by Lisa Daniels
A sharp inhale of surprise came from the man, giving Alex the impression he hadn’t actually expected her to succeed in healing at all.
“So, it is true,” he whispered, taking his hand from her and examining the healed cuts. The blood still stained his skin, but it had nothing to seep out of. “You weren’t lying. You are a witch.”
“Told you,” Alex said, wiping the blood off her hands on the bed mattress. She considered her grubby little tunic, but it had quite enough dirt on it. “So, when we going?”
“Now,” he said, nodding curtly, not finding offense at her brazen manner. “I have plans for you, woman. Your magic will come in handy indeed...”
Chapter Two – Meridas
Meridas hated being in the Undercity. All the humans were so poor, so filthy, consuming one another in a futile effort to make something of their lives. He’d much rather stay in the Isles, where at least people were educated. He bet none of the people running the prison knew how to string two words together in a written sentence.
He had no choice but to enter the Undercity, though. None of the witches in the Six Isles knew healing. They were mostly air witches, responsible for keeping the skyships moving, or light witches, for refueling the orbs that kept the towns suspended above. Sometimes another type of witch emerged, but they almost always got snapped up by some private company and used for profit.
The one thing he needed to find, above all else, was someone who healed. A slim hope, given that historically, the last healer on the Six Isles had lived over eighty years ago. How many prisons had he visited now, where people claimed their occupants were witches? None of them were. How many charlatans had he approached in the streets with his bodyguards trailing behind him, demanding to prove that their magic was real? He still felt the stink of below clinging to his skin, even as he ascended upon the airship to the cool, fresher air, and stepped upon the beautiful mosaic walks of his sky island. Everything up here was beautiful, uniform, well cared for. As for the bungalow he lived in—it sprawled out upon land that reached over many acres, holding proper heating systems and light orbs to keep everything illuminated. The new hire was currently sleeping, after being washed and given new clothes, her old ones incinerated. She slept in one of the spare rooms, and Meridas was now left alone in his study.
His hands trembled slightly. Personally, he wanted to yank that witch woman out of bed and haul her to fulfill her intended purpose, but the hospital didn’t open for visitors until the morning.
He heard the quiet bustling of Elicia outside, his oldest and most faithful servant. She’d served his father before him and took responsibility over the other servants, reminding him of the meetings he needed to attend, and raising up his reputation among the elite. About the only reputation she couldn’t shrug off of Meridas was the acrimonious divorce of his second wife. He’d only just won the legal court battle to make sure she didn’t run away with a chunk of his earnings. The audacity of her, to take away everything he’d worked for, after all, when she hadn’t lifted a finger in her life—but now it made the people of the court suspicious. A twice-divorced man? No, that reputation didn’t serve him well. He didn’t care, but people around him did.
Besides, he thought. I’m not exactly a man. And his second wife hadn’t been human. He assumed their shared magic would lay the groundwork for a good marriage. Certainly his father thought so. The old man lived comfortably on the other side of the sky island, in a huge estate that Meridas personally felt was too huge. Oh, Meridas’ new wife, Keraline, had seemed witty and demure at first, most becoming with those long eyelashes, that elegant curve of her lips, and the beautiful form she shifted into. Possibly one of the prettiest shiftings he’d ever seen.
It didn’t take long for the cracks to show. She might have been pretty, but she was also lazy, deceitful, and abusive to the servants and anyone below her. He could hardly pretend to be any better, but the way she had treated Elicia set his blood boiling even now.
He continued to stare blankly at the pile of documents he was supposed to sort through. Ledgers and accounts and the general economy of his tiny kingdom.
Elicia finally strode into the room, holding a broomstick she’d been using to sweep the floors. Her wizened face was set in concern, and she clutched the broom like a weapon. “Master Dasenson,” she said, giving a curt bow in her servant’s skirt. “You really should be sleeping. Or have you forgotten about the two meetings you’re expected to attend tomorrow?”
“Bother those meetings,” Meridas snapped, his fingers curling on one of the ledgers. He resisted that twitch impulse to brush it aside. “There are more important things right now.” Important things like his sister.
“You can’t keep neglecting your duties, young master. You’ve missed enough on your wild hunt for witch magic.”
“Not enough,” Meridas said stubbornly, though he knew her words to be true. He had been missing out on meetings for the past few weeks especially. “I succeeded, though,” he admitted to Elicia. “I finally have a witch that can heal. She was due to be executed. Had to bribe the warden enough so that I could take her out of there.”
“And she’ll help us, is that it?” Elicia folded her arms, lips tugged down in disapproval. “Are you sure this witch of yours will even want to help?”
He hesitated for just a moment. “She should be grateful. And she should not risk my ire, or I would kick her back to the stones she came from.”
The older woman let out a sigh but didn’t speak further on the subject. She returned to Meridas’ continued absence. “If you keep avoiding your duties, the people of the sky towns will think less of you as a result, and that means less opportunities. A chance for those you trade with to be bribed or bought out by those who care only for profit, and not for you.”
“People are threatening me, are they?” Meridas curled his lips into a smirk. Then his shoulders sagged, and the resistance crumbled. “No, you’re right. I have been missing too many. But...” he rubbed his eyes, suddenly feeling tired, “I need that witch woman to visit my sister as soon as possible. I don’t know how much longer my sister will last, and I’d rather not find out.”
“Of course,” Elicia said, her eyebrows raising as Meridas got up and walked past her.
“I’m going to bed,” he said, yawning as he did so. “Since I suppose I better be ready for what faces me tomorrow.”
He’d much rather be there with his sister, though, watching her revive at last from her illness. That awful, debilitating illness that chipped away at her life each day. The vile thing that ruined their lives so many years back. But he also didn’t want to be put in a position where he needed to crawl back to his father, and admit that he had failed.
He passed the witch woman’s room, paused, and peered through the keyhole. The room had been locked for now, since they didn’t fully trust her yet. Why would they? She might be in the Isles, now, she might technically be forgiven of her past, but Meridas knew that the past had a way of catching up to someone.
It had certainly caught up with him.
From the vantage he was given of the room, he saw a lump in a partially visible mattress. Walking more quietly, he headed to his luxurious quarters for some much-needed sleep.
* * *
The meeting, of course, was as boring as ever. He sat there through the other lords and merchants of their sky island talking about new taxation rules, as the cost of bringing in supplies was becoming more expensive. There were about thirty of them in total, all jostling to make themselves heard.
“It’s becoming an issue on my little home by the Sky Pool,” one of the merchants, Taciv, said. One of the poorer wealthy ones. “Shipping costs of water is becoming super expensive, which I think is ridiculous. But we need water to survive, of course. But if it becomes too expensive, then we will surely find it difficult for us to live up here comfortably.”
“You rogue,” one of the other merchants said. “You clearly want tax exemption for this, don’t you?”<
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Taciv shrugged his shoulders. His greasy dark hair just about skimmed the tops of them. “If you want to enjoy your water at a cheap and manageable price, then I do ask for some leniency in this. Otherwise with the current shipping costs and tax rules, I will need to start charging you fifteen silver circs per liter of water, rather than the cheap 5 that you’ve been enjoying.”
“Fifteen? That’s robbery!”
Meridas listened to their bickering dispassionately. It was true that shipping costs were rising, and that the few air witches who realized how much of a monopoly they had were beginning to bump up prices for requests asked of them. He was in charge of most shipping from this island. Plus, no rivers flowed upon the sky islands. The crops they grew got regularly irrigated by the clouds, so at least they didn’t have to worry about that, and they did have rain traps over the island… but this wasn’t enough to slake the thirst of a population of several thousand people.
Everyone was angling for something in this debate. Meridas preferred to focus on produce that didn’t rely on much from the outside. Besides, when traveling by himself, he could just shapeshift and fly. That saved quite a bit on travel money and shipping costs if he chose to get anything himself. Still, an air witch would be far more useful.
Or, in his case, a life witch. Can make a lot of money with a healer, he thought with grim satisfaction. But I’ll need to be careful not to leave her on her own, or someone else might steal her. His mind now drifted to his sister in the hospital, wondering if the white witch was already there, using that peculiar power to cure his sister of her terminal ailment.
Wondering if she even could.
His mother had failed. Though she hadn’t been a healer. He knew enough about the Creeping Rot now in that it affected creatures of magical origin. That included shapeshifters, witches. But did it include a life witch?
This is my only chance. In the hands of that grubby little witch. He gave a little shiver, before noticing people’s attention upon him.
“Well?” Taciv said. “Do you think the tax exemption should occur, for the good of our little island?”
“Once we have official confirmation from accountants not employed by you to check that your claims are true, sure,” Meridas said, mind racing to form words. “After all, it is important that we get our water. But not if you’re seizing an opportunity to line your pockets far beyond the price.”
The greasy-haired merchant’s expression soured slightly, before brightening again. “There has to be a markup, of course. Otherwise I have no business,” he said.
“Reasonable markups,” Meridas snapped. “A 200 percent increase on the original price does not sound reasonable. Hence the need to confirm your claim. Do we agree on this?”
The general murmur of assent allowed Meridas to sink back into his thoughts again. He worried about the future, like all of them. Already, visitors had started visiting their specific island less, simply because one person was found infected, when it was supposed to be impossible. And the fact that it happened to be his sister meant that he by default had a chance of contracting it, too—without any evidence as to where it came from.
At least none of them knew about his witch. He examined his hand absently, remembering how the skin had fixed itself, and the way the witch’s eyes had glazed over as she seemed to reach beyond his surface, somehow.
He fidgeted in annoyance in his seat. This inane meeting couldn’t end fast enough.
Chapter Three – Alex
The person she was supposed to heal lay comatose in front of her. Even standing away from the woman, who had features so similar to the sibling that worried after her, Alex could feel that there was an inherent wrongness unlike anything she’d ever encountered before. Other diseases tended to ravage the body, and some sent tiny particles to infect others. This one felt ravenous. It appeared to sense, somehow, that she was here and yearned to assault her as well. It crept up the woman’s skin in sickly green shades, tainting the vein color as such, withering her body away as if all the life was being sucked out. The doctors who attended her wore face masks and protective clothing to cover themselves.
She knew, somehow, the disease wouldn’t target the non-magical. Day one of my new life, she thought sourly. Attempt to cure a disease that wants to kill me. How did it know what she was? Elicia, the master servant, stood a little way behind Alex, glaring at her in heavy suspicion, as if Alex might try to dash away at any moment. As if Alex might somehow sabotage her only chance of a better life, since she doubted being sent back to the Undercity would be a viable option. The cops knew her. One sighting from the wrong kind of person, and it’d be straight to the hangman’s block.
Or, in her case, a potential burning at the stake to get rid of the demonic spirits inside her.
“Something’s wrong with her,” Alex said, which prompted a snort of derision from Elicia.
“Obviously. Or did you miss the green skin?”
“No,” Alex said, annoyed. “I mean that I can feel the disease from here. It’s trying to reach me. Like it senses I have magic.”
At this, Elicia’s smirking expression faded. The matronly woman shuffled from one foot to the other, blue eyes now shaded in concern. “It’s not a normal disease, this one. It only targets those with magic.”
“And… you expect me to go and try and cure it, with the knowledge that it’s going to try and kill me?”
“It’s either you try, or you get tossed off the island,” Elicia said, clearly not giving a single flip for her. Well, that was to be expected, she supposed. Alex didn’t belong in a world like this. Everyone walked around like they had rods stuffed up their backsides, and she couldn’t help but slouch, and slink to places, because she could move faster this way. The disease seemed to work itself up when she approached, thirsting to spread. Such a cold, empty hunger.
Here goes nothing, Alex thought, looking down at the dark-haired woman with the creeping veins of death under her skin. She might have been twenty, she might have been forty. Under the intent gaze of Elicia and the doctor hovering nearby, Alex touched the woman on one of her protruding, discolored veins. Instantly, she felt it leap into her and start attacking her magic. She winced. The actual process would be slow—she sensed she wouldn’t get proper symptoms until a few days after the contact if she couldn’t remove it, but the way this disgusting thing already had begun to work on her…
She gritted her teeth hard, seeking the source of the infection. Where some illnesses felt like a wall, this felt like a labyrinth, with a breathing, snorting monster hot on her trail. She needed to focus. Not panic. Her breath came out in wheezing hisses. Her heart rate sped up. Inside that sky-cursed woman’s body was an entire maze, and it gripped at Alex’s mind, her soul, trying to draw her into the darkness.
Diseases aren’t supposed to do this! The thought stuttered in her mind. The woman’s body didn’t only resist her attempt, it hauled her right in. Desperately, Alex hacked at the mental entrapment, the disease, trying blunt, brutal force with her magic.
Finally, her wild assault seemed to strike something, and she heard an awful, grating sound in her soul, as something sucked away from her. She ripped her hand away from the victim’s body.
A green, sticky mess clung to Alex’s palm, and seemed to bunch out of the woman, like earthworms being tugged from the ground. Someone gasped in horror behind her, as she continued to wrestle with the evil thing. With one last, gruesome tug, it left the woman, and immediately began to wither, turning from a poisonous green to an ashen black.
Awareness slammed back into Alex. Sweat dripped down her forehead, pooled at the corners of her lips, and her body trembled like a lead caught in wind. With a groan of disgust, she tossed the vile, tendril-like bundle into the nearest waste bucket, and sought to drown her hands in the provided basin of water. “Never,” she croaked, “make me do that again.”
“Storms...” Elicia said with both fear and awe, “you did it.”
Alex felt neither
triumphant nor happy with the praise. She felt empty, somehow. And very, very tired. As for the thought of going to cure someone else with that particular affliction… she’d been serious about not wanting to do that again.
Except, this was what they wanted her for, wasn’t it? What in skies was that thing?
“Oh, mistress! Thank goodness!” Elicia said, and Alex turned around to see Elicia leaning over the woman who lay in bed, now with both eyes open. Meridas’ sister took some time adjusting, she seemed so dazed and confused, and eventually the doctor ordered both Elicia and Alex out, to give “Miss Vash” time to recover.
Vash and Meridas. What stupid names the people above gave their children. And just like that, while heading back to the bungalow, passing finely dressed people who stared at her curiously in her oversized servant’s robes, Alex was hit by a sharp, sickening longing to return back to the Undercity. At least there, she knew exactly where she fit. Mistress Sue gave her a home, and she knew people in the streets, and all the places they liked to go. She knew the best places to visit, the people to haggle with, and the ones to avoid. She missed most of all being able to sit upon the roof and stare up and dream.
Because being up here shattered them. Even if she now had a new lease on life, it no longer felt like hers to control.
* * *
Hours later, swallowing her way through a warming meal of leftover slops in a bowl, the door behind swung open. Alex turned around to see Meridas striding towards her, wearing formal clothes that looked as though he’d just been to attend a funeral. His dark eyes had that brooding quality to them, as if he spent entirely too much time overthinking matters. Lots of smart people acted like that. Heads too stuffed full of nonsense, Alex thought. She didn’t know what to expect of him now that she’d done the deed he wrenched her out of prison for.
“Why is it,” he said, now picking a seat opposite her on the dining table she sat at, the canteen for the servants of the bungalow, “that a dirty little urchin like you has the powers that someone in the skies should have?”