Servants and guardsmen alike shuffled quickly out of their path as their train wound its way down the keep, first for the kitchens, and inevitably on toward the central yards, where the blossoms of spring held fast. Even with food in hand, the conversation was cordial to a point. Formal. More was given between the words than in them—the way Walthere talked after Sara’s step-mother, or the space between the talk of lords.
Even Charlotte’s husband-to-be could not escape mention in the side-talk. It was in the words. Oh, they all sounded well and good put together, describing how the boy had visited her daily, and wept for her, but individually, the descriptions beckoned a weak character. A moldable character. An orphan. Sara, if she noted it, had the grace not to comment.
It was only when it became apparent that no matter the time involved, Sara had no interest in abandoning her friend—particularly, Charlotte gave thanks, when she made plain how much the seat outside comforted her still-recovering form—that Walthere stopped talking around the issue, and came to it at a head.
It was about time.
“I wished to speak with you of…well…” So close. The man’s hard eyes showed none of the hesitation his voice did. “The obvious, I suppose.”
“Apparently, witches are hardly that,” Sara retorted dully, clinging protectively to Charlotte’s arm. As though a frail thing. A little sister. Charlotte looked sidewise at her friend. Are any of us so broken? “I had her mistaken for a simple girl—and might I add, not a portrait entirely of my own painting.”
Walthere’s chin wobbled with a purposeful cough. He looked apprehensively away. As though he were actually troubled. “You will forgive us this one indiscretion, highness. All families have their skeletons, as it is said. We did not wish you troubled nor, nay, your name tarnished by knowledge of her person here. We faithful—it is a burden to bear.” He held up his hands, helpless, as though to say: “But some things are unavoidable.” Sara’s lips thinned with pursed distaste, but said nothing.
Above their heads, among boughs from plains as distant as alien Zutam, the birds sang a dirge. It caught in the smoke from the city to the west. It carried on a dry wind and grew muddled by lack of the singers’ accord. Confusion. It was in the air.
At her father’s urging, Charlotte’s thoughts drifted back. “What of her?”
“I think it time we considered a parting of ways.”
“Oh, but father—surely she has barely begun to work.” Idly, she fiddled with a scorched strand of erstwhile blonde.
“Or perhaps she works too much. You might have been killed, Charlotte. And you would not have been the only one.”
For a moment, she weighed that. On surface: truth. That scream echoed across memory. In darkness, the stillness of Dartrek’s face. Yet there was something else. To her, all of them had been as ghosts. Notions, not flesh. Madness, or insight into a battered soul. She considered telling her father of the presence she had felt there. That weight that seemed to bury the witch. In front of Sara, though—too easily put to dreams and illness.
“She had been doing better,” she intended defensively, but only mustered lamely. Then she changed tacks: “Where is she now?”
Walthere hesitated. His gaze flicked to Sara and back. “Outside. The mushroom grove by Badur Hill. Amid the circle, bound in chains.”
An old place. Both for ritual and execution. “The standing stones?”
“She remains?” Sara grasped at her own neck. “Maker above. What would possess you?”
The look Walthere shot her next was one of bland fact. “She has had her uses in the past. I think it best you content yourself at that.”
“And mother?” Charlotte asked, changing tacks again. “I do not recall seeing her at my bedside.” Had she known of this, come hell or human hand, she would have been there. Waking should have been a smothering of old beauty.
“She is away. To Sayerne, in Banur. I thought it prudent. We need more from your skittish uncle, and you know well as I she is no good in madness such as this.”
“And your excuse for my uncle?”
She felt bold. Prideful, even—and dangerous. Something clicked behind her father’s cheeks, and it echoed on his tongue. Respect or loathing. They were much the same in a Cullick’s hand.
“How your mind races!” Sara piped. “Do not forget to breathe.”
“There was a battle at the Three Ponds. Lord Gallas led the loyalists. Led them right into a pincer. Old fool.” He smirked, and the years toppled from him. “I am told only a few dozen escaped—though, there were only a hundred or so to begin. Your uncle took Gallas, but the affair did keep him and your cousin afield. Otherwise, I am certain they would be here…attending you.” This last was not entirely devoid of sarcasm.
“Then I think, on the morrow, we should ride to attend them. And show our support.” Charlotte was certain to share a glance with Sara on that note, leaving no doubt she meant the both of them. Witold, like a gathering cloud, loomed forward as if to storm, but a heavy knock on the study’s door drew him off.
“Enter.”
A bareheaded little man dipped repeatedly with his entrance. For all that, the breastplate over his tunic marked him for a soldier. He spoke only when asked. “My lord, ladies. I come with word from Messar Boyce.” At this, he glanced up, waiting until Walthere bid him on. “It is the witch, my lord.” The room grew deathly still, shuffling the man onto his other foot. As if he meant to flee. “She asks for the lady—for, for Charlotte.”
Only Sara offered the obvious: “I thought she was gagged.”
It was the second time Charlotte visited the witch that they actually spoke.
Smoke-filled eyes looked to her—to the one they had scorched—and receded. There was almost light, but the clouds swirled, and the haze thickened, and the witch sank gasping from them, a husk of life. She had not been so bared since the day the soldiers dragged her to the keep.
Would that they never had.
Lips starved purple and thin drew a soft breath to declare: “I have had a vision.”
“A vision?”
Charlotte wielded the words like a curse. Lightly, she stepped around them, as she did the circle of stone and mushrooms—the faerie circle, as the old ones once called it—though she feared neither. It merely seemed wrong to humor the girl—to give to this witch that had taken and burned any shred of human comfort.
This stunt she could greet only with suspicion. There was magic and there was prophecy. Two threads, perhaps, of the same tapestry, but rarely intertwined. Too much for one soul—and even Usuri, in all her rage, had never shown hint of that capability.
Not like the father. Not like he that proved even foresight could not stave off fate’s hand.
“You have never suffered such a thing before.”
“My father—”
“Is dead. So much for the gift.” She leaned against one of the standing stones, waiting for the girl’s head to rise again. The witch chewed at her lip, but did not oblige. Like a cowed dog. In a moment’s introspection, it reminded of a dream months before, where this very witch had stood upon a rock and cast her down. It made her vicious. “Witch and prophet. Each was its own. Now, suddenly, you take the Sight as well? Desperate waif, why should we believe you?”
Usuri’s reply was a soft note in a bitter wind. “Already you speak as woman crowned…”
“I am leaving,” Charlotte said simply, and turned to go.
“Wait!”
The head lurched up at last, and Charlotte smirked for that small victory, but turned with nothing more than contempt. Arms crossed about her chest, she—despite herself—whispered a prayer as she crossed the lines of the circle. Eyes stalked her from every long-stretched shadow. They wondered, useless and mortal. Feared. She would not let it infect her.
Usuri’s arms were drawn to her naked chest, her legs forced to kneel, the whole of her drawn taut. Iron-bound.
The witch had to strain her neck just to watch her. “It—that is, my visio
n—it is his, bird.”
“Do not call me that.”
“You are afraid.”
So dry was her laugh it drew even the witch aback. “Of you?”
“Of life, lioness. And that—that makes you wise.” The eyes lowered again and the girl shrank against her bonds. “You shall surely care. Oh, listen, listen, why do they circle? The birdy and the witch so foul? Oh, she might have burned her. Might have plucked a pretty hair and done her wrong. World burst, and yet, was there any scar but sound? Yes,” she added, with rhythmic, manic tapping of her finger on the chain. “It is a vision, lady, and it gives us sight of you.”
This sounded too much the old Usuri to be anything passing comfort. “Me?” Breath caught in her lungs, an icicle-laden drag. She felt as still as bodies in their graves. Still, she took another step.
“How long have you known it?”
“How long the mind did set to flight? Call your father, b—lady. Call him, and let him know. It should not hold it any longer. I am no worthy bearer. There’s too much…too much…” The witch’s lips tittered around the coming “b,” and would not let it out.
“If this is a trick…”
The final step was the easiest of all. Charlotte stood over the woman again, and as the small shape of her began to shrink into something terribly human, and frail, the hand rose. It swept the air and heaved blood to the fore of the witch’s rolling cheek. For a moment, Charlotte thought that action might have drained what remained of her own weakened body. She held. Her hand tingled in the air, reverberating with the girl’s own hurt, and she held.
“Even witches sleep. And I’ve enough of your waking.”
A Witch’s Vision
The Gold Sunrise wilt meet the Green Descent.
Fire rages through earth and sea, should threaten to consume—
a child, lost within a family’s shadow, shall turn it all to dust.
Oh ashes, ashes, Idasia!
We have seen you smothered in the gore,
consumed by swords of retribution—forgotten, lodged within your spine.
We hear your lamentations, though your people be proud, your walls be high
the shadow will be higher, yea, your weary chick shall take its flight
in reddened sun retire, where leaves and herbs grow green
watered in the heart’s ambition, the distant untouched dead—
therein, the Lady Fair, who at her tips the storms, the life
this slanted earth, scorched beneath the fiercest strife—
though nest be sundered with the call for death
north and south shall take refuge in the lion’s mouth
tax and blood and cruel, cruel war
shall settle by the choice, where heads wilt bow before the door.
But by shackle-rattle hear it now
the enslaved people shall not bow
but shall ye bow, that does not of the blood relent.
At Charlotte’s behest, they rode out the next morning, for the Three Ponds and the company of her uncle. Herself, Sara, and a dozen men-at-arms between them. There had been enough “good” news over the past evening. Something was to be said for the simple honesty she knew her uncle could bring.
It was about three hours’ ride to where Usteroy’s army encamped, open terrain already jewelling at the touch of the springtide sun. Foot traffic on the cobbled roads was heavy, swelled by farmers, merchants, and afflicted refugees alike, and more than one village’s bells rang with their passing, though whether to bark in warning or to beckon traders to Sonntag market was anyone’s guess.
It had been suggested—or feuded over, more like—that the ladies take to coach for the journey. For Charlotte, though, the sun was full in a crystalline sky, the grass stretched long against the memory of rain, and she could think of nothing better to suppress the rigors of previous days than with a vigorous ride. Sara, ever her proxy now, was likewise adamant.
So they rode, setting at times a furious pace. For Charlotte, it was about putting as much distance between her and “the lion” as possible. What was little more than fantasy to her had given that one wings, and all evening her father had reared himself about the keep as though Providence itself had settled about his shoulders.
“Don’t you see,” he cried aloud in joy, “these are the words! It was shards of these that burned him, that brought that whisper of that woman to my ears.”
The witch, it seemed, was no longer to be removed. Rather, she was to be given into Boyce’s care.
Which was to say, the question of her removal remained very much unclear.
“Is she really a prophet?” Sara asked at one point. They rode side-by-side, reluctantly confined to the middle of their column.
Charlotte fixed on the dipping land before them, and the smoke of the fires burning up the sky. “The father was.”
“Was?”
“The Inquisition burned him.”
And that was that. Sara nodded, absently paling at the thought that the Inquisition would no doubt do the same to her, if given ample chance. They had done it to other Farrens. Other heretics. Perhaps it even struck a chord of sympathy in her. Regardless, Charlotte saw no good in adding that the burning had come at the old emperor’s own approval. No need to make his daughter anxious.
They arrived just after midday. The camp at Three Ponds was a solemn, simple thing, regimented to strict military standard and devoid of the pomp and polish of grander campaigns. Lines of tents staked out a small patch of land to the east of the aforementioned “ponds”—small, freshwater reservoirs nestled among the fertile soil of Usteroy’s western fields, from which local farmers and ranchers made ample wealth. Stakes had been hammered into the dirt to mark perimeter, while a long, thin ditch had been dug around, encircling the camp.
Of this, Charlotte had no doubt, the wandering ranchers and sheepherders would not be pleased, come war’s end.
For all its starkness, the camp grew lively at the sight of them. Only a few hundred men were afoot, but all doffed caps or struck a knee, some crying out: “The Empress’s favor upon us!” Sara waved with a practiced poise, but Charlotte only blushed. Moderately. Appropriately.
They savored it.
Few looked worse for wear. Beyond camp, at the heart of the ponds, there remained little sign of the recent battle. What bodies remained had been put to fire far afield, the equipment gathered from their bloodied hands. There was no sign of cannon, no scorch or blackened lame—truly, she would later learn, neither side had boasted any. It had been what her uncle called a “good little war.”
Belligerent Lord Gallas, hoping to chase Maynard through the ponds and therein bottleneck him, had in turn found himself caught there, with nowhere but through the waters to flee. It had been a pitched thing, of cavalry and sword-arm, and little entry even from the muskets. Arrows cleaved the air, and the fleeing men drowned in the puddles as they should.
Trapped, Gallas and his retinue had flown the white flag before the hour was done. They sat now dour-faced at the center of camp, in a hastily-erected stockade. The last time Charlotte had seen these men, they waged a battle of a different sort—sycophant nobles, she knew, built for parties. Not war. Not one among them offered the grace the soldiers gave their ladies now. Too far gone to care. In the weight of all that armor, it should have been no surprise.
Devoid of politick and the yammering of the court, Charlotte’s uncle was not the awkward, formal creature her friend Sara had come to expect. Having no doubt heard of their coming, Maynard was there to greet them, and as soon as they were bundled out of sight of his men, the bear of a man twisted sharply and caught his niece up in his broad arms. Sara looked scandalized. Charlotte only laughed. Over his shoulder, she spied her otherwise rigid cousin grinning back at her.
“My dear, dear girl, the things we have heard here,” he said as he set her back to her feet. The first breath after was a heady rush. “About the…” His concern folded into a decisive frown as his one wary eye cast
Sara’s way. “Well, you know. You are still pale as a sheet. Your illness is better, I trust? Or is there a doctor’s neck I must wring?”
“Should it be so, I should have already done it, ser,” Sara chimed happily—and honestly.
“How now—none of that, uncle.” Charlotte tapped him once on the chest while twisting a playful look at her friend. “The war could hardly spare you.”
“Then I would send the boy to do it,” he grunted.
She rounded back on him. “And Her Highness already knows.”
Walthere wouldn’t have flinched. Maynard all but gaped at the princess. Yet his son did the only thing available to the lost and confused—he quirked a brow and looked between the figures of this new conspiracy, awaiting one or the other to welcome him in with open arms.
None did. Rather, they fell to discussion of the battle. Of troop movements, for the lord Gallas’s partner in crime—another neighbor to Usteroy, Ser Lievklaus—had not been caught with his men, and stood at large, whilst word said Duke Urtz was nearly arrived from the south, hoping to join the Loyalist forces of Mauritz gathering in the southwestern farmholds of Corvaden—the crown’s lands. Gallas’s raids, Maynard suspected, had been but a feint, to divide the army’s attention.
And still there had come no word from the northern lords.
They stayed until evening, Sara even so bold as to allow herself to be talked into surveying the troops. “No one,” she said later, framed under the guise of the Cullick lion and the Farrens’ wheel and eye, “could be so blessed as my brother and I, to have so many men as these before us.” They dined, and turned to more distant things—to wandering mothers and ambitious fathers, and even to a marriage. Charlotte found little enough appetite by that time.
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