Witch

by Marie Brennan

  But of late Eikyo had begun to uncover things that looked much more important. The Cousins had a distinct hierarchy among themselves, it seemed, that did not necessarily follow the tasks the witches gave them. They were very aware of those among them who were failed witch-students—not just “Kyou,” but women far older than her, too—and though those women weren’t necessarily at the top of the hierarchy, they received a certain odd respect.

  It was maddening, trying to tease meaning out of the terse messages Eikyo could transmit; Mirei wasn’t sure what to make of everything her friend said. The Cousins had arranged for the survival of doppelgangers in the past—but why? For that, she had only one cryptic reference to “hope.” Hope for what?

  She scanned the newest note quickly, picking the code out of its surrounding, unrelated text with the ease of practice. Perhaps she would get that answer this time.

  They suspect me.

  The words lay there, buried in their protective camouflage. It was the only complete sentence Eikyo had ever sent, and it chilled Mirei to the bone. If Eikyo meant that her charade was in danger of being uncovered . . .

  Then what? Mirei had no clue what the Cousins would be likely to do. Stop working for the witches? The thought was unfathomable, but she couldn’t rule it out. Satomi should never have done this. Eikyo’s no good as a spy, and if they know Satomi set her to watch them—

  She grabbed a scrap of clean paper and scrawled a quick note for Satomi. Perhaps now she could persuade the Void Prime to recall her friend. That might look diplomatically awful—how in the Goddess’s many names had Satomi ever planned to bring this to an end?—but there might not be a better choice. Note completed, she sang it to Ruriko’s desk. The one time she’d sent a message to Satomi directly, the Prime had verbally flayed her alive. Ruriko was there for a reason.

  By then she was running late. Mirei stripped off the embroidered long coat she’d put on for her politicking in Haira, changing instead into something she found far more comfortable: loose pants, sash, and a jacket, all modeled on the outfits worn by the training-masters at Silverfire.

  Her escort of Cousins followed her downstairs as she left her quarters and went outside to a small, level clearing just east of the main part of the settlement. The buildings there were storehouses, one of which had been given over to Mirei’s use, but today her charges were waiting for her on the pounded dirt outside, breath steaming in the autumn air.

  There were six of them. Only Amas, Indera, and Lehant were technically old enough for Hunter training, which began at ten, but Mirei had decided to bend that; she had been put into physical training as a Temple Dancer at five, and saw no reason why she couldn’t do the same here. So there were three additional girls in the group: Falya, Ometrice, and Ranell, ranging in age from nine down to six. Together, they made up the tiny ranks of her so-called Hunter school.

  The work she was putting them through was a mix of Hunter and Dancer that would have given any proper teacher from either tradition a fit. Even some of her students complained—mostly Indera, but occasionally Lehant. They thought of themselves as Hunters, and didn’t see why they should learn things that weren’t about combat. To Mirei, though, it was all of a piece. The faith drummed into her as a Dancer had gotten her through the trials of Hunter training; she had come to view the movements of fighting as their own kind of Dance. And that faith, expressed through her body and voice, had saved her life and made her whole again. More than anything, she needed these girls to understand that.

  She reached the clearing just as the bell on the main building, hidden now behind trees, began tolling High. The air today had a real bite, hinting at winter to come, but by now they all, even little Ranell, knew better than to complain.

  The first part of their work needed no discussion. While the Cousins stood sentinel nearby, Mirei led the six doppelgangers through their usual warm-up. When she was away, Ashin oversaw their practices; the Air Key couldn’t teach them the way Mirei could, but she could at least make sure they worked out. It was better than having them sit around and do nothing. The girls had morning exercises with those Cousins who were being taught to fight, training themselves for strength and flexibility, and then afternoon drills with Ashin. And every day Mirei was at Starfall, she set aside time to work with them.

  Warm-up completed, she divided the girls into groups. The younger trainees practiced basic tumbling, rolling back and forth in the dirt, while the ones who had been at Hunter schools worked on kick forms.

  It plainly drove Indera up the wall that Mirei was not having them spar. The decision was a deliberate one: They were all far too focused on the idea of combat and the potential for exerting force against others. That was a part of the Warrior’s nature, of course, and they would come to it eventually, but before that, Mirei needed them to understand their own bodies.

  The question of why movement was a Void focus had much occupied Hyoka’s theory witches when Mirei first returned to Starfall. Answering that had been Rigai’s big contribution to the group. The Void was traditionally seen as the opposition of the world, the antithesis of concrete existence. Rigai had speculated that, while that was true, the Void was also emptiness in the world: that was to say, the space between objects. And movement defined space by bridging it and passing through it. Tajio, her main rival, still argued that the space was filled with Air, and therefore wasn’t empty, but most of the other theorists seemed to think Rigai was on to something.

  More importantly, Mirei thought she was on to something. Which meant that her young protégées needed to understand movement, and how to express it with their bodies. There was a relationship between the flow of a spell’s music and the flow of a body in motion; Mirei was working on her own in what few spare moments she had to try and integrate the two as closely as possible. If the trainees could learn that now, rather than working it out the hard way when they came of age, so much the better.

  Hence the forms. The same limited set of kicks, the same punches, the same grapples and pins against an imagined opponent, executed at a whole range of speeds, with Mirei singing as they moved. Not spells; she just wanted them to get used to relating movement to music. She’d tried to have them sing, but it had been exactly as painful as she expected.

  There was another way around that, though, and they shifted to it as the bell rang the third hour of High.

  Ashin arrived with seven more girls in tow. Mirei was finally used to the sight of them, but at first it had been so very strange, seeing them all lined up. Amas with her red-gold hair grown long, no remaining dyed ends—but it wasn’t Amas, it was Hoseki. Sharyo, showing what Indera would look like if her face weren’t so permanently bitter these days. Owairi, who had cut her copper hair short even as Lehant’s grew out, so that only Lehant’s harder build made them distinguishable from each other. The witch-doubles of the three younger girls. And thin-faced Urishin, the only one who stood alone, the other half of the missing Naspeth.

  This was the point at which the Hunter aspect of training went more or less out the window, and Mirei started inventing wholesale.

  There were some Temple Dances that were choreographed for pairs—not just for two people, but for two people moving together. Most of them, unsurprisingly, were somehow related to the Bride. Mirei was drawing on memories of her years in the Temple and some of the more dancelike Hunter forms, and creating paired exercises for the girls to perform together.

  So far as she knew, there was only one spell in the world designed to be performed in that manner, by two people, one singing, one dancing. It was the spell that brought those two back together into one body. Each of these girls would have to perform it some day, and the thought that she should teach it to them had led Mirei to invent this practice.

  Ashin came over to stand at her side as the witch- students began to stretch—an activity they had taken to far less naturally than their doubles, but they had learned. “How are things going?” Mirei asked her, eyes on the now-sizeable herd of gir
ls scattered around the clearing. Her headache hadn’t quite gone, even with Rigai’s help.

  The Air Key sighed. “About as usual. They told Ukotto to pack her bags yesterday; they’re sending her to Razi. Which means the students need a new teacher for political history.”

  “Razi? Why, what’s happening?”

  Ashin shrugged. “Nothing special, I think; just that Ukotto was once very friendly with the domain chronicler there. Had two children by him, in fact. That was years ago, but Satomi is hoping she’ll be of use.”

  Once again, the demands of the political war against the dissidents had created a gap in the teaching staff at Starfall. Mirei remembered the orderly, well-regulated progression of her own childhood education, and wondered just what impact this chaos was going to have on the current students. She did not envy them, when the time came for them to face the fifteen Keys and prove their knowledge.

  Assuming everything’s still running that way by the time they make it that far.

  Another witch-student had been tested since Eikyo’s supposed failure; much to everyone’s relief, she had passed without incident. Otherwise, the faction insisting that they suspend all testing until the full complement of Primes was restored might have grown to the point where they won their case.

  But that was Satomi’s problem, not Mirei’s. “Do you think this is doing any good?” she asked Ashin, nodding at the girls.

  The witch didn’t answer immediately, which Mirei appreciated. Ashin’s honesty would do her more good than the platitudes so many people gave her. “Yes, though the degree depends on what kind of good you’re talking about,” Ashin said.

  “Oh?” Mirei glanced at her, curious.

  “As a morale-booster, it’s fine,” the Air Key said. “Plenty of witches here look at these sessions and say, you see? She’s building our new way of life.”

  “Don’t tell them I’m making this up as I go along.”

  Ashin grinned. “Of course not. You’re also encouraging the girls, giving them a structure to hold on to. It’s a strange education, by our usual standards, but they can tell themselves it’s preparing them for their future. It’s a comfort.”

  For most of them, anyway. Mirei found herself looking to where Sharyo was stretching. Indera was several paces away, repeating the kick forms while she waited for practice to resume. Her technique was sloppier now; the energy behind it suggested she was vividly imagining herself in a real fight.

  But she wasn’t in a mood to deal with Indera’s resentment today, and she no longer wanted to hear Ashin’s assessment of how little real good these exercises were doing. Mirei stepped forward and clapped her hands sharply to get the girls’ attention.

  “Right,” she said. “Same dance as yesterday. Owairi, Lehant, you’re up first.”

  They started out facing each other, hands raised and laid palm-to-palm. Owairi waited for Lehant’s nod, and then she began to sing.

  The tune was a simple one, a farming song from Teria, where Owairi had been raised. The melody was plaintive, and the two girls mirrored it with smooth, flowing motions, always keeping at least one hand in contact with each other. Movement with music was part of the point; two bodies moving as one was another part. She was starting them off with choreographed steps, but hoped that soon they’d learn to improvise, to anticipate each others’ actions.

  They passed into a complex move, and Lehant lost her balance.

  Owairi stopped when her double stumbled. After, or at the exact same instant as? Mirei couldn’t be sure. If the two happened at the same moment, that could be a good sign. Perhaps they were feeling the connection between them.

  “Here,” she said, coming forward. “You pressed too hard on her hand, Lehant—leaned too much weight into her. The point of this one is that you should be touching, but without pressure. Keep your own balance, and let her keep hers.” She glanced at the watching audience. “Why was she off balance?”

  Indera answered; as much as she might dislike this entire situation, she never passed up a chance to show the shortcomings of the girl she still thought of as a Thornblood. “It started before that, when she did the turn.”

  “Right, but incomplete,” Mirei said. “Anyone else?”

  This time it was Urishin, surprisingly, who answered. “She turned too fast, and had too much momentum.”

  Another sign of hope? The doppelgangers were usually the ones to understand the mechanics of movement, not the witches. “Exactly. Watch, Lehant. Imagine a partner next to me; I’m touching her, but not leaning on her. I extend, and then I turn—”

  And as she spun, the world spun with her, and she fell on her ass in the dirt.

  Indera’s bray of laughter was excessively loud; everyone else gasped. Mirei sat where she was, eyes wide, disoriented, and tried to figure out what had happened.

  Ashin appeared at her side. “Are you all right?”

  “I thought so,” Mirei said, momentarily indiscreet. “Maybe not. What in the Void happened?”

  “You fell,” Indera said with satisfaction. “Even the Thornblood only stumbled.”

  “Let’s get you into the shade,” Ashin said, as if the weak autumn sun were to blame, and helped her to her feet. Mirei’s knees felt like wet paper; the Key had to support her over to a tree root she could sit on. “Have you eaten?” the woman asked, taking her pulse as if she could tell something from that. Ashin could cast simple healing spells, but that didn’t make her a healer.

  Mirei’s stomach churned in response. “Yes. In Haira.”

  “And how long ago was that? You’re pushing yourself too hard, Mirei.”

  But I’m not, Mirei thought, both irritated and confused. I’ve done much worse than this before. Not that past stupidity should excuse present—but this isn’t a fraction of what I did to myself when I first arrived at Silverfire.

  Granted, she no longer had one of the advantages she’d possessed then. As a young Temple Dancer, she’d learned to retreat inward, to a quiet place within that she could draw strength from; she’d reached for it since rejoining and had found nothing. She suspected it was her connection to Miryo she’d drawn from, and was half entertaining ideas for how to test that theory. Now that she was whole, though, that source was gone.

  Still, she wasn’t doing a fraction of the physical work she’d done then. And tiredness wasn’t excuse enough.

  “I’m fine,” she said, shaking Ashin’s hand off. “You know how sickeningly rich Hairan food is. Something just didn’t agree with me.”

  It sounded lame even as she said it. Ashin gave her a skeptical look. “Am I going to have to talk to Nenikune?”

  Mirei had already been through a blizzard of examinations at the hands of the witch who ran Starfall’s infirmary, back when she first showed up and the woman was determined to study the miracle of two bodies made one. She didn’t relish the thought of revisiting the place. “Misetsu and Menukyo, no. I’ll be fine.”

  Urishin came trotting up with a cup of water; Mirei accepted it and took a sip, wondering what could be causing this. Dehydration? She knew better than to fall victim to that, although the drink was still appreciated. She’d eaten recently enough, whatever Ashin might think. She was sleeping.

  Mostly. She had nightmares about Eclipse on a regular basis. But she didn’t want to bring that up, not to Ashin, not in front of the girls.

  “Okay, practice is over,” Ashin said, standing up from her crouch.

  “What?” Mirei got to her feet, and was pleased to find her knees had solidified into bone and muscle again. “It isn’t time.”

  Ashin looked at her with an uncompromising expression. “Yes, it is. You’re going to rest. Owairi and Lehant are the oldest girls here, and they’re barely twelve; they’ve got plenty of time to learn what they need to. Practice is over for today.”

  The Air Key could compete with a boulder in a stubbornness contest, and Mirei didn’t have the energy to argue. “Very well,” she said, and handed the cup back to Urishin. “Dismiss
ed.”

  The girls made their bows to her, Ashin smiled in satisfaction, but Mirei did not rest when she went back inside. Instead, she turned her mind once more to the endless, fruitless question of how to save Eclipse.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ECLIPSE WOKE TO SEARING PAIN, and found his sheets stained with blood.

  He was out of bed and halfway across the room before he knew it, one hand clamped over his wrist as though that would save him from the Warrior’s retribution—and he found the scar smooth, closed, not bleeding.

  His hands shook badly as he fumbled with flint and tinder, until he gave up and took his candle into the hallway to light it from a sconce there. Alone in the corridor, he turned his wrist up into the light and examined it.

  There was blood on his skin; it hadn’t just been a nightmare. And it was still wet. But the scar was quiet—no sign that it was the source. Had to have been, though. I’m not cut anywhere.

  Back into his room, candle in one trembling fist. Stains on the bedsheets, yes, but small ones. It hadn’t been much blood.

  But it was a warning.

  “THEY KNEW this might happen,” Jaguar said, tapping one finger on a paper that lay on the desk before him.

  Anger was much easier to deal with than the heart-stopping terror that had woken him up. “Nice of them to tell me.”

  “They didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily.”

  “This is my Void-damned life on the line. I’m already worried.”

  “Apparently the Warrior gives warnings when an oath is in danger of being broken. I’d heard of it, but didn’t realize it would take this form.” Jaguar sighed. There was no sign in his immaculate appearance that he’d been woken abruptly in the small hours of the morning; his weariness was not physical. “They recommend taking certain steps to prevent the situation from growing worse.”