The Instruments of Control

by Schaefer, Craig

  “I wasn’t the original captain. Name’s Marco. What’s yours?”

  “Renata.” She didn’t see any good reason to lie. Not about that, anyway.

  “And you’re a witch.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Hope you’re telling the truth,” Marco rumbled. “See, we had us an old man, a fortuneteller. He had the second sight. Kept us ahead of the thief-takers, helped us win some tough fights.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He got cute. One of his ‘predictions’ almost led us right into an ambush. He said it was a mistake. I got a low tolerance for mistakes. So I scalped him, nailed him to a tree, and left him for the wolves. That’s okay, though, because now we got you. You aren’t gonna make any mistakes, right?”

  Renata watched the purple-black sand flow through the hourglass on Marco’s desk, spinning in spirals to the time of her beating heart.

  * * *

  Hedy stumbled blind through the forest, the raucous sounds and dwindling firelight from the bandit camp receding at her back. The main road wasn’t far. All she had to do was run parallel to it, run until the sun came up or she found some sign of civilization. She was a good runner.

  The hourglass barely weighed a pound, but dragged like an anchor in her grip. She turned to throw it into the underbrush—and froze.

  I can’t.

  Dampness clung to the forest, the air laden with the smell of peat and pine in the wake of a recent rain. It didn’t take Hedy much time to find a stagnant mud puddle. The black water reflected her panicked face and the silver curve of the moon rising over her shoulder. Finding something to cut with was harder. She grabbed a small branch and snapped it over her knee, leaving one half with a serviceable jagged edge. It wasn’t a knife, but it would draw blood.

  This is going to hurt. She pushed the thought away as she got down on her knees in the mud. She slid up the sleeve of her dress, letting the familiar words of a familiar spell burble up from her throat. The magic soothed her, winding a silver leash around her heart, tying her to a greater purpose. As she poured her energy out, searching, seeking, she ripped the broken branch across her forearm.

  Her skin tore, the splintered wood leaving an ugly cut. She sucked in air through gritted teeth as blood dripped from the wound, blossoming like the petals of a black rose in the mud puddle.

  “Master,” she whispered, hoping against hope that he had heard her call.

  She pressed the hem of her skirt to the wound and squeezed her eyes shut against the stinging pain. Night birds warbled from the branches around her, but nothing else stirred in the forest.

  “Please,” she hissed.

  The water shimmered, and a face loomed out of the bloody dark. A thin man with greased-back silver hair and the bone mask of a fox.

  “Mouse? You can’t already be in Lerautia. Why are you bothering me?”

  “M-master, listen, there’s trouble—” The story spilled from her lips on a gust of pent-up breath. The fox mask bobbed ever so slightly, taking it in.

  “Good escape, well done. You’ll want to navigate parallel to the road, but close enough to the underbrush that you can slip out of sight. If you hike about eight hours west—”

  “No! You don’t understand. I can’t leave Renata behind.”

  “Of course you can,” Fox said. “She’s not one of us. She’s cattle. The entire point of traveling with cattle is so you can throw them to the wolves and slip away. What’s the problem?”

  “She saved me! She didn’t have to, but she did.”

  Fox brought up his opera-gloved hands, clapping sarcastically.

  “Good for her. She’s just fulfilled her entire purpose in life, and she should take pride in that as she dies. They exist to serve us, Mouse. That’s what cattle are for. Listen, this information the Owl wanted, this ‘L.S.’ woman, it’s more important than I originally thought. I am ordering you to get to Lerautia and start your hunt. Immediately.”

  Hedy pursed her lips and glared at the reflection.

  “No.”

  The fox mask tilted to one side. “No?”

  “I’ll go to Lerautia, and I promise, I’ll work extra hard and do anything you tell me to. But first I have to help Renata. She’s my friend.”

  “Stupid little girl,” Fox spat. “You are a stupid, disobedient, willful, worthless excuse for an apprentice, and if you think I’m going to tolerate this behavior—”

  “And I’ll accept whatever punishment I have coming and I’m truly very sorry, but I have to go now,” Hedy said quickly, slapping her palm against the puddle to break the image into a burst of rippling light. The sands in the hourglass were running low, too low, and she still had a spell to cast. It was a simple one, one of the first and only real bits of magic she’d learned so far, but it would have to do.

  * * *

  “Think she’s comin’ back?” Marco said, looking at the hourglass as it wound down to the last dregs of sand. “I don’t think she’s comin’ back.”

  I don’t either, Renata thought, her heart sinking.

  The bandit chief sat on his bench, gripping a roasted mutton-leg in his massive fist. He tore off a ragged strip of meat, leaving his lips smeared with grease as he chewed.

  The tent flap whipped aside and Hedy burst through, breathless and clutching a bundle of freshly plucked herbs along with her hourglass. She slammed both against the rug as she crashed to her knees, panting.

  “Made it,” she gasped.

  “All right,” Marco mumbled through a mouthful of mutton. “Now prove you’re a witch. Let’s see it.”

  Hedy untied Renata’s bonds, her tiny fingers working at the bristly rope. As Renata rubbed her aching wrists, Hedy laid the little piles of herbs out before her.

  “Mistress,” Hedy said, looking Renata in the eye, “you should show him that hex you were teaching me the other day. It’s a very quick spell. In fact, it should take effect almost immediately.”

  Renata got the message. Heart pounding, she waved her hands over the herbs, cleared her throat, and whispered gibberish that she hoped sounded like magic words. She swayed her hands as she babbled, as if weaving an invisible tapestry.

  Hedy nudged her with her knee. She followed Hedy’s gaze, flicking from her to Marco. No, not Marco. The plate of roasted meat on his lap. Renata tried to hide her horror as a plump, glistening maggot shoved its way out of a chunk of meat. Another followed, poking out its eyeless white head and squirming free, and then another. As Marco put the mutton leg to his greedy lips, another maggot burrowed out the other side and tumbled onto the plate.

  “I curse thee!” Renata snapped, pointing her fingers at him. Now the meal was a river of rot, fistfuls of maggots squirming out of blackened and greening meat. Marco looked down, yelped, and leaped to his feet, dumping the entire tray onto the floor. He hurled the mutton leg, leaving a smear of gristle as it bounced off the wall of the tent, and he spat a half-chewed mouthful onto the rug. He turned on Renata, his face contorted in fury.

  “Well?” Renata squeezed her nails against her palms, forcing herself to breathe deeply and look him in the eye.

  “Oughta bust your skull for that.” He shook his head. “But you made your point. You’re the real thing. Welcome to the Seven-Fingered Men.”

  “You’re…hiring us?” Hedy asked.

  Marco wiped his greasy hands on his leathers and gave her a scornful laugh. “Hiring you? We own you two now. Talent like that’s gonna make us filthy rich. I can think of all kinds of things to do with my own pet witch.”

  “I can’t—I can’t always bring the magic right away,” Renata stumbled over her words. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  Marco loomed over her, lips spreading in a broken-toothed grin.

  “You’d better hope it works how I want it, when I want it. Or maybe I’ll let you watch while the boys go to work on your little helper, here. Or maybe I’ll just skin you alive, starting with your feet and working my way up, until your attit
ude improves. Like I said, I can think of all kinds of things to do with you.”

  He put his fingers to his lips and gave a shrill whistle. The one-eyed man poked his head into the tent.

  “Yeah, boss?”

  “Take these two,” Marco said, “chain ’em up for the night, and post a guard. We just struck gold.”

  Chapter Ten

  Nessa owned a small cart and a pair of sturdy dun horses, and she, Werner, and Mari set off into the west together. All of Murgardt changed with the seasons. Canopies of pumpkin-orange and blood-red leaves stretched overhead, scattering their colors across lonely dirt roads. The mornings brought a cold snap that left Werner shivering, and a faint hint of frost hung in the air. They were three days out now, and they’d barely seen a thing but trees and brambles since leaving Reinsbech.

  Werner guided the horses, mostly, swaying on the driver’s perch with the reins held loose in his calloused hand. Mari and Nessa had become fast friends, chattering away half the afternoon in their native tongue. When Werner asked if they could speak Murgardt so he could join in the conversation, Nessa shot him a look that could cut glass.

  “Sunset’s about two hours off,” Mari observed. The forest’s shadows stretched slowly into slender, grasping fingers.

  Nessa, looking over a map, shook her head. “Nowhere near civilization. Let’s find a spot to camp for the night. Early to bed, early to rise.”

  At this point, they had a routine. They found a flat patch of shaggy grass near a burbling, icy stream, and Mari walked to the bank to sling her fishing pole while Werner and Nessa cleared ground for a fire. They supplemented their supplies with local game as best they could, trying to make them last, and fish were the easiest catch.

  Could do with some black pepper, though, Werner thought as he scrounged for stray rocks to build a firebreak. A little lemon, anything really. At least the water’s fresh.

  Nessa walked alongside him, holding a small bundle of scavenged tinder in her arms. He didn’t notice her until she spoke.

  “Why does she scream at night?”

  Werner almost dropped the rocks. She looked at him, expectant.

  “She won’t tell me,” Nessa said. “Why does she scream at night?”

  “Sorry. She doesn’t mean to wake anybody up—”

  “Not what I asked. Something’s haunting her. What is it?”

  He set down his load at the campsite, casting a quick glance toward the stream to make sure Mari was out of earshot.

  “We had a job, a couple years back. Kettle Sands, pissant little village in Carcanna, not far from the Verinian border. They had a witch problem.”

  Nessa’s eyes went wide behind her round glasses. “You fought a witch? You’re bolder than I thought.”

  “Nothing like you’re thinking. It was…it was all fucked up. The ‘witch’ was just a kid. Instead of a trial, they trussed her up and roasted her alive. She never had a chance to defend herself. Mayor basically told us to take our money, shut up, and get out of town by sunset.”

  “She feels…that guilty about it?”

  Werner made a small circle of stones, uprooting stray clumps of grass to clear a safe place for the fire.

  “Every night she sees that dead little girl, and it tears a tiny piece out of her.”

  Nessa’s gaze went cold as she watched him work.

  “Why don’t you?”

  He looked up and blinked. “Pardon?”

  “See the dead girl. It doesn’t sound like you feel guilty at all.”

  Werner chuckled, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “I was a soldier for a long time, and I’ve crossed steel with a lot of people. Some deserved to go down, some didn’t. After a while, you stop thinking about it. Only way to stay sane. Besides, Mari wasn’t always, ah, the person she is today.”

  “I’ve gotten that impression, talking to her,” Nessa said. “I’ve also gotten the impression that maybe she doesn’t quite understand how different she is. Almost like someone…changed her.”

  Werner shrugged. He didn’t make eye contact.

  “I took her under my wing. Tried to set her on a good path. Trying to keep her safe, that’s all. I just want her to be safe and happy.”

  “And that’s why you’re afraid of what’s waiting at the end of this journey.”

  Now he looked at her.

  “If we find the last knights of the Autumn Lance,” she said, musing aloud, “Mari’s dream will come into hard contact with reality, perhaps shattering it. And shattering her. Or, here’s a possibility, perhaps they’ll be everything she hoped and prayed for. And she’ll join them. Achieving her dream means leaving you behind. Which of these two possibilities is the one keeping you up at night?”

  “The first one,” Werner snapped. “Obviously.”

  “Right.” A faint smile hid at the corners of Nessa’s mouth. “Obviously.”

  Werner was quietly thankful when Nessa wandered off. Then he had time to contemplate her question, and suddenly he wanted to be distracted again.

  Mari was a fast hand with a knife, and she had two fat trout cleaned and filleted in no time. As darkness fell over the forest, the three travelers sat around a crackling fire and cooked Mari’s catch on the ends of sharpened branches.

  “I’ll put on some tea,” Werner told Mari, pushing himself to his feet and ambling toward the wagon. “Something to help you sleep.”

  Crouched at the stream’s edge and filling their kettle, he realized Nessa was beside him again. Standing at his shoulder like a ghost.

  “Making tea, hmm?”

  His brow furrowed as he stood. “That’s right.”

  “I studied history in Verinia. I also studied herbcraft. Bit of a hobby of mine.”

  “Is that so?”

  Nessa nodded. “It is. It’s amazing the little things you learn. Like the difference between elder bark and riverwood moss, or how powdered jackflower can soothe a headache. Or how certain roots have very distinctive smells.”

  She stepped closer to him. He felt her warm breath on the back of his neck as she stood on her tiptoes.

  “Like salamander root, for instance.”

  He froze.

  She walked around to stand in front of him, plucked the kettle from his hand, and unceremoniously poured it onto the grass at his feet. The icy water splashed over his boots.

  “Go back to the fire. I’ll be taking care of Mari’s evening tea from now on, I think.”

  “Nessa—”

  “Go.”

  He paced near the fire, trying not to look anxious, until Nessa returned.

  “Mari, once this warms up, I’d like you to try something. It’s a tea of my own devising, and I’m rather proud of the recipe. I think you’ll find that it eases your slumber quite well. Why don’t you put the kettle on, and I’ll get the bedrolls off the wagon?”

  As Nessa walked past, she paused beside Werner. Their eyes locked.

  “I’m just trying to—” Werner started to say. Nessa’s eyes narrowed.

  “If I ever see you slipping that filth into her food again, Imperial, I’ll tell her exactly what it is and what you’ve been doing to her.”

  “Nessa, you don’t understand—”

  “Mark my words, Werner Holst: we’re in Imperial territory now, but in a few days we’ll stand on Terrai soil. Soil her family, and mine, bled and died for. Don’t test me.”

  * * *

  Long after the fire had burned down to faint embers, Mari laid back on her lumpy bedroll and stared up at the canopy of stars. Nessa’s tea had tasted faintly of hyssop and left her with a warm, tingly sensation in her stomach that slowly spread out to her arms and legs.

  Werner snored soundly on the far side of the dying fire. She’d gotten used to the noise by now. About eight feet away, Nessa was a motionless blot of darkness.

  “Which one are you looking at?” Nessa whispered.

  Mari turned her head. She’d thought the other woman was asleep.

  “Which what?” she w
hispered back.

  “Which constellation? I see you searching for something up there.”

  “Just looking. I don’t know the constellations.”

  Nessa sat up. Mari watched as her shadow dragged her bedroll next to Mari’s. She flopped back down again and flung one arm in the air, pointing toward the moon.

  “Just east of the moon,” Nessa whispered. “You see those four stars close together, curling like a bow? That’s the Lady’s Braid.”

  “I can’t possibly remember—”

  “You can if I teach them to you one at a time. It’s a perfectly manageable task.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I enjoy teaching,” Nessa said. “But it’s not the stars keeping you awake, is it? It’s the moon.”

  Mari’s fingers traced the worn face of her brooch.

  “What are they like, Nessa?”

  “The knights of the Autumn Lance?” She thought it over. “Valorous. Just. Honorable. Compassionate. All the virtues a knight should possess.”

  Mari brought the brooch to her breast, cradling it in both hands.

  “All my life, it’s all I’ve ever wanted. To be a real knight.”

  “When we reach our final destination,” Nessa mused, “a full moon will hang in the sky. Seems a good omen.”

  “Do you think they’ll take me?”

  “It doesn’t do to speculate,” Nessa said, turning her head to stare at Mari, “but I will say…I think you have some profoundly life-changing experiences coming. Just wait until we get there.”

  “It’s not easy to be patient. I’ve waited so long, worked so hard for this, and I might be inches away from getting everything I ever wanted.”

  “I know. You’re burning with anticipation.” Nessa smiled in the dark. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get everything you have coming to you. And more. But now is the time for all good squires to sleep. We’ve many miles to cover tomorrow, and dawn always comes too soon.”

  “Sorry. It’s hard for me to fall asleep sometimes.”

  “Not tonight, it won’t be. Close your eyes. Focus on my voice.”

  Mari’s eyelids drifted shut.

  “I feel floaty,” she said.