Crow Heart (The Witch Ways Book 4)

by Helen Slavin

  34

  A Chance Encounter

  It had been an intense few days, and Charlie was feeling it. She was glad of an opportunity to head to the brewery on the first of her consultancy days. It would be a relief to step away from Havoc and think about hops and delivery schedules.

  She had patrolled the Wood, on watch for a returning Nuala, and despite there being no sign of her, Charlie was reminded of a phrase her grandmother had used about hunted foxes. She had “gone to earth”.

  Charlie had been up at Day’s Ride, picking up the shreds of Nuala’s trail, and they led in odd directions, turned in on themselves, doubled back and trodden over. Charlie could not find the way out and was doubly anxious for not having told either of her sisters the structure of her latest patrols. She was wrong to follow Nuala alone, but she felt drawn, compelled even. Where had Nuala Whitemain gone?

  Charlie was so focused on this question that she didn’t see Michael Chance until it was too late. It was a car park, and not full by any means, but Charlie was hemmed in by her own car and that of Ivan Herald. Michael Chance blocked the escape route, standing before her, his car keys clicking in his hand.

  “You win,” he said in a voice laced with anger.

  “I win?” Charlie let all the tiredness seep from her and be replaced with a chilly stoniness. “Win what? I don’t know what you’re on about.”

  His face snarled and his voice picked up the mood. “Yes. You do.” His grin was unpleasant. “Played it just… right.” He snapped his fingers.

  “Is there a point being made here? ’Cause I’m not getting it.” Charlie’s voice could have been chiselled. Her eyes, far from avoiding his gaze, met it and noted that his eyeballs were a bit bloodshot.

  “The point is, you knew exactly what game you were playing at.” His snarl deepened into something more dangerous. The everyday, Woodcastle part of herself felt uneasy, borderline afraid. Michael loomed tall, took a step closer. She could smell the heat from the engine of her car fuse with the whisky that was sweating out of his pores. “You know what you did.” He was threatening.

  “Oh, so I sold the brewery?” The Havoc part of her was not playing this game. It was breaking all rules. Her voice scratched at the paintwork and at the snarl on Michael Chance’s face. It wavered. Just enough. He said nothing. “That was what I did, is it? That’s what happened here? I sold up the brewery and did not tell my friend and chief brewer that it was happening. I…” the pronoun punched out of her “…did that.” She had missed out question marks and did not blink.

  Michael Chance took another step towards her. “Don’t come it. You know exactly how this went.” Cornered, he proved mean.

  Charlie recalled a day, about a hundred years ago now, when, under the influence of Mrs Fyfe’s slow poison, Michael Chance had taken his chance and kissed her. It had been a turning point, she saw that.

  “You. Know. Exactly.” He jabbed the keys at her, the point of one touching her sweatshirt. The bitterness breathed out of him, clear as something tainting the brewing wort. She kept his eyes locked with hers. Honeyed sugar brown, those eyes had once seemed. Bitter brown now, like spent coffee grounds.

  “We might have had a chance together. It isn’t my fault you chose not to take it.” Charlie would not be bullied. Her words cut into him.

  “A chance?” he looked crushed. “A chance at what? An opportunity for you to use me… like you used that other poor bastard, Aron Thorne. Someone should warn Herald what he’s getting for his money.” Michael was cocky and cruel in his ire.

  Charlie felt as if a curtain had been swished aside to reveal someone pitiful. She understood with terrible certainty that they had never had a chance, that he would never reach out, not to her, not to anyone. Sorrow distilled inside her like the bitterest whisky.

  “Won’t be you, because you are a coward.” Charlie stepped forward.

  “Excuse me?” Michael leaned down, menacing. He smelt of slept-in clothes. “Excuse me? Someone ought to teach you a lesson.” He took one more step too close.

  Charlie’s Strength reared upwards. The air between them flexed and bent, and Michael Chance staggered backwards, off guard and off balance. Charlie stepped forward into the gap.

  “Goodbye,” she said, moving past him. She did not look back.

  35

  Keeper Will Come with the Red Wrangle

  As all good hunters, Thinne had waited, careful to cloak his presence where possible, keeping to the edges of Leap Woods and trying a back route to the cottage on Red Hat Lane. He could see where a Keeper had come and cracked Nuala’s boundary and doubted it was safe to linger. In other times, he would have cut his losses and left her. She was too dangerous; but now, in the harsh light of his wager, he did not have that luxury. He needed her tithe to save his own skin.

  The allotment incident had shown him that she was up to something. He could not fathom what it was. She was a fool to attempt pinning the red-haired girl — bone magic would only cry out to Havoc. That night, he had been so close. The cats had been good cover, until she scented him out at the last possible moment.

  The Gamekeepers had been swift to pick up the trails. He must act quickly. He had no intention of allowing the Gamekeepers’ task to rob him of what was owed. That had happened once already with Hettie Way on the Knightstone Bridge.

  He had been skulking at the edge of Leap Woods when the chance was offered. The maze rattled the air and Thinne scented her — the cats she had used for her bone magic left a pungent trail. This was his chance. Far from having to hunt Nuala himself, he saw where the Gamekeeper flushed her towards him. Through the trees. His.

  That was the moment. He pulled her to him with a hand over her mouth, vanished her from the Gamekeeper’s sight, before he felt the sting of the Red Wrangle. He gasped, but there was no time. He flexed his magic, and in a heartbeat they were out on the bridleway. She struggled, her bones grinding in his fingers, but, Red Wrangle or no, he was not letting go.

  He threw her at the banking by the edge of the ditch, her arm twisting in his grip as he pulled up the sleeve, and Nuala tried to wrench it away.

  “No no no no.” Her voice was an incantation of fear. The Red Wrangle was barbed if he touched it, and he half marvelled at the sight. He’d heard of the stuff, the thread of legend, the kind of thing your grandma would terrify you with. “Keeper’ll come with the Red Wrangle.” How had the young Gamekeeper done this just now? She was still in the maze. Nuala had outrun her, and yet somehow…

  “How?” Thinne jagged Nuala towards him, his grip relentless. His brain ticked and whined with the new knowledge.

  “When? How?” He glanced back to the valley, the house. But a thought struck him with a sudden blow: it was not the new Gamekeeper, but the old who had wrangled Nuala. “You let her do this? How?” he snarled. “You let this happen to avoid your debt? Hmm? You thought that now you are a poor bargain, I would cast you off?” He jerked her about like a weasel with a chick. “You planned this?” He rattled the arm that was wrangled. She was silent as a stone, her face white as her hair. “Did you think me stupid?” he hissed, his spittle flecking her face.

  “I hid it well enough.” There was a glint in her eye, one he recognised. He stared at her, the clockwork of his mind ticking slowly backwards. Tock.

  “The bridge. At Halloween. After the… She made you pay for the father and son…” He watched her face and understood. “No. Before that. You were wrangled already…” realisation dawned “…and that was the reason you offered me the boy and his father… to repay your debt that way.” It was not a question.

  “It was Hettie Way’s fault,” Nuala growled. “She did this and then…” Nuala stared him down. “There was no going back. I would have paid the debt. I intended to pay. I gave them to you, only Hettie Way stopped it.”

  Thinne did not let his grip relax. It was, he knew, like holding a snake. He thought of her apprenticeship to him, so many years ago, and how it was the worst bargain he had ever
made. She had always lied, always thieved, always outrun him. He saw that she would never honour the debt. Even Red Wrangled, she was searching for the way out.

  At that moment, Thinne was afraid. The Red Wrangle drained her power; he could sense it as he stood over her, feel the energy of it working against her, warding him off. She was useless, and yet she was a loose cannon, charged and loaded with who knew what. Her face was beginning to show its true age. She struggled against him. He must salvage something from this. Someone might buy her for the Wrangle. It could be salvaged easily enough from a corpse.

  “I’m owed.”

  “I can honour it.” She was confident. “The girl. In the maze. She has power, put there from beyond Havoc,” Nuala said. “I was trying to take it for myself.” She was earnest, begging. “We could share.”

  Thinne laughed aloud. “You’ve never shared anything in your life.”

  “Then take it. Take it. I will help,” Nuala said. Thinne looked into her eyes and saw a desperation he had never before witnessed. “Write off the debt. Take it. Take what she holds, and write off my debt.”

  Thinne was wary of returning to Nuala’s cottage and any secret hoard of power she might have stashed there. As they made their way down the bridleway to town, he considered all Nuala’s options, and each one of them involved her killing him. He was heartened as they approached the hedge. Its ragged state bore witness to the trouble she was in. Worse was to come as she attempted to turn in at the gate and was shoved back. She gave a strangled cry as she stumbled back in Thinne’s arms. He looked ahead of them.

  The Gamekeepers had not simply broken the boundary. This time, they had staked and netted the place. The ban of it pushed at him also, daring him to disobey. Nuala did not crumble; you had to credit her with that. There was nowhere for her to go, and yet she still held tight to her fury and spite.

  “This.” The word hissed from her. “This seals it.” Everything about her seethed.

  Thinne checked his thoughts. Hettie Way had won, even after death. Everything turned against Nuala. Her own efforts to steal the power were compounding the curse of the Red Wrangle. She was weak. Thinne wondered how he could turn this to his advantage. If he could hold his nerve, he might not have to sell the Wrangle. He could keep the twist of it in his pocket. What a man he would be then.

  Nuala muttered and spat curses. He saw them, fizzled black shreds that fell from her, useless, and it gave him courage. He must save her from the Gamekeepers. He must get her out through Havoc. If he could just get them to Day’s Ride, they could be away.

  The Red Wrangle was his trump card. She could not take the power from the girl, but he could. He would increase his strength. Another alternative exploded in his head. What if he made her his familiar? Never mind apprentice. He was beginning to see that the situation smiled upon him.

  “Stop your wailing and come this way.” He took her wrist, the one unwrangled, and half-dragged, half-wrestled her along the path. He turned onto Weaver Lane, striding, Nuala stumbling. At the far end by Flowerpot Cottage, he stepped into a small track through to Leap Woods, barely noticeable. He tugged Nuala behind him.

  The trees ahead darkened, the path narrowed as the hedges closed in. Nettles and brambles tangled his feet. He turned on his heel, pushing and shoving Nuala ahead of him, muttering to herself. Was she closing the paths? Was he trapped by her? The sounds she made were mad and nonsense, and she laughed, bitter and bubbling. It riled him; he kicked at her and she lost her footing, her laugh giving way to a shocked gasp.

  He dragged her up the bridleway. Her feet kicked and stumbled, and the ground seemed steeper, stonier. Thinne felt a cold dread as he looked about, noted that they were barely half a mile from the edge of town. He stepped forward and the hawthorns closed over them, sealed their progress. He had feared this all his life. Havoc was enclosing him, sealing his paths. If he stepped further, he would be lost forever, twisting through thickets.

  Beneath the cage of thorns and branches, Thinne whipped Nuala towards him, her arm creaking at elbow and shoulder. He leaned into her face.

  “What did you do?” He shook her. She was wild-eyed, not in charge of herself, a state he had never seen before and wished never to see again.

  “Everything. Everything,” she muttered and cursed. “Everything for nothing. Nothing for everything.”

  He shook her. Her teeth snapped together. She looked feral, and at last he understood.

  “You never intended to honour the debt.” His voice was thin as the wind. “All your scheming… and still she thwarted you.” He was shaking her, careless of whether he broke every bone in her body. “Havoc is sealing us out. Why? The Red Wrangle is only part of it. Isn’t it? Isn’t it? What did you do?”

  “You mean what did we do?” Nuala began to laugh, a low sound deep inside.

  Thinne’s thoughts were a cannonball, hurtling. “That night… on the bridge at Knightstone.”

  She had promised him two lives in exchange for her own. He recalled the storm she had asked him for. The car on the bridge. Lightning slashed like a sword, sending it skidding off the edge. But no, Hettie Way had intervened, had called up Old Magic, had begged a boon and stopped Thinne from taking what he was owed.

  His mind bolted as he asked himself, at last, whose husband was that? The father of whose child? Who was the mother? In his mind, Havoc rattled its branches. Hettie’s granddaughter’s husband. Hettie’s great grandchild. That was the reason why Hettie begged a boon for the father and his child. Thinne recalled with piercing clarity how Nuala had done nothing to help him. She had not lifted one finger to thwart Hettie. He had thought she was afraid, but he understood, she was already restrained by the Wrangle.

  It was revenge. It was vengeance. He was less than bait in the terrible web of it. The truth shouted out to him. “You were wrangled even then.” Why did he only see this now? “What else did you do? After the Knightstone Bridge. What did you do?” Nuala laughed, a high endless cackle.

  “What did you do to Hettie Way?” He shook her, her body juddering back and forth.

  “Pity an old woman… alone in a wood.” She glittered with darkness, wild and vast as the sky.

  It was as if she’d struck him. Thinne gasped and let her go. Without skipping a breath, she wrenched his wrist towards her, snapping his thumb. He struggled to react as she drew the energy from it in a wild rush. He struggled hard, against Havoc, against the Wrangle, against his terrible apprentice. With all his effort, he swung out with his other arm but did not see the broken branch in her hand until it jarred against his forearm, bough and bone breaking.

  The breath knocked out of him, and he fell. He smelt roots and fungus, in the edges the fresh cool water of Pike Lake, as she stood over him. Pain radiated out from his broken arm, and she breathed it into her. She unsheathed his own knife, the blade catching moonlight as it sheared downwards.

  “I. Pin. You.” She whispered in his ear.

  Thinne heard his femur crack.

  36

  A Narrow Path

  With Anna patrolling town on special watch for Mimosa and on lookout for Roz at Villiers House, Emz took her circuit of Leap Woods very seriously. Her plan was to avoid the main byways and instead focus on the edges and tracks less trodden, those picked out by fox and badger. She was part way along Wisheart Ridge before she realised she was once again borrowing her speed from the deer she had healed back in September. It was her tired and tense quads and the stuttering beat of her heart that halted her. It was a shock to have used her Strength without even thinking about it. She felt pleasure in it, but the physical pain reminded her of a need to watch out. She was not, actually, a deer and had pushed herself too far.

  Catching her breath, she climbed the stile at the Ginnel, a thin valley that wove Leap into Havoc on the western edge. From here, she could see a long way into Havoc, across to Crow Houses and, in a small clearing, Mrs Massey’s cottage. It was a rear view, and the old place looked forlorn in its winter bareness.
Everywhere looked quiet but felt wrong.

  The sensation was like a tide reaching towards her, and she jumped off the stile and began to run into Havoc. She did not have to wonder where she was going. The drag of this wave tugged her towards the bridleway.

  Anna had returned from her patrol with no sign of Nuala. The sight of Cordwainer cats at Mimosa rattled her nerves as if they were a red flag, warning. More reassuring, though, was the sight of the whitewash bramble twisted and twined not just into the window, she now saw, but all the way up and over the building, making a crow’s nest of the chimney. The sight of Velvet Joe, chieftain of the Cordwainer cats, taking up his post as sentinel on the church wall eased her mind a little, and his deep growl was like a greeting. As she walked back to Hartfield, her thoughts drifted to the contents of the fridge and what could be rustled up for supper.

  She was on the path, passing close to the walled garden, when the hairs on her neck prickled. It was more than that; it was pins and needles being stabbed into her, and she did not pause as she altered course, picking her way through the skeletons of last summer’s rosebay willowherb to the rickety back gate of the garden.

  She was wary as she stepped into the threshold. The beds were a tangle of last year’s stalks and stems. The hothouse at the top end was a jungle of tomato plants, husked by a hot summer and a cold winter. Tall umbrella fronds of fennel waved as if in warning, and the pins and needles intensified as Anna walked on the outer path. A crunch of gravel behind her. She spun and was cannoned into by Nuala Whitemain. The two staggered backwards, Anna leaning into the momentum to right herself as, in the blink of an eye, Nuala’s hand grasped Anna’s forearm, her finger bones grinding, pressing, so that Anna’s bone creaked. And as it did so, Nuala spat the words.