Witchmark

by C. L. Polk

  It wouldn’t. She would take me back into the clutches of family. She wouldn’t ever let me go.

  A witch who knew my name had died in my arms last night, and today I dined next to my sister for the first time in thirteen years. I didn’t like coincidences. Nick had known my true identity, had died while trying to tell me secrets about the war—

  I fought to keep from choking on roasted lamb. If there were secrets about the war, the Invisibles knew them. That included my sister. She would lead the Queen’s secret mages one day.

  “Are you all right, Miles?”

  I reached for my water glass, forestalling an answer. My sister was an Invisible, but not yet one of the Queen’s Ministers. Besides, the image of Grace feeding someone poison was ridiculous. A bolt of lightning, perhaps. Or a sword to the heart. I nearly smiled at the thought.

  “I’m fine.”

  Grace sniffled. “Skip dessert, will you? I want a private word before you go.”

  Every eye at the table was on me. “Oh, Grace. You know how much I enjoy dessert. And I should get back to my patients.” And Nick Elliot, waiting for me in the hospital morgue.

  “Please, Miles?”

  Manners wouldn’t permit me to refuse, not in such polite company. We bowed to our table before she led me to the lift, where a couple in silk and cashmere waited. She pressed a button, and our gilded chamber rose the eighteen floors to the top, all of us staring at the pointer clicking to each floor number.

  The well-dressed women went right; Grace turned left to an ebony-paneled door. She led the way through a luxurious, modern suite colored black and silver, smoke and glass. My steps sank into the carpet, and the view from plate-glass windows went for leagues, all the way to the ocean.

  Grace reached for my shoulder. “I thought I’d never see you again—”

  I moved away from her hands. “Don’t touch me.”

  Grace froze, staring as if I’d slapped her. “Do you honestly think I would—”

  “I can’t risk it.” I had to get out of here before she wound a linking spell around me and locked it down. After that, she’d own my power as if it were hers, to use as she wanted. She would be able to find me no matter where I hid.

  I would belong to her.

  She reached for me again. “You have to consent to binding.”

  “I know that’s not true, Grace.”

  “I just want to talk. I haven’t seen you in so long. …”

  I had thought I’d never see her again. “Stay back.”

  “Whatever you say.” She backed up. “I’m so glad to see you. Let’s not talk about binding. When did you get back? Were you hurt?”

  Five feet separated us, and when I didn’t reply she retreated again. I found my tongue. “Months ago. I … they captured me.”

  “I know,” she said. “I wanted a funeral. Father wouldn’t allow it. He said it was too much like giving up.”

  “Father never liked to bow to anything that interfered with what he wanted.”

  Grace’s clamped lips pulled back. “Chris—”

  “Miles.” I couldn’t breathe properly. “Who did you bind? Anyone I know?”

  “No one,” Grace said. “I never bound anyone.”

  I was at the door in a heartbeat, fumbling with the locks.

  “Miles! Please don’t go.”

  I threw open the door and looked for the stairwell.

  “Miles! My blood on it!”

  I looked back. “Swear it.”

  She had a blade out of her pocket in a heartbeat. I shut the door but kept my hand on the lever. She drew the white-handled blade across her skin. “I bind my power to this promise: I will not bind your power to mine without your consent.”

  Blood welled up in her palm, and she drew a stylized G that carried the suggestion of a bolt of lightning. “By my oath, my mark, and my blood, this is true.”

  She used the strictest of vows. A tripled oath was impossible to break. It was old magic, older than Link Circles, older than storm-singing, and she’d done it without hesitation.

  She held her hand out. The blood seeped back into her skin, the spell a part of her forever.

  I could trust her.

  I took her hand and traced my finger over it. A thin scar crossed her palm, a new line of fortune to join the rest.

  “You have a cold.”

  “You have a new witchmark.” She flexed her fingers. “Did you get it in the war?”

  “A what?”

  “A witchmark. You’ve always had the pink one, but the new one’s green. Just there, and there.” Her fingers hovered over my head: one near my temple, the other at the back of my head. “You can’t see auras without touching someone, still.”

  I shrugged. “Plenty of things I can’t do.”

  Grace covered her mouth, chagrined at her rudeness. “You survived the war.”

  Not that I deserved to. “I did.”

  “We knew you’d gone there. Father found out you were at medical school.”

  “Why didn’t he haul me back?”

  “He thought you’d come home. We kept your disappearance a secret for months,” Grace said. “Then you shipped out. He was devastated. When the telegram came to tell us you were missing…”

  “He what? He cared?” I barked out a laugh that had no mirth in it. “He probably started parading potential Secondaries in front of you before the message hit the desk. How did you say no to him for this long?”

  Her mouth thinned. “When you went missing, he went wild. He made the army go after you.”

  “ Father pushed General Johnston into raiding Camp Paradise?”

  “Awful name.” Grace’s face pinched as if she smelled something bad.

  “We had to call it something,” I said. “Bitter irony seemed best.”

  Grace hunched her shoulders and watched the sky. I marveled at her face—she was older, a woman now. And yet she was just the same, as if she had been there all along. “Was it—was it bad?”

  A cold, round pressure nudged at the back of my skull. A ghost. A memory I brushed away with my fingers. “You wouldn’t happen to have anything to drink around here, would you?”

  “Of course.”

  I took a velvet-covered seat at one end of a glass-and-wrought-iron coffee table. Grace poured me a deep glass of whiskey, diluted with a dropper of water. I drank more in my first sip than was strictly polite and set the empty glass on the table between us.

  Grace took the seat to my left, setting the cut-crystal bottle at the corner. I shifted to the right and turned my face to the highest view in the city.

  Ships sailed out of the mouth of the Blue River in the window to my left. The Ayers Inlet framed the other side of the westward-pointing finger housing the oldest, wealthiest parts of Kingston, from the bone-colored banks and trading houses to the pale green domes that roofed the palace. Gold and scarlet-leafed trees lined all the streets I could see. It was greater than when I left it, the buildings taller and more prosperous. I should have left it forever. I shouldn’t have loved Kingston so much.

  People moved along the grid lines of the roads, the pulsing life of Kingston, so small and busy-seeming below us. Some of them had sisters. What would they tell me to say to mine?

  I missed you. We can’t meet again. It wasn’t your fault. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “I wanted to heal people.” I poured us both a finger’s-breadth of whiskey.

  “I know. I wouldn’t have stopped you.”

  “I wanted to be free.”

  “I would let you have your freedom—”

  “Then why bind me at all?” I asked.

  “Because I need you,” she said. “None of the other Secondaries want liberty the way you do. They bend their necks and dismiss their own talents as worthless tricks. None of them is someone the other Secondaries can look up to.”

  “I want freedom, and so you want to chain me, to teach the others they should be lik
e me.”

  “I need you because Storm-Singers and Secondaries should bind as partners. Because Secondaries aren’t failures. That’s a lie. It’s only because we need the power.”

  “You’ll always need more power, Grace.” I didn’t want this argument. “However nobly you intend to use it, you’ll always need more. I can’t believe you went this long without binding anyone.”

  “No one felt right. No one felt like you, or had your power, or knew what I was going to do before I knew it myself. You and I, we’re hand in glove—”

  “And I’m the glove.” But together, we could do anything. We’d stopped a deluge of rain on our land to save the beauty of spring flowers when I was only eight. I could ken the winds and know the patterns of air and water when we linked, but alone I couldn’t even whistle up a breeze. Together, we were invincible. Without her, I was a disappointment with nothing but second-rate tricks. No. I saved lives. I had purpose. I was worth more than a mere power reserve, and I wouldn’t become less, even for Grace.

  “We could make this work,” Grace said. “I don’t have to draw on you in Circle. I already Call without you.”

  “So my slavery would be just for appearances?”

  Grace pressed her lips together. “I already promised, Miles. Don’t insult me.”

  “All right. Tell me what you’ve been doing.”

  “I’m getting married.” Grace’s smile was soft and warm, the wonder of it still fresh. “My fianc é designed this building.”

  “Edwin did this? He never.”

  Grace’s face fell. “Edwin was years ago, Miles. I’m engaged to Raymond Blake.”

  “Of the Grand Lake Blakes?” Nothing less than the most powerful of the Hundred Families for the scion of the Hensley legacy. I had another sip of whiskey and left some of it in the glass. “But you were devoted to Edwin.”

  “Miles, I was fourteen.”

  I cocked my head and took aim. “Father didn’t want you marrying a Secondary.”

  A muscle in Grace’s jaw jumped. “Ray’s wonderful. He plays the harp. He designed this hotel. He’s handsome, talented—”

  “And Talented? He’s a Storm-Singer.”

  Grace shifted in her seat. “He’s in the Circle with me, yes.”

  “Caller or Link?”

  “He’s the Caller for his Station in the Second Ring.”

  That made him a skilled weather manipulator, far better than Links who had the power, but not the finesse. His position in the Second Ring could be talent. It likely was. But his name certainly had something to do with it.

  “A union between the Hensleys and the Blakes would give you a stranglehold on the Invisibles.”

  Grace looked away. “Say a firm grip.”

  The last swallow of whiskey shivered in my glass. “How bad is it?”

  “It’s been difficult, since you left.”

  My rebellion had consequences. I reckoned the costs—the inconvenience, the loss of power, the embarrassment to the family—and I could see which way the wind had blown. “Father’s power eroded. You never bound a Secondary. But if you had your prodigal brother at your side—”

  Grace sighed. “Yes.”

  “And you vowed on your blood not to bind me?” I sat back in my chair, wondering. “Why?”

  “None of that matters as much as you,” Grace said. “You’re alive. I can have my brother back.”

  “Christopher Miles Hensley died in the war.”

  “No, he didn’t.” Grace raked her fingers through carefully dressed waves, and mahogany hair flopped into her eyes. “I missed you every day you were gone.”

  “I’m sorry, Grace.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “You’re here now.”

  But I wasn’t going back. Cover it in satin and silver, but a cage is still a cage. I rose, buttoning my jacket, and crossed the room to where she sat. “Do you have any appointments this afternoon?”

  “No.”

  “Then let me heal you.” I traced over her face with my fingers. She’d been battling congestion with saline, but the virus was still there, irritating her nose and throat. I knew the shape and attitude of cold germs, and I soon had a picture of this particular virus. She sat still and let me cure her, though she’d burn with fever for half an hour and sleep exhausted for the rest of the afternoon. But she’d be up and hungry in time for supper, cured.

  When I took my hand away, she caught it. “Thank you, Miles. I hate colds. I never learned to endure them. What would you like from the kitchens? There’s a menu by the telephone—”

  “I have to go.”

  This was the price I paid for freedom and medicine: seven years’ service to Her Majesty, and my only sister. I couldn’t look at her face, couldn’t see what I’d put there. A tearing ache in my throat kept me silent as I walked away.

  She waited until my hand touched the door. “Miles.”

  I barely missed resting my head on the paneled black surface. “What?”

  “I’m not giving up. But I’ll keep you a secret from Father.”

  Hope trickled over the ache. Enough to swallow and say, “Good.”

  I pushed down on the scrolled iron lever.

  * * *

  After making sure my handkerchief wasn’t waving a damp crumpled corner out of my jacket pocket, I assumed a pleasant expression and walked out of the lift. Guests still lingered in the lobby, but I ignored their attempts to speak with me. I hurried out to the apple-scented air of the street.

  If I craned my neck to peer at the topmost windows of the Edenhill, would I see my sister watching me leave her again? I kept my focus on the street around me, walking with the fashionable crowds of the Wakefield business district. Money movers and deal makers strode with purpose on their way back from luncheon meetings, uninterested in the bounty of fruit overhead.

  I wove around a trio of teenage girls filling pails with apples to take home. The girl who had climbed into the branches yelped a warning. I caught a gold-and-scarlet fruit out of the air.

  “Sorry, Mister.”

  “No trouble.” I offered it to a girl in a knitted cap and a striped sweater.

  She shook her head. “You caught it. It’s yours.”

  I took my prize away and jogged across the street, dodging drafts of bicyclists. The apple was round and firm, a little cool from hanging in the autumn air. Grace had loved apples. She’d eat them until she had a stomachache, especially at the beginning of Leafshed when they weren’t quite ready yet. She’d first gotten drunk on hard cider she’d stolen from the servants’ larder, and even the unhappy result didn’t break her steadfast devotion to her favorite food. I swallowed a lump in my throat and dropped the apple in a litter bin.

  I couldn’t have my sister back. Even if I learned to mask my magical aura, we couldn’t be seen together in society. She couldn’t visit me, and I could never go home again. With care, we could meet in secret.

  If I was careful, I could draw stories out of Grace about what her friends and associates were doing, collecting information on those who might be connected to Nick’s murder. No Minister would be cast down for less than treason. If they learned I was hunting them, I could be next to Nick Elliot in the morgue.

  Grace would talk, if I asked her about it. Grace had a free tongue around people she trusted. As children, she had trusted me most of all. I could ask her nearly anything. Was she the same woman? I had to wonder.

  A draft of cyclists in ready-made tweed suits waited for the long parade of pedestrians to cross. I hurried my steps to catch up with the tail end of the pack, startling a woman in a fox-trimmed coat. She looked over her shoulder at me, and my apology for disturbing her dried in my mouth.

  Clara Sibley met my eye, and she stared, round-eyed and shocked, at the boy who had competed against her for top marks in Life Science. There was no way to deny it, no way to pretend she was mistaken.

  Coming into the business district with all its respected banks and firms had been a risk. Bound Secondaries oft
en took care of their Storm-Singer’s mundane affairs, managing the legwork required to grow their finances. Blast! I would have been safe inside a hired carriage, but now I was sunk. She’d tell her Storm-Singer she saw me, and the rumors would fly straight for my father’s ears.

  I shouldn’t have stayed in Kingston. I was lucky to have lasted this long.

  “Forgive me.” Clara’s expression was smoothed into polite reserve, suitable for addressing a stranger. “You look very like someone I went to school with, but I see you are not him.”

  It was a lie, and I could have kissed her for it.

  “No harm done,” I said. “Perhaps he’ll be amused to hear he has a double.”

  “I wish he could be amused. He died in the war. But I remember him as a friend.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss and grateful for his sacrifice.” Oh Clara. You’re a brick. “He was lucky to have such a friend.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I must go.”

  She gave me one last look as we parted ways, and I hurried toward the hospital, head down.

  FIVE

  A Miracle

  Beauregard Veterans’ was a building in half-mourning, fashioned from gray stones and black-framed windows, the kind with many panes pieced together to make a larger whole. It was the old site of Wakefield Cross before they moved into a larger, grander building farther uptown and kindly donated the land to a then-sleepy and ceremonial army. It was never built to shelter so many battered souls, but the calm gravity of its proportions shouldered the burden with grace.

  The black iron fence bordering the grounds was some of the finest wrought work in Kingston, cluttered with employee bicycles locked around its posts. A shiny black carriage stood by the walk. The coachman crooned to four satin-groomed black horses as they ate the apples from his hands. I returned his nod and walked to the front door among the swirling of fallen leaves, dried and crunching under my shoes.

  Warm air rushed through the opened door, patting my cool cheeks. Patients gathered around the wireless in the lobby, those not lucky enough to claim a chair standing behind, all heads leaned toward the amplifier. They smiled to hear of the last ships launched from Mostway Island, crowded with soldiers returning home. The newscast ended. Some gave up their seats to those waiting behind. Strings and horns played upbeat dancing music, and patients nodded in time or patted the tempo on their knees.