Witch's Pyre

by Josephine Angelini

  Walltop soldiers were different. They regarded all Outlanders (except maybe his half brother, the legendary Lord Fall) with a disdain that lacked the fear that Carrick was accustomed to. Unfortunately Carrick could do nothing to teach them otherwise. His Lady Witch simply wouldn’t have it. She was overly fond of Walltop for reasons she would not disclose to him.

  Carrick rode into a copse of trees and saw some signs of Alaric’s tribe—nicked bark on the side of a hickory tree and two ruts through the maidenhair ferns where one of the heavier armored carts had passed. This particular cart had caught Carrick’s attention because its drovers seemed to mostly travel at night. Carrick had a hunch it was the armored cart he was looking for, but he hadn’t gotten a look at it yet.

  He rode fast across the open ground and slowed when he reached the cover of a forest. He dismounted and started scanning the ground. His mount hissed softly. Carrick looked up in time to stop the first blow, but he was overpowered and knocked out before he could make contact with Lillian.

  Lily floated in a wooden tub of cold spring water. Rowan had sprinkled some kind of herb in it that smelled like thyme and lemon and a few drops of something that tingled.

  Her new tattoos were chilly under her skin. The blisters from the pyre had shrunk, and as Lily watched, the red welts on her wrists from the shackles were disappearing. She felt tired, but it was the pleasant feeling of drained muscles, not the pounding head and nausea that usually dogged her after going to the pyre. She tipped her head back in the tub and just let herself float.

  She could hear Rowan’s voice outside the tent. He was explaining the situation in Cherokee to a handful of baffled Outlanders who couldn’t understand how over ten thousand tenderfooted city folk had managed to appear in the woods without making a sound. Outlanders are not used to being taken unawares. She smiled to herself as she listened to his overly patient tone. He hated repeating himself. She heard Caleb take over when Rowan had finished and then she heard the crowd outside her tent disperse. Her mechanics would stay close to her through the night to guard her, although Lily knew they didn’t really need to. Almost all of these braves were her claimed, and she’d already explained her strange return to them in mindspeak, even though most of them had no concept of teleportation.

  Rowan ducked into the tent with a clenched jaw. Lily laughed.

  “It’s not funny,” he said, repressing a smile. “The Elders are angry you brought so many tunnel folk and ranch hands.”

  “They’re collectively calling themselves ‘below folk,’ by the way, and I don’t blame the Elders for not liking them,” she said. “But at least the braves are happy I’m here.” She rolled over in her cool bath, hearing laughter and the beginning of a song a few campfires away.

  “Are you kidding? They’re ecstatic you’re here. They feel like they can actually survive this war now,” Rowan said, kneeling down next to the tub. “You’re not the problem, the below folk are. They hate the Outlanders for what Chenoa did to them, and there’ve already been a few serious fights. The Elders are worried the fighting is going to turn to killing soon.”

  Lily frowned, remembering. Chenoa had used the women living in the subway tunnels to smuggle the radioactive materials from her lab at Lillian’s college to the Outlands, but she never explained to the women how dangerous those materials were, probably to keep their contents secret. Lily had seen the result.

  “They have every right to be angry,” she said quietly.

  “Of course they do,” Rowan replied. “That only makes it worse.” He picked up a bowl and started pouring water over Lily’s back. “The ranch hands are a rough bunch, and most of them have family ties to the women who died transporting Chenoa’s dust.”

  Lily knew exactly what kind of men the ranch hands were. Some of them would have been good people if their lives hadn’t been so hard, but all of them had done something to earn a place on the ranches. These weren’t just petty thieves. Lily didn’t trust them.

  “I won’t let them hurt anyone else,” she promised.

  “How are you going to stop them?” Rowan asked delicately, unwilling to bring up the touchy subject of possession again.

  “I’ll tell them right now that if there’s any more violence tonight, I’ll be their judge and jury in the morning. They can’t lie to me, and my punishment will make whatever the crime was pale in comparison,” she said. She trained her inner eye on the minds of the ranch hands and sent them her warning. “There. It’s done.”

  The sound of the water trickling over her skin seemed to fill up the tent as she watched him. He kept his eyes on his task as the tension built.

  “I thought you hated me for siding with Lillian,” Lily whispered, breaking the hum of attraction between them. She thought about the moment he tore her willstones from her neck. They were in such close contact that Rowan saw it, too.

  “I never hated you,” he said, shaking his head. “As soon as I learned about the bombs and what they could do, I understood why Lillian started hunting scientists.” He pulled his lower lip through his teeth and continued haltingly. “She worldjumped to a place where the bombs had been used, didn’t she? That’s where she was for those three weeks she disappeared.”

  “The shaman called them cinder worlds. There are a lot of them clustered around this world in the worldfoam. Similar universes are closer to one another, which mean most of the worlds like yours—where there are witches and Outlanders and Woven—have already been destroyed by someone who made the wrong decision.”

  Rowan considered that, his forehead knitted. “So my world is on borrowed time?”

  “As long as Chenoa’s bombs are out there? Yes.”

  “When I saw the tunnel women, I knew Lillian had the same thing they had.” A look of pain crossed his face. “Will you tell me why she wouldn’t let me touch her, not even to help her?”

  “I can’t.”

  “It’s about my father, isn’t it? She didn’t want me to touch her because she was scared she couldn’t keep what she’d seen there from me if she did,” he said. Lily pressed her lips together and pushed away from the edge of the tub. Rowan stopped her from floating away. “Look, I’ve put it all together. Lillian went to a cinder world and something happened to her there, something that had to do with my father because he was the first person she hanged when she got back. Just tell me what it was. What did he do?”

  Lily shook her head. “I can’t.” It was Rowan’s turn to pull away from her. “Have you ever heard the saying ‘whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’?” she asked. He shook his head. “Every time I had a seizure and lived through it, I believed it made me a little bit stronger. I still think that being sick so much as a kid gave me the strength to handle this.” She gestured to the fading marks on her wrists. “But when I saw the cinder world, I stopped thinking that saying was true. There are lots of things that can happen to people that make them weaker. Things that break them. That’s all I can say about your father.”

  Rowan thought about what she said carefully, but in the end he shook his head. “That’s not good enough, Lily. I deserve to know why she killed him.” Rowan moved to stand up, but Lily put out her hand and stopped him.

  “You’re going to see Lillian soon. You have to ask her yourself. But do you want my honest opinion?” He nodded slowly. “Don’t,” she begged. “It happened in another world. Leave it there. Lillian couldn’t leave what happened to her behind in the cinder world where it belonged, and that’s why she killed your father.”

  Rowan sat back down next to her. “That bad?” His next question hurt him to ask. “Do you think she was right to kill him?”

  “No,” Lily said emphatically. “Lillian thinks the only difference between the different versions of us is our experiences, and if you were to make one version of a person experience what another had, they would react the same. I don’t believe that. Your father was not the River Fall of the cinder world, and I don’t believe he ever would have become him, even if
he went through the same thing. Just like I’ll never become Lillian, no matter how many memories of hers I absorb. Lillian believes our experiences and our worlds make us. I believe our choices make our experiences and our worlds.”

  “So you’re saying you would have chosen differently than she did?”

  “Not about everything,” Lily admitted, her voice catching in her throat. She reached out and brushed her thumb across his lower lip. Rowan inhaled sharply and Lily saw his eyes darken and felt his mouth soften against her fingers.

  But there was a gulf between them. They couldn’t even talk about it because Tristan was inside that gulf, and because of that, Lily couldn’t bring herself to close it. She pulled her hand back and slid it under the water.

  “I’ll get you something to wear,” he said hoarsely, and stood without looking her in the eye.

  Rowan heard the alarm yips from the sentries before Lily did. He sprang to his knees and peeked out the entrance of the tent. Shapes and shadows sped past.

  “Stay here until I send for you,” he said as he pulled on a shirt and slid a knife into his belt.

  Lily nodded and scrambled through the sheets to find shoes. She remembered falling asleep alone, feeling cold, and then delicious warmth wrapping around her back. She’d dreamed of turning to Rowan and kissing him. Some part of her must have known he was there. He only came to her now when she was asleep, like he couldn’t stop himself. It hurt her to think that they could only be their true selves to each other in dreams.

  Lily finally found her shoes and put them on as Una pulled open the flap to her tent.

  “She’s okay,” Una said over her shoulder.

  Lily heard Tristan speak to Breakfast behind Una. “Who’s with my mother and sister?” she asked.

  “Caleb,” Tristan answered. He motioned for her to come out of the tent. “We’ve got to move you. I’ll have Caleb bring them to you when he can,” he said.

  They bundled Lily out of the tent, Una on one side, Breakfast on the other, and Tristan leading the way deeper into the camp. She reached out to her claimed braves along the perimeter and asked what was going on, but she got only confused images from them.

  Most of her braves weren’t accustomed to mindspeak, and they had either very little or no innate magical talent. Lily had gotten so used to conversing with her mechanics that she forgot most people in her army had never heard mindspeak before, and weren’t capable of forming full sentences or transmitting entire thoughts. She only got images and fragments from them. She’d have to change that if they hoped to fight as one—the way the Hive did naturally.

  “I think they found a spy,” she told her mechanics as they entered the center circle where the one campfire was kept burning all night.

  Rowan had his back to them. He turned his head as they approached and smiled at Lily, relieved. As he motioned for her to come and stand next to him she saw that the person he’d been having words with was Alaric. There was a slight hitch in her step when their eyes met, but she recovered quickly, squared her shoulders, and joined him at the fire.

  “Good to see you again,” Alaric said, watching her reaction carefully.

  “Is it?” she asked. “I can’t say the same.”

  His mouth ticked up with a wry smile as his eyes narrowed. “Well, apparently you wanted to see me because you sought me out,” he reminded her.

  “I came for the rest of my army,” she replied. The fire popped between them as the silence grew heavy. Finally, Alaric nodded in concession.

  “From what Rowan tells me, you can bring all of your claimed from place to place with no need to travel. They’d all survive the journey if they travel with you, and I can’t promise them the same.” His poker face was flawless. “But would they follow you into battle?”

  “We both know their loyalty is with you,” Lily replied, making a concession of her own. “So here’s what I’m willing to offer you. Your voice will be heard with all things concerning the Outlander braves in my army. You’ll be one of my generals and you’ll report to Rowan. I offer you this under one condition. That you let me claim you.”

  Alaric barked with surprised laughter. When he realized Lily wasn’t kidding, he looked to Rowan for someone to talk reason to her, but Rowan shook his head once in answer.

  “You lost my support when I found out about the bombs,” Rowan said.

  Alaric smiled and nodded. “And that’s what this is all about.”

  “It is,” Lily said. “I want to know where the bombs are, and I want them dismantled and disposed of properly. They are no longer an option in this war.”

  “Bomb. Single. I only have one left that still works—and it does still work”—Alaric nodded to one of his painted braves—“even though you sent someone to try to sabotage it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lily asked, not even trying to hide her confusion.

  There was the sound of a tussle as someone was dragged into the light of the fire. She saw Carrick pinioned between two braves. He was bucking against their restraints with real fear in his eyes as he was dragged before Alaric.

  “Lily,” Carrick said, baring his teeth as he breathed her name. “At last.”

  Lily could feel all of her mechanics step closer to her as she shrank into Rowan’s side. Rowan said something to Carrick in Cherokee, but Carrick only laughed at his half brother and shook his head.

  “Don’t think I don’t know you and Lillian sent this uktena to undermine me,” Alaric said as he gestured to Carrick with a foul look on his face.

  “I have nothing to do with Carrick,” Lily replied hotly. “Lillian and I don’t agree on everything. I came here with my own plans about how to deal with you and the bombs—sorry, bomb—and it had nothing to do with him. And where is the second bomb? I thought there were two.”

  Alaric sized Lily up with a guarded look on his face. A thought occurred to him and he tipped his head to the side. “She didn’t tell you that she stole the other and kept it for herself, did she?” Lily stared at Alaric, horrified. He gave a bitter laugh. “I didn’t think so.”

  Lily shut her mouth with a snap and reached out to Lillian in mindspeak.

  Lillian. Do you have a bomb?

  There was no answer. She stalked over to Carrick where he was still being held by two braves and slapped him hard across the face.

  “Does Lillian have a bomb?” She slapped him again before he even had a chance to answer. Carrick’s face whipped to the side and came back to Lily wearing an indulgent smile. Her skin puckered as if something had slithered across it. “Answer me,” she warned.

  “I don’t know. If she got one, it happened when I was following you,” Carrick replied. “But it sounds about right. Lillian plans to raze Bower City to the ground.”

  I don’t think he’s lying, Rowan said to Lily in mindspeak.

  He isn’t, she replied. Lillian told me herself that she planned on destroying the city, but I never thought she’d use one of the bombs to do it. Never. It’s the last thing she would do.

  And Lily knew that was why Lillian was doing it. Lillian believed that in order to win, she had to cross the uncrossable line.

  “You came here to gather an army and join Lillian, but the Outlanders are following Lillian to stop her,” Alaric said. “We want to live in Bower City, if we can get past the Hive.”

  They don’t know the whole story about Grace. The thought came from Caleb, who was only now joining them at the fire with Juliet and Samantha in tow. He stepped into the light and spoke aloud.

  “Sachem, there is no getting past the Hive,” Caleb said. “Not without Lily and Lillian and every single person they’ve claimed. The Hive is under the power of a witch named Grace Bendingtree. It’s bewitched. I’ve seen it myself. We can’t hope to beat her without a bewitched army of our own.”

  Alaric heard what Caleb said, but his eyes kept darting over Caleb’s shoulder to the two women who stood behind him, his attention torn.

  “Juliet?” he said, h
is voice softer and more plaintive than Lily had ever heard it. He stepped toward her with his halting gait and went to take her hand. She stepped back, uncertain and a little frightened by the intensity of his gaze. Alaric understood then.

  “You’re not my Juliet,” he said. Juliet shook her head and Alaric turned his gaze to Lily. “Where is she?” he asked.

  Lily pressed her lips together and swallowed, hoping to soothe the tightness that was closing off her throat. Her expression was all Alaric needed. His eyes shut for a moment and a held breath came rushing out of him.

  “How? When?” he asked, suddenly looking a little smaller and a lot older.

  “Grace Bendingtree. Last week,” Lily answered quietly.

  Alaric nodded, his eyes looking inward. Anger began to mount in him the more he tried to push it down, like a smelting fire that gains heat from pressure. “This Bendingtree has claimed the Hive?” he asked through clenched teeth.

  “She made them,” Rowan answered. “There’s something you need to know about the Woven.”

  Rowan switched between English and Cherokee in order to explain everything to Alaric. When words failed him, he showed his stone kin what he had seen in mindspeak, keeping Lily in the loop as he did so.

  Images of Bower City, its busy port, its wealth, and the exceedingly long and healthy lives of its citizens were passed to Alaric. Then Rowan showed him the antique womb combs and explained what they had been used for two centuries ago. Alaric didn’t say a word. He just sat there, staring at the fire. When Rowan finally showed him Grace and the confrontation in the redwood grove that had ended in Juliet’s death, Alaric barely moved.

  “She’s an Outlander,” was all he said, past anger. After a few more moments of staring into the fire, Alaric stood and faced Lily. “You can take all the braves safely to Bower City, and away from it again to get them out of danger?”

  “In an instant,” she replied.

  “Then you may dismantle my last bomb. I have no quarrel with the Thirteen Cities anymore,” he said. Lily breathed a sigh of relief, but Alaric waved a hand, cutting her off. “Don’t celebrate yet, because I agree with Lillian. She’s still got a bomb of her own, and I don’t doubt she’s going to use it.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Can you believe it? I nearly killed you for saying this last time we met, but I agree with Lillian,” he said musingly. “Bower City should burn.”