Witch's Pyre

by Josephine Angelini

  “No, wait. You don’t understand. The citizens don’t know what Grace has done,” Lily started to argue. Alaric turned away, uncaring.

  “Put Carrick Son of Anoki in the yoke,” he ordered, and Carrick was dragged off.

  “The people of Bower City are innocent,” Lily pressed, but Alaric ignored her.

  Leave him be, Rowan advised Lily in mindspeak. Give him a chance to cool off.

  Alaric stopped in front of Juliet. “I’m sorry if I offended you earlier with my over-familiarity,” he said politely.

  “Not at all. I’m sorry for your loss,” she replied in kind. Alaric bobbed his head in acknowledgment and limped away from the fire. Juliet’s eyes followed him.

  “Alaric, I still need to claim you,” Lily called after him. “I can’t jump you if I don’t.” He didn’t stop. “You’ll be left behind!” she hollered even though she knew it wouldn’t do any good. Alaric was even more stubborn than she was.

  Lily woke and found Rowan sleeping next to her again. His hair had fallen across his eyes and she resisted the urge to brush it away.

  She left him in her tent and went out into the camp before dawn. The night was mild outside of Richmond, and there was a faint layer of mist between the ferns and the sycamore trees. She touched some of the minds of her braves and asked them where he was. She followed the faint tugging of their minds to the other end of camp and saw him chained up next to a giant armored cart.

  She thought she’d approached silently, yet he raised his head as she neared. His chains clanked and she rubbed the marks on her wrists at the sound. Carrick was locked in an oxen yoke, arms suspended alongside his head, the heavy wood of it dragging down his upper body.

  She looked at the armored cart behind him. Its wheels were sunk deep into the soft earth. Lily trained her witch’s eye on it and saw no radiation, but she did detect a large amount of lead.

  “Lily,” Carrick rasped. He said her name a lot. She didn’t know if he knew how it unnerved her. “Don’t worry. I already disarmed it.”

  “So that’s the bomb?” she asked, gesturing to the armored cart.

  “The only weapon more dangerous than you,” he said, laughing with the effort to keep his head raised. “Maybe that’s why you and Lillian are so obsessed with it. You can’t bear the competition.”

  Lily’s brow pinched at the troubling thought, and she glared at him. “The only thing I’m obsessed with is saving as many lives as I can.”

  “Liar. You think I don’t know you?” Carrick smirked. “I know you. Better than that pretty brother of mine. Oh, he sees the magic of you, but what he misses is the blood. All you witches are magic and blood. You more than most on both counts. You like the blood as much as you like the magic, but what you don’t know, that I can teach you, is you need the blood.”

  She kept her face neutral by dint of will alone. “Where’s Lillian’s bomb, Carrick?”

  “If I told you, would you set me free?” He saw Lily’s lips purse at the thought and chuckled. “No. Because you’d never set a monster like me loose in the world. So why should I tell you?”

  She knew that there was no point appealing to his humanity, no point in pleading for the lives of the people of Bower City. For Toshi’s life.

  “You’ll tell me because you need me,” she said. “Lillian is dying. Who’s going to claim you when she’s gone?”

  She saw the thought glinting in his eyes—a spark across the flat black of his inner life. “You’d claim me?” he asked, hopeful but cautious.

  She nodded once. “Because I’d never set a monster like you loose in the world.”

  A smile crept up his face. “I don’t know where Lillian’s bomb is. She acquired it while I was following you in your world,” he said. “But I will find it for you.”

  “Find it. Disable it. And when Lillian’s gone, I’ll claim you,” Lily promised. When she saw him smile—a thin reptilian upturn of the lips—she felt a part of herself lie down and die.

  Lily, what are you doing?

  Lily turned to see Rowan coming toward her, shirtless, barefooted, and angry. He carried one of the silver knives from his belt in one hand and a torch in the other. It took everything in her not to run to him.

  Making a bargain with the devil, she told him in mindspeak.

  “Missing something, brother?” Carrick taunted.

  You shouldn’t be with him on your own. Carrick is dangerous, even if he is bound, Rowan told her in mindspeak.

  I know. But I need him—

  Rowan stiffened and his head whipped around, interrupting her thought. Both his and Carrick’s eyes were already darting into the murky edge of the firelight before Lily could hear what the two of them heard—the absence of sound. The tree frogs had gone silent. Not one owl hooted.

  “Let me out,” Carrick said in a low, desperate voice. “Brother. You can’t defend her alone.”

  Rowan’s eyes narrowed at Carrick, and Lily got the sense that they were sharing mindspeak. Whatever Carrick said convinced Rowan. One quick tug and he pulled out the peg behind Carrick’s neck. The yoke fell away with a jingle and a thump. Rowan tossed Carrick one of his blades and the two of them put Lily between their backs, both of them looking out, encircling her against the silent darkness.

  Lily opened her hands to the torch, absorbing the heat of its small flame. A witch wind whipped her hair about her head, whispering ghostly, half-heard words. She filled Rowan’s willstone just in time to meet the onslaught. The Woven burst through the trees in a wave of noise and motion.

  “Simians!” Carrick called out.

  The simian Woven hooted as they knuckled forward, their thick bodies swinging between their arms with blinding speed. Rowan ran out to meet them. They barreled into the light of the torch fire and stopped abruptly.

  “Hold,” Rowan ordered, pulling up short.

  “They’re not attacking,” Carrick said, like he couldn’t believe it.

  The simians swung around a perimeter just far enough to show that they weren’t engaging in a direct fight, but not far enough to let the humans run.

  Lily felt one of them look her in the eye, assessing her. He snorted and looked away, scanning Rowan’s and Carrick’s faces.

  “They’re looking for someone,” Lily said, puzzled.

  “Lily!” Rowan hissed as she stepped forward. She felt Carrick snatch at her arm and she shook him off.

  “I’m okay,” she told them, walking to the edge of the perimeter. “Look—they’re not here to kill anyone. I don’t think those are their orders.”

  The simians retreated as she neared, rolling their lips back and baring their fangs anxiously. One of them darted in at her, bluffing to push her back. It was just what Lily was waiting for. Instead of falling back in fear, she dove forward, her hands reaching for the Woven’s neck. The creature was so startled by Lily’s brazen action she had time to find a small, hard lump under its skin.

  Lily touched the Woven’s embedded willstone and felt someone push back against her mind. A flash of fury ignited and fizzled in a moment as Lily shoved the other witch out of this Woven’s willstone.

  “It’s okay,” she murmured to the frightened creature. “I won’t harm you.”

  It wasn’t like a human mind. He had a vague sense of self, and even less of a sense of will. Lily knew she could invade his stone without cracking it as Grace had done, but she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to make any of the choices Grace had. Instead, Lily asked. She felt the Woven give his assent and claimed his willstone for herself.

  Mine.

  A barrage of images sped through Lily’s mind. Swinging through treetops. A beloved grooming the scales on his blue back. Peacefully warming in the sun. Awoken and commanded to kill. Shown a face by the angry one within—a face that must be found.

  “Breakfast!” Lily piped, surprised, when she saw the face. She broke off the mindspeak with her newly claimed Woven and turned. “They’re looking for Breakfast—except he’s an Outlander?�
�� she finished doubtfully as she assessed the image she’d seen. It had been Breakfast, but he’d had long, braided hair and war paint on his face.

  “Lily, get back,” Rowan said. She felt him pulling on her arm, trying to get her to step away from the Woven who stood only inches away.

  Without warning, the simians turned as one and sped back into the trees, hooting and howling as they went. All but one. Lily’s claimed Woven stayed where he was while the rest of his family group sped off.

  Follow them, Blueback, Lily told him. She added an image of him turning and leaving her in case he didn’t understand. The Woven took her command and knuckled his way off into the darkness.

  “Ro!” Caleb called.

  “Here!” Rowan called back. He turned and made a disgusted sound. “He’s gone.” Lily looked at him, her mind still sorting out what Blueback had shown her. “Carrick is gone,” Rowan clarified.

  “Lily’s fine,” Caleb said into the darkness behind him. Tristan appeared behind him at a jog, and they joined Rowan and Lily.

  She reached out to the rest of her mechanics, searching for Breakfast. She found him, still shaken, as he and Una joined them. Una was covered in Woven blood. She started wiping at it to get it off her.

  “They tried to carry me off,” Breakfast told them, offended. “They would have, too, if my girl hadn’t stepped in.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Una said, declining to take any credit. “We were totally outnumbered, and then they just dropped him and ran off.”

  “They weren’t looking for Breakfast,” Lily replied. She grabbed Rowan’s arm, her alarm growing. “The shaman Red Leaf. They came for him.”

  Lily could hear braves calling out in alarm. Caleb and Rowan cocked their heads, listening to the coded signal calls for a moment before sharing a dismayed look.

  “They got him,” Caleb said.

  “Why would the Woven want the shaman?” Una asked.

  “Not the Woven,” Lily said, shaking her head. “Grace. Why would Grace want a shaman who knows how to spirit walk unless it’s because of what I told her in the redwood glade?”

  The coven’s eyes went wide as they realized what Grace wanted.

  “Let’s get him back,” Tristan said, already breaking away from the group. “Come on, guys, let’s go.”

  “There are too many,” Rowan said quietly.

  Lily pulled heat from the torch, but it was a small flame. She gave her mechanics as much force as she could, and looked at Rowan. “She can’t learn how to worldjump, Rowan. She can’t.”

  He nodded, but his face was furrowed with a doubtful frown. “Breakfast, stay and guard Lily,” he ordered, and then the rest of her mechanics took off so fast it was as if they’d disappeared. As soon as they were gone, the darkness seemed to grow eyes that watched her hungrily.

  “Stay close to me, Breakfast,” Lily said. “Carrick is out there.”

  “If we’re lucky he’ll get eaten by something ugly,” Breakfast said, kneeling down on the ground to build a proper fire. “I doubt he’d risk coming back for you tonight.”

  Lily nodded and relaxed some. She reached out to Blueback in mindspeak. Find the human your kind has taken, she told him.

  For a moment Lily was crashing through the underbrush and then vaulting up to the trees to careen through the branches. Blueback chased down his group by scent and sound, but when he caught up with them, none of them had Red Leaf. Blueback started to retrace his steps to find one of the other family groups that had been a part of the raid. He smelled for the human, but there were so many humans in the forest that night he couldn’t be sure which was the one Lily wanted.

  You may stop now, she told Blueback. Go join your family, but watch for the stolen human.

  She reached out to Rowan, only to hear from him what she had already learned from Blueback. The Woven trails broke off into over a dozen different directions and there was no way to be sure which group had taken Red Leaf. She called her mechanics back.

  We know where they’re taking him, Lily told them, trying to quell her unease.

  “Breakfast. Red Leaf is the other you,” Lily said. “You can reach him in mindspeak.”

  “Ah—I’ll try,” he said uncertainly. His face scrunched up in confusion. “How do you contact another you?”

  Lily smiled, remembering what it had felt like when she heard Lillian whispering to her across the worldfoam.

  “You have to go a little crazy,” she replied.

  Lily had no idea how long it would take the simian Woven to get Red Leaf to the edge of the Hive’s territory, and from there, how long it would take them to get all the way west to Bower City, but however long it was—days, maybe weeks—that was all the time she had to get her army assembled and ready to jump into battle. In the meantime, something had to be done about Grace’s control of the wild Woven.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Grace was in a conspicuously fine mood that morning, which was terrifying.

  Toshi pulled his gaze from the bow of the yacht as it dipped into the surf and looked across the brunch table at Mala, hoping she didn’t crack. Grace’s good humor seemed to hide a thousand threats, and the Warrior Sisters perched in the rigging didn’t help. They looked down on the forced merriment, twitching their heads and shivering their wings with malice. Toshi could practically hear Mala chanting she knows under her breath.

  Of course, it would be a miracle if Grace didn’t know. Toshi and Mala had been meeting with malcontents for the past week to gather up opposition, and hopefully, some kind of fighting force. They had plenty of support from foreign sources. Every other country in the world wanted what Bower City had, and they risked little by pledging money, weapons, even soldiers. It wasn’t their home that would be destroyed in a war with the Hive, or their lives that would be left in tatters afterward. Every meeting where he spoke in code and exchanged microcapsules of pre-written terms with a handshake had left Toshi feeling like a traitor. None of those foreign forces cared if Bower City fell, just as long as they were the first to get the formula for making willstones, and because of that Toshi had forgone accepting their help. So far.

  The homegrown opposition that Toshi really wanted was harder to come by. The natives knew what would happen if they tried to fight the Hive. They knew the Hive wouldn’t hesitate to kill them all.

  “Toshi?” Grace said, as if she were repeating herself.

  “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head and giving her one of the more charming smiles from his repertoire. “I was miles away.”

  “And I can understand why. You haven’t been getting much sleep lately,” Grace observed casually, as if it were normal for her to know something as private as his sleep schedule. She spooned more caviar onto her crostini. “Lunch with the minister from Japan. Then drinks with the foreign trade envoy from Germany. And that was just yesterday.”

  A Worker ambled toward him across the tablecloth, feeling her way through the salt spray in the air with her antennae. Toshi watched her slow progress and concentrated on his breathing. She was trying to taste his sweat. If she did, all she would taste was fear.

  “I’m always looking to improve our relations abroad,” he replied when he knew he could do so without his voice breaking.

  Grace’s eyes narrowed over a brittle smile. “Are our relations in such bad shape that the two of you feel you must repair them with every nation?”

  Mala hadn’t moved a muscle in too long, which is difficult to do on the deck of a yacht. Toshi looked at her and laughed, letting the sun bounce off his upturned face to show how carefree he was. Mala joined him a beat late, but at least she broke out of her frozen posture.

  “Mala and I have come to an understanding recently,” he said, reaching across the table for her hand. She took his cue and looked at him with a simpering fondness that he forced himself to duplicate. If they were going to play lovers, they might as well play it to the fullest. “And we decided it was time to think about our futures. If we ever want
a family, we’re going to have to focus on our careers now while we can.”

  “Family?” Grace asked. She looked between the two of them, stricken. “I never thought of you as the type to want children.”

  Toshi shrugged a shoulder in a way that could be seen as apologetic, allowing her to assume that he hadn’t wanted children with her. If they were lucky, Grace would be so derailed by the blow to her ego that she would overlook the fact that both he and Mala were sweating.

  There was something about being on a boat with someone you didn’t trust. It didn’t make much sense, seeing as how Grace could have both of them killed anytime she wanted, but out on the open water where there were no witnesses, Toshi still felt less secure than he did on dry land. He couldn’t shake the image of his body being dumped overboard, never to be found. He could tell Mala was thinking the same thing from the way she kept peering over the railing, contemplating the deep, cold waters of the bay.

  “So you can see why we’re eager to be indispensable to you, Grace,” Toshi finished.

  “Yes,” Mala said, her voice gravelly with disuse. She hadn’t said a word yet, and was now forcing an overly animated smile to make up for it. Clumsy. Especially considering the fact that she had nothing more than “yes” to add. Toshi poured them some more wine. Maybe if he got her drunk she’d calm down.

  “So, to what do we owe this little excursion today?” Toshi said. He’d hoped to sound lighthearted, but the abrupt change in topic was as jarring as grinding gears to his ears. He winced a little at the awkwardness of it.

  “I’ve had some good news and I was looking to spend the morning with two indispensable people,” Grace replied.

  Toshi didn’t know if he should laugh at her play on his words or not, so he settled on looking inquisitive. “What news?” he asked.