Remnant: Warwitch Book 1

by Teresa Rook

  “You,” the man snarls. He reaches for Ennis's throat, his brown fingers closing around Ennis’s neck. Ennis is too distraught to fight back, so I wedge myself between them and shove the newcomer away.

  “Leave him alone! He's hurting, too.”

  The snarl slowly turns on me. “And who the hell are you?”

  “Darga. From Barnab Farms. I came to ask your mother for—”

  He waves me off and tries to step around me. I step with him. He orders me out of his way, and I stand firm.

  And then Ennis, again, comes to his senses.

  “Brother,” he says, and though he has to fight to get the words out, they come. “Something terrible has happened.”

  “You’re no brother of mine.” A vein in the man’s forehead pulses madly. “Nirokean scum. I always said this would happen.” He turns to address the gathering crowd, arms spread wide. “Didn't I try to warn us?”

  Some people cheer and raise their fists, but most just stare, shell-shocked. A few openly glare at him, arms crossed tightly over their chests.

  “We brought this stain into our family,” he says. “Into our home, into our tribe. And now, proud Chirals, your Wolf is dead because of him.”

  The crowd splits: some clamor for Ennis to pay, but many watch the speaker with unconcealed disdain. Ennis steps forward as well, and all eyes are on him as he speaks. “Chirals,” he says, pausing to take a steadying breath. “Friends. Neighbors. Family. I am so, so sorry. Our Wolf is… She's… I couldn't get to her in time. Tragedy has claimed our mother and your Wolf.”

  “You don't get to use that word,” the other man spits out. Ennis has stepped out of my protection, and I don't understand their politics well enough to judge how badly I would mess things up by interfering again. I step back so they can settle this however they need to.

  But before the man can launch himself at Ennis again, another figure steps from the crowd. He's older and weathered, and far more muscled than the other two. He, too, has the Wolf's curls, her same green eyes. “Dyren,” he says, and the shorter man turns to him.

  “Riksher.” He's working to cool his temper now, to appear rational. “Mother is dead. I know you don't want to hear this, but Ennis is at fault.”

  Ennis works his jaw but says nothing. He seems to trust Riksher to be on his side. Ennis may be the adopted brother, but it’s clear Dyren is the outsider.

  “Don't, Dyren. This isn't the time to be laying blame. Let me—” His next words are mangled by the sight of the Wolf. His lips part in shock, and I see a private grief written across his face. His eye bulge and his throat bobs, swallowing air. He looks so much like her.

  He stands and turns back to his brothers, back to address the crowd. His face is carefully blank, a force of reason against a tide of panic. “Today, we have suffered great loss,” he says, and though his voice is even, no more words are forthcoming. The crowd waits for him to continue, but I suspect he can’t, not without a crack in his careful composure.

  “Loss,” Dyren sneers. “Thievery. Riksher, admit it. Ennis wanted to stop the assault on Niroek, so he killed our mother.”

  “Stop it,” Ennis says. “I loved her as much as you did.”

  “Dyren. Please.” Riksher works hard to keep his calm. I sense that this mountain of a man is on the precipice of a breakdown. “Listen to yourself. How would Ennis even manage this?”

  Dyren says something under his breath, and Riksher orders him to speak up. So he says it again, louder. “The Nirokean witches.”

  I snap to attention.

  “They witched the castle to fall. Admit it, Ennis. That's the only way this could have happened. You smuggled them in and told them where to hit. You've been against us all along.”

  “You think I hired witches to bury Iskielle alive,” Ennis says flatly.

  “It's true, isn't it?”

  They stare each other down, both with fists closed tightly at their sides. Dyren’s eyes are wide and wild, and Ennis’s are heavily lidded. Hurt. Disbelieving.

  “It wasn't witches,” I say.

  Ennis cringes at my voice. The other two turn their heads to me mechanically. Dyren wears rage, contempt, and defensiveness. Riksher looks at me as though I hold the significance of a tumbleweed. But I hold fast. “I don't know what happened here today, and I'm sorry for your loss. But I can promise you it wasn't witches.”

  Riksher straightens to look at me head-on. But it's Dyren who speaks. “Darla, is it? And how—”

  “Darga.”

  His pause drags out. “And how can you know it wasn't witches?”

  Ennis watches me now with open curiosity, his head tilted and eyebrows drawn to the centre of his forehead. Riksher is unreadable, the same rational mask he’s worn since turning away from Iskielle’s body. His lips are a perfectly flat line, his eyelids smooth and steady. I have to clear my throat before answering. “There were no runes.”

  Riksher's eyes widen, just a titch. I savor having surprised him. I get the feeling not much does.

  “Runes,” he repeats. I nod.

  “Riksher?” Dyren asks. “What's she talking about?”

  “Witch runes,” he answers without taking his eyes off me. “It’s how they make things move.”

  “I've never seen anything like that.”

  “You can't. People can't.” He tilts his head. “Tell me what the runes look like.”

  My heart thumps tighter in my chest. I'm beginning to feel trapped, a mouse backed into a corner. I shouldn't have said anything. This is what Mhyra warned me about.

  Should I lie? Say I was making it up? But then nothing will be fixed. Dyren will still argue it was witches, and he'll blame it on his adopted brother.

  “Darga?” Riksher prompts.

  What do I care if the witches take the blame for this? I owe them nothing after what they did at Barnab. Our situation is as much on the witch woman as it is on the Chirals.

  And yet, part of me harbours a fondness for what witches used to mean, for the tech lying dormant in our fields. For the runes that only Abadiah and I can see.

  “Light,” I say. “Shimmers of light. They look like live things, shifting into the surface of whatever they're written into. I can't use them,” I add hurriedly. “I don't even know how they work. Just that they come from witches, and witches can't do anything without them.” I shudder at the memory of being buried under those boxes. “They're what give them their power, I think. And there were none inside, so witches can't have done this.” I look to Ennis for reassurance, and he smiles weakly.

  Then Dyren explodes. “It was you!” he bellows. I back away but he grabs my hair, knotting it around his fist and dragging me down. I shriek in pain, then clamp my lips shut. It would be so easy to swipe my leg out and kick his feet from under him. But with his brothers here, plus our audience—half of whom saw me wandering around town and probably thought I was madder then Old Man Wells—better to let myself be rescued, which I'm sure Ennis will step up to do. Let them think I'm weak.

  Dyren knees me in the face, and I hear my nose crunch before I feel it. Then Ennis is dragging him off me, so Dyren turns his attack on him. Riksher gets between them, and Dyren doesn't dare hit his older brother, so it's over. Blood runs over my lips and drips off my chin. When it's dried, it will leave rivulets where it carried away the thick dirt on my skin.

  “Dyren,” Riksher growls. “Ennis. Inside.”

  A moment of awkwardness as everyone looks back at the ruined building. Riksher rolls his eyes and flexes his jaw. “Fine. Follow me.”

  “And her?” Dyren asks, jutting his chin to where I kneel with a hand to my nose.

  “Leave her,” Riksher says.

  “But she—”

  “LEAVE HER.”

  Dyren takes a step back and throws me a dirty look before bowing his head in deference. Riksher leads his brothers away through the gawking crowd. Ennis looks back at me and holds up a hand. Five, it says. Back in five.

  When Dyren looks back at
me, I shiver. He's not cowed. He is a predator, leaving me in a slow-death snare.

  Once the brothers are out of sight, it's me against the rest of the Chirals. At least sixty of them have crowded into the courtyard, and I'm sure more are craning their necks from outside the wall. That must be why Riksher left me here. He knows these people won't let me go anywhere.

  A murmur starts from the back of the crowd, something I can't quite hear. It ripples forward, more and more lips curling with it, and by the time it makes it up to me, it's a chant.

  “Witch! Witch! Witch!”

  The force of their collective rage tips me backward. I try to crab walk away from them, but I'm up against the debris and can't go anywhere from here. Dyren I could handle. Riksher, maybe. But an entire grieving tribe? There's no way.

  They trap me here, but don’t touch me. I don't know how much time passes. My nose scabs up eventually. I let myself settle on the ground and put my head in my hands.

  eight

  “Get up,” says an urgent voice. I jolt into consciousness, my eyes snapping open and my skin burning with the cold of the night. “Quick. Hey. Hey, wake up. Come on. Can you stand?”

  I'm baffled, and then afraid, to find that I can't. My mind is sharp, reeling, but my legs are wooden beneath me. I try to put weight on them and they just give out.

  “I can't stand,” I gurgle, the muscles in my throat fighting me, too. “Where am I?”

  “Prison.”

  I reach a shaky hand out in the darkness to touch the stone wall beside me, slick with condensation. The packed dirt under my feet reminds me of the storehouse.

  “That was our compromise. Bought us time.” Ennis swears under his breath as he tries and fails to hook my arm over his shoulder. “Dyren must have slipped you something while you slept.”

  “Wait. I'm confused.”

  Ennis sighs and takes my limp hands in his. He looks me straight in the face and speaks quickly. “Dyren wants you executed. Riksher and I talked him down to holding you until we figure out what happened. But you're not safe here. Dyren doesn't usually keep his word.” I think of his cold calm and I shiver. “When we came back for you, you’d fallen asleep. Dyren must have given you something to keep you like that for a while.” He drops my hand in demonstration. I manage to steady it just before it would hit the ground. “Riksher and I are getting you out. Come on.”

  I feel bad, just a little, for the way he stares earnestly into my eyes. My numb fingers rest in his hands. He seems good. I should warn him there's no chance of us falling in love.

  But after I'm out. I can be that selfish.

  He practically drags me from my cell. I make a little sound of shock when I see a body on the ground, a Chiral guard slumped against the wall.

  Ennis grunts. “He's not dead.”

  “You did that?” I didn’t take him for a fighter. He doesn’t have the stamina for it, if the afternoon’s events are any indication. It doesn’t take much for him to lose his way.

  We pass another guard, and another. Everyone's knocked out, and Ennis helps me limp past them.

  “Sleeping powder.”

  I think about this for a moment, then laugh. “Cow frond?”

  “Yeah.”

  While extremely potent, that isn’t the only thing cow frond is known for. When ground up, it’s notorious for carrying great distances in the air. “Dyren didn’t drug me. You did.”

  Ennis takes a moment to answer. “Oh. That makes sense.”

  “No matter,” I say. “I just want out of here.”

  Outside, there’s barely any light to go by. There is noise in the distance, what sounds like the beginnings of a riot, but the path ahead of us is clear. We hurry down it, Ennis in the lead, me struggling to keep my legs moving forward in a straight line. I stumble many times, and Ennis never complains about having to help me up.

  The night has started long and it will only get longer. I want to ask Ennis where we’re going, but I’m afraid to break this silence. It doesn’t feel safe, exactly, but it does feel paused. Like nothing we do right now counts in the real world. Am I still asleep?

  I am not, as my clumsy body makes me aware. It’s hard to see anything around us. The sparse street lamps I saw the previous night have been snuffed out, and darkness plays around us. It makes me want to laugh and throw my head back, tongue sticking up to the stars. There’s something maniacal to me tonight. But I keep my wits and I stumble where Ennis leads, through alleyways and between broken fences. Slowly, the fog dissipates from my mind. I trust this man a whole lot more than I should.

  Because I have little choice, I allow him to decide where I go. It’s a bit brighter here, as some of the houses have left candles burning in their windows. Perhaps the homes closer to the prison were abandoned, or maybe their habitants simply can’t afford spectacle and late nights. This city has far more diverse districts than I anticipated.

  I think of the moon and look up to search for it, but I see nothing. No light, a good night for an escape. I’m lucky.

  We sneak through the streets, and my strength comes back to me limb by limb. I’m still shaky when the little girl sees us, but the surprise doesn’t send me sprawling.

  She stands open-mouthed in a doorless entryway, candle in one hand, the other hanging at her side. Her little nightgown, the hem coming loose, is a dull pink in the tiny flame’s light. I wonder what she sees when she looks at us: a wolfson carrying a beggar girl through the night.

  “Momma,” she says quietly. I hold up my hands as though to catch her, shush, shush, shush, no need for that. “Momma!”

  A scraping from further back in the house. Someone bigger is up. My mind is cloudier than I thought, because if it weren’t for Ennis, I’d still be standing there in front of that girl when her momma arrived, and then I’d be back in that cell, or who knows. Maybe I’d be dead.

  But Ennis drags me out of sight, down a crooked alley that gets narrower the further we go. Just as I become convinced he’s wedged us into a dead end, the night opens before us and we burst out.

  Into a square filled with harsh torchlight and angry, gray-faced people, every one of whom turns at our arrival.

  They pin me with their eyes, black under thick browbones lit from above with torchlight. I know from the twist of their mouths they are not happy to see us. Or maybe they are. There’s rage, but there’s also anticipation. They see a chance to get something they desperately want.

  “Chirals,” Ennis says as they circle in front of us. He holds his hands out to them but we keep our backs to the wall. “What is this?”

  “Hello, brother,” says a certain curly-haired rat, stepping into the torchlight. He looks meaner now, sharper. He may be the shortest of the three brothers, but he’s also the most unnerving. His sneer could slice us into pieces.

  “Dyren.” Ennis’s shoulders slump. “Let us pass.”

  Dyren draws a knife from his belt in a long, slow movement. The sound of metal coming unsheathed vibrates in the still night air, folds amidst the cackling of the torches. “I didn’t think you’d break her out tonight. Wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

  Ennis adopts a stoic mask. “What are you doing with these people?”

  “These people are frightened. Something needs to be done to protect them.” Brief, angry jeers. “Somebody has to take action. To show the Nirokeans that we will not be made small. We will not be pushed around and we will not disappear.” He jabs his knife in my direction. “That they can’t send their witches to bury our Wolf and shake our city into rubble.”

  “I’m not a witch,” I say again, though I know it will do no good. My words are met with jeers, and a smirking man darts closer, threateningly near. They all look the same tonight, wounded and angry. In search of someone to blame.

  “She dug through the wreckage with me,” Ennis says. “She helped us find…to find the Wolf.” He says this as though it will pull a string somewhere inside of Dyren, but it doesn’t.

  “After she k
illed her. Nice cover, little witch girl.”

  Little makes me grind my teeth, but I know better this time than to speak up. Again, let them think I’m weak.

  Another man darts forward, and this one isn’t feigning. He lashes out with his torch as though to set me on fire. I don’t realize it until the flame is almost to me, nearly singeing my hair. A dark arm shoots between us and grabs the torch. Ennis wrestles it from the man while the rest of the crowd looks on. Once Ennis has it, he holds it high.

  The he drops it backwards through a window behind us.

  Instantly, flames.

  Dyren’s face goes slack, then wickedly satisfied. The crowd shrieks and tries to pull at us, but it’s halved, because this fire absolutely must be stopped before it spreads to the entire dry city. Salis can disappear in a matter of minutes. Everything is flammable and there’s so very, very little water.

  Two men and a woman come for us at once, and I grab Ennis by the collar of his shirt and haul him out of the way. I hiss at him to find us a way out of here as I block the woman’s fist and knock away a wooden post that was meant for my skull. Thanks to the lingering drugs in my system, the last assailant lands his blow, a punch to my kidney. I flex before he hits, and I think it’ll be no worse than a bit of a bruise. But they don’t back off, and more keep coming, so now it’s my turn to wrench away a torch. I brandish it in front of me like a club, pivoting to point it at anyone who gets too close. “Back!” I snarl. “Get back.”

  But they don’t, because there are more of them than there are of us. I take a blow to my arm before striking my assailant with the torch. The woman’s hair goes up in flames. I smell burning flesh and it makes my stomach churn, but I keep its contents down and my torch up. Ennis yells, and I whirl around to pound his attacker with my fiery club. I almost expect it to be Dyren, come in for the killing blow on the brother he hates. But it’s just another Chiral, a crony, while Dyren has disappeared into the mob, an invisible face amidst a whole sea of them. The real dirt of violence never graces his fists. He only fights for show.

  I feel like a grain of sand swept up in the roiling sea. They are numerous and I am small, and I’m good, but I’m not good enough.