Blood Witch

by Thea Atkinson

  Yes, she had. Back when she thought he was her Arm and not his mother's, when she thought she was the only remaining witch with powers of her type, the only surviving member of her tribe. She believed he would keep the girl safe for her. She believed so much then.

  "Safest to leave her alone?"

  "Safer then here, I suppose." He might not have been able to shrug, but his voice implied it.

  Yuri seemed he'd had enough. "It matters not. The girl is where the girl is. The real question is who were they? Who attacked my people?"

  Yenic swung his gaze toward Yuri, whose feet were planted apart, his arms still crossed. In the dim light he looked tired but determined. "I told you. I don't know."

  "I heard the words." Yuri turned finally and studied Corrin. "Take him out of the shackles."

  Corrin scowled miserably but did as he was told. When Yenic's arm let go, it was accompanied by a low groan from its owner. Alaysha had a flash of memory deep in her own cells that reminded her how painful and how pleasurable that release was. She noticed Corrin's slow grin of satisfaction and wanted to see him dead right then.

  "Come, then," Yuri said and started out of the bathhouse in purposeful strides that gave Alaysha a short moment of panic that she would be left alone inside again. It wasn't until she felt Yenic take her left side and she could smell the sweat on him from the insult to his body that she felt as though she could move. She wanted to reach out to him and might have if Corrin hadn't pushed them both aside to catch up to Yuri.

  Yuri stopped abruptly, just where the bathhouse met the tunnel that snaked out towards the entrance. Corrin stood next to him, waiting, until Yuri looked over his shoulder at Alaysha.

  "Put him in the chains."

  "Him? Corrin?"

  Yuri's brow lifted. "Corrin? I thought you called him the carrion?"

  Alaysha would keep his gaze. She would. She would not look down in the face of that bald knowledge.

  Corrin backed up before Alaysha could protest or agree. "You've lost your mind," he told Yuri.

  "I have lost one thing only, and it is not my mind." Yuri stepped closer to Corrin whose face shifted from disbelief to panic. Strange how a man so adept at offering pain could quake so. Yuri seemed oblivious to the man's fear, and Alaysha could see how his own training was used to great effect. He took in Alaysha's rigid posture, her dreams realized, true, but a fearful thing to see occur nonetheless, and he advanced on Corrin once more.

  "If you do not retreat to those shackles, I will kill you right now."

  A sickening kind of hope crept across Corrin's face. He knew he would not die in this moment. Alaysha could have felt sorry for him until Yenic took her hand. It was hot, too hot, and clammy with sweat. She didn't have to look to the table next to those shackles to be reminded of the tools that lay there waiting for use, to know how afraid he'd been. How badly The Carrion wanted to use them.

  She lost her pity.

  "Will you choose, Corrin, or must I?" Yuri asked.

  Corrin shuffled back into the cavern and stood waiting beneath the shackles.

  Yuri nodded at Alaysha. "Bind him."

  Wordless, she did as he told her. Corrin glared into her face, and although she wouldn't take in his eyes, she knew they were filled with hate.

  "I was too easy on you," he whispered.

  "My father would have killed you otherwise."

  He chuckled low. "Your father pretends he doesn't know how I trained you. Are you truly that stupid?"

  She said nothing, merely jerked his wrists into the manacles, stretched them, pinched his fingers with the clamps.

  "Truth is," he said. "I told him everything. How you wept. How your ribs sounded when they cracked. How much you enjoyed our time together."

  She gathered spit. How dare he? How dare he make her remember. She grabbed his chin with her fingers to hold him fast, looked into his black eyes, and sent the gob straight at him.

  "You can rot in here," she said.

  He acted as though the fluid wasn't there. "I would if he didn't need me so badly." He chuckled. "You go with your boy. I'll just wait until Yuri returns for me."

  Her legs were trembling, but she managed to leave him and follow out the bathhouse into the intermittent dark of the tunnel. Yenic took the back, her father the front. She was so engrossed in her thoughts she wasn't aware Yuri had stopped until she walked into his back.

  He turned and looked down at her. The blue eyes that rarely met hers and that could be so striking were merciless in their directness, with the flickering light of torches playing over them.

  "You told me before the thing that made you agree to kill me was because I never gave you a choice about killing others."

  She said nothing; she had said it, just nine or so turns ago, when he wanted to know why she was willing to put him and the entire city to her power to save just one girl: Aedus.

  He looked over her shoulder in the direction of the snaking tunnel. "You have that choice now."

  Kill Corrin? Surely he didn't mean it. She pulled her arms across her chest. So many times beneath the Carrion's hand had she wished it. Dreamed it when she passed out, begged for it when she'd psyched as much moisture as she could from the cavern and still there was too much to pull from him.

  She felt Yuri's hand on her shoulder. "He will stay there until you decide." He snuffed with finality and turned from her. In seconds he was out of sight, lost in the darkness before she felt Yenic behind her again.

  "Let's get out of here."

  She couldn't speak to him either, she was so filled with conflicting thoughts and emotions. Not knowing who to trust: her father who'd always used her, or this boy who pretended to love her and lied to her. Knowing she was now being given permission to kill again, but only by her choice, when she'd always just been ordered to do so. Ordered, but never wanting to take life. The flood of thoughts were enough to get her feet moving by way of escape from them.

  She was just seeing the far-off light of the iron bars when she realized Gael was still there, a hunched form next to the stone he'd settled against.

  Yuri must have passed right by him and Gael, obviously feeling guilty about having led Alaysha into the mountain face, had opted to stay hunched next to the wall.

  "Gael?" she said, testing her voice.

  No response nor movement came from the pile of leather and boots.

  "Gael?" She said again, and Yenic brushed past her to put his hands on the man's shoulders.

  "Oh no," he murmured.

  No? Oh no? That couldn't be good. "Yenic? What's wrong?"

  He stood from his squat at Gael's side and pointed down at the man's throat. It took a few moments, a few steps, and a close examination to see a tiny quill jutting from just behind Gael's ear.

  "What is it?" She didn't truly want to know the answer.

  Yenic folded his arms across his chest, exasperated. "Aedus," he said.

  Chapter 6

  It took the two of them to stretch Gael out into the sunshine beyond the doors. By the time they had dragged him through the iron gates and lain him flat, Alaysha was both out of breath and weak. It had taken all of her command of herself to work without giving in to the still lingering pain of her injury.

  Yenic pulled the quill and passed it to Alaysha who inspected it. Porcupine. Hollow and empty. She shrugged at Yenic. "I don't understand." She leaned over and listened at Gael's mouth again. Yes. Breath. Shallow, as though he was sleeping but not quite under enough. "He's alive."

  "Of course he is. Do you think Aedus a murderer?"

  An old woman with a basket of onions strolled by and, seeing the witch and a man staring down at what was obviously one of Yuri's soldiers, gave them an abrupt wide berth.

  "We should get him out of sight," Yenic said. "We don't want to make people nervous."

  "How long will he be out?"

  Yenic pursed his lips, thinking. "The last batch had me out for a couple of hours."

  "A couple of hours? You?" Alaysha
stared at him. "Last batch?"

  He shrugged one shoulder deferentially. "She found a new pastime while we were searching for Edulph."

  It sounded like there was much more background, but it also didn't seem the time to talk about it. Instead, Alaysha gave her attention to Gael. "So if he's out for a couple of hours, we need to get him out of sight."

  Yenic said nothing but gave her an I-told-you-so look.

  "Yes," she answered. "That's what you said, I know." She scanned the area of the curtain, searching for a good spot to put him, and finding none, stated the obvious. "Why don't we just bring him to his sister? Is not as though we've done anything wrong."

  Simple enough, except she was already aching from the exertion of dragging him into the sunlight. She hoped Yenic would come up with a better plan.

  Yenic reached for Gael's feet. "If you say so, but you take the head part. I don't want to be anywhere near that mouth if he wakes up." He lifted. Grunted. Alaysha reached beneath Gael's shoulders and when she tried to heft him, found she couldn't keep from wincing and letting go. He fell with a thunk to the ground.

  "I can't," she said.

  Yenic chewed his lip thoughtfully. "Hurts too much?"

  "I kind of overdid it during the attack."

  "Kind of?"

  She sighed, looking down at Gael's head and settled for easing onto the dirt and pulling his head onto her lap. "I guess I got stabbed a little bit."

  Yenic dropped the feet and managed to look annoyed and concerned at the same time. "Stabbed."

  Said baldly like that, it did sound a little extreme.

  She nodded. Gael's head fit nicely into the crook of her thighs and she truly did feel winded and sore.

  "You go get his sister. She'll know what to do with him. I'll stay here."

  A hound snuffled up to her as she sat. It had a white spot on the top of its nose that reminded her of Barruch. She would go to the stables later and bring him a parsnip from Saxa's kitchen. That was providing she wasn't angry at her for getting Gael into this condition. Yenic had yet to leave and she wondered what the hesitation was.

  "What are you waiting for?"

  "I don't know," he said. "Something just doesn't feel right."

  "Because it isn't. Aedus is inside somewhere shooting people with sleeping potions, Corrin is in the bathhouse waiting to have his fate decided, I'm sore as a cat with a cut tail, and Gael is lying here on the ground with his head in the lap of a woman he hates. What could be right?"

  Yenic chewed the inside of his cheek thoughtfully, but finally sighed and gave in. She watched him leave, thinking how peculiar he would look to the citizens of Sarum with his chest bare, tattaus running up one side and beneath his arm. He stood out in other ways too. Most of Sarum was fair – as Yuri's original tribe was fair and large, but Yenic's fairness was different. He was wiry strong, not broad like Yuri's people. Her people. Well, half her people. And he was much shorter.

  Still. That wasn't all of it. The people of Sarum, original and captured and enslaved, had all adopted an air. They seemed to know subconsciously that they were from within and went about their business as though no danger could touch them. In a word, they were oblivious.

  The soldiers were somewhat different. They were wary, but they too expected the city to keep them safe from those without. Yenic, however, stepped lightly, bounded where he could, as though in one movement he could avoid sudden danger. He never took a straight route. She watched him seeming to meander through the throngs and clusters of people, but was decidedly intent on his direction. He never swung his arms. He had an economy of movement that spoke of a warrior's training, but he had something else that the Sarum warriors did not. Something she couldn't name.

  She thought back to the time beneath the early morning sun, back at the oasis, when Aedus had gone off and they'd thought she was just foraging. She could easily remember the feel of his hands on her skin, the taste of his mouth with its lingering sweetness of honey and peaches, how filled with need she was to have him closer even though they were already pressed hard against each other.

  She felt as though someone was watching her.

  "What are you doing?"

  She looked down into Gael's face. Yes. Someone was. She thought her face must be burning red.

  "Sleep well?" She asked him and tried not to compare the eyes she saw beneath hers to the honeyed eyes that had looked into her own just moments before. Tried and failed. She wasn't sure whose were more captivating. She told herself it didn't matter.

  Gael groaned and rolled onto his side. "I wasn't sleeping."

  "Of course not. I snore when I'm awake too."

  He glared at her and tried to get up, grabbed his head and weaved back and forth.

  "Careful," she said. "You've not been awake long."

  He didn't open his eyes, but his tone told her if he did, his nasty glare would not have left. "I told you, I was not asleep. I don't sleep."

  "Ever."

  "When I need it, yes. But not on duty."

  "You must have needed it, then," she said and thought she shouldn't have pushed him so. He obviously had no idea about Aedus.

  He struggled to his feet and towered over her, looking down. She thought he would reach out to help her up, but then he took a deliberate step backward.

  "I don't feel right," he said. "What did you do to me?"

  She scrabbled around the dirt to find the quill, then lifted it for him to see. "We found you with this in your neck."

  He looked down at it, confused.

  "It's a porcupine –"

  "I know what it is," he snapped. "What was it doing in my – oh." His head lay back on his neck. "Now I remember. That boy."

  "Aedus," Alaysha said. "Girl, you mean." Aedus could easily be mistaken for a boy, she supposed, especially if she had muddied her hair up again.

  Gael shook his head. "Not a girl. I've seen Aedus. I know what she looks like. There was a boy lurking around the doors. I didn't pay him much mind, but I did watch him a little."

  "A warrior is always aware."

  "Right. But inside the city, well, usually you can let some of your guard down…"

  "But given the attack –"

  "I trust nothing."

  "So what about the boy?"

  "He was drawing in the dirt just off to the side of the doors." Gael pointed toward the other side, and even as he did, was setting over to inspect the area. Alaysha looked down to see what appeared to be a small map. An e X marked next to a horizontal line in a big circle.

  "That must be you," she said to him, sticking her toe toward the X.

  He made a thoughtful sound. "The boy was pointing my spot out to someone."

  "Aedus." It made no sense, but Yenic seemed so sure she was just up to more mischief. She had a predilection for having fun at another's expense. She'd let Yenic wear the dreamer's worm just for a chuckle. Alaysha studied Gael's face, wondering what he might have done to Aedus to incur her angst.

  Gael shuffled under her scrutiny and then huffed. "Do you think she did find her brother and is working from within to help him?"

  Alaysha shook her head. "Her brother cut off her finger; she won't help him take over the city."

  "Blood is blood, Witch."

  Indeed, it might be to someone who had a regular relationship with blood. Alaysha's blood kin had sent her to kill hundreds of people in her short lifetime, Aedus's blood had used her as bait to attempt to murder an entire city. She couldn't imagine the girl remaining loyal under those circumstances. Alaysha certainly hadn't.

  She had to ask the one question that lingered, regardless of how painful the answer might be. "What about Yenic? Could he have been involved somehow?"

  A look passed across Gael's face that Alaysha didn't understand. "That boy? He wouldn't harm the man who was watching your back."

  "Is that what you were doing? Watching my back?"

  His unshaven jaw see-sawed back and forth as though he'd been caught at formulating a lie.
"You took a dirk in the belly for me."

  "Hardly; I just didn't want any of those men to escape." She remembered that some had, and that the ones he'd attacked had died gruesome, painful deaths.

  She felt his hand on her shoulder and wondered at the way the touch could make her feel so small and so safe at the same time.

  "You're brave, Witch; I'll give you that. But you are not wise. That boy wants you. It's clear, and if he's involved in this, he's better at play than any man I've ever seen."

  She wasn't sure what to do with all that information, so she chose the least bothersome. "You think I'm brave?" No one had ever told her so. No one had given her much kindness, in fact, at least not until lately. She had the feeling it couldn't last long.

  "You're the bravest witch I know." He started off in the direction of Saxa's cottage, weaving a bit, and having to find his direction constantly. Alaysha found herself following, watching his stride, thinking how many steps she had to take for each one of his. His shoulders moved easily through the crowds, despite being broad enough that he could have pushed each person out of his way. She had to hurry to keep pace while he seemed to be merely ambling along. She caught up to him just as she realized the impact of his words.

  "Do you know many witches?"

  "You're the only one."

  They made it to the main courtyard and were heading to the cottage to the right of the keep, where Saxa had planted a few lavender bushes. The smell crept across the breeze to greet them.

  "Is Saxa a witch?" She asked bluntly.

  He stopped short and peered down at her, making her belly flip-flop over on itself.

  "Saxa is a born sagini."

  "Sagini?"

  "What you would call a shaman."

  Alaysha was surprised to get so many words from the man and couldn't help pressing for more. She imagined the carrion stretched out in the bathhouse, waiting for her decision. "Do you remember the man who flogged your father?"

  "Corrin." The name was acid in the air.

  "Yes," she said. "I am to decide if he lives or dies."

  Gael made a noncommittal sound.

  "What would you decide?"

  "It would depend on how badly he beat me," Gael said, and his chin quivered, just a bit, then stopped with a defiant clamping of his jaw.