Witch

by Marie Brennan

  The joy faded into something closer to practicality. Satomi turned to Mirei. “But it could have been something else. What did you do to her, during the test of the Void?”

  Mirei was hardly confident she could explain it, but this wasn’t the time to tell the Void Prime “no.” She scrambled for words. “I . . . something like the way the Elemental tests work, only not. In the same way that the Void itself is . . . not.” The expressions aimed at her were unencouraging. Blast it—this is like Hyoka and her friends all trying to study Void power when they’re incapable of understanding what it is in the first place. “The Void is non-essence, empty space, nothingness, and you make an illusion of that. But it wouldn’t really prepare her to understand how she can use the power of that concept. I fed her Void power, so she could learn.” Mirei couldn’t suppress a smile. “She handled it pretty well.”

  “How did you know how to do that?” Churicho asked, confused. She and Paere were sitting together, slightly apart, as if in deference to the Primes—but Mirei was included in that deference.

  Mirei shrugged. “I just knew.” As all new forms of magic were just known. Perhaps her faith had slackened from the fervent, driven surrender that preceded her rejoining, but the Goddess still saw fit to give her that gift.

  Satomi was more concerned with other matters. “Could that be responsible for Urishin?”

  Again, Mirei shrugged. “I have no idea. But at the moment, it doesn’t matter.”

  “What?” Koika asked.

  Mirei smiled grimly at the Earth Prime. “Urishin passed out. I’m willing to bet Naspeth did, too. Shimi and Arinei know what we’re up to. So if we’re going to use her to find them, we’d better do it soon.”

  CHURICHO AND PAERE having been sent away, the remaining three bent over a map spread out on the council room table.

  “Kalistyi,” Mirei said, laying a finger on it, tucked into the northern bend in the coastline that formed White Bay. “We know they’re in there. Specifics are what we’re missing. So I figure Urishin and I go here—” She tapped the letters marking Olpri, a town in northern Haira. “Been through there a couple of times; I remember it well enough. And then we go here.” Her finger moved to southern Liak. “Triangulate the two senses of direction that Urishin gets, and see where they meet up.”

  “It’s distant, though,” Koika said thoughtfully. “At that range—”

  “She’ll still feel Naspeth, trust me. It won’t be precise, but it’ll be more than we have now, and we can do it in just three jumps.”

  Nodding slowly, Satomi said, “And even if they find out what we’ve done . . . they’re in trouble whether they relocate or not. If they stay put, we find them, and if they move, we’ll hear about that, too.”

  A knock at the door interrupted them. Mirei, in deference to the Primes, went to open it.

  Ruriko was outside. “Aken,” she said. “Chashi. Mirei.” She held out one of the many message sheets the witches used to communicate with distant places. “This just arrived from Silverfire.”

  A clatter of heels on the floor alerted Mirei before the two Primes appeared at her shoulders, bending to peer at the words on the sheet. Mirei recognized Jaguar’s hand, even in the brief message it conveyed.

  The dissidents are near Garechnya. With this information, Eclipse renders his final service. As the last of his boons, he requires that you not seek him out. He gives you his sworn word that he will not endanger Mirei’s life.

  Her stomach lurched at the words. Flat and unemotional as they were, she read what lay behind them. He’s going to die. Warrior, there has to be a way to save him—

  “Garechnya,” Koika whispered, and then swore. “We didn’t need to risk Urishin.”

  Mirei didn’t give a damn about that at the moment; her mind was entirely on her year-mate. She wasn’t bound by the boon. She could search for him—

  For what purpose? To kill him more quickly?

  She became aware of noise. Shouting in the corridors, as witches called out to one another. The Primes and Ruriko were looking up, message forgotten, when a figure Mirei had not seen for months came into view at the other end of the hallway.

  “If you’ll pardon the interruption,” Eikyo said, pink with nervous excitement, “there are women who want to speak with you.”

  A SMALL CROWD OF RIDERS waited in the morning sunlight of the courtyard. Red-haired, every one; it took Mirei a moment to realize they were not witches.

  They were Cousins.

  Cousins as she’d never seen them before. The quiet, near-invisible servants of the witches were standing, reins in hand, facing Satomi and the rest of the growing crowd, and somehow they were more there than ever before. Drawing attention to themselves, rather than fading into the background as they usually did. She hadn’t realized how good they were at fading until she saw them stop.

  In front of them stood one woman who was not a visitor. Nae, her old face hard with determination, was waiting for the Primes to arrive.

  Satomi stepped forward, every bit as imposing as the Cousins, and spoke. What she said, though, was not at all what Mirei expected.

  “I hope,” she said in a quiet voice that carried no farther than the newly arrived group, “that you have the answers I was recently promised.”

  THE COUNCIL ROOM was not suitable for a group of this size; they took over one of the teaching halls instead, rearranging the seats more appropriately. Or rather, Mirei and Eikyo rearranged the seats. Satomi and Koika, whether they realized it or not, were obviously expecting the Cousins to do that work, and the Cousins were just as obviously not going to do a bit of it. Mirei and Eikyo, so very junior to most of the other people there, took care of it, while the Primes fiddled with foci and cast spells warding the room to the Void and beyond against any eavesdropping or meddling.

  Mirei whispered to her friend as they moved chairs. “What happened? Your last message—”

  “Were you reading those?” Eikyo whispered back. She cast a sidelong glance at the women milling around, but no one was paying attention to them. “They knew all along. They just made me think they believed it. I’ve been talking to them for days—” But then the seats were arranged, and they had to shut up, waiting for the others to talk.

  Songs completed, Satomi took possession of a chair, and opened her mouth to begin the meeting—but Nae beat her to it.

  “We have decided to offer you our help,” the old woman said, in a tone of voice no more meek than that which a Lady might have used.

  “I see,” the Void Prime said, seemingly unfazed. “First I must ask, though—what of Kyou?”

  Mirei winced.

  Nae’s mouth pinched tighter. “Eikyo,” she said, “has been an ambassador on your behalf. Fortunately for you, she is more competent at diplomacy than spying.”

  Satomi went very tense.

  “We knew right away that she wasn’t really a Cousin,” the woman continued. “As soon as she woke up. There is one thing the touched remember, even when they’ve forgotten everything else: They remember the words the Goddess passed through them. Eikyo had no words. By that, we knew she was an impostor.”

  Koika, seated next to the Void Prime, gave the Cousin a startled and confused look; then, comprehension dawning on her, she turned to stare at Satomi. And Mirei remembered that Satomi had lied to her.

  Satomi glanced sideways at her, a quick flick of the eyes. “Later,” she murmured, and Mirei heard the plea in her voice. Don’t ask about it right now. Don’t show weakness, dissent, division, in front of them.

  Since she happened to agree that now was not the time for Satomi to explain her lie, Mirei threw herself into the conversational breach. “The ‘touched’?” she repeated.

  Another Cousin answered her. “Those who were raised to be witches,” she said. “Who lost their memories in the test. They’re touched by the Goddess.”

  “The words they say,” Mirei said. “That’s the touch? What causes it?”

  Nae took over again, he
r voice tight with offended pride. “You needn’t say that as if it were a curse.”

  Mirei felt obscurely as if she should address the woman with some honorific; the rest of the Cousins were clearly deferring to her. “I didn’t—”

  “It isn’t a curse,” Nae snapped, before Mirei could finish her half-formed apology. “It’s a blessing we’re too weak to handle.”

  As diplomatically as she could, Mirei said, “Please explain.”

  “Being touched is not a form of failure,” Nae said. Her posture was ramrod-straight in her chair, and her hands were stiffly folded in her lap. Looking at her, Mirei thought, She’s nervous. This confrontation is not easy for her, after who knows how many years of invisibility. “Failure is being destroyed by power. The ones who become witches control their power. The touched, though, find a different way to survive.”

  Satomi’s quiet voice slipped in when Nae paused. “Do you remember it?”

  Nae was a witch-student? Mirei thought, startled, as the old Cousin turned to the Prime.

  “No,” the woman said, and there was a wealth of sadness in the word—yet pride as well. “But from our words, and from the stories we preserve of who we once were—stories given back to us by those Cousins who knew us before the touch—we know what happened.”

  She looked at each of them in turn, eyes intense, and Mirei resisted the urge to prod her into going on.

  “In the moment of crisis,” Nae said at last, “when others control the power and live, or else succumb to it and die, we who are touched surrender ourselves into the Goddess’s hands. We give ourselves to her, completely, because we are faced with something beyond our strength, and only through her merciful grace will we survive it. In that surrender, we open ourselves to her voice.”

  Remembering the perfect faith in Urishin’s eyes, Mirei believed it. She was relying on her faith to get her through. And it did—though not in the way we expected and hoped for.

  “The volumes in the archives,” Satomi said. “Pages and pages of incomprehensible babbling, as written down by the witches who heard it from the—the touched. That’s the Goddess speaking?” There was a faint, skeptical edge to her words.

  “She requires us to work to understand her meaning,” one of the other Cousins said sharply.

  “Or else human minds are too dumb to translate her message,” another suggested, more cheerfully. “It gets garbled along the way.”

  “Either way,” Nae said, on the heels of the second one, “our words are divine messages. There is meaning in them.”

  Satomi made a conciliatory gesture. “I don’t doubt you. But we’ve looked for that meaning. I read your words, Nae— Would you prefer to be called Omonae? But I couldn’t get anything from them. I can’t even be certain these are the ‘answers’ I recently heard of.”

  “You haven’t tried hard enough.” Nae’s expression was harsher and less forgiving than stone.

  “Nae,” another Cousin said quietly. She had been at the forefront of the riders in the courtyard, and she locked gazes for a moment with the old leader of the Cousins. Surprisingly, Nae bowed her head and indicated the other woman should speak.

  “I’ve been keeping an eye on Eikyo since she arrived among us,” the newcomer said. “The fact that you sent her to spy on us is only partially counterbalanced by your intentions in doing so. You have Eikyo herself to thank for persuading us to come forward like this. She learned much about us, in such a short time.” The look she bestowed on Eikyo carried a hint of pride.

  Eikyo smiled back at her and then spoke, diffidently. “Aken, Chashi—may I introduce Rin, leader of the eastern Cousins.” One by one, she named the others, while Mirei tried not to glare at Satomi for not having thought to ask sooner.

  “It is an honor to meet you,” Satomi said when they were done, and at least she sounded sincere.

  Rin looked to Nae again, and having received a nod, she continued speaking. “As Nae told you, there is meaning in the words the Goddess gives to the touched—but, as you pointed out, it isn’t very clear. This is what we’ve been debating among ourselves. We all agree that some of the words apply to this situation; what we don’t agree on is which words, or what they mean. But on the whole, we’re willing to support you, because we think that the changes Mirei has brought hold hope that the touched might not have to lose their memories when the Goddess’s presence descends on them.”

  It was good to have reasons for real, heartfelt smiles, after the stress and grief of recent days. “More than a hope,” Mirei said, grinning and not caring whether she was stepping on Satomi’s toes. “We have to wait for her to wake up to be sure, but we’re pretty positive Urishin still remembers herself.”

  “What?” Nae demanded, echoed by several others. “Urishin what?”

  “We tested her last night,” Satomi told them, with a fleeting glare at Mirei. “At her request. So that she could find Naspeth, and through that, we could find Shimi and Arinei. She was . . . touched, during her final trial. But she seemed to remember herself, before she passed out.”

  This sent an excited murmur through the gathered Cousins. Mirei heard “could be what Barani’s words meant,” “I told you—‘only by keeping will you not lose,’ ” “isn’t she one of them?” and then, in an ironic voice, “We argued for so long, they beat us to the answer.”

  Satomi waited for the noise to die down. “We would be grateful for your support,” she said. “What did you have in mind to offer?”

  Rin’s smile was predatory. Here we go, Mirei thought.

  “We know where the dissidents are,” the Cousin said.

  “So do we.” Satomi showed no hint that they had learned it less than an hour before.

  The setback didn’t faze Rin. “We can describe it for you, well enough for Mirei to send herself there. Yes, we know how her magic works,” she said when Koika shifted in surprise. “And though some of our people are truly on the side of the dissidents, we have our spies among them.”

  “How did they give you this information without violating the oath?” Mirei asked.

  The answering smile was both pained and smug. “Shimi didn’t immediately think of including Cousins in the oath. Once she did, she placed them under a stricter version than the witches, but by then, it was too late.”

  Invisibility had its uses, obviously. Mirei began calculating just what she could do in Garechnya, if she got herself there.

  “But we can offer more than that,” Rin went on. “Not just information, but aid. As I said, we have people among them, who can help you with whatever you have planned.”

  Possibilities began to flower in Mirei’s mind. She couldn’t take any large force with her, and alone she couldn’t do much, but with help . . .

  Satomi nodded, not taking her eyes from Rin and Nae. “In exchange for what?”

  “In exchange for nothing,” Nae said, but her cool tone belied the innocuous words. “Merely keep the promise you made to me.”

  Koika stared at Satomi again.

  “A boon,” Nae said. “To ‘better our lives’—I believe that was the phrase you used.”

  Satomi’s lips thinned. “I meant it when I said I wanted the best for witches and Cousins. The fact that you feel obliged to remind me of this boon means you intend to ask for something very large indeed.”

  A tiny incline of Nae’s head and the faintest hint of a smile conceded the point to the Void Prime. Even with that warning, though, her response hit like a catapult shot. “Magic for our daughters.”

  Dead silence.

  “I beg your pardon?” Koika said flatly.

  “Magic. For our daughters. We have five candidates. Create the channel in them; educate them as witches. Let them be tested. Their mothers were witches, generations back. We see no reason why they cannot be, as well.”

  Koika was shaking her head before Nae had even finished. “But these candidates of yours—no doubt they’re more than five days old.”

  “So?” Nae asked. “Five days
is tradition, nothing more. Yes, they have souls already, but we know now that it’s not a problem. They are all infants yet. They can be trained just like any other witch-child.” She was smiling, but underneath it was determination honed over decades of quiet, unobtrusive service in a world that had once been hers. “We want that chance for them.”

  Mirei looked to Eikyo, and found her friend serene. Her eyes said that she supported this idea wholeheartedly. The thought was so alien, though—

  More alien than what I did? Mirei was hardly one to throw stones at radical ideas. And as far as she knew, there was no reason other children could not become witches. Even children not of Cousins. The ability was not inborn; it was created. Misetsu’s decision to create it only in her own daughters might have been her first step down the path of prideful error.

  Satomi broke the silence. “On one condition.”

  This time everyone in the room stared at her. The reasons for staring varied between the witches and Cousins, though. “You offered the boon without conditions,” Nae said.

  Satomi disregarded that. “One of the five must be a boy.”

  Dead silence, again. Mirei was probably the only person who had seen that coming.

  Koika said, “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am,” Satomi said, somehow both defiant and peaceful at once. “Can’t you feel it, Koika? This is a time of change. Yes, our traditions are being overturned, but it’s because they need to be. I know how we can reduce the risk of women dying in the testing. I realized it while we were testing Urishin. It will mean changing our entire way of conducting the trials—but should we cling to tradition, when lives are at stake? We know how to keep the Warrior part of our selves; we know how to save our memories. ‘No more will be lost,’ Urishin said. And now this: a chance to increase our numbers. Why should it only be our own daughters who can become witches?” Satomi gave them all a smile that was almost creepy in its calmness. “We have a chance to change things for the better. I mean to take it.”