Unlikely

by Frances Pauli

Hadja had the fire really crackling. She’d stuffed the pan with coals and had some kind of meat roasting. Possibly rabbit, from the scent wafting to the rafters. The flames cast the cabin walls into patterns of light and shadow, and the two women bent low over the half table and chewed on their plan.

  “Marten has agreed to ask the Gentry for help.” Hadja made her voice light, had learned early on the Skinner was a touchy topic. “If we can have them waiting in the pocket, it would certainly help.”

  “Help?” Satina snorted. She ignored the faint twinge at the mention of the imp and focused on Hadja’s success. The older woman had much better luck getting him to cooperate. “I don’t see how we can do this without them.”

  “It would be tough.” It would be impossible, but Hadja had a deep vein of optimism.

  “It’s good he’ll do it.”

  “Yes.”

  They sat quietly for a second. Hadja was waiting for her to confess about Marten, and Satina had been stubbornly refusing for almost a week. The longer they stayed quiet, though, the more she was at risk of blurting or asking about him. Instead, she changed the subject.

  “Tell me about the symbols in the cellar.”

  “Huh.” Hadja grunted and popped off her stool. She waddled more than she needed to on the way to the cauldron, played feeble whenever it was her turn to avoid a subject.

  This time Satina didn’t let her. She got up and followed into the living room. “You said the gangs stole the symbols from something older? Maybe the marks on the menhir are from the same time.”

  “Maybe? Of course they are.” Hadja sighed and settled beside her pot. “The Powers themselves may have carved those marks, Satina. You ought to be far more careful with them.”

  “Who are the Powers?” She ignored Hadja’s shock, the little gasp. She’d grown to expect the reaction to her stupidity, but it didn’t matter how ignorant she’d been, she needed answers now. “Tell me.”

  “Who are the Powers? What are they? Before the Final War, the Powers were everything—at least to us.”

  “Us? To humans?”

  “To Magic folk. Don’t look so surprised, goodmother. You’ve worked this much out already.”

  She had. Hadja worked magic despite her lack of blood, and she couldn’t miss it living with the woman. But she didn’t understand how, or where the power came from. “Humans used magic before the war?”

  “Not all of them. Magic is earned, not born. Sure, you with the blood have a different deal. You fared better than we did, when the Powers left, but make no mistake, all magic comes from the same place.”

  “From these Powers?”

  “From darkness and light. Yes.”

  “Shade and Starlight?”

  “Perversions. Memories of things that actually had substance. The gangs know less about real magic than…”

  “Than I do.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I know.” She was damn tired of hearing it though. “So the Powers left, and humans lost their magic?”

  “Everyone lost some. That was the price of what we did, the real cost of the Final War. Not the castles falling down, not the Kingdoms fracturing. We lost our connection to the Powers, and all magic dimmed.”

  “Except in the pockets.”

  Hadja snorted.

  “Why did they go?”

  “Who knows, really? Maybe the war, maybe just a whim of the Powers. No way to tell now.”

  “None of the Gentry know?”

  “If they do, they aren’t telling. When the pockets formed after the Final War, the magical races, the ones that had chosen not to fight, either died out or fled into them. They can’t live magic-free anymore than we can go without breathing. Not for long anyways.”

  “And the ones that did fight? The elves and such?”

  “Nothing left of them by that time.”

  Satina chewed her lip and thought about the Gentry. All the nobler races killed in the Final War, and what was left? Fiends and fauns and their ilk, would Marten be able to convince them to help? That might very well rest on the final fate of their fiend. If the woman had died, wasn’t he taking a big risk just going to meet with them?

  She fidgeted with the hem of her skirt, pulling at the loose strings that only got more plentiful every day she trekked with the Starlights to the dig site. Vane had ordered a road built, but so far, he’d kept the majority of his manpower directed toward the three separate digs underway. So far, he’d let her spend most of her time with the menhir, had only dragged her away when his group needed direction.

  She’d bluffed her way through that and managed not to give him anything solid, but his patience with her would not hold forever, and his gang members liked her even less.

  They had a ghost of a plan, and it relied on so many things going right. Satina’s stomach clenched despite the delicious aroma filling the room. She’d lost her appetite again. Nerves. They almost balanced out her goodmother metabolism. She’d be down to a smaller dress if they didn’t get it over with soon.

  Soon. And then what? She couldn’t remain in Westwood if Marten stayed mad at her, but worse than that, she wasn’t sure she could leave it, leave him, either. She sighed and pulled herself to her feet with the aid of Hadja’s sleeping pallet. Sleep she needed more than food, no matter how delicious.

  “I’m not going to make it tonight, Hadj. Save me some?”

  “You need to eat.”

  “Tomorrow.” She headed for the curtain without hesitation. The bed was the bright spot of her days now. If she had to leave after, it would be back to sleeping on the ground. Who knew when she’d see a mattress again?

  “Don’t worry about Marten.”

  Satina stopped at the curtain. She held her breath, counted to five. “I wasn’t.”

  “Well, just the same, he’ll be fine.”

  She ducked through and let the fabric block out the old woman. The privacy it offered was illusory in a space as small as Hadja’s cottage, but it made her feel secluded at least. It hid her face, if nothing more. Somehow the old woman still guessed at her thoughts. Somehow, she still plucked the nerve every chance she got, as if she feared leaving it alone would let Satina forget about him.

  She crawled under cool blankets and tucked them in around her to keep her body heat from escaping. No matter what happened after, forgetting about Marten was something she didn’t think she’d ever be able to manage.

  Chapter Sixteen