Zel’s fingers curled into fists. “There are other ways.”
“We trust you. We do not trust her. However.” The lamp’s blue eyes studied her. “She is precious to you, isn’t she? My heart, acquire her silence, by what manner I leave to your choosing. If you promise us she will not speak, we will believe you. But be sure, my heart, be sure the promise is true.”
The steam wings furled more tightly, drawing all the heat from the air. The glowing face became a mask, a hard shield of gold. Then the lamp went out with a hiss, and the column of steam fell to the floor in soundless feathers of frost.
~ ~ ~
Gannet was in the bedroom sorting through her gowns. Zel stood in the doorway, watching. Gannet’s skin was chapped by tears and cold, yet she was still beautiful, sitting on a cloud of silk and lace. Her hands shook as she inspected a weakened seam. She did not look up, though Zel knew that she knew Zel was there.
“Gannet, I understand why. But you must undo what you’ve done.”
“What I have done!” It was a cry of pain, but Gannet still did not look up. Her trembling fingers found a lace collar with a raveling thread.
“Gannet, haven’t we paid each other enough?”
“Paid.” An explosion of breath, soon spent.
“I know you would have married him, but—”
“But you would never have allowed me!” Finally Gannet met her eyes. “Tell me that you would!”
“Allowed you?” Abruptly Zel, too, was shaking. “When did I ever have the allowing of you, or of anything? Of myself! Zel, play the servant. Zel, play the thief. Zel, deliver the letter to the man I want to marry. Where was the allowing in that?”
Gannet gaped. It was probably more than she’d ever heard Zel say at one time. And Zel was not done.
“For once, you said. For once you would be the one to haul us out of trouble, but there was no us, was there? From the moment you decided he was no game— But maybe there was never an us, maybe there was only ever you.”
“That isn’t true.” Gannet’s voice trembled like her hands.
“No? I nearly died, Gannet. Did you ever understand that? Did you even try to understand? They nearly killed me, and they may as well have done, their magic like a knife in my heart—” air like a sob in her throat “—and now all you can think to do is offer yourself on a platter to them, and for what? For what?”
“Money!” Lace tore in Gannet’s hands. She threw the pieces aside. “What don’t you understand? We’re in debt to our ears, we’re trapped in this city until the harbor thaws, and we have no money! What do expect to live on? Zel, they throw debtors in prison here!”
“Prison! Dear gods, do you know what they do to thieves?”
“That’s why!” Gannet leapt to her feet, gowns falling about her feet. “Of course I know what they do to thieves. Did you really imagine I would forget you?” She palmed tears off her cheeks. “I would never have abandoned you, I would never.”
“No.” Zel swallowed, but the words still came out savage and hoarse: “No, you would take me to his house. Lady Torrend’s foreign maid. What did you think, that it would be a game I could play for the rest of my life? I was wrong, I should have let you marry him. I should have helped you marry him. Then at least I would be free.”
Gannet looked away.
After a long silence, Zel took in a deep breath and said with great care, “I cannot undo what I did, and I am sorry for it. But Gannet, this madness, this blackmailing the Bodils, it will get you killed.”
Without looking up, Gannet said sullenly, “I know you’ve always thought me a fool, but I’m not so great a fool as all that. I wrote down everything you told me and gave it to a letter writer in the galleries. If I die, the letter goes to the Inquisitor.”
“My gods, you would do that to me?”
“I never mentioned you!”
“And you think they would not investigate? You think they would not question the letter writer, and you, and me?”
Gannet raised her eyes to mirror Zel’s appalled stare. “They wouldn’t.”
“Oh, Gannet, of course they would. They would have less mercy even than the Bodils. Now listen, please listen. The Bodils have held their hand this long for my sake, but they require a guarantee of your silence.”
“For your sake?”
“Yes, for my sake! Do you think they let me go because they trusted me? I wouldn’t be hanged as a thief or a conspirator, I’d be burned as a witch! Now, will you listen? You must retrieve that letter—”
“Zel,” Gannet breathed.
“Listen! You must retrieve that letter, and you must promise me—”
“It was them. They stole you from me.” Gannet suddenly blazed with rage. “They stole you from me! I would be glad to watch them burn!”
“And me with them?”
Gannet stared, hands over her mouth.
“They stole me no more than Torrend stole you. And like most thieves, they take what they value and throw away the rest. Me, they might choose to keep. You, Gannet, they will kill. You must retrieve that letter!”
Gannet slowly lowered her hands. “If they killed me, would you still go to them?”
This time it was Zel who could not answer.
“You would, wouldn’t you? Yes, thieves keep what they value. Well, you listen, then. You can have them. I wish you joy of their cold hearts and bloody hands, and they can have you, but I will have Willam, too. That is my bargain. Tell them, you tell those bitches, I will burn that letter and carry their secret in silence to my grave, but they must give me Willam Torrend.”
“Gannet.” Zel’s voice shook with tears. “Gannet, please. They could do more than kill you.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care!” Her voice soared. “I will not be left alone!”
~ ~ ~
The Bodils were having a dinner party. Zel stood across the way as sleighs drawn by bell-harnessed ponies deposited guests at their steps. The sky was still clear and it was so cold the ponies’ breath hung in a cloud the whole length of the street. Zel hesitated, thinking that she should wait, or go and come again—thinking she should not dare to be seen. But the cold cut like a flensing knife, the cold and Gannet’s words. Zel’s words. If only she had held her tongue! If only, if only, cutting more deeply even than the wind. In a pause between two sleighs she crossed the trampled snow and climbed up to the door.
“Messengers to the servants’ door,” the butler said. He was round, balding, serene. How much did he know of what happened in the Bodils’ cellar? Where did his master keep his wine?
“I am here to speak with Audey Bodil.”
“Servants’ door.” He was about to shut the door in her face when he paused. Bells could be heard singing down the street.
“I am not a servant,” Zel said quietly. “I am here to speak with Audey Bodil.”
The butler looked again, his serenity ever so slightly disturbed. Then he stepped back and swung the door wide enough for her to enter. “Come in, madam. I will see if Mistress Audey is available.”
He summoned a footman to show her to a small sitting room. The young man lit a lamp, poked at the slumbering fire, left without once looking at her face. She stood by the fireplace, indifferent to the ache of warming blood. After a while she unwrapped her scarf and took the mittens off her hands.
The door opened.
“Zel! Should it be my turn to say, ‘so soon’?”
Audey, in the flesh. She wore blue velvet that bared her shoulders and sapphires in her hair. Her smile cooled to a wary expression. She pressed the door closed without turning her back to Zel.
“You have a face like a lion. Is it my blood you want?”
Zel raised her hand to her face. “Lioness.”
“Yes.” Audey drew a careful breath. “Of course I’ve never seen one. I’ve never been south of the mountains.”
“I have only seen them dead.”
“I’m sorry.” Audey approached the fire with a hushing of skirts
. “I’d like to see one alive.”
“They would miss the sun,” Zel whispered.
Audey smiled, cupped Zel’s face in her hands. “I would miss the cold.” She dropped her hands, gestured Zel to a chair as she sat. “You spoke to your friend.”
Zel touched her cheek again, then sat and told Audey Gannet’s demands. When she was done, Audey sat for some time turning the rings on her fingers.
“Is it possible?” Zel asked. “Could you give him to her?”
Audey straightened a ring. She had beautiful hands, long-fingered and strong. “Yes,” she said, but in her voice there was a qualification.
“Will you?”
Audey lifted her gaze. “Do you wish it?”
“Yes.”
A lifted brow. “So easily?”
“Easily!”
Audey smiled briefly, returned to the study of her hands. Finally she said, “I must speak with my sisters, but I think. . . .” She stood. “I think yes.”
Zel stood as well. “When?”
“Oh, tonight, once the people are gone and our father has been put to bed. But Zel, we will not be able to do it without you. And this, too, will not be easy.”
~ ~ ~
“Are the witches free where you come from?” one of the sisters asked. Zel thought it was Masha, but they looked so much alike, in the dim cellar she wasn’t sure.
“There are no witches,” Zel said. “Where I come from, there are only priests.”
“Oh, it’s the same,” another sister said. “Everywhere it’s the same.”
Zel smiled, thinly. “Some of the priests are women.”
“It makes no difference,” Audey said. “Hide us in cellars and use us for secret gain, or try and turn us into men: neither lets us be.”
“Is that what you want?” Zel asked. “Just to be?”
“To be left alone,” a sister said.
“To be free,” another said.
“To be unafraid,” Audey whispered.
The women undressed, the Bodils to lacey shifts, Zel to linen undershirt and drawers. Masha poured oil in the hollows in the earthen floor, Liran followed with matches and Godeth with wicks. The northern women’s skin bloomed like new ivory in the light; Zel’s was rich as gold. Audey let down her hair, careless of gem-headed pins, then reached to undo Zel’s. Zel stepped aside. She heard Gannet cry, They stole you from me! Audey gave her a sober look.
“This is dangerous work we do, my heart. There must be trust between us or it will turn awry.”
Zel nodded, but she untied her braids herself.
The sisters knelt within the ring of firelight, patting a soft rhythm with their palms on the floor, chanting invocations that were meaningless to Zel, even those in a language she knew. She sat amongst them, silent, but her hands twitched to the drumming. This went on and on. She was tired. The oil-flames blurred to red-gold scarves across her eyes.
Dark girl gleaming like amber in a ring of golden fire. Dark girl dancing like light across a jewel.
She is a bead strung on the web of their intentions. Their knowledge moves in her—moves her—like instinct. Their power, fluid as a cat loping across a desert plain, easy as a bird lying on the arctic wind. Memory, morality, burned away, meaningless to the wild creature she has become. Restraint is essential, instinct tells her so, but theirs are the hands that have set her free. Let them restrain her if they can. Meanwhile, she dances.
When the owl comes, she recognizes herself. Likewise with the knife.
Likewise, the blood.
~ ~ ~
Zel fell into a kind of sick exhaustion while Audey and her sisters made their charm. When she woke on a cot in a dark alcove of the cellar, her hands were stiff with blood, her skin everywhere flecked white with down. Her throat caught on some sound and she struggled to sit. Audey appeared wearing a robe, her hair still loose around her face.
“You’re awake,” she said.
Zel hid her hands between her knees and wept.
“I know.” Audey put her arms around her. “Oh, I know. It’s hard. It’s always hard. Think how terrible it would be if it were easy.”
~ ~ ~
She had to deliver the charm to Torrend herself. Audey did not make it an order, but Zel understood the necessity. It was almost a moral necessity, though how—she had to wonder—how could one possibly use that word in this context? A man’s will subverted, his heart and mind ensnared, and why? Because a thief entered the wrong house. Because a foolish woman fell in love. Yet she could not deny what the Bodils had said. Existence, freedom, fearlessness: these were not trivial desires.
“Don’t pity him,” Audey said, reading her face. “He would burn us like candles and never think himself anything but righteous and just. Our enemies are not innocent men.”
So Zel delivered the charm, which was in the shape of a letter sealed with a fat blob of red wax. When he broke the seal, the magic would take hold.
It was still bitterly cold. Audey had offered Zel a fur cloak, but she had refused, and wearing her servant’s wool she threaded her way past stables and coach house to knock at the Torrends’ servants’ door. A maid answered.
“Come in quick, it’s colder than a witch’s behind.”
Zel, strung tight as a crossbow, broke into painful laughter. When she could speak, she said, “I have a letter to deliver to Captain Torrend. My mistress told me to be sure to put it directly into his hand.”
“Eh, well.” The maid looked her over. “Wait here. I’d best go ask Master Gherd.”
Zel waited.
The butler came, studied her coldly, demanded the letter.
“I can’t deliver it to anyone but him.”
“Captain Torrend is not at home. You must leave it with me.”
“I’ll wait.”
He scowled at her, went away. Came back. “Follow me.”
Willam Torrend was in the same room as before, a high, cold chamber with as many weapons as paintings on the wall. He stood, tall and straight in his black uniform, with his back to the fire. He said, “Wait in the hall, Gherd.”
“Sir.”
Gray eyes fixed on Zel. “I have only agreed to see you because I want it made clear to your mistress, once and for all, that there is no point to these continued attempts at communication. I do not count myself her enemy, but it is impossible that I should count such a woman as any acquaintance of mine. Take that and her letter back to her, and let there be an end to it.”
Stiff and cold, she thought. As stiff and as cold as a sheet of glass that showed all the pain behind. Poor man. He was not making it easier for her. “Sir,” she said, “I’m afraid there has been some confusion. The letter is from Audey Bodil.”
He gave a kind of laugh. “Audey Bodil! Have you changed mistresses, then?”
“No, sir.”
“Then I am doubly confused.”
“Pardon me, sir, but I believe the letter will explain everything.” She pulled the letter from the breast of her coat and held it out.
He shook his head and murmured, “I don’t understand.” Put out his hand, took the letter.
Broke the seal.
~ ~ ~
When she left the house, snow had begun to fall.
She walked aimlessly, cut loose, but not at peace. She wanted to see Gannet, yet could not think of a single reaction of Gannet’s she could bear to witness. Joy, fear, regret, guilt: any of them would only add to Zel’s confusion. She had seen the blood rush to Torrend’s face, the sudden shaking in his hands. The charm was cast. Perhaps Zel wanted to see Gannet only because, by judging Gannet’s reactions, Zel might put some name to her own.
The fine snow hissed on the wind. Her face was numb, her hands aching in their bones. It began to dawn on her that if she could not go to Gannet, she had nowhere else to go. No place, no money, no friends—no one but the Bodils. She thought she did not want to see them, she thought she would live a better life if she never saw them again, but it was so cold, and she was so tire
d, and she had spent all her pennies on the bath. Freedom, she thought bitterly: she had left her father’s home because she wanted freedom, and now she knew there was no such thing. As Torrend had said, she had only changed her mistress.
She went back to the Bodils’, and the Bodil butler showed her to Audey’s sitting room as if she were a favorite guest. Audey was on a footstool by the hearth, rustling the coals with a bit of burning kindling. When Zel came in she leapt to her feet. “Well? Did he take it?”
Zel pulled off her mittens, unwound her scarf. “You’re going to burn your skirt.”
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