The Witch Who Came in From the Cold - Season One Volume One

by Lindsay Smith

  He barely remembered to smile widely at the French agricultural secretary, toss out his customary “How’re you?” as he ambled past in search of a remote bathroom. Flicked at the lock, fumbled with his trousers, aimed for the toilet. Deep breaths, Pritchard. Get through tonight, then figure out what needs to be done. He washed his hands in the scalloped basin, then ducked his head down and washed his face, too. Tried to get the splotchy red to even out.

  He straightened and reached for the towel. But someone was already handing it to him.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Gabe leapt up so hard he smacked his head on the angled ceiling of the half bath. Tanya Morozova stared back at him in the mirror, trying to conceal a faint smile. Gabe whirled around toward her, his first instinct to reach for her throat, before he thought better of it. He was sober enough to realize he didn’t want to start an international incident, at least. “How long have you been standing there?”

  Tanya thrust her shoulders back, trying to look taller than her modest height. Her dark blonde hair was pulled back in the kind of sleek bun even Bolshoi ballerinas would envy. It added a certain severity to her expression, not that she needed the help. “We need to talk about the Ice, Gabriel.”

  “Here?” Gabe snatched the towel out of her hand; felt a little better when she flinched. “Right now?”

  “No one followed either of us. So, yes, I do think this is the safest place for it.”

  “Sorry, honey. You and the Ice had your chance.”

  He reached for the door handle, but she caught his wrist first. Gabe ripped his hand back. It came out of her grip easily, but already she’d swung her other hand up toward her face, palm flat, as if to block from a follow-up blow. Gabe laughed in spite of himself. She had asked for a talk, but clearly she expected a fight. Okay, KaGeBeznik. Gabe leaned back against the sink and crossed his arms. Let’s see what your game is.

  The hitchhiker was no longer hammering in his head; if anything, it seemed soothed by Tanya’s presence, as if it were in harmony with whatever elements were closest to them right now. Figured, that it’d be a filthy traitor that way.

  “I understand why it is . . . difficult for you to speak to me,” Tanya said.

  “Oh, I’m not sure you do.”

  “I do not know what was done to you, but Winthrop has explained some of your situation to me. I know you didn’t ask to be a part of this world, this . . . this other war.” She canted her head to one side, an oddly delicate move. But it had to be calculated—Gabe didn’t think the KGB ever did anything that wasn’t scripted from the start.

  “No,” Gabe said, trying to keep his voice low, though he suspected he wasn’t doing a good job of it. “I didn’t.”

  Tanya winced, and kept her eyes closed for a few seconds, perhaps searching not just for the right words but the right English ones. “But Alestair seems to think that you—”

  “How often are you talking to Alestair, anyway?” Gabe asked. “It’s incredibly stupid. For both of you.”

  “When it comes to magic, it does not matter!” Tanya’s voice was tense, quiet, but forceful, like pressing her thumb over a hose. “I do not care. East, West, none of that will matter if the Flame is allowed to succeed.”

  The alcohol was clarifying in Gabriel’s veins, distilling into pure anger. “Sorry, doll.” He bowed forward until his eyes were level with hers. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. You say it doesn’t matter—” He grinned. “But I’ve heard that pitch before.”

  Something elemental crackled in the air, pulling the hitchhiker out of its brief lull. Gabe hadn’t seen Morozova reach for a charm or any other magical item to activate—was it coming from her? Or somewhere else?

  “You don’t understand what the Flame is capable of. What they intend to do.”

  “Don’t care,” Gabe snapped.

  Tanya’s ivory cheeks flushed pink. “Their plans—they make fools of us. All our silly little games, passing codes and numbers and secrets around . . . the danger the Flame poses makes them look like nothing. Crumbles it all to ash.”

  “Doesn’t look like nothing to me. To the Czech people your tanks rolled over. Or the millions of Russians your own leaders put into the ground—”

  “Millions?” Tanya cried. “The Flame will kill billions, Gabriel. The fascists could only dream of the power the Flame is trying to grasp. They want to elevate all those they deem worthy of magic and its nuances, and all the rest—”

  Gabriel had had enough.

  His anger ballooned out of him, honing the edges of every element he could sense into a fine blade. The bathroom, tucked beneath a staircase, seemed to shrink, or maybe he was growing; he planted his forearms against either wall as he lunged toward Tanya. She stumbled backward and landed on the closed toilet seat.

  Was she afraid of him? Was that fear, finally, in that softness of her Party-stoic face? Good. He relished it. Maybe fear was elemental too, sweeter even than French champagne and bubbling just as steadily under his skin. Gabe’s grin was a creature all its own.

  “You deliver these grand speeches about what monsters the Flame are, as if you’re not their goddamned twin.” He bent down, casting a shadow over her wide eyes. “But I’ve seen the Consortium of Ice for what it really is. Ice, Flame—it’s all the fucking same.”

  “What are you talking about?” Tanya whispered. Her voice trembled so much she might have even meant it.

  “Your little love boat on the Vltava. Don’t think I haven’t seen it.”

  Tanya’s eyebrows wrenched upward. “What about it?” She was good, he’d grant her that. Gabe should try to recruit a KGB instructor someday. Teach Prague Station a few tricks. “It’s for rituals—all the spell components we require to perform massive rituals along the ley lines. You did not ask Alestair about it? Part of our fight against the Flame.”

  Gabe bashed one fist against the wall, no longer caring who heard. “What the hell kind of spell requires so many frozen bodies?!”

  Tanya’s lips popped open; she made one tiny sound before her voice dried out. The rosy tint to her face was fading fast. Her lower lip quivered as she worked her jaw.

  She didn’t know. She really hadn’t known.

  “There are dozens of them. Frozen—I couldn’t tell if they were dead or alive, but the ice holding them—it wasn’t natural.”

  “You’re lying,” Tanya managed.

  “Why the hell would I lie about this? There must be a dozen of them, locked up in a chunk of ice like some kind of witchcicle. Trapped in some kind of—stasis, or something. I don’t even know.”

  “But that’s—” Tanya’s knees came up to her chin as she curled into a ball. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would they—”

  “What? You’re going to pretend you didn’t know? God, you people are so sick.” Gabe dragged one hand to his face and wiped away the sheen of sweat that clung to it. “Is that why you’re giving me the hard pitch? Do you want to lock me up too? Shove me in a freezer, figure out what kind of botched spellwork made me into what I am before you take me out for good?”

  “What you are?” Tanya echoed back, her tone watery as if she couldn’t parse out the English phrase. Then she shook her head, freeing wisps of hair. “No. You are lying. There is no reason—we have no need—”

  Gabe laughed, loose and ragged, as if something was tearing out of him. Not the hitchhiker, unfortunately. His grip on reality, maybe. The last shred of hope that maybe he could learn to live with this curse.

  “You didn’t even know. Of course you didn’t. Ice couldn’t trust you with this knowledge. Ahh, and I bet you thought you were something special to them.”

  Tanya’s eyes flashed with pure hatred now. “You do not know what you are talking about.” She lurched up from the toilet. “You are a fool. And it will get you killed, Gabriel.”

  Gabe shook his head. “Ice, Flame, it’s all the same. You can keep your goddamned magic. Just like your dear leaders and their show of making a world for all the workers, isn
’t it? Give anyone a sliver of power, and they’ll find a way to abuse it.”

  Tanya thrust the heels of both her hands square into Gabe’s gut, just beneath his sternum. The air whooshed out of him all at once, briefly, mercifully, catching him off guard long enough that it rattled even the hitchhiker. Then she stormed out of the bathroom and was swallowed up by the droning chatter of the embassy.

  5.

  Jordan Rhemes tipped the boiling pot forward. Her shoulders eased at the familiar hiss of hot liquid hitting the tempered glass; she watched the caramel-colored broth swirl around the assorted herbs and filings in the glass flask, waiting until they reached just the right consistency before pulling the pot back. Counted backward, to ten. Then opened herself to the currents of the ley lines.

  One-woman rituals were a hell of a lot more powerful when you had the convergence of two powerful ley lines at your disposal.

  Once her chant was finished—a graceful twist of Aramaic, and Coptic with a few Egyptian flourishes—she shoved a cork stopper into the flask and returned to the main bar.

  “Freshly empowered,” she told the man waiting at the counter. “You’ll use it in the next five hours?”

  “I—um—” He retreated into the upturned collar of his coat.

  Jordan held out a palm. “Y’know what, don’t answer. Just use it in the next five hours.” She winked. “And thanks for watching the bar.”

  “Of course, of course.” The man picked up his glass, although it was empty; Jordan noted the weathered envelope tucked beneath the coaster, and slipped both smoothly behind the bar. “Thank you again, Miss Rhemes.”

  “Anytime, Pavel.”

  As Pavel tucked the flask into his coat pocket, Jordan scanned the bar. Late afternoon was always a comfortable slowness, just enough customers to keep her busy but not so many she felt rushed. Some Slovak witches who liked to order shots while they bitched about the Russians cutting them off from their suppliers; a trio of men who whispered together in German, talking equally as often about shady business deals as fishing trips; and the usual parade of spies who didn’t think she’d pegged them as spies.

  Then Jordan spotted the two men sitting at a four-top, drinking nothing, saying nothing. The foremost of them wore a tweed coat with leather patches at the elbows and had his hands laced together on the table as he stared into the middle distance. Everything about him was angled, precise—his combed hair, his fine nose, his faint smile so unwavering it might have been his stock expression. The man beside him, shorter, rounder, arms wrapped around a leather satchel, looked considerably more vexed, though he too said nothing, and never once glanced toward his companion. She tried to catch their eyes, but neither looked her way.

  That should have been her first warning.

  “Are you gentlemen ready to order?” she asked, loudly enough to cut in on the other conversations around her. Jordan wanted eyes on her, and on these men. Witnesses. Just in case.

  “Ah. Hello, Miss Rhemes.” The taller, particular one looked up at her without moving his head. “Please, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Karel Hašek, professor of medieval European history and sociology. And this is my associate, Vladimir.”

  Jordan cut her eyes to Vladimir for a brief, forced nod before turning back to Karel. “I see.”

  “Yes, I am confident that you do. This is quite a fascinating piece of land that you have, Miss Rhemes. But I am certain you know this already.”

  Jordan straightened, hoping the movement distracted them from the hand she slipped into her pocket. “It’s been in my family for some time.”

  “That isn’t the only thing that has been in your family for some time,” Karel said.

  The words glinted like a knife between them. Jordan fought against her instinct to take a step back, to put space between her and this man who was undoubtedly some sort of witch or another. If he knew about her family’s history in Ice, then he probably knew that she wasn’t exactly well-liked in the Consortium. But then, he might not be Ice at all, but something else entirely.

  She liked that possibility even less.

  “There was a book in the library at our university.” Karel pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and began wiping his glasses. “In the special collections. Only serious scholars were permitted to view it—doctoral candidates, whose theses directly related to the subject matter. A wonderful book. I’ve written a few papers on it myself—and written other things using it, besides.”

  Jordan knew what kind of books they kept in Prague libraries, away from anyone who might use them for harm. Emperor Rudolf in particular had liked collecting grimoires, and the witches who used them. Ice didn’t much care for leaving that kind of knowledge where anyone could find it.

  “But this is not in keeping with the spirit of global communism, now, is it? Knowledge for all. Power for all. Doesn’t matter whether the Party really means their bullshit—and let’s be honest with each other, we all know they don’t. Yet Marx and Engels had one bright idea.”

  Karel replaced his glasses, then turned toward Jordan with his whole body. His eyes were light gray—the leached-away fog of February mornings and thick ice.

  “Resources,” he said mildly, “are meant to be shared.”

  Jordan glanced back to the empty tables. She’d have felt a lot better if Pavel were still around. The tavern was too wide suddenly, too hollow. Not nearly enough patrons. She clenched the chunk of stone tight in her pocket.

  “Sharing,” Jordan repeated. “I was never very good at that.”

  Karel’s smile was even colder than his stare. “Yes, so I understand. But you must know, these little charms, these brews, these solitary rituals . . . Isn’t it just a waste? I’m sure it keeps you in business . . . barely . . .” He peered over the edge of his glasses at the dim bar, the tufts of dust she knew gathered in the corners. “But imagine what could be done with it in others’ hands.”

  “The Vodnář isn’t for sale.” Jordan tried to keep her tone as sturdy as the rock she was clutching.

  “Oh, no, I don’t imagine it is. But surely there are other . . . arrangements we could come to.”

  Jordan swallowed. “I doubt that.”

  “Think about it.” Karel stood up; a moment later, Vladimir joined him, still clutching the satchel to his chest. “There must be something you want, Miss Rhemes. You’ll know how to find me when you decide what.”

  Jordan watched them leave with her heart in her throat. She’d assumed they were Flame, but Flame didn’t give up so easily, she thought.

  It was hours later that she realized she hadn’t even considered what might have been in the bag.

  Episode 5: The Golem or What Happens in Cairo . . .

  by Ian Tregillis

  1.

  Žižkov District, Prague

  February 8, 1970

  “Have you any idea,” Jordan panted, running a kerchief across her brow, “what they do to grave robbers?”

  Gabe whispered, “No. But I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

  “I won’t, in fact. You know why?”

  As it happened, he knew very little beyond the crushing pressure in his head—the hitchhiker was in fine form tonight. Or maybe he’d concussed himself when he took a header on the cobbles of the Staré Mĕsto that morning. It was all he could do not to bite through his tongue, so he let the crunch of his shovel be his answer.

  “Because,” she continued, warming to her subject, “nobody knows the penalty for grave robbing these days because nobody has been stupid enough to try it.”

  “Less hissing, more digging,” he managed.

  His shovel hit another root. They froze like fawns caught in the headlights of a speeding truck until the echoes faded.

  They worked amid ten thousand graves. A clammy winter fog had rolled off the Vltava, a mile or two to their west. Tendrils of that same mist, silvered by the moonlight, drifted like revenants through the underbrush of Prague’s overgrown New Jewish Cemetery. The fog turned their discre
et flashlight beams into shimmering and very indiscreet haloes. It was cool against Gabe’s skin, but exertion and a hyperactive hitchhiker had him sweating like he’d just stepped out of a sauna.

  Jordan picked up her shovel and rammed the blade into the earth. Crunch. “When you showed up at the bar tonight, asking for help again, I thought, sure, why not, he’s making a good-faith effort to work with Alestair.”

  Gabe grunted. Alestair’s “lessons” had been helpful, but they came with a hefty dose of Ice propaganda. And like some gormless developmental, Gabe had nearly swallowed it, hook and all. But then he followed the hitchhiker to the barge and found . . . well, whatever it was, he wanted nothing to do with it. He’d solve his problems on his own, thank you very much.

  “I thought it would be something simple.” Crunch went her shovel, sluff another load of earth tossed aside. “But here I am robbing a grave, awaiting a Kafkaesque nightmare when the police inevitably catch us.”

  The displaced earth took on a metallic ozone tingle beneath the scent of moldering leaves. Something in the leaves drove the hitchhiker nuts. Gabe groaned, using his shovel as a crutch.

  “I swear I can feel it,” he gasped. “We just . . . have to . . . dig a little farther. I can’t stop now.”

  They’d excavated a hole nearly two yards deep. Despite the static sizzling in his brain, he noted faint scents of salt and sandalwood rising from Jordan’s clammy skin. She smelled like a shipwrecked schooner carrying spices from the Near East. The hitchhiker had all Gabe’s senses revved up to redline.

  Her eyes were unreadable in the moonlight. “The Golem of Prague is a myth, Pritchard.”

  The hitchhiker hit him with another seizure. “I’m not so sure,” he gasped.

  She leaned on her shovel. “You’ve wandered through this graveyard like a tipsy sailor for nearly an hour. You haven’t found it because it doesn’t exist.”