … the cursed, poisoned knife.
It wouldn’t be long before she realized what had happened. Jeshickah had said that vivid dreams were the first sign of infection, and they would occur as soon as she slept. Unless she let us go first, she would ensure that we would die with her.
For now I took the knife back to the deathwitch. Jeshickah followed closely. How long would we need to keep up this act?
Long enough, I thought as the deathwitch used the bloodied blade on the trainers. The work looked intricate as he cut a symbol into each trainer’s palm. I wondered if it meant anything.
“I can heal you, too,” the witch said to me when he was done.
“Heal what?”
“You’re carrying death around like a parasite,” he said. “It isn’t natural.”
“You can undo it?” Kadee asked.
The Shantel nodded, then looked up past me to add, “With your permission, Mistress.”
“What about my men?” Jeshickah asked.
“They will rest a while longer as their systems destroy the last of the curse,” the Shantel witch lied. “They may be weak for some days after they wake, and they will probably need to feed often in order to recover, but time should restore them.”
“And the humans?” I asked. “Some of the slaves are still sick. Can you heal them?”
“I can try,” the witch answered, “but if the infection is too advanced, there is probably nothing I can do.”
Kadee was less concerned with trainers and slaves. “Mistress,” she said quietly and deferentially, “would it be possible for us to see Malachi now?”
“Of course,” Jeshickah replied. “You might as well all wait with him, until I see for myself that my men are recovering.”
I resisted the urge to look at the others, too nervous about what my expression might give away. On our way back to the cells where I had left Malachi, it occurred to me that I could run. Should run. All I needed was the tiniest bit of a head start. If I could get outside …
No.
Kadee wasn’t running. Neither was the Shantel witch. And Malachi couldn’t run from where he was.
Kadee reached for my hand and squeezed it as Jeshickah unlocked the door to the cells. Then the sick stench of decay from the two corpses we had left behind rose up to greet us.
Two … or three?
Malachi sat against the far wall, his face down on his bent knees. He wasn’t moving. Was he breathing? The sound of the door shutting behind us with a thud barely registered in my thoughts as I hurried to his side.
“He isn’t dead,” the Shantel witch said as Kadee and I both knelt beside the half falcon.
“Malachi?” Kadee called, touching his cheek.
No response.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.
Kadee shook her head. “He gets this way sometimes. I’ve heard it was worse when he was younger. It’s the falcon magic in him that causes it, I think.”
“Jeshickah thought breeding a white viper with a falcon would stabilize the magic without diluting it too much, since white vipers are supposed to have power, too,” the witch explained as he knelt beside one of the two dead slaves. Joseph. “Instead she ended up with a child who barely learned to speak, prone to fits of—well, this—without any noteworthy power. She would have put him down if Farrell hadn’t offered to buy him and his mo
ther.”
I looked at Malachi, curled on the floor. He had shown me the place where he had spent his childhood, but I had dismissed his warnings. Because the children weren’t freezing, I had excused the lack of warmth in their lives. Because they had food, I had ignored the other ways, as Kadee had put it, that a person could starve.
“What are you doing?” Kadee asked. The witch had turned from us again and was reaching down to close Joseph’s eyes.
He ignored the question and, instead of answering, whispered words that lilted musically, which I seemed to feel rather than hear as they struck me. Like sunlight, or a warm breeze.
As the power faded the witch looked up. “I was trained as a deathwitch. Did you think that meant I just learned how to murder vampires? The dead cry to me. These two, they lost themselves long ago, but their savaged souls still reach out to me. They want to be heard and remembered.”
He went to the other dead slave and repeated the process. This time the aroma of baked apples arose, along with the feeling of soft wool pulled across my skin.
“Is there anything you can do to get us out of here?” I asked. I didn’t want to face Jeshickah’s wrath when she realized what we had done.
“I can do many things,” he answered. “For example, I have successfully infected the Mistress of Midnight with a plague. I bound enough of your magic into that knife that a scratch would have been enough, but we convinced her to drive the spell directly into her own heart. Come dawn she will sleep, and she will never wake.”
“Then she won’t ever know we betrayed her,” Kadee said, half hopeful, half skeptical.
“Unfortunately,” the witch answered, “there is still nothing I can do to get us out of this cell. I’ve seen my death here. Maybe another of her kind will do it after she is gone, or maybe we will starve. A locked door can kill us as surely as Jeshickah herself.” His eyes flicked to me, and he added, “Sorry. You didn’t do anything to deserve this.”
“Apparently I did,” Kadee mumbled.
“I don’t know your story,” the witch said, “but you’re Obsidian. Whether you chose to join or were forced into it, when you took that name, you traded any hope for a long and comfortable life for what you call freedom. Congratulations,” he added. “You’re free.”
“Jerk,” Kadee snapped.
“If it helps, you did change the world, hopefully for the better.”
“No,” Kadee answered. “It really doesn’t—”
The door burst open and we all turned, expecting Mistress Jeshickah. Expecting the end.
The woman who stormed in had the dark, angled features I associated with the Azteka, but I had not seen her before. Her upper arms bore the scars of many small cuts, placed in ritualistic fashion, and her hands held a short bow with an arrow already nocked as she shouldered open the cell door.
THE ARROW FLEW before any of us could move. It hissed by my cheek, the slight breeze of its passing inexplicably hot on my face.
The Shantel witch tried to dodge, but the archer was too close.
The arrow tore into the meat of his upper arm. For an instant time seemed to pause as the witch looked up at the Azteka woman in shock. Then his body jerked. Where the arrowhead had pierced his flesh, the skin sizzled.
He fell to his knees, his other hand moving toward the exposed shaft, as the magic traveled inward. Blood vessels glowed white-hot. For a moment it was beautiful, like moonlight shining in lines beneath his skin, but as that light reached his torso he let out a shriek like nothing I had ever heard.
The sound cut off, strangled, as the witch hit the ground. A cool draft flowed around and through me, drawing a shiver from my bones even before it occurred to me that we had all just been caught. It was over now.
“Alejandra.” Mistress Jeshickah’s cool, cutting voice floated toward us from the hall. “You seem to have made a mess of my witch.”
The Azteka woman set the bow down and held her hands out to her sides. Only then did she turn slowly and say, “We did not commit this crime, and we will not be blamed.”
Jeshickah looked at the dead witch and then at the Azteka intruder. “You decided slaughtering my employees would be a good defense?”
“If you attempt to imprison me for his death, you will find it difficult,” Alejandra said. “The likelihood of your being able to control me without killing me is low, the likelihood of my killing you in the process is high, and even if you did manage to enslave me, you know my story. I cannot pass on my magic. So you would benefit from hearing me out.”
Though she spoke quickly, her words were obviously carefully planned. Despite being in the heart of Midnight and having just killed a man, she was perfectly calm as Jeshickah weighed her words and then said, “Proceed.”
“When Yaretzi came to you to take care of Ehecatl, she did so because he was freeblood.” It took me a moment to remember that was my other name. “Given the innocence of his upbringing, she did not think it appropriate to let him die for his association with you. We do not kill our children for their childhood misdeeds. Ehecatl,” she said, glancing toward me without ever fully turning her back to Mistress Jeshickah, “you are still welcome to return to us, if you choose. I will take responsibility for you and ensure that you are granted every privilege your birth should afford you.”
She did not wait for me to answer before continuing to speak to Mistress Jeshickah.
“Our healer did notice foreign magic in him, but she did not know its origin. When she explained why Ehecatl would never be able to use his magic, the trainer—Jaguar—concluded that the blood dreams and weakness were results. She did not correct that mistaken assumption, but neither did she lie to any of your people, or encourage them to feed on Ehecatl, or do anything that puts us at fault. She described the poison she sensed in his blood to me when we passed on the road, before I arrived at the market and saw your missive.
“I have told you already, we do not harm children. We would not send an infant or a child to you as a weapon. And we will not be blamed and destroyed because one of your traitors from the Shantel felt it was appropriate to do otherwise.”
“How could he have—” I started to protest, and then broke off. I had spoken to this guard for the first time in the market. He had given me his cloak and stayed with me until Taro arrived. “He said …” I trailed off. He had said the visions had set him on this path and put him in my way, which was why I had not questioned how easily I found him when we needed a witch. Now I realized it had been even less of a coincidence.
Ignoring me, Jeshickah asked, “What of my men?”
“Now that the deathwitch is dead, his power will fade. Unfortunately, they should recover swiftly.”
“Do you require payment for your service?”
Alejandra flinched. “This was not a service,” she spat in reply. “If he had managed to infect you, I would have volunteered as his protector until your corpse was rotting in the ground. His incompetence is the only reason I interfered. I wish for only one boon in return for this dirty work, one that might even aid you.”
I dared not look at Kadee as the Azteka woman spoke her request softly, probably intentionally keeping it from our ears. Alejandra had not known, could not have known, that our nameless Shantel associate had managed to infect Jeshickah only minutes ago.
Now he was dead on the floor, and Alejandra had made it clear that with his death, the illness would end.
“May I ask what will happen to us?” Kadee asked. “We did not mean to bring a traitor here.”
“Accompany me as I check on my men,” Mistress Jeshickah ordered. “After I see to them, I will decide what should be done with you and your mongrel friend.”
We made a strange procession down the halls. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the few slaves we passed sink to their knees, trembling at Jeshickah’s passing. I tried to sear the image in my mind. That was what I needed to recall when I thought of this place.
We all reached Jeshickah’s room. Alejandra lingered in
the parlor, but I continued forward as if hypnotized. Kadee stayed a pace behind me but did not leave me alone. We held our breath as Jeshickah knelt beside her men.
Jaguar stirred first, his black eyes flickering open for a moment before drifting shut again. I watched tension drain from Jeshickah’s body.
“Your clan is not loyal to me,” she said to Kadee as the others began to gently rouse, as if from a deep sleep, “but you are more useful outside these walls. Take the mutt from the cells and go. Vance …” My heart stopped as she paused to consider. “Jaguar lives, so the offer for you to stay remains open. I look forward to seeing what he might make of you.”
My heart gave a little conflicted thump at that comment—a combination of terror and pride. Would I feel that way for the rest of my life?
“Thank you for the offer,” I replied, “but I think it would be better for me to leave, for now.”
Why did I add that “for now”? To be polite, or to hold on to hope?
“Let’s go,” I said to Kadee. I did not want to face Taro or Jaguar. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but if I stayed here until they woke, they could probably convince me to stay forever.
Just outside the door, though, something occurred to me. I turned back to ask, “What will happen to the Shantel?”
“That’s really not our concern,” Kadee whispered, looking at the slowly waking trainers. I could tell she would also rather be gone before they were able to focus on us, but I wanted an answer.
“You demanded blood price from the Azteka,” I said to Jeshickah. “What will happen to the Shantel?”
“He was working for Midnight,” Kadee asserted before Jeshickah could speak. “By Midnight’s law, a nation is not held responsible for the actions of those they have already exiled for betrayal.”
“It seems to me,” Jeshickah replied, “that our late guard was not exiled, but rather sent to Midnight on an errand. I will deduct his years of service from the account. I think Shantel royal blood will pay the rest.”
Bloodwitch Page 18
