Witchmark

by C. L. Polk

  With a gesture, he sent his Links to deal with us and spoke to the Queen, who turned her attention reluctantly back to the new proxy Voice.

  Sir Johnathan spoke again. He had a chin like Raymond’s, narrow and pointed. “Please leave.”

  “You’re so certain my Secondary is wrong?” Grace demanded. “You’re willing to wager lives on that? Are you?”

  The other glanced to her partner before saying, “You let your Secondary tell us something straight out of an opera.”

  “So you’re going to ignore it?”

  Sir Percy’s Links marched up and blocked my view of the Queen.

  She didn’t look at me again.

  “Yes. Don’t make us force you, Miss Hensley. Take your Secondary and leave.”

  A robed Invisible in the simpler robes of the Second Ring broke out of the crowd. Raymond. He took Grace’s hand and folded something inside it.

  “Sorry.”

  He melted back into the crowd.

  Grace opened her hand. Grandfather’s engagement ring rested in the valley of her palm, the emeralds so deep a green they were nearly black.

  She closed her hand into a fist. “Miles. Let’s go.”

  I followed her into the night, bracing myself against the car’s skin-crawling effect. “We don’t have enough time to ask for an appointment.”

  “We’re sunk,” Grace said. “We’re now uninvited from the surrender signing, too. Only those in the Circle are attending.”

  “There must be something.”

  “There might be. If they won’t listen to us, maybe the Amaranthines can help. We go to the asylum with Tristan, and ask his Queen.”

  “Grand Duchess.”

  Grace waved the correction away. “I’ll go into the stones if I have to. Sir Percy Stanley can’t blackball her for telling wild tales, can he? We get her help, Miles, and pray we get it in time.”

  Grandfather’s engagement ring rattled on the lipped shelf in the middle of the car’s console as we drove away.

  “I’m sorry, Grace.”

  She glanced at the ring and shrugged. “I didn’t love him.”

  “Even so.”

  She shook her head, and the round cap of her hair swayed. “Forget about Raymond Blake. It was political. He had a lover.”

  “A Secondary?”

  “Richard Burleigh.”

  Sleet bounced off the hood of Grace’s car halfway through Halston Park.

  “What the deuce.” Grace flipped a switch, and a rubber wiper cleared the windshield. “Sleet? During a ritual? They have to be singing in winter by now.”

  “Maybe this is how?”

  “The ritual’s supposed to be done under the stars, Miles. Somebody blundered.”

  “Or Sir Percy’s skill isn’t up to being the Voice.”

  Grace’s smile was unkind. “How embarrassing. Poor man.”

  She exhaled—a slow, calm breath—inhaled, and sang. My hair stood on end, from my scalp down my arms. Grace was strong. How much magic could she do on her own? The fall of sleet slowed, and stopped.

  “No sense getting your coat wet,” Grace said. “I’ll let it go once you’re inside.”

  “Aren’t you coming in?”

  “No.” Grace stroked the fur cuff of her coat. “After all that, I want to be alone. I’ll be back early, so get some sleep.”

  “How will you explain leaving in the morning?”

  Grace waved her hand. “I’ll be gone an hour before he wakes up. The next time he sees me it’ll be in the company of Amaranthines.”

  “Initiative. Father likes that.” But not too much. “Grace … we don’t know what we’re going to find at the asylum. And I don’t know if he would encourage us to go there.”

  She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “What are you saying?”

  If we kept the whole secret, we’d leave the Queen without a last line of defense. “Tell him about the Laneeri’s spell and the soldiers. He can talk to the Queen, arrange her protection, at least. Don’t tell him we’re going to Bywell, or anything about the asylums. Or Nick Elliot.”

  He could protect the Queen. He would protect her, and he could make Percy look like a power-hungry idiot. He might have taken the proxy from my sister, but Father was still the Voice.

  “Why not?”

  I couldn’t tell her all of it. “I think we’re about to stumble onto a state secret with these asylums. He might forbid you. And then we couldn’t ask the Grand Duchess for help, because it would be an act of diplomacy somewhat beyond your authority.”

  “I have no diplomatic authority. I see your point. I won’t tell him the part about the asylum.”

  I pressed my lips together. I shouldn’t leave her to deal with this alone. “Maybe I had better go with you and explain.”

  “Miles. Walk into that townhouse and enjoy a night of privacy,” Grace said. “I’ll handle Father.”

  My jaw hung open. “Grace…”

  She shrugged. “Tristan and I had a talk. I’ll be here in the morning. Make pancakes.”

  I took a breath of fresh, cold air and let myself into Tristan’s home.

  * * *

  The lights were dimmed, but I knew Tristan’s narrow foyer well enough to kick out of my shoes and put my own hat away, dry thanks to Grace’s show of magic for the sake of my convenience. A faint smell of hot chocolate hung in the air, and rinsing water drummed into a pot in the kitchen.

  “You two are back already? I wasn’t expecting you for hours,” Tristan called through the half-open kitchen door. “I thought of something while you were out, Miss Hensley.”

  I cleared my throat. “Tristan, Grace isn’t—”

  He slid open the door and stopped, staring at me on the front door mat, hanging up my coat.

  “Grace isn’t here. She’ll be here in the morning.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Interesting.” His hair was loose down his back, freed from its usual plait. He’d removed his tie, the top buttons open to expose smooth golden skin. “What happened?”

  “They kicked us out. Voted Grace out, sent us packing.”

  “They didn’t listen.”

  “Grace wants to ask your Grand Duchess for help.” I came to a stop before him. “Would she?”

  “If it means your people will be indebted to her … she might. But I wouldn’t guarantee it.” He lifted his hand, then stilled, as if he didn’t quite dare. “Miles.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’re here.”

  “Should I go?”

  “No. Stay.” His hands trembled as he set them in mine.

  I raised them to my mouth and kissed his knuckles. “You didn’t enchant me.”

  “Like in the stories,” Tristan said. “I never did.”

  “You’re shaking.”

  “I am. Isn’t it silly?”

  I turned his hands over to kiss the palms, tracing the calluses of his sword hand. “You’re nervous. I didn’t think you felt—”

  “Shut up, Miles.”

  He wound his arms around my neck and let me carry him upstairs.

  * * *

  The birch log in Tristan’s fireplace fell with a shower of sparks. I propped myself up on one elbow, prepared to brave the goosebump air to tend it, for the master suite’s radiator stood cold and useless between two tall and drafty windows draped in silver and violet damask.

  Tristan caught my arm as I slid out from under down-filled quilts. “No.”

  “The fire’s dying.”

  He burrowed under the blankets and I laid another log atop the coals, closing the chain curtains meant to keep sparks from landing on the thick carpet. My face and arms were heated from the fire, my back chilled from the draft seeping around the curtains.

  I didn’t feel lost to infatuation, and I should have. I smiled at the blanket-covered hump in bed. I should be enchanted twice over, and I wasn’t.

  It would hurt when he was gone. But it would only hurt.

  “What are you smiling at?”


  “How you’ll howl when I put my cold hands on you.”

  “A precious memory to bear in my heart.” Tristan flipped the covers back. “Come here. Don’t tell me what time it is.”

  Morning was too soon, anyway.

  He curled around my cold back, his chin on my shoulder. “I’ll do everything I can to come back.”

  “I know.”

  “Miles.” He pushed me onto my back so he could see my face. “It might take some time.”

  “It’s all right. You have to go home. You have to report, and you’re the heir’s bodyguard. You don’t have to explain.”

  He hunched his shoulders. “Yes, I do. Because I know what the stories say. Some of it’s true.”

  “Like how you can’t—”

  “How we can’t love,” Tristan said. “How we lock up our hearts so they can’t be hurt?”

  If I put my hand up, it would touch his chest. “They do.”

  “We don’t put our hearts in caskets for safekeeping, Miles. But mortal lives span seven or eight decades. Powerful witches live ten or eleven, and then they die.”

  I licked my lips. “Tristan, how old are you?”

  “Concerned I’m robbing the cradle? I’m fifty-one.”

  “You look twenty.”

  A pillow landed on my face. “Flatterer.”

  “All right, twenty-five. But you don’t—you don’t die? And I will.”

  “An Amaranthine never forgets the ones they loved. They go on with the memory, forever. Until they are killed.” His hands feathered along my face. “Miles. I will never forget you. Never.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Frostmonth

  Frostmonth dawned with a silvering sky. It clouded gently, suggesting enough rain to plaster golden orange leaves to the street and clean the salt and seaweed from the air. I looked out the parlor window at streets empty as a held breath, warming my fingers against a cup of black coffee.

  “She’ll come,” Tristan said from behind me.

  “I know,” I said, but I turned my head to watch the west again.

  Tristan’s hand traced gentle circles over my shoulders. I turned to draw him close, leaned to kiss the corner of his jaw. We stood together before the parlor window, but I wasn’t watching the street any longer.

  The low rumble of an engine drew nearer, and Tristan drew his head back. “Look.”

  Grace, in her long black car. She pulled up to the space in front of the townhouse and waved up at the window before she let herself in.

  “Pancakes, you said?” Tristan stepped away, leaving my left side cold. “I’ll heat the griddle.”

  Grace followed Tristan into the kitchen. “Do you think your people are looking for you?”

  “I’m sure they are, but no seeking spell has touched me yet,” Tristan said. “And the longer it takes, the bigger the response we can expect.”

  “Will they really send a war party for you?”

  “I am … indispensable to the Grand Duchess. She’s waited a year and a day for my return. Best to assume they’re coming in heavy numbers.”

  An army of Amaranthines headed right for us. Tens of thousands of soldiers possessed by dead Laneeri, bent on retribution. But breakfast would keep us on our feet if we had to use magic, so Grace and I got in the way trying to help. Tristan banished us to the kitchen table, where we guzzled coffee and ate what he brought us.

  I cut my pancakes with the side of my fork and ignored Grace’s grimace at my working-class behavior. “How did Father take the news?”

  She used a knife, and her every gesture was precise. “He’s going to see her Majesty when he wakes up. He’s convinced.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “I told him what you told me, I told him what I saw myself, and he trusts your talent. Miles, he really does love you.”

  That was no comfort. Maybe he did, but it didn’t matter. Whatever we found in the asylum would likely shred our relationship beyond repair. I shrugged and drained my coffee. We could still succeed. Grace would win her place back. Secondaries would win more rights, more dignity. Raymond Blake would regret jilting her. Maybe they’d reconcile.

  And maybe enough people would join her side so I wouldn’t have to make a dynastic marriage.

  Oh, Miles. Still selfish. “Do you know what you’ll ask the Grand Duchess?”

  “No idea. What if Tristan’s prediction isn’t correct and she’s not there?”

  “I guess we go with him to find her.”

  “She’ll be there.” Tristan finally sat beside me, his plate piled high with round golden pancakes, sweet syrup, and half a pound of sausage. “I’ll eat fast,” he promised, and set to his breakfast with an unseemly quickness.

  We left dirty dishes behind with apologies to the absent Mrs. Sparrow and braced ourselves for the ride to Bywell.

  * * *

  Grace pushed her car to the limit, the press of our own speed rocking us back against the seats. How thrilling to travel so unimaginably fast, faster than a horse could gallop, long past the time a horse would collapse and die from the strain. Forty miles an hour, the velocity gauge read. Faster even than a train.

  If only it hadn’t made us feel so ill we barely spoke, trying to keep our breakfasts down. If only we weren’t racing to find the truth Nick had been killed to keep. If only the evidence pointed to someone other than Father.

  He was above justice. They’d never arrest him for murder and I knew it. But that wasn’t reason to give up. Tristan still didn’t have the answer to the question he’d been sent to answer—where were Aeland’s dead going? I remembered the path of the two souls I’d pulled from Bill and Old Gerald, slipping out of my grasp and out of sight. To go where?

  East. East, toward Bywell.

  Grace drove around a bend in the narrow road. “I think—yes. That’s it.”

  She pointed out the window. The asylum was graceful white plaster, with tall windows and rambling wings, hemmed by scarlet-leafed shrubbery and cheerful yellow mums. To the eye it was serene, peaceful and composed. A black iron fence standing twelve feet high bordered the long, rolling lawns and mature oak trees, the points atop the bars long and sharp.

  “Friendly,” Tristan said.

  “Welcoming,” I agreed.

  “Can you feel it?” Grace asked.

  “I can’t feel anything sitting in this car—”

  But my hair stood on end, and the air tasted of the heavy pressure in the second before lightning.

  It was thick with power.

  “What is that?”

  Tristan squeezed my hand. He craned his neck to look at the sky, and his voice was small with horror.

  “Souls. They’re pouring into the building. Can you see them?”

  “No,” I said. “Show me.”

  A minute later, I wished I hadn’t asked. “Oh, gods.”

  They sped through the air, headed for the asylum. They went in.

  None came out. A force tugged at me, and pulling away from it was like the struggle to keep iron from a magnet. It wanted to pull me inside the asylum, and with every step the pull grew stronger, like it would pull me from my body and make it fly into whatever hungered behind those clean white walls.

  Grace showed the gate guard her identification, and the guard ran out to open the gate for us, touching the brim of his uniform cap as we drove along the curving path to the asylum’s front doors.

  “That was easy,” Grace remarked, and a chill ran up my spine.

  “I’m going to be sick,” I said, and Grace braked. I stumbled onto the leaf-scattered lawn before the asylum and tried to breathe in air that didn’t taste like screaming.

  There wasn’t any to be had.

  “It feels wrong,” Grace said. “My skin’s crawling. What are we going to find in there?”

  “Horror,” I answered, wiping my mouth. I didn’t want to go in. I had to. I headed for the asylum’s front door, Grace on my left hand, Tristan on my right.

  Guards waite
d for us inside. Grace held up her identification and they fell back.

  A man walked into the lobby, headed right for us. He wore a fine suit under his doctor’s white coat. “May I help you?”

  “You may,” Grace said. “Dame Grace Hensley, Dr. Miles Singer, and Sir Tristan Hunter. We’re here to see the facility. My brother is particularly interested.”

  “I’m a psychiatrist.” The air was thick with a horrible, helpless gravity. My muscles trembled to hold me upright. Every limb was drawn down and slightly ahead of where we stood. Grace’s jaw was stiff with effort. Tristan grabbed my shoulder and squeezed.

  “ Psyche. You wrote about dissociative memory episodes and their treatment in veterans with battle fatigue.”

  I swallowed. “You know me?”

  “I recognize your name. I wrote an article about the commonality of delusion among witches, and I noticed your observations about veterans. … You aren’t here to talk about that.” The doctor pasted on a smile before turning to Grace. “Dr. James Fredman. I’m at your service. You’re here to show Dr. Singer the asylum?”

  “And to satisfy my curiosity,” Grace said. “I’d like to see the results of our investment.”

  “Of course. Please, come in.”

  He unlocked a door for us, and led us into an aether-lit corridor. He ambled toward a staircase made of golden oak. “Dr. Singer, I suppose you’re interested in our patient care?”

  “I am,” I said. “I want to see the witches.”

  He stilled mid-step. “They’re here, of course. We’re an approved facility for the care of patients with magical aptitude. We’ve kept them as comfortable as possible, given the circumstances—”

  Grace cleared her throat. “Not that way, if you please.”

  Dr. Fredman halted again, one foot on the stairs. “I’m sorry?”

  “Take us to the basement,” Grace said.

  “Where you keep the witches,” I added.

  He swallowed. “Patients are on the upper floors.”

  He knew exactly what I meant.

  Grace shook her head. “It’s definitely coming from below. Come on.” She walked briskly across a five-armed star inlaid in the floor. “We’ve no time to waste.”

  * * *

  Grace had locked onto the source of the collection of power, and she navigated her way through service hallways, back stairs, and wrong corners. She ignored Dr. Fredman’s demands to stop and explain herself, his protestations fading to agitated utterances of “Ma’am!” and “Please, stop.”