The Queen and the Tower

by Shannon Page

  Leonora carried her cup into the front parlor, taking her former seat there. Most of the others drifted toward the front room as well, pointedly ignoring Raymond.

  After basically forever, I felt Manka’s presence approaching the house, and hurried over to bid her enter.

  Manka wore simple, dark, traditional robes, short-sleeved to allow for freedom of movement. Her long salt-and-pepper hair was pulled back into a ponytail fastened by a red cord; the cord’s long tails wove around the ponytail, holding it firm. She carried a black leather bag, within which I could hear bottles and jars clinking.

  “Thank you, Calendula Isadora,” she said, stepping over the threshold. “The patient—?”

  “In here.”

  In the second parlor, Manka bent to examine Logan, touching her at all the energetic nexuses. After a minute, she pulled three bottles out of her bag, pouring a bit of powder from each of them into the palm of her hand. She spat into her palm, rubbed the powders into a paste, and placed bits of the paste on Logan’s wrists, temples, and the base of her throat. Then she leaned in again, holding perfectly still for several minutes.

  She straightened up and addressed us all. “It is an essence-draining illness, though one I have not encountered before,” she said, her mouth a grim line. “I cannot identify the origin, or even its point of entry into her system.”

  “Neither could Dr. Andromedus or Dr. Fallon,” I said. “What is it?”

  She looked around at all of us. “This just happened?”

  “Yes,” Gregorio said, “and quite suddenly. We were all enjoying a quiet dinner party, which was, er, briefly interrupted.” His eyes darted toward the front parlor. “Logandina Fleur took ill immediately thereafter.”

  “Surely the human could have had nothing to do with that,” my father put in.

  “Of course not,” Leonora said.

  Manka shook her head. “And the rest of you feel fine?”

  “Yes,” I said, to nods of agreement all around.

  “I would like to examine any remains of the meal,” Manka said. “You are certain she did not eat or drink anything that no one else did?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s all still in there.” I waved toward the dining room.

  She nodded and began to pull out a number of vials, then suddenly stopped. “Wait—there is an unaccounted-for presence.” She looked at me sharply. “I sense your essence…in some way partitioned.”

  “What? Oh—Petrana.” At Manka’s quizzical look, I said, “My golem.”

  The healer blinked at me. Had she not heard? She would be the only one in the city, if so. “I will need to examine the creature as well.”

  “Of course. Do you want me to get her now?”

  “Not yet. I am not finished with the patient. Is the golem capable of working magic?”

  “Um, only a bit. Little things…nothing like this.” I felt desperate. “Can you heal Logan?”

  “In theory, any magical injury can be made whole,” Manka said, in the weary but gentle tone of one who has given unpleasant news many times over her long life. “If I knew the exact nature of the infectious agent, I could simply untie its knot, as it were. Unfortunately, that may take some time. I shall need to take some blood and saliva from the patient, in addition to samples of whatever she consumed.”

  “But, this is crazy!” I protested. “Diseases don’t just…attack like this!”

  My father gave me a sad smile as Gregorio said, “Calendula, it appears that one has. As I mentioned, I have in fact seen something similar to this before, though a long time ago. I will work with Manka to determine the cause.”

  I sat back down in the little chair and took Logan’s limp hand. “I just don’t understand.”

  My father came and put a gentle hand on my shoulder.

  “Take heart,” Gregorio said. “We will solve this mystery.”

  — CHAPTER EIGHT —

  I hugged my parents goodbye and closed the front door behind them. Gregorio and Manka had already left with the samples. Now only Leonora, Dr. Fallon, and Jeremy remained. The green-eyed warlock sat by Logan’s bedside, holding her hand in his. If only she’d been conscious to know it.

  “You might have asked Belladonna to stay,” Leonora said in a quiet voice. Her whole disapproving demeanor had softened in the last few minutes. Logan’s crisis seemed to have shifted something in her. At least for now. “She clearly wishes to help you.”

  “I…” I shrugged. “I know. But her help… I know she means well, but I think she still sees me as a witchlet of sixteen.”

  Leonora smiled. “I understand.” She reached down and petted Grieka absently. “Given Logandina’s life focus, however, she might well respond to Belladonna’s more intuitively-based care.”

  “Wild magic,” I murmured. Yes, my mother and my best friend did have that in common. Perhaps I should invite Mom back. Tomorrow. “I just need it to be a little…quieter around here right now.”

  “I understand that as well.” Leonora got to her feet. “And I will leave you to whatever peace you may manage to find.” She eyed Raymond, still in his spelled sleep on the couch. Logan’s illness had certainly put that issue into perspective.

  “Good night, Mother,” I said.

  She picked up her cat. “I will see myself out.”

  “Do you mind if I stay a little longer?” Jeremy asked softly, after my coven mother had gone. “I think her essence may be strengthening a little, though it’s hard to tell.”

  “Really?” I glanced at Dr. Fallon, who had just examined her again a moment ago.

  “It might be,” the young warlock said. “If so, it’s subtle. At the very least, Dr. Andromedus’s spell seems to be holding—her essence is no longer draining away.”

  I put my hand on Logan’s forehead to see for myself. It was as they said: not worsening. “Stay as long as you like,” I told Jeremy. “I know she’d be thrilled to have your company if she were awake.”

  He smiled at me and turned his gaze back to her.

  “Would you like some help cleaning up?” Dr. Fallon asked.

  Oh, Blessed Mother, the half-eaten dinner was still all over the table. We’d never even gotten to dessert. “My golem—” I started, then changed my mind. It was hard to imagine a warlock willing to wash dishes, but… “Yes, I would, thank you.”

  He followed me into the dining room. “I’d just like to say…” He hesitated. “In spite of everything that’s happened, and at the risk of sounding completely insensitive, it really has been such a pleasure to get to know you better, Callie.”

  “Well, thank you, Dr. Fallon.”

  “Please, call me Sebastian.”

  “Sure.” I smiled back at him.

  Together, we carried all the dishes to the kitchen, put the extra food away, and began washing up, all by hand. I wasn’t sure I could focus on doing it magically. And there was something soothing about hot water and soap, the rhythm of the movements. Making things clean, one by one.

  “Actually…” Sebastian said as he dried the dishes, stacking them on the kitchen table for me to put away later, “I’ve been hoping all evening for a chance to talk with you more privately.”

  Oh for crying out loud, what was this? “More privately”? This was just not the time. “What is your area of research, Sebastian?” I blurted out, reaching for the first safe subject that came to mind.

  “I plan to be a healer, actually,” he said.

  “Really?” I turned to look at him, surprised.

  “Yes. My work with Dr. Andromedus is just a general internship, getting a basic biological education before focusing on patient care.”

  “Isn’t that a bit…unusual for a warlock?”

  He gave me a shy smile as he took another plate out of the drainer. “I suppose. But I’ve always felt drawn to it. I tried a few other things, but they didn’t work out. Finally, I just decided to go for it.”

  I thought about how Manka had interacted with him—or hadn’t
, rather. She’d come in, examined Logan, spoken to me, and Leonora, and Gregorio…and left. I hadn’t even noticed. Was she avoiding him deliberately? Did she even know? “Are you getting much pushback?”

  “Some,” he admitted. “But times are changing, don’t you think? I mean, just look at your party tonight. Traditional in form, yes; but there’s nothing traditional about a dinner being given by an unaffiliated witch and a witch who’s not living in her coven—much less one who’s openly dating a human.”

  “Yeah.” And what’s your point? I added silently. He’d as much as said this earlier.

  “And you invited two prominent Elders, the city’s most important coven leader, a botanical worker, and a medical intern. What a varied group! All together, hanging out, as equals.”

  “Well, I’m related to half of those people,” I pointed out, smiling. “And don’t forget that the human is drunk and spelled, sleeping on my couch.”

  He gave a rueful grin in return. “Well. There is that.” Then he grew more serious. “But that still makes my point, doesn’t it? Not that long ago, someone like Leonora would just have thrown him onto the street, no discussion, wouldn’t she? Probably blanked his mind permanently in the process. Coven mothers did have what amounted to ownership of the witches in their houses, didn’t they?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, thinking about it. “No, not quite like that. Or at least that hasn’t been the case for a long while. When we blood-swear to a coven, we agree to a lot of general things about honor and respect and—well, not blind obedience, but we do agree to honor the coven mother’s leadership.” I ran a platter under the hot water and soaped it up. “There aren’t such ironclad rules, though.” I smiled at him. “It is assumed, I guess, that a good witch will spend her un-unioned life in a coven house… Like people might assume warlocks wouldn’t choose to become healers. Is that what you’re getting at?”

  “It’s nothing my parents ever imagined I’d be doing, put it that way.”

  “I’ll bet not. How are they taking it?”

  “It’s not the only thing I’ve surprised them with,” he said, giving me a teasing smile. “My dating life is probably even more complicated than yours.”

  “Oh?” I turned from the sink to look at him, and dried my hands. This was proving to be a more interesting conversation by the minute.

  “They haven’t given up on finding me a nice witch to form a union with,” he said. “My mother never tires of explaining to me that as long as we had a child or two, I would be free to spend the rest of my time with…whatever fellows I like.” He gave the last phrase such an ironic lilt that I could almost hear his mother’s voice, though I had never met her.

  “Oh!” I gave a short laugh. “You really aren’t too wedded to tradition then, are you?”

  “No.” We shared a smile as he dried off one last platter. “Not witchkind tradition, anyway. Humans are well ahead of us in this one.”

  “Yes.” I thought a moment. Though witchkind society strongly held to notions of bedroom privacy, formal unions were explicitly contracted between one warlock and one witch, as such arrangements were chiefly intended for procreation. I didn’t know, or know of, any openly gay witches or warlocks. “Does Gregorio know?”

  “Who can tell what someone like Dr. Andromedus knows?” he said casually. “But I have never discussed it with him. My parents know, of course, and I have no idea who else they may have told.” He shrugged. “There are a few others. It’s not a dire secret, but…it’s nothing I tend to advertise. I’m sure you understand.”

  I nodded. Everything I’d thought about this man was turning upside down. And here I’d been wondering if he was working up to asking me out.

  “That’s why I’ve wanted this chance to talk,” he said. “It’s so rare to meet someone—anyone, really—who’s…testing any of the unexamined assumptions that define our lives.”

  “I suppose,” I said slowly. He wasn’t wrong; Logan had been living this way for decades, but beyond me, she largely kept to herself. “I just…needed more space for my research. And I was finding coven life increasingly stifling. I’m nearly a half-century old; I felt it was time for a bit more freedom. Not just for dating whoever I want to, though that is certainly a big part of it.”

  “Exactly,” he said with a smile.

  “I always thought it was witches who were locked into tradition, while you guys were totally free.” I picked up a stack of dishes and started putting them in the cupboard. “I guess it’s all more complicated than I realized.”

  Now that I thought about it, most of the warlocks I knew were either scientist-scholars, managed money, or pursued some form of politics, like Jeremy. They rarely seemed to go into anything so mundane as lower level education, or gardening, or the decorative arts…or healing.

  I wondered how many warlocks felt as constrained as I did, how many were privately struggling with the same kinds of questions.

  Clearly not all of them. I recalled Jeremy’s companions at Rose’s on the night of Logan’s birthday—their sneering dismissal of an unaffiliated witch, one who worked with tarot. We all had a ways to go, it seemed.

  But talking to each other like this—this was a good start, I thought.

  “There we are,” Sebastian said, handing me the big platter. I placed it on a high shelf in the cabinet. “I’ll go check on the patient one last time, and then leave you to that peace you wanted.”

  “You can stay over too, if you like,” I said. “I have a guest bed.”

  “Thanks, but if she’s stable, I should probably get home.” He grinned. “Need to feed my cat.”

  “You have a familiar?” Healer warlocks, gay warlocks—that I could handle. But…

  He laughed. “She’s just a cat, nothing more. And she’s probably pretty hungry by now.”

  Elnor, at my feet, took the opportunity to remind me that she, too, had been denied her dinner, and was on the verge of certain, dire, imminent starvation.

  Sebastian pronounced Logan the same as before, and took his leave, promising to return in the morning.

  Now Jeremy sat quietly by Logan. In answer to my offer of tea, or brandy, or dessert, or even a more comfortable chair, he said, “I’m fine. You rest.”

  “Soon,” I said.

  I went through the double doorway to the front parlor and stood staring down at Raymond. It had been several hours since I’d spelled him to sleep. Were there still vestiges of the spell in him, or was he just sleeping normally now? I tried to search his essence, but it’s harder to tell with humans. Many of them have latent, vestigial magical pathways in their bodies, a holdover from the days when we were all one species. Yet they were far too atrophied to read easily.

  “Wake up,” I whispered to Raymond, directing a magical line of energy at him to reinforce my words and unmake my sleep-spell. “Wake up.”

  He murmured and shifted on the couch. I could still smell the alcohol heavy on his breath—not just beer, but something stronger underneath.

  “Wake up.”

  After another minute, he blinked, then blearily focused on me. “Callie?”

  “How are you feeling?” I asked him.

  “Um.” He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “Hung over? Did I…?” He sat up a little and looked around. “Did I pass out on your couch?”

  “Sort of.” I gave him a gentle smile. “Do you feel okay enough to get yourself home?”

  “Home?” His face fell as his awareness sharpened. “I can’t stay here?”

  “Honey,” I said, “we do need to talk, but right now, I need you to go home.” I could almost feel Jeremy carefully ignoring our conversation, in the next room.

  Raymond sat up further, putting his feet on the floor, wobbling a little. Then he glanced through the open double doors, noticing Jeremy…and Logan. “Who…?”

  Don’t make me fog you again, I thought. “These are friends of mine, and one of them is very sick.” A brilliant thought struck me. “Probably highly con
tagious—we’re not sure, but we think it might be hemorrhagic fever. It would be a lot safer for you to not be here.”

  “Oh. Um. Right!” Raymond slowly got to his feet, still blinking. Shaking away the fog, the spelled sleep, the alcohol, or some combination of all three. “Yeah.” He looked around. “Did I have a jacket?”

  “You’re wearing it.” I gave him another gentle smile, then herded him into the front hall. Good, it seemed like he didn’t remember anything. “I’ll call you…in a few days.”

  “Yeah. Um.” At the front door, he stopped and turned to me, confusion written all over his adorable face. “I’m…sorry?”

  “Oh, Raymond.” I pulled him into a strong hug, holding him for a while. Then I drew back and kissed him. “You have nothing to be sorry for. But go on, now, while you’re still safe.”

  “Yeah.” He kissed me, then turned to leave.

  I locked the door behind him and sighed, then went into the second parlor.

  “Hemorrhagic fever?” Jeremy asked with a minuscule smile.

  “Oh, Blessed Mother.” I sank down into a second chair. “That was awkward all the way around.”

  Now Jeremy gave a small snort of laughter. “Awkward! Yes, that would be one way to put it.”

  I looked down at Logan. She was so very, very still. “No change?”

  “I don’t think so.” Jeremy looked up at me. “I gave her some of my essence, but I cannot tell if she’s holding it or not.”

  “Let me try.” Witch essence would be better suited for her than warlock essence, though in a pinch, they would both work. It’s not quite as fussy as blood type—his essence wouldn’t harm her—but mine would be a better match.

  I put my hands on her chest and concentrated, sending her a measure of my own essence—my strength, my power, the ineffable energies that made me a witch. I felt it flow into her, find its way into her system. After a minute, I closed the channel and removed my hands.