Witches With the Enemy

by Barb Hendee

  “No, Mother,” Rochelle said, sounding hurt. “You have us. You have your children.”

  “All I had,” Helena whispered again.

  “My lady, please drink this,” Céline said, and thankfully, Helena swallowed the spoonful.

  She continued to mumble sorrow-filled words over the loss of her brother, but soon, the opium-laced liquid took effect, and she grew sleepy. Finally, Céline and Rochelle were able to help her back to bed, where she closed her eyes.

  “Oh, thank you,” Rochelle said to Céline. “I didn’t know what to . . . Oh, you’re hurt. Your face is bleeding.”

  Céline’s cheek had been stinging where Damek had used his fingernail, but she’d been too occupied to notice much. After touching her cheek, her finger came away covered in blood. “It’s nothing. I was careless and scratched myself.”

  Rochelle looked back to her sleeping mother. “I’ll stay with her. Lizbeth, you should go back to bed.”

  Céline turned her head toward Lizbeth. “Do you think you could sleep?”

  Wordlessly, the girl nodded, but she seemed so lost and distressed, nothing like the feisty creature from earlier this evening.

  Céline stood and went to her. “Come with me.”

  Lizbeth allowed Céline to usher her outside into the passage where Anton, Heath, and Maddox waited.

  “Lady Helena is sleeping now,” Céline told the men.

  Heath closed his eyes briefly. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll see Lizbeth back to bed,” Céline finished, heading across the passage with the silent girl.

  Lizbeth opened a door and stepped inside.

  Céline followed, went right to the bed, and pulled the covers back. “You should take that cloak off and come crawl under these blankets.”

  Like a child, the girl obeyed her and even let Céline pull up the coverlet to tuck her in.

  “I didn’t want to be right,” Lizbeth said, her eyes bleak.

  “About what?”

  “About Carlotta having been murdered. I know I said that to you, but I didn’t want to be right.”

  Céline sat on the edge of the bed. “Of course you didn’t. You were a brave girl to speak up. Don’t be afraid to say what you think when lives are at stake.”

  Some color returned to Lizbeth’s face, and she rested on her pillow.

  “Will you stay here until I fall asleep?” she asked.

  “Yes.” On impulse, Céline leaned down and kissed her on her forehead. The poor girl seemed to need some mothering. “Close your eyes.”

  A few moments later, Lizbeth was sleeping, and Céline stood and slipped out the door. Anton was waiting there to walk her back to her own room.

  * * *

  Near dawn, Anton lay in his bed, still unable to sleep. Rurik slept quietly on a pallet on the floor. Upon returning Céline to her own room earlier, he’d had some unwanted unpleasantness with Rurik and Amelie both demanding that Céline explain herself, but Anton was near the end of his self-control, and he’d squelched their questions and ordered everyone to bed—technically leaving Céline to deal with Amelie on her own.

  Then he and Rurik had gone to their own room and fallen onto their respective beds in exhaustion. Anton had been lying awake since.

  I attacked my brother.

  The phrase continued to roll over and over in his mind, and he couldn’t keep up with the emotions that accompanied this inescapable reality: triumph, a sense of freedom, guilt, betrayal, relief . . . and then back to guilt.

  His history and connection to Damek were too long and too complicated for anyone else to understand. Perhaps that was always the way with siblings?

  When they were boys, their father had seemed like a god. As a warlord from a long line of warlords, Prince Lieven was a good father in the sense that he saw to his sons’ education. Tutors were brought in to teach writing and mathematics. Prince Lieven made sure the boys spoke fluent Stravinan and Belaskian so they would never need to depend upon a translator in discussions with neighboring nations. Both boys could ride almost as soon as they could walk. They had a sword master, and Lieven himself drilled them on military history. He might have been a taskmaster, but their father wanted them prepared for their place in the world.

  Their mother, the Lady Bethany, of the house of Yegor . . . she gave them love.

  Anton’s mother had been married to their father when she was only sixteen. Lieven had been a good deal older, but had finally gotten around to seeking a bride. The Lady Bethany was small and sweet-tempered, with a round face and a mass of chestnut-colored hair, and she never seemed to age. When Anton was quite young, he never fully understood that she was the wall between him and everything else.

  By the time Anton was five, Damek had already begun small cruelties against him.

  Once their father brought them each a tunic from Enêmûsk, and Anton had puffed with pride. The tunic made him feel manly, and he was so pleased to receive it. Before he had a chance to wear it even once, he found it shredded to pieces on his bed.

  A moon later, one of their tutors had praised Anton’s handwriting, and Anton had beamed. Praise was rare in their world. Later that day, when he went to his room, he found that all his quills had been snapped into pieces, and someone had taken his entire supply of ink and poured it all over the floor.

  Anton knew who had done these things.

  But after every incident, his mother had come to him and cleaned up the mess. She’d comforted him and promised him a new tunic or new quills. Something about her dependable kindness made Damek’s cruelties seem smaller.

  Three years passed, and when Anton was eight years old, his father announced that he was taking Lady Bethany and the boys on a journey. Anton was so pleased by this news, he could barely contain himself.

  The family home was Castle Pählen, and he’d barely set foot outside the courtyard except for riding practice. Prince Lieven owned other properties, and he’d decided on a trip to take stock of the new vassal he’d assigned to Castle Kimovesk.

  Damek had taken note of Anton’s excitement and frowned at him.

  Although the journey took less than a day, it was tiring for Anton—though he never complained. He rode his pony proudly beside his mother’s horse and remained determined to see and hear every new sight and sound.

  On their arrival, the castle itself struck him as a disappointment, nothing so grand as their home, but he and Damek ate dinner in the great hall with the adults and this made him feel quite grown-up.

  The next afternoon, Damek came and asked him if he wanted to go exploring. Since Damek never invited Anton to play at anything, Anton jumped at the invitation. He wanted his brother to like him. He wanted them to be friends.

  For the next hour, Damek behaved like a brother, and the two boys visited with some of the guards and were even allowed to walk the castle wall. Then Damek picked up a lantern and suggested they go down to look at the old prison located beneath the great hall.

  Anton was enjoying himself so much, he followed his brother like a puppy. Damek led him through the castle to a stairwell leading down. Most of the villages had their own jails, and as the house of Pählen had been at peace with the other houses for some time now, the old prison at Kimovesk was no longer used.

  As the boys emerged into what had once been the guardroom, Anton began to regret his agreement to come down here. The place smelled dank, and to him, it felt . . . sad. He walked through the guardroom and looked down a passage at the doors to the cells, and he thought about the past people who’d been locked away here.

  “Let’s go back upstairs,” he said to Damek.

  “In a moment. I came down earlier by myself and found something. I want you to see it.”

  Damek had come down earlier? Anton followed his brother down the passage between the cells, and at the end was a small door. Damek opened it.

/>   “Come and look in here.”

  Anton wondered what there might possibly be to see, but he obeyed his brother and walked over to peer inside. He saw nothing but darkness.

  Then he was shoved from behind, and he heard a loud click. After that, he heard nothing, and he saw nothing. He was alone inside the room. It was pitch-black, and the door had been closed.

  “Damek?” he called in confusion.

  No one answered.

  In panic, Anton ran for where he guessed the door must be, and he found it, but it was locked from the outside. He pounded and shouted, still believing this to be some sort of mistake.

  Again, no one answered, and no one opened the door. He had never been afraid like this in his life. He had no idea how large or small the room might be . . . or what might be in here with him.

  “Damek!”

  During the rest of the day and the night he spent in that room, he had no sense of the passage of time. He remembered becoming thirsty, and then his thirst became torture so that he could no longer call for help. After a while, his mind began to play tricks on him, and he imagined unseen things coming at him from the darkness.

  At some point, he believed he would die in here . . . of thirst.

  Then he heard a clicking sound, and the door opened, and Damek stood on the other side, holding a lantern.

  “You can come out now,” Damek said.

  With his throat so dry he couldn’t speak or weep with relief, Anton stumbled out the door.

  “Father thinks you’ve gone missing,” Damek said. “He’s had a search going. I told him you were last seen walking on the wall, as we were playing up there, and that I ran to get us some apples and then could not find you when I got back. So no one has thought to look down here. When you and I go up, I’ll say that you were a fool and came down here and managed to lock yourself in. I will say I saved you.” He leaned closer. “If you say anything else, I’ll call you out as a liar, and Father will believe me.”

  The tragedy was that Damek was right, and their father would not be able to accept the truth of what really happened down here. It was unthinkable.

  Later, Anton learned that Damek had left him in that room from one afternoon to the next.

  But that day, he was taken to his bed and fed water and broth so that he might recover.

  When his mother came to him, her eyes were sad. She sent all the servants away and sat down on the bed.

  “Did Damek do this to you?”

  He began to weep. At least his mother knew.

  “Why?” Anton asked. “Why would he do this?”

  She gripped his hand. “Listen to me carefully. Your brother is jealous because you can feel things he cannot. He cannot take joy from a new tunic or from the praise of a tutor. He cannot . . . love in the way that you do, and so he seeks to hurt you for it. There is something broken inside him, and I fear he cannot help himself from trying to punish you. I never thought he would go so far.”

  “Can I tell Father?”

  “No, that is the one thing you can never do. Your father respects only strength, and he would see your complaints as weakness. I would see you raised high, my Anton, and for this, you must have your father’s respect.”

  She leaned over and pressed a cool rag to his forehead. “But I will watch your brother. He knows I love him well, and I will speak to him gently on this matter. I promise to put a stop to these cruelties.”

  In relief, Anton closed his eyes, finally able to rest in the knowledge that his mother would protect him.

  And she did.

  The family went home to Castle Pählen, and for the next three months, Anton did not suffer from a single incident instigated by his brother. His mother often touched Damek on the back or hugged him and called him her “sweet boy,” and it seemed to Anton that Damek was striving to be the person she saw.

  Then, one night at dinner, she looked queer and could not eat any food.

  “Forgive me, my lord,” she said to Prince Lieven. “I am not well. May I retire to my rooms?”

  Their father stood, as such a request was unusual from their mother. “Of course,” he said. “Do you need a physician?”

  “No, just some rest, I think.” She was holding her right side.

  Before the middle of night, she was in agony, and by morning, she was dead. One of the serving women explained to Anton and Damek that their mother had been taken by something called the rupture, where an organ in her right side had burst and there had been nothing anyone could do to save her.

  Anton was numb, in shock, but that proved a good thing, as their father made it clear he would brook no tears from two princes of Pählen.

  The boys were allowed to see their mother’s body laid out before burial, and Damek stood, stone-faced, staring down at her. Even then, Anton, who had depended so heavily on his mother, understood the depth of Damek’s loss.

  Damek reached down and touched her face. “Now she will never love me as she should have.”

  Stunned, Anton blurted out, “She did love you!”

  Damek’s eyes narrowed as he looked up. “She loved you more. Everyone loves you more.”

  A coldness settled in the pit of Anton’s stomach.

  The following month came the day that Prince Lieven bought the boys their first puppies . . . and Anton came to love his dog Arrow so much. On that night, later, when Damek had arrived at Anton’s room, displaying brotherly affection, Anton had so wanted to believe in it.

  But after that, Anton never let himself hope again, and over the following years, Damek seemed to take his only real pleasure in destroying or sending away anything or anyone that Anton cared for. Sometimes Anton wondered what would have happened if their mother had lived. Could she have saved Damek?

  He never forgot her saying that there was something broken inside Damek and that he could not help himself.

  Anton never told Prince Lieven of a single cruel act of Damek’s.

  He never would.

  And yet tonight . . . on this night inside Castle Kimovesk, he had rammed his brother’s head into a wall and threatened him with a dagger. For the first time, he was the one who had not been able to stop himself.

  When he’d seen Damek gripping Céline and biting her ear, something inside him snapped.

  A part of him regretted his loss of control, but at the same time, Anton knew without a doubt that he was capable of carrying out the threat he’d made to his brother . . . and of never looking back.

  Chapter Seven

  By midmorning the next day, Céline and Amelie were still in their room, but they’d formed a plan of action and decided that the first thing they needed to do was learn more about the dynamics of the family. After some discussion, they felt it might be unwise to go downstairs and ask permission to begin reading people like Captain Maddox or Johanna, as this might inadvertently—and incorrectly—shift blame.

  Once the sisters knew a little more about the family, they would gain a better understanding of who indeed might have a reason to go to such lengths to stop the impending wedding.

  “I think we must divide and conquer,” Céline said. “I’ll start with Lizbeth. She might be open with me. You try your luck with Heath. He seemed quite taken with you last night before . . . well, before his uncle died.”

  Amelie made a face. “He was not taken with me. I was simply one of the few people in the room who spoke to him.”

  Yes, poor Heath. He’d seemed so unable to assert himself. His uncle had been condescending, and his mother ignored him for the most part. Only his sisters seemed to welcome his company.

  Helga pulled two wool dresses from the wardrobe, one brown and the other dark purple. “You two should wear somber colors today.”

  Céline agreed, and she took the brown dress. Although the Quillette women had been wearing bright colors last night, the fami
ly would be in double mourning now. Somber colors might be best.

  “And no wandering off by yourself today!” Helga ordered. “I never thought you such a fool.”

  “Don’t start,” Céline warned.

  Amelie glanced over but managed to keep quiet. There had been quite a scene last night upon her returning to this room, with Amelie demanding answers and Helga raising a fuss. Céline had decided to tell them the truth about what had happened . . . thinking they should both be better warned about Damek. But she had played down the danger to herself and the swiftness of Anton’s arrival, and then she’d asked them both not to bring it up again.

  Amelie took the dark purple dress and laced it up, pulling the sleeves down over her sheathed weapons.

  Céline laced the front of her own gown and brushed her hair. The scratch on her cheek was still red, but it had stopped bleeding.

  “I’m starving,” Amelie announced.

  Céline was hungry, too. “I’m sure something is being served in the great hall for breakfast. We can go down and see who else has arrived. Helga, would you like to come with us? If breakfast here is anything like in Sèone, it will be a casual affair with people dishing up for themselves.”

  “Nope,” Helga responded. “I think I’ll try my luck in the kitchen and see what gossip I might pick up.”

  “Oh . . .” Céline nodded. “Good idea. Should we let Prince Anton and Rurik know we’re going down?”

  Helga’s already wrinkled face wrinkled slightly more in thought. “No, if they’re sleeping, let ’em sleep. If they’re not asleep, they’re probably already downstairs.”

  Jaromir had been right to send Helga. She might be abrasive, but she was sensible—and determined to help.

  With that, all three women set out for the day. At the bottom of the stairwell of the east tower, Helga headed off down a passage that ran down the shorter side of the center section of the castle, leading to the kitchen. Once again, Céline and Amelie started down the long passage running along the backside that led to the great hall.

  Upon passing through the archway, Céline took stock of everyone present. For the most part, this looked like a typical breakfast in the hall of Castle Sèone. A number of guards—a mix of Väränj, Sèone, and Kimovesk—milled around, helping themselves to food that had been laid out. Servants were busy checking pots and bowls.