Catching Stars

by Cayla Keenan

  The witch twitched in her sleep, and Maddix signaled for the caravan to stop. The sedative was powerful, but valyach metabolized chemicals much faster than normal humans. It wasn’t worth the risk.

  “Check the collar,” ordered one of the hunters, a woman named Barra. She’d been promoted when their previous leader burned to death. Maddix shuddered as he clambered into the wagon, thinking of how Durem had screamed as his skin bubbled and blackened. The scent of charred flesh was still stuck in his nostrils. He rattled the brass lock on the witch’s collar, careful not to let his skin brush hers.

  Their nightly camps were as silent as the days’ travel, the silence only lifting when one of the hunters announced shift rotations. When he wasn’t on watch, Maddix made it a point to sleep as far away from the witch as possible, but one night he woke up to the sound of a girl crying out. The next morning, the valyach was still unconscious, but fresh bruises bloomed on her dark skin.

  Maddix didn’t ask.

  The damnable quiet made it all too easy to replay the battle at the docks over and over in his mind. Maddix had seen magic before in the Gull, little displays to dazzle tourists that spoke nothing of true power. Every time a cloud passed over the sun he flinched, expecting magicked lightning to split the sky. Even their cookfires reminded him too much of the two firewitches and the screams of the hunters who’d burned alive, roasting in their skin.

  But as terrifying as the other witches were, they had nothing on the creature that rode in the prison cart. Maddix had never seen anything like her—he hadn’t even thought such magic existed. She’d killed one of the hunters with a gesture. In an instant, he’d been reduced to meat and bones, stripped of anything that made him human.

  The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon when a shout shattered the silence. Maddix’s eyes flew open, the nightmare fading. Around him, the other helwyr charged to their feet and through the haze of confusion, the cry was repeated.

  “She’s escaped!”

  Maddix fumbled for his sword as Barra barked out orders. The helwyr scattered, sprinting into the forest to reclaim the lost witch. He crashed through the trees, trying to ignore how the shadows seemed to reach for him. Every rustle of leaves sounded like Mole’s rasping voice, calling for his death, demanding his sacrifice. Maddix clenched his hands around the hilt of his sword to keep them from shaking.

  It’s not real, he told himself. It’s not real.

  Wind gusted on the back of his neck, and Maddix whirled, smelling Mole’s rancid breath. He swung his sword and a flock of birds burst from the underbrush, shattering the illusion. There were no ghosts in the woods, no tunnel-dwellers that lurked in the shadows. It was just his imagination.

  Here!” one of the hunters shouted, his voice echoing off the trees. “I’ve got her!”

  Maddix exhaled, forcing thoughts of ghosts and molemen from his mind. He was helwyr, and he couldn’t go to pieces whenever it got a little dark.

  He raced towards the sounds of voices, of shouts and grunts of pain, to find the witch kicking and struggling in the hunter’s arms. One of his hands was clapped around her mouth, and he swore as she bit him hard enough to draw blood.

  “Valyach bitch!” the hunter—a man named Wulf—snarled, dropping the girl. She scrambled on her back, bruised and bleeding from shallow cuts on her neck and face. “Oh no you don’t!” Wulf shouted, grabbing her wrist before she could get away. He twisted her arm behind her back, and the witch hissed through her teeth.

  “Stop!” The word was only halfway out of Maddix’s mouth when Wulf brought the hilt of his sword down with bone-shattering force. The witch screamed, the only thing keeping her upright was the grip on her wrist. Maddix rushed forward, plunging a syringe into the girl’s neck. Her eyes rolled, and she went limp.

  “If it tries that again, I’ll break both its legs,” Wulf promised, spitting. His face twisted with revulsion. “You carry it back. I ain’t touching that thing.”

  For the rest of the journey, Maddix doubled the dose of sedative in the witch’s system, and there was at least one hunter with eyes on her at all times. They couldn’t risk her getting free again. If the silence had been forbidding at the start of their return trip, it was downright oppressive now, and Maddix knew he wasn’t imagining the poisonous glances shot his way.

  They made it back to the helwyr compound two days later, met with a solemn kind of celebration. The mission had been a success, but it had come at a terrible cost. Seven dead. Seven helwyr fallen, and all to get the witch for him.

  Maddix couldn’t help the guilt churning inside of him and was quick to transfer the blame onto the valyach. Of the seven hunters killed, she’d killed four.

  “You need to be debriefed,” Kenna said, appearing in the crowd and beckoning to Maddix. He was grateful to the intervention. Witchhunting was a dangerous business, but he knew the others blamed him for the deaths of their brothers and sisters. The whispers that had followed him since the beginning became more pointed, accompanying sharp glances and angry eyes.

  Maddix spent the next several hours being asked question after question in a tiny room that made it hard to breathe. What happened? How did the plan go wrong? What were the natures of the valyach killed? Was there anything else he could have done? Was he sure?

  Finally, finally, Maddix was released.

  Hale was waiting for him.

  “Walk with me.” It wasn’t a request. “How are you feeling?”

  “Tired,” Maddix answered honestly. “If I may ask, sir, how long until the valyach is ready to help us?”

  Now that this was in motion, he was eager to continue. He wanted to prove this wasn’t all for nothing.

  “That is entirely up to it,” Hale said. Maddix looked at him strangely. “It isn’t the first valyach to assist us, and it probably won’t be the last, but we’ve found many of them need a bit of training before they’re manageable. The sooner it proves itself, the easier this will be.”

  Hale clapped Maddix on the shoulder. “But don’t worry, if this one is as spineless as the others, it should only take a couple of days.”

  It took more than a couple of days. Kenna tried to assure him things were progressing well, that this valyach was just a little tougher than they’d expected. He was also explicitly told to stay out of the dungeons where the witch was being held. Maddix chafed against the restrictions but did as he was told.

  Another five days passed without any progress.

  Once, Maddix would have balked at flaunting a direct order. Once, he had been a star-eyed boy with dreams of grandeur and glory, and it had gotten him thrown into the Pit. If he could do something to make the witch talk, he was going to do it, orders be damned.

  Chapter Fourteen:

  Jayin

  Jayin woke to footsteps. It was a nice change of pace from her previous wake-up calls of ice-cold water or a blow to the stomach. As best as she could tell, she’d been imprisoned for over a week, though she didn’t know how much time she had lost on the journey from Southport to her new dungeon home.

  Dried blood was crusted on her skin from half a dozen shallow cuts all over her body, and her arm was mottled with purple bruises where it’d been broken. One eye was so badly swollen Jayin could barely see, and if the pain in her side was any indication, she was sporting a few broken ribs. Despite all of it, she still didn’t know what they wanted from her. She didn’t even know who they were. Her captors asked no questions, made no demands, just dealt in pain.

  Worst of all, they’d neutered her magic. Jayin learned quickly not to use her powers—if she did, the collar around her neck choked her until she passed out or let the magic go, whichever came first. She’d chosen unconsciousness more than once.

  The first day, Jayin thought they were going to kill her. She wanted to let them. Every time she closed her eyes she saw Om dying in her lap, his energy guttering out in her second sight. He’d saved her, risked everything—his anonymity, his safety, the life he’d built in Aestos�
�and in return, Jayin had gotten him killed.

  The dungeon door swung open, and Jayin tensed, all thoughts of Om vanishing in an instant. Her heart picked up, fear chilling her blood.

  “Bleeding stars,” she swore. Through her one good eye, she recognized the figure walking towards her. Even with her magic suppressed, she would know him everywhere; his face had been featured on wanted posters for years. “Maddix Kell.”

  He started, surprise flitting across his face before he composed himself. “How do you know my name?” Kell demanded, crossing his arms over his chest.

  Because I’m the one who caught you, Jayin thought, remembering the day she’d found him. The Kingswitch had been pushing her hard to find the rogue Guard, harder than he ever had before, but there was nothing. No trail, no aura. It was as if he’d just vanished. Then, after almost a week of aimless searching, he appeared out of nowhere, half-dead and covered in blood.

  His aura hadn’t hurt so much then. Jayin wished she’d noticed, wished she’d known there was a dayri walking around Pavaal with the power to cut through her defenses like a knife through silk. Maybe she could’ve done something about it with enough time and forewarning.

  Maybes didn’t do her any good now.

  Jayin rose to meet him, standing as straight as she could manage. The chain around her ankle didn’t allow for much range of motion, but she was small enough to stand to her full height.

  Kell looked different than she remembered. There was something behind his eyes, as if he’d traded despair for something else. Fanaticism, perhaps.

  Whatever it was, whatever was driving him, it was the only thing keeping him going. He wasn’t the emaciated husk he should’ve been after two years in the Pit, but he still had a starved look about him that showed in the hollows of his cheeks.

  “How do you know who I am?” Kell barked.

  “All of Pavaal knows who you are,” Jayin said, injecting as much scorn into her voice as she could. He knew she was sahir, but he didn’t have to know she was the one who’d caught him. Somehow she didn’t think knowing that would improve his opinion of her.

  Jayin’s legs trembled, threatening to give out, but she refused to fall in front of him. He was unsure of himself, that much was obvious, and Jayin intended to press any advantage she could find.

  “You’re the poor Guardling who lost his head and killed four people.”

  “Shut up,” Kell said, and Jayin had to tilt her head up to look him in the eye. She sneered, moving as close to him as her chains would allow, gratified to see him flinch away from her. His hand went to his throat before he dropped it again.

  “Why?” Jayin challenged. “Afraid talking about them will call their ghosts to you? If you didn’t want to be haunted, you shouldn’t have killed them.”

  “Shut up,” he said again, fists clenching at his sides.

  “They were people,” Jayin went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “They had families that cared about them. Do you have any idea how many lives you ruined, you starcursed—”

  “Shut up!” Kell shouted, and then he was moving. Jayin bent her knees, trying to ignore the pain that burned through her muscles.

  Anger made Kell sloppy and stupid. Even as weak and hurt as she was, Jayin managed to slam the top of her head into his jaw. He staggered backwards, off balance, and Jayin dropped into a crouch. She swept her leg out, knocking his feet out from under him, and pounced, wrapping her chains around his neck.

  The door burst open and men poured in, alerted by the crash.

  Here comes the cavalry, Jayin thought, pulling the chain tighter. Kell choked, brushing her bare skin as his arms flailed. Her second sight erupted behind her eyes, Kell’s energy blotting out everything else and redrawing her world in strokes of white-hot pain.

  The leather around her neck constricted, grounding her. Jayin hissed, shoving the boy away from her. She fell to her knees as her magic fizzled out again, and the collar loosened enough for her to suck in a single, desperate breath.

  “How dare you raise your hand to one of us?” Jayin forced herself not to flinch, recognizing the voice of one of her torturers. She didn’t have time to brace herself before a booted foot caught her in the chest. “Filthy valyach,” the man spat, kicking her again.

  Valyach. Jayin wheezed out a breath, blood speckling her lips. The word tickled something in the farthest reaches of her memory; a story she hadn’t thought about in years. Dread pooled in her stomach and Jayin steeled herself to keep it from showing on her face.

  “Oh how the mighty have fallen,” Jayin wheezed, tilting her head up. The hunter was a ghost, washed-out except for his ice-blue eyes. They were flinty and hard, narrowed with contempt. “The great and terrible sahirla reduced to torturing a lone witch. Pathetic”

  She smiled unpleasantly, baring her teeth. There wasn’t much of a chance she would get out of this alive, but she’d be damned if she cowered before these monsters before they killed her.

  The sahirla were a ghost story, a fairytale that witch mothers told their children to scare them into behaving. Don’t be naughty or the sahirla will get you. Do you know what happens to bad children who don’t eat their vegetables? They’re given to the sahirla.

  Jayin had always thought they were a myth, an imaginary group of old-fashioned madmen who spoke antiquated Aestosi and hunted witches for sport. She never imagined that they were real. Not only real, bit active on the outskirts of the kingdom.

  “Oh, wait,” she continued despite the anger growing on the hunter’s face. She forced a laugh. “You were run out of Ayrie Palace, and then we replaced you. Funny how those things happen.”

  At first Jayin was sure that the hunter would strike out at her, but the rage on his face quickly cooled into something icy and cruel.

  “And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” he said softly. “You’re one of the Palace’s pets. Or do you prefer to be called the Gulwitch?”

  Jayin’s heart dropped even lower. There was no way he could know that, just like there was no way the witchhunters could’ve known where she was. Unless—

  “Maerta,” Jayin whispered, understanding dawning.

  “You creatures even turn against each other. You’re disloyal, dishonorable animals.”

  “And yet here I am,” Jayin snarled. “Alive and kicking, while seven of you died like cowards. The proud sahirla, begging for their lives from a—” Jayin’s words died as a fist met her stomach, driving all the air from her lungs. Blow after blow rained down with pause or hesitation. Jayin squeezed her eyes closed and tried to brace herself, but it wasn’t enough. She was breaking. She was broken.

  She was dying.

  “Dryhten,” Kell’s voice broke through the ringing in her ears. “Sir, stop—you’re killing her! Hale!”

  “We’ll find another,” the hunter—Hale—said, his voice horribly even. “If these animals can’t be trained, they’re no good to us. There will be another that does what it can do.”

  “No,” Jayin rasped. The word stung her throat, scraping against the shards of glass lodged beneath her skin. She spat blood out of her mouth, struggling to meet the hunter’s eyes. “I am the only one.”

  “It’s lying to save its own skin,” Hale insisted. She could see the indecision in the hunter’s eyes before her own fell closed.

  “The mighty sahirla. No wonder you died out.”

  She was adrift, numb and nerveless. Her second sight spluttered back to life for a single second, and the dungeon was aglow with Om’s fiery aura.

  I’ll see you soon, Jayin thought. Her injuries and exhaustion finally caught up with her, and she finally faded away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jayin

  Water dripped onto her fingertips, a slow, rhythmic reminder she was still alive. Jayin hovered on the edge of consciousness for a long time before resurfacing. She didn’t open her eyes at first, allowing her other senses to filter back in their own time. Someone had begun stitching up her wounds, and her ribs were
set and bound. A thin cot rested between her and the cold ground, though her hand was still firmly chained to the wall.

  A door creaked and light footsteps echoed inside the chamber. Jayin opened her eyes slowly and sucked in a breath. She saw the scar before the man, a twisting mass of dead tissue that obscured over half of his face. Her own was barely a scratch by comparison.

  “That looks like it hurt,” Jayin croaked.

  The scarecrow jumped at her voice, the instruments in his hands falling to the ground with a clatter.

  “You don’t get scars like that from any natural fire.”

  He didn’t answer, hurrying to pick up the items he’d dropped. His hands shook so badly the metal rattled.

  Slowly, careful not to pull any of her stitches, Jayin sat up as much as her restraints would allow. She leaned on her elbow, looking the scarecrow up and down. He didn’t look like much. In fact, he shared almost nothing with his sahirla brethren besides the scar. No wicked tattoos crawled over his skin, marking him as one of their killers.

  Good. The advantage was hers.

  “So you tangled with a firewitch and lost, obviously. And you’re not a fighter, so the sahir is still alive. You’re hiding then.” Jayin nodded, leaning in towards him. “Would you like know a secret about witches? We never forget a face.”