Ottilie Colter and the Master of Monsters

by Rhiannon Williams

  ‘Hello?’ she said.

  Gracie smiled her cold little smile, and Ottilie found herself thinking of Yosha Moses, the girl who had jumped from the tree.

  Gracie was looking a little better, she thought. Still pale, but more yellow than grey. Ottilie’s eyes darted to Gracie’s arm but the scar from the wyler bite was hidden beneath her sleeve.

  Ottilie was surprised to see that Maeve, on the other hand, looked awful. Her dark hair was matted, and she had purple smudges under eyes. It looked like she hadn’t slept in days. What was going on with those two?

  ‘Are you doing it today?’ Maeve demanded.

  ‘What?’ She felt shaky and wasn’t sure why.

  ‘Don’t play dumb, you’re taking the petition to the directorate today?’ pressed Maeve, flicking hair away from her strangely fraught face.

  ‘How did you … yes. Why?’ Ottilie regarded her with wide eyes. Maeve seemed angry. Her mood radiated from her in a way that Ottilie had never felt before.

  ‘We’d like to sign, please,’ said Gracie with her usual false sweetness, her mouth quirking up.

  ‘You … really?’ Ottilie had not expected this.

  ‘Of course,’ Maeve snapped, glowering. ‘Isla didn’t even ask us.’

  Ottilie wasn’t surprised. They had only asked people they trusted and Ottilie considered these girls two of the least trustworthy people at Fort Fiory. She held out the petition with narrowed eyes. What if they tore it up? Or ran off and took it to Wrangler Voilies? But then Ottilie remembered Maeve on the night of the wyler attack. She had been fearless – and angry. It did make sense that she wanted to sign.

  ‘I’ve only got this with me,’ said Ottilie, pulling a stick of charcoal from her pocket.

  ‘That’ll do fine,’ said Maeve, scratching Ottilie’s hand as she snatched it.

  Ottilie blinked. She had the oddest sensation of wind sweeping across her face, but the day was perfectly still.

  The petition was out of Ottilie’s hands for only half a day before they had their answer.

  ‘Insubordination!’ spat Wrangler Voilies, his face the colour of rotting meat.

  Wrangler Morse had promised to pass on the petition to Captain Lyre – after that, Ottilie didn’t know what had happened. She could only guess that the directorate had rejected their request and sent Voilies to deal with them.

  He had called everyone who had signed to a small chamber, well out of the way of the rest of the fort. They wanted to keep it quiet, thought Ottilie, keep it contained. She swallowed the lump in her throat. This was not the moment for tears. Gully stood beside her, gripping her wrist hard.

  ‘It is a disgrace!’ hissed Voilies.

  Ottilie felt Gully twitch. Skip was on her other side, hard-faced, with fire in her eyes.

  ‘A devious attempt to undermine our operation.’

  Heat began creeping up Ottilie’s neck. Her disappointment morphed into anger and she ground her teeth and fixed her eyes on the tapestry hanging behind Voilies.

  ‘Sneaking. Manipulation. I’ve thought for years that there should be no women allowed in the fort at all. A noxious distraction! But there are jobs that need to be done. Ingratitude, that’s what this is!’

  Skip cracked her knuckles, and Ottilie quickly linked her arm – more a gesture of restraint than support.

  ‘My elites … I am deeply disappointed.’ His gaze lingered on Ned.

  She studied his face. How did he feel about this? Was he regretting helping her? His shoulders were square and his brow furrowed in quiet defiance – it didn’t seem so.

  ‘The custodian chieftess has been informed. She is rightly outraged. Every custodian in this room is to report to her chambers the moment this meeting is over.’

  A tiny fraction of the weight lifted off Ottilie’s shoulders. The custodian chieftess was going to handle the girls, not the directorate. They would be punished, she was sure, but not locked up, not sent away.

  ‘And as for the huntsmen,’ said Voilies with a dangerous hiss. ‘You are all on probation, and if I hear a word about this again you can pull on a shovelie suit, because I WILL NOT HAVE IT! This is the natural order, and I will not have it disrupted!’ he said, sending spit flying in their faces.

  ‘These are dangerous times. If you girls are concerned about your safety you should focus on your jobs. Keep the fort in order, keep the huntsmen comfortable and well fed, so that they are in the best condition to go out and do the job that you are not capable of doing. We will protect you. There is no need for you to learn to protect yourselves.’

  His eyes fell upon Ottilie and strange white patches blossomed on his dark red cheeks. He had not targeted her specifically, so that must have meant that Wrangler Morse had not named her as the instigator. Even so, he would never accept her as a huntsman, and any fool could see that the question of training girls had not been raised before a girl had infiltrated the Hunt. Ottilie would have to be very careful. People would be looking for a way to silence her.

  Voilies was still rambling on and on. ‘An attempt to destabilise the natural order is an act of rebellion!’

  There was a loud bang. The tapestry directly behind Wrangler Voilies fell to the ground and burst into flame. He shrieked and hopped sideways.

  For a moment everyone froze, then the two closest, Bayo and Alba, hurried forwards, ripped another tapestry from the wall, and smothered the fire. It sparked and licked, catching on one of Alba’s braids. She flicked it like a bothersome fly and kept stamping until there was only smoke.

  Wrangler Voilies was clutching his heart, breathing hard. His eyes darted accusingly around the room. But none of them had caused it. How could they? A fire like that, from nothing? Not even bone singers could pull a trick like that. The tapestry must have caught on a candle when it fell. But still Wrangler Voilies observed them, mouth gaping, his eyes darting manically from girl to girl.

  ‘Witchcraft,’ he hissed, his eyes rolling back. ‘WITCHES!’

  Ottilie’s heart sped to a gallop. Her gaze found Gracie. She was utterly calm, her face absurdly peaceful. Once again, Ottilie pictured Gracie under the hood. But she had been bitten, Ottilie reminded herself. It couldn’t be her. Beside Gracie, Maeve was white as salt, her eyes wide with fright and fixed on the embers sparking and drifting from the smoking tapestry.

  17

  Hush

  The custodians were quiet. Even those who’d had nothing to do with the petition kept their heads down and their mouths shut. Ottilie spotted bandaged hands and bruised cheeks. Any signs of behaviour that the Hunt deemed inappropriate – questions, spirited talk, gathering in groups – were met with punishment. Penalties ranged from scolding and skipped meals to … well … Ottilie had heard threats about locking ‘malefactors’ in the burrows, but she was not sure if anyone was following through.

  ‘Why aren’t they punishing us?’ asked Scoot, as he and Ottilie left the dining room.

  ‘Because they’re too scared,’ she said. ‘They need us – the huntsmen.’ She remembered the look Voilies had given her when they were called in for reprimanding. He wanted her gone. She knew that. But, for now, her connections were keeping her safe. Gully, the Hunt’s star fledgling, was her brother. Ned and five other elites had signed the same petition, and Leo, their only champion, was her guardian. He had turned on her before, but he was the one who had begged her back into the fold. They probably didn’t trust that he would betray her again – but of course, his name hadn’t been on the petition. That wouldn’t have gone unnoticed. Ottilie knew she would have to watch her back.

  Her interactions with Leo since the business with the petition had been chilly at best. She hadn’t raised the topic because she was furious with him and didn’t think she could stomach an ‘I told you so’.

  Leo, to her surprise, was sensible enough not to bring it up. He was simply pretending nothing had happened, meeting her frostiness with smiles, which only made her angrier. If he had signed, it might have made all the difference!
Now it was too late, and they would never know.

  Scoot was in the middle of a sentence that Ottilie wasn’t paying attention to, when someone grabbed her arm and wrenched her sideways, pulling her into an empty broom cupboard.

  ‘Ottilie!’ Scoot hammered on the door.

  Her heart thundered, the tight space pressing in.

  A dim lantern rested on an empty shelf and in the amber light Ottilie saw Maeve, pulling hard on the inside of the door to keep Scoot from opening it.

  Strangely, Ottilie’s breathing eased, and she found herself feeling more curious than afraid. What was this, another prank? Was Maeve trying to frighten her?

  ‘Get him to shut up,’ Maeve hissed.

  ‘Well, let me out, then.’

  Maeve didn’t budge.

  ‘Or at least let him in!’ she snapped.

  ‘Fine.’ Maeve kicked the door open, sending Scoot sprawling.

  Ottilie felt a great tug towards the wide, highceilinged corridor beyond, but her curiosity kept her captive.

  ‘Get in, quick,’ said Maeve.

  Scoot got to his feet, his jaw jutting out. ‘What the –’

  ‘Just get in,’ said Maeve sharply.

  ‘Fine … fine …’ Scoot threw up his arms and entered the cupboard. ‘Crazy,’ he muttered.

  Ottilie looked Maeve up and down. She looked so dreadful that, despite everything, Ottilie couldn’t help but feel concerned for her. She leaned closer, intending to ask what Maeve wanted, but the words came out differently. ‘Are you all right?’

  It might have been the fractured light, but Maeve’s cheeks seemed hollower than Ottilie remembered and there were scrapes and cuts all up her arms. She found herself thinking of Gracie, and the girl who had jumped from the tree. She might not be the hooded witch, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t capable of doing someone harm.

  Scoot grabbed Maeve’s arm and twisted it to the light. ‘Did they do this to you?’

  Maeve shook her head.

  ‘Did Gracie?’ said Ottilie, quietly.

  Maeve tugged her arm back. ‘What? No! Are you crazy?’

  ‘We’re not the ones pulling people into cupboards,’ said Scoot.

  ‘I just wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘In a cupboard?’ said Scoot.

  ‘Yes, in a cupboard. It’s not safe to talk out there, not to her.’ She nodded at Ottilie with narrowed eyes. ‘They’re watching us, all of us that signed, but particularly you.’

  Ottilie had guessed as much.

  ‘I want to know what we’re doing,’ said Maeve, desperation thinning her voice.

  Scoot snorted. ‘We’re standing in a cupbo–’

  ‘What’s the next step?’ Maeve interrupted. ‘What are we going to do now?’

  ‘I … there is no next step,’ said Ottilie, hopelessness weighting her words. ‘They said no, and now they’re … it’s not safe to do anything now.’

  Not now that Voilies is going on about witches, Ottilie thought. She didn’t say it; she had begun to fear ever uttering the word ‘witch’.

  ‘I want to train in secret,’ said Maeve, her eyes stretched wide. ‘I want you to teach me.’

  It made sense after the wyler attack, but Ottilie couldn’t help but wonder if Maeve wanted to learn to defend herself against someone else. The thought made her stomach churn.

  She really did want to help but … ‘I can’t teach anyone,’ said Ottilie, shaking her head. ‘I’m only learning myself.’

  The lantern flickered and sparked. Scoot jumped and leaned away from it. ‘What was –’

  Maeve threw her hand over his mouth. Someone was passing.

  They moved away.

  ‘Argh!’ Maeve drew her hand back. Scoot had his teeth bared. He had clearly bitten her.

  ‘You’re an animal!’ spat Maeve.

  ‘I’m an animal? Have you looked at yourself lately?’

  Ottilie elbowed him. ‘Maeve, this isn’t smart. We have to go. I’ll … I’ll think about it.’

  18

  The Tipped Barrow

  Later that day, Ottilie visited Alba in the root cellar. She was settled on a grain bag with a woollen blanket wrapped around her like a cocoon. ‘It’s slow going,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t look like a big book, but every page I turn, it’s like I get nowhere.’ She tapped the spine, the tips of her fingers poking through the ends of her chunky gloves. ‘I don’t know if it’s because it’s really dense, or because the book is spell’d.’

  Ottilie frowned and leaned away. ‘Why would a book be spell’d?’ she whispered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Alba, stroking its cover. ‘It’s about witches, and not the kind of things you normally read – about how they were evil and they ate their babies.’

  ‘I have never read that,’ said Ottilie, with a grimace. She wished they were having this conversation somewhere else, preferably in a wide-open space beneath a cheerful sun.

  ‘Well, trust me, it’s out there,’ said Alba. ‘But this one … I think it was written by witches. Did you know they were sort of growers first – “keepers of the land”. Then they learned that they could heal people, like they could heal plants and animals, and then … well, that’s about as far as I’ve got. The writing is really small and I have to keep stopping to look up words I don’t know, but I think it’s more than that. I think it’s a much bigger book than it pretends to be.’

  Ottilie blinked at the book and crinkled her nose. ‘What do you think Whistler will do if she finds it missing? She’ll know it was us.’

  ‘I don’t know. She didn’t punish us for breaking in. I think she quite liked it. “Lions not mice”, remember.’

  Ottilie picked up the other book, the one Whistler had given them. She traced a finger over the lettering on the cover. Sol. Everything kept coming back to the royal family. Centuries ago, the young princess, Seika Devil-Slayer, had felled the first dredretch, then a hundred years ago, Viago the Vanquisher had broken the promise and caused the dredretches to infest the Laklands, and now their current king, Varrio Sol, had created the Narroway Hunt. And Whistler had given them this book – what did it all mean?

  The door to the root cellar flew open. ‘What do you two think you are doing!’ said Montie.

  Alba jumped to her feet, masking the book from view. ‘We’re just talking, Mum.’

  ‘Just talking? Secretly in the root cellar?’ Montie’s eyes were sharp as daggers. ‘Ottilie, dear one, I’ve told you, you can’t come down here for a while. Alba’s name was on that petition – if they catch her talking to you like this –’

  ‘Why would they catch us?’ said Alba. ‘Why would they come in here?’

  Montie sighed, her eyes heavy. ‘You know very well that they’re watching all of you. Our … my position is not secure here, Alba, and they don’t allow people they consider untrustworthy to just go back to the Usklers! Who knows what they would do with us.’

  Not for the first time, Ottilie wondered why Montie had come to the Narroway. What had driven her to bring her daughter to such a place? Her eyes traced Montie’s face. Ottilie had never asked about the burns slinking down from under her scarf, twisting the skin on the left side of her face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and she really meant it. The last thing she wanted to do was cause trouble for Montie and Alba.

  Montie’s eyes softened. ‘It’s all right. I love that you visit us, I do, but you both need to settle for a while. No creeping around – not until things calm down.’

  Ottilie needed to stretch her legs. She felt as if she had spent half of her afternoon off crouching in store cupboards. The sun was setting over the trees and the grounds were bathed in fiery light. Deciding to make the most of it, she looped the pond and wandered further across the fields.

  Bayo Amadory passed, crossing paths with a sculkie with coppery hair and fairly large ears. Ottilie recognised her immediately. She was infamous. It was Fawn Mogue, the girl who had accidentally let the wyler into the sculkies’ bedchambe
r.

  Fawn was pushing a barrow loaded with shiny red apples from the grove. Hitting uneven ground, the barrow wobbled and a few apples tumbled onto the grass.

  Ottilie watched Bayo retrieve them for her and was just about to go after the last rolling apple herself when she caught a flash of orange in the corner of her eye.

  Her mind said it must have been the sun, but her gut stopped her in her tracks. Bayo and Fawn paused too. Fawn touched her temple. It looked as if she, like Ottilie, was sensing the ghost of a headache.

  In the distance, a shepherd howled.

  Ottilie’s heart froze as she spotted another flash of orange – a bushy tail. She swallowed. She and Bayo were both unarmed.

  ‘Run!’ Ottilie cried. ‘The wall!’ It was closest and there would be armed huntsmen up there.

  Fawn released the barrow. It tipped and apples rolled underfoot as they sprinted. Ottilie tripped. Bayo and Fawn ran back to help her up, and the wyler pounced out of nowhere. Ottilie grabbed the only weapon she could find, pelting the dredretch with apples. One after the other, she missed, but dodging kept it busy.

  Ottilie heard shouts, howls and thundering hooves. The wyler leapt at Fawn.

  ‘Your ring!’ cried Bayo.

  Fawn lifted her left arm high and kicked out. The wyler tore across her leg with its claws. Ottilie hit it hard with an apple and it fell back. Bayo grabbed Fawn, helping her to her feet and then shifting to stand between her and the wyler, apple in hand, his broad shoulders masking Fawn from view.

  Ottilie could see Leo running towards them, bow raised, but he was too far away. Further still, the dark shadows of shepherds streaked through the dimming light. The hoof beats were louder and Billow thundered into view, Ramona Ritgrivvian on his back, her red hair flying.

  She was a wrangler – she had no weapons, but Billow reared and stamped. The wyler dodged and leapt back. It bent to spring: Billow, the biggest threat, was its new target. The wyler leapt high. Billow lunged sideways and kicked hard.