Sabina—who’d just taken a healthy bite out of an apple from the orchard they were standing in—chewed thoughtfully before answering. “Very majestic,” she admitted, craning her neck to stare up at the cliffs. “But even if it was mine to build a castle on, it’s not a fortress I need.” Her own pink cape fluttered about her shoulders stylishly but lacked the length to lend it the sort of grandeur that Scarlet’s cloak achieved.
“Everyone needs some sort of fortress.” Scarlet shrugged. “But that’s beside the point. There’s magic stirring in that big rock—magic old and deep.”
I thought you said you weren’t a witch? Sabina just managed to not ask, biting her lip and staring sideways at Scarlet instead.
Whatever retort Scarlet might have come up with was lost in her obliviousness to what Sabina had almost blurted out. “You wouldn’t have known it ten years ago,” Scarlet said instead. “The magic’s been…sleeping. But it’s shaking off the cobwebs now, and whoever harnesses it is in for a lovely wild ride. That someone could be you.”
The next comment Sabina avoided making was, “Or you,” but so loud was the thought that at first she wasn’t sure she hadn’t given it voice. She wanted to believe this whole “faerie go’ssmother” thing—she really wanted to—but in her experience, no one ever just gave you anything. She’d received her share of so-called gifts, to be sure, but they’d always come with a price attached.
Right now, for example, there were no less than half a dozen young men who she was diligently avoiding because each thought of her as bought and paid for by things they’d done for her or given her. Keeping them all deluded was the increasingly difficult juggling act that had brought her to the realization of how precarious her family’s position had become.
Now a complete stranger was offering to mother her, and to hand her the future on a platter? Even Sabina’s own mother hadn’t mothered her, on account of being dead for as long as Sabina could remember. All the woman had ever given Sabina was her curvaceous beauty and—not coincidentally—an extravagantly wealthy father. Admittedly, that was more than most people had to work with, but she had worked, and that was the point.
A girl of a different temperament in Sabina’s situation might have grown up realizing that she was perfectly positioned for an easy life as some man’s trophy, even if that meant marrying down a bit. A girl of a slightly different temperament might have resented that idea. A girl of a very different temperament might have embraced the notion and devoted herself to looking for just the right man for the job—but Sabina being Sabina had spent her life resolutely staring right past the option, oblivious to its existence, no matter how many matchmakers waved it in front of her face.
Always in her private, girlish fantasies, from a most tender age, she had known that when she married, she would marry for power, and would pull her husband’s strings like a puppet master playing with an especially well crafted and responsive marionette. As the result of it all, the exhausted young woman found herself to be, in equal measure, both ready to look for miracles and thoroughly mistrustful of them.
“This is where you step in and say, ‘Wow, really? How do I do that?’” Scarlet prodded her—then stopped and cocked her head, sniffing the air as a scowl crossed her pretty face.
“What…?” Sabina began. Then she smelled it too. “Something’s burning?” She followed Scarlet’s gaze skyward and saw the thick black smoke billowing up behind the treetops. Something big was burning. Only a contrary wind had kept them from smelling it earlier.
Scarlet sighed heavily and shook her head. “What are these people doing?”
A little white blur, low-to-the-ground, came speeding through the orchard and directly between them, leaving the grasses rustling in its wake.
“Now that,” Scarlet said, glancing thoughtfully over her shoulder to watch the little cat go, “I do believe was your witch.”
Sabina was still watching the cat go, trying to decide if she should believe the woman’s pronouncement or chalk it up to mental instability, when Scarlet struck her in the shoulder with a sudden, straight-armed shove of startling strength that nearly pitched her into the trunk of a tree. Sabina yelped, sprawling in the dirt, but before her mind could decipher what had happened or why—and before her body could choose between fight and flight—a towering, terrible figure in black and red came barreling through the space she’d just been standing in, slinging about a very large axe with murderous intent.
“And that would be a very bad man,” Scarlet pronounced, her eyes narrowing as she watched Riordan disappear after the cat.
“Isn’t he trying to kill the witch?” Sabina managed to ask, spitting out dirt and grass as she tried to clean up her face.
“That’s what I said,” Scarlet replied with a sharp nod. Then she added, “Oh, bother,” as a flaming cinder settled on her cloak, and she extinguished it with a quick slap. Both women glanced around to find the flames behind the smoke they’d smelled spreading quickly through the orchard and heading their direction, contrary to the contrary wind. “Now would be a good time to run,” Scarlet said quietly but firmly.
As a woman of decisive action, Sabina froze. Her accustomed arena of decisive action had nothing to do with matters of bodily harm, and everything to do with social and political maneuvering. Had the onrushing flames seemed amenable to some manner of negotiation, she would have sprung to the offensive, convincing them that all the really good combustibles lay somewhere off in the opposite direction, probably behind a hedge or two, while all they’d find over here was an ill-tempered rainstorm known to haunt the region. But it didn’t, and her finely honed mental reflexes failed her.
Scarlet grabbed Sabina by the wrist and pulled her roughly to her feet. “Run!” she repeated, giving Sabina another little shove toward the towering rock wall of the Wolf’s Tooth.
“Please tell me this wasn’t part of her plan,” Elissa murmured.
“You think I’d know if you don’t?” Nolan asked.
In truth, Elissa didn’t know which thought scared her more: that Keely might be so out of control to think that playing with fire was a good idea, or that the fire itself was out of control. To their left, the red glow of the setting sun had nearly faded into night, but ahead and to the left, the red glow above the treetops had only intensified.
Above them, the night sky had briefly turned to dark blue velvet shimmering with star dust, until encroaching storm clouds had rolled across the great silver moon and begun dousing the other lights one by one. Then the ominously expanding cloud of smoke had gotten in on the act, and what had first whispered promises of becoming a beautiful, clear night had begun to rapidly devolve into something dark and dreadful.
Knowing they might not arrive before dark at the crossroads where they’d planned to leave Elissa’s handiwork for Keely and Ulric to find, Nolan had prudently brought along a lantern. He’d been in no hurry to light it—not knowing where the Inquisition might have spread its net looking for Keely, and neither of them really caring to attract its attention themselves—but given the current turn of events, he did so now. Stumbling along blind in the neighborhood of a wildfire could easily have lethal consequences.
Elissa fully expected Nolan to simply turn back at that point, claiming it was too dangerous for her, but to her mixed relief he simply urged her to make haste.
Other lanterns appeared out of the dark ahead of them—one at first, then two and three. The first of the lanterns swung wildly as it approached, illuminating a soot-stained farm boy of perhaps twelve, scurrying down the road as fast as he dared. “Bryn Pencaer’s whole farm’s burnin’!” he coughed excitedly. “They’re needin’ every man who can to come help, and all else t’ get clear.”
Nolan exhaled sharply, shaking his head in disgust and disbelief, but rallied quickly. “Off to warn the castle, cousin?” When the boy nodded, Nolan sent him on his way with an encouraging clap on the shoulder. “There’s a lad. Mind your feet in this dark!”
“Nephew of yo
urs?” Elissa asked as she watched the boy disappear into the gloom. She’d noted the word “cousin”, but figured decent odds he’d simply meant it as “relative”, especially with the age difference between the two of them.
Nolan shrugged. “Maybe. Can’t throw a stick around here without hitting someone in my family. Let’s get this done, then we’ll figure out whether I’m dragging you along to carry buckets or dragging you up on the Tooth to keep you out of harm’s way.”
More and more lanterns appeared from the gloom as refugees from the flames hurried past—mostly women with children and the elderly—all either making for the rocky heights of the Wolf’s Tooth or the stout stone walls of the castle. The general consensus seemed to be that they’d been sent away only as a precautionary measure. They retreated from the flames in an orderly fashion rather than in a panic, and Elissa found herself able to relax a little.
At last they arrived at the crossroads, and Elissa unslung the large satchel she wore, removing the newly bound book from inside to give it one final inspection.
“It’s fine,” Nolan prodded impatiently. “The first two attempts were looking fine as far as you took them. It only needs to fool folk for a quick glance from a distance.”
“That’s no excuse not to get it right!” Elissa said defensively.
“It’s the perfect excuse.” Nolan chuckled.
“I just wish I knew what the real Grimm Truth looked like.” Elissa sighed, fidgeting with the crisp new pages. At least they were the only bit that didn’t look respectfully aged.
“Breathe, girl,” Nolan prodded her. “That’s battle-jitters talking, because once you let go of that thing and walk away, it’s all real. No taking it back and starting over. But you did your bit, and you did your bit good. You got your friend exactly what she asked for. It even looks old and important to me, and I saw you binding the thing. If anyone sees through it, it’ll be Keely’s fault, not yours. It’s her battle now. Let her fight it.”
Elissa sighed again, but nodded, and she slipped the book under the hedge directly behind the old, whitewashed signpost at the crossroads, not allowing herself time to think about it any further.
“Come on now,” Nolan said. “Let’s get you up on rocky ground where it’s safe. Up on the Tooth it’ll be easier to see how bad the fire is, anyway.”
“Oh, you have so much to answer for, young lady!” Keely snarled, slamming Shoshona back up against the trunk of an old apple tree with a hand around her throat. Keely had emerged from the dark night so swiftly and silently that neither Shoshona nor Ulric had been aware she was there a moment before, and now she stood naked and soot-stained and furious, back-lit by the fire raging three fields away, her nails gouging deep enough to draw blood from the neck of the bound priestess.
Ulric cleared his throat but backed off cautiously when Keely waved him away with her free hand. “You demonize me, and you chase me across, what…five kingdoms?” Keely hissed. “For turning myself into a fluffy little cat? Then you have the nerve try to bring me to justice by unleashing the human inferno into the world’s biggest apple-scented tinderbox? Or is that ‘man’ even human?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shoshona rasped.
“That!” Keely snapped, throwing Shoshona roughly to the ground as she pointed back over her shoulder at the blaze. “Your man Riordan did that! I saw him do that! He didn’t knock over a candle. He didn’t kick up embers from a fire pit. He just got mad, then the whole farmhouse went up, and the flames came chasing with him like a hound at heel. How many people has that bloody demon already killed for you!”
“Liar!” Shoshona shouted back vehemently. “He’s a good, holy warrior! You…”
“I,” Keely interrupted the inquisitrix, crouching down to return her hand to Shoshona’s throat, “will do any shouting that needs to be done around here.
“He was there, wasn’t he?” she demanded. “When you people killed Blackwater Molly? When you burned Hart Cove to the ground?”
Shoshona made a faltering attempt to laugh past Keely’s tightening grip on her throat, and her eyes grew hard and cold. “Blackwater Molly?” she gasped. “Sir Riordan slew that witch-queen himself.”
“That witch queen was my blood!” Keely screamed, releasing Shoshona’s throat only to seize her by the hair and slam her head mercilessly into the ground. She’d slammed it a second time before she felt Ulric’s arms wrap under hers and pull her forcibly off the woman. Keely struggled for a moment before a flicker of actual self-awareness caught her attention through the haze of rage, and she forced herself to stop fighting him, if not actually relax into his grip. No one spoke as she hung there for several seconds, seething.
“Let’s get moving before I kill her,” Keely spat, when she’d finally composed herself enough to speak. “We’ll probably have to if someone comes poking around because of my screaming.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Ulric said, cautiously easing his grip on Keely until he was satisfied she’d really regained some semblance of control. “That fire’s going to demand a lot more attention than a little yelling, and it’s causing its own share of yelling, too.” He unslung his pack and dug out the clothes he’d brought along for Keely, tossing them to her. “Do we still…”
“No. With that thing chasing me, I had to swing around a couple of times to find it,” Keely said, melting back into the darkness to get dressed, “but I did find it. Let’s just get moving.”
“We’ll be needing to take a detour,” Ulric said, watching the fire with a bitter sigh, painfully aware that every field or orchard those flames devoured would make it that much harder to feed the county through the winter—and that much harder for it to recover after—but all this had officially escalated beyond any semblance of control. The house of Haywood had declared a covert war on the Inquisition, and whatever happened from here on out, it wasn’t going to be pretty. Innocent bystanders were going to get hurt—were already getting hurt.
For their own safety, though, he had to pretend he didn’t care. Some twisted fate had landed him as the Haywoods’ field commander, and from what he’d seen, a commander who struggled to protect everyone generally wound up endangering more people than he saved. The best way to save lives was to win the battle and end the war as quickly as possible.
Keely was a clever girl, and she thought this was her show, but the woman was a con-artist, not a warrior. Some part of her clearly believed that if she couldn’t see the damage she’d wrought, it had never happened. Worse, her complex schemes were not surviving contact with the enemy, and her only “plan B” seemed to be concocting more elaborate schemes as she went.
If all that wasn’t bad enough, she’d also just tipped her hand at how deeply personal this whole thing was to her, and that he couldn’t expect her to keep a cool head when confronted with her own emotions. Whatever trust he’d chosen to invest in Keely, she lacked the discipline for any meaningful sort of command.
Ulric’s career to date had always focused on the comfortable role of “competent right-hand”. He was good at it, and it allowed a certain level of privilege while dodging all the real responsibility. Those days had just come to an end. This was his war now. No one else able to take charge of it was in a position to.
“Come on, though,” he said, pulling on his best suit of emotional armor and buckling it into place as he pulled the still dazed priestess to her feet. “It won’t be far.”
Keely reappeared, looking a little less wild now that she was dressed and relatively calm, but she still made for a rather convincing witch, moving fluidly through the dark night with her ragged cloak and tunic and her silvery hair only half tamed. She allowed Ulric to lead the way, lingering behind and prodding Shoshona as needed.
At last Ulric led them through a gap in the hedges and into a dark so deep that they had to feel their way along with each step.
“Is me tripping and breaking my neck part of your plan?” Shoshona asked quietly. “Or are you just
hoping I’ll smash my face into something?”
“Either would work nicely,” Keely said sweetly. “You’re alive out of a rather questionable sense of courtesy, not because I expect you to be useful.”
“Just sit tight,” Ulric said, his voice muffled by some light banging and clattering sounds. “I think I’m going to have to step back out to get this lantern lit after all. Can’t see anything.”
“Of course, I could just turn you into a stoat or something,” Keely went on.
“Could you now?” Shoshona answered mockingly. “You have no power over me, witch, or you’d have already done it.”
“I’m sure it’s comforting to think that,” Keely said.
“And you do need me—for something,” Shoshona said. “I don’t know what it is yet, but I will soon enough. You’re terribly transparent. You went to far too much trouble prying me away from Sir Riordan for this to be a whim or an accident, so you can stop pretending you’d just as soon kill me.”
Keely let out a long, deep sigh. “Fair enough. I do expect you to come in handy getting the book, but don’t think you can’t be replaced. You were just the most promising candidate at hand. Now be a good girl and shut up again.”
“Here we go,” Ulric said, ducking back in through the gap in the hedge with a glowing lantern in hand. Its light revealed an old, half-overgrown track leading away among the great, gnarled trees of the Crimson Forest. He headed off down the track without hesitation, and the others fell in behind him.
Keely gave one last look back at the hedge wall that so sharply marked the line here between civilization and wilderness, and she watched as the shadows of the night—chasing the retreating lantern light—swallowed it without a trace. Somewhere off in the distance, the hooting of an owl was answered by an unnerving screech that Keely couldn’t identify.
Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1) Page 23