Escape to Witch City

by E. Latimer

  The seamstress completely ignored Isolde’s chattering, a talent which Emma rather admired. She wished she could ignore Isolde too, but her mother was hovering over one shoulder, providing a constant trickle of waspish remarks. Emma’s posture wasn’t straight enough. She was slouching. Her hair was a terrible mess, and she had better not scowl like that at court!

  Emma’s reflection in the mirror across the room looked back at her miserably. The dress she was in was many-layered, puff-sleeved, and aggressively lacey, with tiny pearls sewn into the fabric.

  She looked like a walking wedding cake.

  The one benefit of the seamstress coming to their rooms was that she insisted on doing the fittings in the main parlor, as it had the best light. It was Emma’s favorite room, with its wide balcony that looked out over the palace’s gardens. The door was always kept open, even in the winter, and there was a cool, pine-scented breeze drifting in, stirring Emma’s hair around her face.

  From her position on the box, she could see the center of the rose garden. The rosebushes were bare, but the triple-layered, green-and-white marble fountain still filled the air with the cheerful trickle of water. It was quite pleasant, if you ignored the glowering stone statue of the queen that perched atop it.

  “You’re not listening. Stand up straight, Emmaline.”

  There came a demanding poke in the middle of her back. Emma jerked upright and immediately received a sharp stab in her left thigh that made her eyes water. The seamstress glanced up, eyes wide. She looked as if she were about to say something, but Emma shook her head hastily.

  After giving her a long look, the woman sighed and returned to her work, head bent, and Emma relaxed.

  “You must work on your posture.” Isolde came over to stand next to her elbow, her gaze raking down Emma’s form. She shook her head reprovingly. “You clearly need more lessons and less time running wild about the East Wing. I’ll ask Mr. Davis to increase your finishing classes.”

  Emma scowled at her.

  Of course her mother would restrict her access to the East Wing, and to the abandoned library within. This had nothing to do with Emma’s posture. She would be kept in the dark, fed the same stories about her family history over and over again.

  Her mother would never let her discover what had happened to Lenore.

  Anger flared in the pit of her stomach and Emma tensed, fists clenched at her sides. The seamstress looked up from her newspaper, brow furrowed, and from somewhere in the back of Emma’s mind came a dull, quiet sound.

  Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

  Her breath caught, a shiver of shock rippling through her.

  Oh no, not here. She couldn’t do this here.

  It had been weeks since this last happened, and Emma had hoped against hope that she would make it to Testing Day without any sign of it, that perhaps she’d even grown out of it.

  If it happened tomorrow, it might affect the outcome of The Testing. She couldn’t let that happen.

  Quickly, she shut her eyes and pushed the irritation down, taking a deep calming breath.

  Sometimes, if she caught the Noise early, she could make it go away before anything really dreadful happened.

  After a second it faded, and Emma let out a sigh, eyes fluttering open. She was startled to find Isolde’s starkly painted face only inches from her own.

  “Why have you got that look on your face?” Isolde said, suspicion clear in her voice.

  Emma leaned back, dismayed.

  Thankfully, at that moment a small commotion started up in the garden below: a high, annoyed-sounding shout.

  Someone was sitting on the bench in front of the fountain. Emma couldn’t make out who it was, but he was dressed in court fashion, a lord or duke perhaps. A member of the court waiting for the proceedings to start, most likely.

  He was sitting up straight on the bench, waving his arms at a pair of black birds on the pavement before him.

  The distant sound of his voice, high-pitched and shrill, drifted through the window. “Scat! Shoo, bloody birds!”

  Emma watched, amused in spite of herself. Even from her position in the parlor, she could see he had some kind of biscuit or scone clutched in one hand, and the birds—crows, she thought, judging by their glossy black feathers—kept edging closer to his bench, hopping sideways over the paving stones.

  “Get away!”

  “Goodness. How undignified.” Isolde’s voice was so close to Emma’s left ear that she jumped. Her mother was the picture of disapproval as she stared out the window.

  “Maybe he’s afraid of birds,” Emma said.

  As they watched—even the seamstress had sat up from her pinning, craning her neck to look out the window—the young noble finally lobbed his biscuit at the crows and ran. He would have made a clean getaway too, as the birds swooped down on the food, but one shoe caught the edge of the stone pathway, and he pitched forward, falling headlong into the nearest rosebush.

  “Oh!” the seamstress said, and Isolde made a disapproving clucking sound.

  “As I said, no dignity at all.”

  Emma groaned, cringing in sympathy as a pair of palace guards rushed to help the young man out of the bushes. Then she paused, eyes narrowed, as he struggled to sit upright. There was something familiar about him.

  A moment later she realized what it was.

  The tall, gangly frame; the shock of black hair.

  Her cousin, Edgar. The prince.

  Ugh. Maybe she didn’t feel bad for him after all. His spill into the thorny bushes was well deserved, in her opinion.

  Emma wanted to stay and watch the extraction of the young prince, but the seamstress finally stood up with a heavy sigh and announced that the pinning was done.

  Isolde, who seemed not to notice that it was her nephew floundering in the distant rosebushes, was in a hurry almost immediately, demanding Emma slip out of the dress and accompany her to their chambers.

  “We have simply got to do something about that hair. And are you still so adamantly against painting your face? The shadows under your eyes are so dark, it really would help, Emmaline.”

  Emma bit back a sigh, but she stepped off the box and stood still while the seamstress unbuttoned the back of the dress. While she waited, she kept an eye on the rose garden, but there seemed to be no further commotion. The guards untangled the prince, who brushed them off and hurried away down the path, straightening his jacket as he went.

  Emma watched, sighing deeply as he vanished behind the hedges. Tomorrow was going to be dreadful, but at least she hadn’t fallen face-first into a rosebush like an absolute idiot. Small mercies, she supposed.

  But as she stood there staring at the empty garden, the sound of the fountain was drowned out by her mother, who had begun admonishing her for not holding her shoulders back, and Emma began to feel sorry for herself.

  First she was forced into an atrocious wedding-cake dress. And now she was about to have her hair painfully yanked on for the next hour and a half. And on top of all that, her gaze kept straying to the wheel of the seasons on the wall beside the window, a small clay disc with a single wooden pointer that was turned to a new slot each day.

  Another day gone, and now she had finally run out of time.

  The sight of it sent a wash of cold through her and tied her stomach into uncomfortable knots.

  On second thought, she’d take the rosebush.

  Emma scratched at her neck, miserable.

  The Throne Room was so crowded there was barely an inch to move. People kept bumping into her, and the atrocious dress her mother had forced her into was unbearably itchy in the sweltering heat. There was a hearing day every month, and each time it seemed there were more and more nobles attempting to pack themselves into the echoing space, all of them dressed to the nines in cream-colored lace, purple silks, and the most ridiculous hats possib
le.

  Emma made her way around the fountain at the front, avoiding the fine mist sent up from the rush of the purple-tinged waters, and headed toward a table heavily laden with food. She frowned as a gaggle of young women in high-necked gowns and peacock-feathered hats pushed past her, knocking her elbow. None of them seemed to notice they’d run into her; they were too busy staring up at the dais, raised above a set of five stone steps and sectioned off with heavy purple curtains. At the base was a life-sized statue depicting Queen Alexandria, her booted foot resting on one side of an upended, cracked cauldron. And looming over that was the queen’s throne, empty now, waiting for Her Highness to arrive…

  Emma scratched again and looked over at the wheel of the seasons, this one a massive stone plaque that had been erected beside the dais. She shivered and looked away.

  The Testing was what, twelve hours away?

  When she turned back to the table, she nearly jumped.

  A boy had appeared across from her. He was tall and pale, with messy dark hair. His posture was distinctly uncomfortable, and he stood with his arms dangling at his sides, as if he wasn’t sure what he was meant to do with them.

  Prince Edgar.

  The mere sight of him was enough to put a sour taste in Emma’s mouth. She turned away, crossing her arms over her chest.

  He must have seen her too, but neither of them said anything to the other.

  Emma had been expressly clear on the matter of her dislike for him, as she’d barely spoken a word to him in four years. She could remember down to the exact day—no, to the moment—when she’d decided never to speak to him again.

  They’d been playing at Witch Hunter, a game that had consisted of Edgar playing the hunter and she the witch, both of them galloping down the stone corridors shrieking at the tops of their lungs until one of them “caught” the other.

  It was a dangerous game, mainly because of the subject matter, but no one would have known if Edgar hadn’t gone and ratted them out. He’d pushed her over during one round, and she’d shouted that she was going to curse him.

  It had been nothing. An empty threat made in the spirit of the game.

  But Edgar had run to his mother, and his mother had brought the witch hunters, and a terrified nine-year-old Emma had found herself in the middle of three large, stern men, being interviewed for nearly an hour, until her mother had come back to their suite and kicked the witch hunters out.

  It was the one and only time Emma had seen Isolde stand up to her sister.

  She would have remembered it with more admiration if her mother hadn’t then spent the rest of the night yelling herself hoarse over Emma’s foolishness.

  She glanced at the prince from the corner of her eye. He was picking morosely at the strawberry tart on his plate, black curls flopping in front of his eyes. His cravat had been incorrectly tied and had come undone, and he appeared to have tucked a pen behind his ear and forgotten it, as it had stained his neck with a great deal of black ink. He had a thick leather book tucked under one arm, and there appeared to be a number of long, red scratches on his face and neck.

  The boy was a mess.

  Prince Edgar glanced up just then, as if sensing her glare.

  Emma cleared her throat awkwardly, quickly shifting her gaze down to the food, as if she’d meant to scowl at a plate of deviled eggs rather than him.

  The table was completely full.

  There were platters of food piled high all the way down the long table: curls of thinly sliced peppered ham and white cheeses, poached grouse eggs arranged with salmon, and pastries with cherry and raspberry in the center.

  She could hardly stand to look at any of it. Her stomach felt sour, a problem that seemed to occur every time her mother dragged her to court.

  “I expect we’ll hear about the coven.”

  Emma jerked upright, startled that he’d spoken. “What?”

  Edgar didn’t look at her; his gaze was fixed on the empty dais. “You know, during the hearings. We’ll hear about the coven, how the hunt went. I hear rumors it didn’t go off as planned.”

  For a moment she stood still, pressing her lips together hard, caught between her moral outrage of four years ago and her current burning curiosity. The prince clearly knew something about the witch hunters she’d seen in the hallway the night before.

  The pieces of the ripped-up poster were now safely squirreled away in one of her stocking drawers, but she could still picture the woman’s face so clearly.

  Had the witch hunters found her? What did Edgar mean when he said that things didn’t go as planned?

  She badly wanted to question him, but she also badly wanted to snatch up one of the tiny stuffed quiches and lob it at the side of his head.

  She wasn’t sure which impulse was stronger.

  When she glanced back over at him, Edgar was staring at her expectantly, brows raised. He was waiting, she realized, for her to ask him about the coven.

  Slowly and deliberately, she reached out and plucked a cheese square off the platter and shoved it into her mouth, chewing aggressively, sure to keep direct eye contact all the while.

  That would show him she didn’t need his stupid information.

  Edgar blinked at her, clearly taken aback. “Uh,” he said hurriedly, “I heard they got away, nearly all of them.”

  She stopped chewing, unable to hide her surprise. “Really? How?”

  Prince Edgar grimaced, and Emma realized she’d spoken around a mouthful of cheese. “Er, well, I heard they set the place on fire while the captain was inside. Bad business all around.”

  The captain—the regal blond man who’d passed out the posters of Lenore. Emma remembered him saying how dangerous Lenore was. Had she been the one to set the house on fire? “I heard they may have been looking for one witch in particular. Do you know if they found her?”

  Prince Edgar perked up a little. “Did you? I didn’t hear that part. Who told you?”

  Emma pressed her lips together. A familiar feeling had begun to steal over her, setting the hairs on the back of her neck prickling. She darted a look around the crowd to see if anyone was watching them.

  She’d said too much.

  Instead of answering, she said pointedly, “Fell into a rosebush, did you?”

  Prince Edgar didn’t reply, but his face went bright red and he looked away quickly, which was enough of an answer as far as she was concerned.

  She snickered and let her gaze wander to the front of the room.

  Beyond the statue, the wall was covered in a massive, painted mural. In it, Queen Alexandria was sitting very straight on the throne. Her neck was long, her chin thrust out, a half-smile on her full red lips. The painting was so detailed you could see the way her crown glittered under the light, and her black eyes shone as she gazed down at you.

  At the base of the painting was the royal motto in scrolling script: Semper Vigilo. According to her tutor, it meant the queen was always watching over her people.

  Emma, who found the whole thing rather unnerving, would rather she didn’t.

  Worse still were the figures just below the throne. Witches. Monstrous women with tangled hair and wild black eyes. A line of them stretched across the bottom of the mural. The first two had a hapless human between them in chains, demanding he demonstrate his magic, enslaving him when he failed. But by the end of the line the witches lay defeated, their black dresses in tatters as they crumpled in the dirt at the queen’s feet.

  Emma knew the painting was meant to celebrate the queen’s defeat of the witches, and how she’d put a stop to their plans to enslave all of humanity. But the witches were still a nightmare, with black teeth and nails and eyes.

  The painting had kept her awake for several nights the first time she’d seen it. She’d checked her face in the mirror for weeks afterward, looking for a darkening of her eyes or blacken
ing of her teeth.

  She turned her gaze downward, trying to shake off the chill.

  Her mother was holding court just below the steps of the throne, no doubt a deliberate position.

  Emma couldn’t hear her, but she could see the familiar smile on her mother’s face, the expression of benevolent superiority combined with a long-suffering air. She gestured regally at the people clustered around her and, at the same time, leaned heavily on the arm of the handsome young lord beside her, her fan clutched hard in one hand. By the way Isolde’s companions were leaning close, Emma could tell her mother was speaking in that faint, whispery voice she so often used. Isolde Black would never be queen, but she was certainly good at capturing the attention of her admirers.

  One of these admirers, a pretty young woman with thistle-shaped diamonds dangling from her necklace, reached out and clasped Isolde’s hand, brows knit together in concern, and Isolde waved her off with a brave smile.

  Emma rolled her eyes to the ceiling and then paused, noticing that the rafters had been draped with bows of greenery woven through with dried thistle flowers.

  She missed the East Wing.

  She turned her attention back to the cheese and was about to pluck another square off the platter when, behind her, one of the young ladies in purple silk pressed closer, jostling her arm. Emma tried to shove down the annoyance and bite her tongue. The woman hadn’t even noticed; she was too busy talking loudly to her companions.

  “I hear Isabella wore an obsidian stone in her choker to the dance last night. Black as a witch’s eye, I hear.”

  “Hush, Sophie!” One of the woman’s companions darted a look at the empty throne, eyes round. “You say the most outrageous things.”

  “Well, you’ve got to wonder about a girl wearing black at all.” Sophie flicked her blond ringlets over one poofy silk shoulder and wiggled her eyebrows. “If you ask me, it smells like a sympathizer.”

  “That’s a serious accusation, Ms. Sophie,” a tall, dark-haired man chimed in from behind them. The girls burst into nervous giggles and shot him flirtatious looks.