Witchmark

by C. L. Polk

  A fine neighborhood—lined with tall, narrow townhouses and their tiny gardens—with an apple tree at its center. I rang twice, called out “New fish” to the draft I joined, and some of the riders ahead waved to acknowledge the recent two-wheeled convert.

  We’d fallen into a clump of men in sack suits and shiny shoes, probably clerks or managers. Tristan pedaled beside me, grinning. “Completely refreshing,” he said. “What an advantage, the bicycle.”

  “Going to sack Michael, are you?”

  “It’s only a few more days.” He glanced behind him, and glanced again. “Don’t look.”

  I fought the urge to echo his gesture. “What?”

  “The man from the hospital is behind us.”

  I glanced at my handlebar mirrors, but there were women riding just behind us. “He could be minding his business. Let’s take the next right.”

  We broke out of our draft and turned southward, and this time my mirror captured him—at a casual distance, but he’d turned our way.

  “Left on that alley,” I said, and we had to veer sharply to make it. The cobblestones rattled my bones as we pedaled through the stink of restaurant refuse and grease barrels, dodging parked wagons and horse droppings.

  Tristan sped ahead and turned left, spilling us back onto smooth blacktop. The man with the mustache pedaled harder, pursuing us.

  Adrenaline surged through my limbs. I pedaled harder. “Left,” I called, but where Tristan darted through a gap between drafts and made the turn back onto Wakefield Street, I dodged right, nearly cutting off a slow-moving draft.

  They shouted at me. “Scofflaw! Freerider!” One even identified me as an organ of elimination, but I watched my mirror. Left or right? Which one of us did he want?

  He turned right. Me, then. In spite of it all, I grinned. If he wanted me, he’d have to catch me.

  I cut across drafts and drove into the intersection before twisting my bike in a hard turn, straight up a short, steep hill. Climb that, blackguard. Let’s see how you do. I stood on my pedals and muscled it out, but he was in better shape than I supposed and soon I was speeding along a street heavy with foot traffic crisscrossing from shop to shop in pursuit of the day’s errands. I rang my bell, shouted warnings, and dodged alarmed customers who shook their fists at me, then squawked in outrage when my pursuer came flying after.

  I raised one hand in a universal sign of insult and startled a carriage horse when I ducked into another cobbled alley. He’d tire. His blood was up, chasing me like this. A cooler head would have let me go on my way.

  Everything was sharp and clear. I rode under clothing drying on a line strung between the alley’s buildings, trouser legs bannering gently in the wind at my back. A cat saw me coming and dashed for safety. I popped out onto the street, legs churning, and my pursuer came barreling after, his mustache a dark curl in his exercise-reddened face.

  I turned a corner and Tristan rode toward me, past me, intent on my pursuer. My blood sang as I leaned into a looping turn to join Tristan’s pursuit. There were two of us against him, and we became the hunters as he fled Tristan’s grim face, racing along the smooth black road to get away from us.

  But he didn’t ride five miles uphill from work, or climb up and down stairs every day. We gained on him. He tried to lose us with sudden turns and tricky maneuvers until we came to the King’s Way, the train-crossing bars lowering across the street.

  A train was coming. We had him, and I was going to ask him more than a few questions.

  But he pedaled harder, straight for the tracks. We were close enough that the exposed copper cable strung above the tracks whined against my ears, and the train’s warning horn sounded with an awful howl as the rider drove over the tracks, directly into the train’s path.

  The rails screamed as the engine man tried to brake, but a passenger train needs four times its length to come to an emergency stop. Cyclists waiting at the lowered barrier shouted, some of them averting their eyes—

  And our quarry scooted across the tracks, shot out like a bar of soap from a wet fist.

  The train rolled to a stop as the man with the mustache got away.

  Tristan leaned over his handlebars, breathing hard, but he caught my eye and grinned. “That was fun.”

  Tristan was a madman. But so was I, for the bubbling feeling in my chest made me want to laugh. Our pursuer had escaped, but we’d turned the tables on him, and damned well.

  “Did you get a good look at him?” I dropped my voice to a hush. “Was he a witch?”

  “I did, and yes. He’s a witch.” Tristan appraised me. “Follow me home. Eat until you’re ready to burst. We’re going to work hard.”

  * * *

  Tristan’s townhouse was a house of mirrors. Instead of art and photographs, mirrors hung on the walls, framed in gilt and rosewood and pale, hand-rubbed birch. The mirror next to Tristan’s umbrella stand stood inches above my own six feet, the frame carved in a garland of ribbon and woodland creatures peeking from behind lobed oak leaves. Identical silver-framed mirrors flanked a narrow corridor leading to the kitchen where Tristan prepared a meal with his own hands.

  I was still energized from our adventure, but excitement was turning into jittery nerves. That man had been waiting for me. Had followed us, and while we’d turned the hunter into prey, the meaning sank under my skin and shivered: Nick’s murderer knew I was involved.

  I turned my sherry glass with fidgety fingers and watched Tristan work in shirtsleeves. He could cook, handling knife and pot with speed and grace.

  “You seem surprised.”

  “I thought that Amaranthines didn’t—”

  He laughed. “Didn’t eat?”

  “Didn’t cook.”

  “What, that we conjured ambrosia from magic?”

  I shrugged, embarrassed.

  He sliced, saut éed, and served us slabs of beefsteak and a motley of greenhouse-grown vegetables with browned mushrooms.

  “More where that came from.” He urged me to have more. “It’s fuel; you’ll need it.”

  I ate until black spots swam in front of my eyes, and then he led me to the parlor. I stood in the doorway to take it all in. None of the furniture pieces matched, but they were all tufted, stuffed, and dripping with pillows in bright fabrics and bold embroidery. It was a cross between a jumble shop, a lady’s boudoir, and a gentleman’s retiring room. All it needed was a cat.

  “You haven’t said anything.”

  “I’m speechless.”

  “Oh, do try.” Tristan sprawled over a deerskin-covered chaise.

  “It looks comfortable.” It did. This was a room to relax in, to smoke and talk long into the night. It was a room for close friends and intimates, not company. Comfortable.

  “My home isn’t what you expected.”

  “You’re not what I expected. I mean. The Amaranthines are figures of awe and terror, and you’re…”

  “Do you have any idea how much work it is to be majestic? The high court is exhausting. I escape it whenever I can.”

  “What’s the high court like?”

  He covered his eyes. “Polite. Mannerly. Dangerous and beautiful. Everyone has a ladder on their back.”

  “Sounds like Lucus’s court, before the Hundred Families stood against him and raised Queen Agnes.” I took two strides to a deep armchair and sank inside it. My elbow bumped a mouth-blown glass water pipe, and I leaned over to sniff it.

  “Hashish,” Tristan said.

  “If it had been opium it would have meant a lecture.”

  “I’m a good boy, Doctor. Amusement, not ruin.” He sat up and patted the place next to him. “Come sit. I want to know something.”

  I sat next to him, keeping space between our thighs. “What do you want to know?”

  “Why do you persecute poor witches? Why do you say they’ll go mad?”

  I blinked. “They do. They all do.”

  “But your people, the aristocrats—they don’t?”

  “No. Well. Th
ey’re just as prone to melancholy or overexcitement as anyone else, but witches are different.”

  “They’re not,” Tristan said. “The difference is wealth and power. You have it; they don’t.”

  I shook my head. “Witches aren’t like mages.”

  “Such snobbery, Miles. Where’s your evidence?”

  “But they do go mad. There’re cases. Loads of them.”

  “Have you ever met a witch?”

  “I saw one, once. She’d been confirmed at trial. She was at Kingston Asylum awaiting transport.” She’d been bound so she couldn’t hurt herself, but she was beyond protest, beyond tears, sunk deep into herself to escape what was happening to her.

  When she saw me she screamed, her face ugly with rage. She’d known. She could see it on me. She hated me, for being free where she was bound.

  I didn’t blame her.

  “Only one.” Tristan broke my reverie. “And one mad witch is proof?”

  The question stung. “But if they don’t go mad, why do we commit them?”

  “Why, indeed.”

  What he was implying couldn’t be true. There had to be a difference. Why else would they be sent away? “Are you saying it’s a lie? That they’re … put out of the way?”

  “Have you ever researched the hearings?”

  I shrugged. “Seen articles in the paper.”

  “I’ve attended hearings and read transcripts. Do you know the most common proof of a witch’s madness?”

  “Delusions.”

  “Specifically, a delusion that moves them to accuse others of being witches. They usually name people from the highest levels of society: Royal Knights.”

  My dinner was a lump in my belly. “But that’s…”

  “True,” Tristan finished. “I’m sorry, Miles. I thought you knew this, as a psychiatrist.”

  “We have specialties.” How many witches went to asylums? How many had gone to the gallows before the enlightenment convinced the people witches were not evil, but simply mad? How many had been plowed under so we of the Hundred Families could stride about, free and rich and powerful? It made a lump in my throat. It made bile sneak up and taint the back of my tongue. A bolt of hatred lanced through me. I hated them; I hated myself.

  “Miles. Your people, the mages. Why do you enslave each other?”

  “There’s only one kind of mage that matters: Storm-Singers.”

  “And you’re not a Storm-Singer, so you don’t matter?”

  “Those who can’t control the weather are bound so Storm-Singers can draw on their Secondary’s power as if they were walking batteries.”

  “Why?”

  “Power,” I said. “The group rituals take every last shred of power from every mage involved. If someone figured out how to bind two Secondaries at once and draw on both without killing one first, they’d do it. Storm-singing is that important.”

  “So your people would see you as denying your power to their purpose?”

  “Yes. I’d be put under extreme control because I deserted.”

  Tristan put out his hand, but drew it back before touching me. “Do you want to go home?”

  “No.” I didn’t want to be alone with this. I didn’t want to have to lie in my lumpy bed and feel this sick anger. I needed to put it away, think about it later. “Teach me something.”

  “First you must learn to see without touching. It’s a block in the psyche, but it isn’t hard to fix.”

  The matter was dropped. A rush of gratitude warmed me up. “What do I do?”

  “Pick a mirror,” he said. “One where you can see yourself and me. Watch the reflection; let your mind wander. You need a certain state of consciousness for this to work.”

  “Which?”

  “Look in the mirror,” Tristan said.

  I settled in and chose the mirror with the simplest frame. “Now what?”

  “Keep looking until you’re ready to cry with boredom.”

  “And then what?”

  “Keep looking.”

  I looked for hours. Tristan read a book. I fidgeted, fought to stay still, dragged my wandering mind on track, and finally sighed. “This isn’t working.”

  “Are you thinking too much?”

  “Probably.”

  “What do you think about?”

  I’d spent the past minute mooning after his straight nose and the studious way he read. It would be satisfying, to lounge in this room over books and brandy, talking or reading, or …

  I couldn’t say any of that. “I have to learn how to do this. It’ll help my patients; it’ll keep me safe. So much depends on it.”

  “Thinking too much.” Tristan reached out. “Touch my hand.”

  I kept my gaze on his reflection. It shimmered, and I sat up. When Tristan let go of my hand the distortion disappeared. I sank back into the cushions. “I’ll never get this.”

  Tristan took my hand. Calluses across his palm rubbed against my skin. I stared hard at the shimmering effect of his mortal guise, willing it to remain when Tristan let go.

  It didn’t.

  “Let’s do something else,” I said. “Distract me with talk.”

  “What should I talk about?”

  “Tell me why you’re here. How long have you been here?”

  “Nearly a year. I’m here to solve a mystery,” Tristan said.

  “You don’t mean Nick Elliot.”

  “No. I was sent here to find out why you’d all died.”

  I turned my head. “What do you mean?”

  Tristan stroked little circles on the back of my hand. “Keep looking in the mirror. What do you see?”

  “I see you, but there’s a wavering look to it. What do you mean? We’re alive.”

  “You are. There are millions of you Aelanders. But your souls don’t come to the Solace. You haven’t for years.”

  “Why? Where do they go instead?”

  Tristan shrugged. “If I knew, I’d be on my way home. What do you see when you heal?”

  “I see anatomy,” I said. “I watch your heart beating, your lungs swelling with air, the pulse of blood. If you have a bullet in your chest, I can see the bullet, and the disrupted flesh of the bullet’s path.”

  “I didn’t know how it worked.” Tristan’s reflection wavered, as if I saw him though water falling down a window.

  “Why did you come here now?”

  “Hm?” Tristan cocked his head. “To Kingston?”

  “You said you thought we were all dead for years. Why now?”

  “Magic started to flicker out elsewhere in the realm. We sent someone there to see why. Sending me to a dead land was … an afterthought.”

  “So they sent you on a useless quest?”

  Tristan’s reflection looked away. “Any quest would have sufficed, so long as it meant I wasn’t at court. What do you do with the bullet?”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “I was asking you about your technique. Do you take the bullet out with surgery?”

  He’d changed the subject. “Yes.”

  “I thought you willed the body to heal. I didn’t know it was so detailed.”

  “Maybe that’s how you Amaranthines do it. Once the bullet’s out, I can make the flesh knit back together again. Or I should say I can give it a push. Then I’m dizzy and the world is turning black on the edges.”

  “Because you reach the limit of your power,” Tristan said. “Did you take out bullets?”

  “Bullet wounds were the least of it. Grenades, mines—those were my downfall.”

  “You couldn’t heal them?”

  My laugh was bitter. “Oh no, I could. I caught the worst injuries. Those closest to dying, the lost causes. I saved them. A lot of them.”

  I’d worked miracles.

  “You’re powerful. And you found a way to teach yourself.” Tristan said. “Can you see old wounds on me?”

  I sat up again.

  “There. You had a wound. The right side of your chest. It pierced your lung
, hit the scapula—what happened?”

  “I got in the way of an arrow.”

  The scarring took a straight path. A bullet could have tumbled inside to tear through more flesh after bouncing off his shoulder blade. “Amazing. How did it happen?”

  “It was an assassination attempt.”

  I blinked. “Someone tried to assassinate you?”

  Tristan laughed. “Not me. I’m—I was one of the heir’s personal guard. I stepped between her and an arrow when she was a child.”

  “That’s brave.”

  He shrugged. “Simply my duty.”

  “So if you’re the heir’s bodyguard, what are you doing here?”

  “Did you notice we’re not touching anymore?”

  We weren’t. He sat with his hands on his thighs. I gazed at his reflection, at his beating heart and the story of his life, told on skin and bones.

  “You broke your wrist.”

  “Took a bad fall learning the sword.”

  “I can see it.”

  Tristan took my hand again. “You did it.”

  He was his true self, and my breath caught. He radiated power, stronger than I’d ever felt from a single person, Storm-Singer or Secondary. The edges of it fuzzed over my skin, and I leaned toward him, iron drawn to a lodestone.

  He put his other hand between us. “Wait.”

  I let go of his hand and covered my eyes.

  “You can look.” He was back to human, with a human’s imperfection and regret in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “It’s all right.” I stood up. “I should get home. It’s probably close to … damn.”

  My watch ticked a quarter to ten.

  “Too late?”

  “It’s fine. I can go back to the hospital. I’ve slept there before.”

  “Or you could stay here,” he said. “There’s an extra bedroom.”

  “I can steal a cot in one of the recovery rooms.”

  “It’s softer than a cot. Plenty of blankets, plump pillows, hot breakfast in the morning. We’re near enough to the same size. You can borrow one of my shirts, and the guest bath is fully stocked.”

  “I keep early hours.” Five thirty in the morning wasn’t a gentleman’s hour. He likely didn’t rise until nine.