Wisdom's Grave 01 - Sworn to the Night

by Craig Schaefer

  “You’re my guide,” she told the deer. “You’re here to help me. Come closer. I…I brought an offering.”

  She gestured to the stone pentacle. The doe sniffed at it, nose twitching, but held her ground.

  “Please,” Nessa said. “I did everything right. I followed the rules, all the instructions, to the letter. Now give me what I asked for.”

  The doe snorted. She took a shambling step back and ducked her head. Nessa sprang to her feet, her anxiety taking over, frustration shattering her concentration.

  “Give me what I need! Please!”

  The doe wheeled around and bolted into the brush. Nessa heard light, scattered hoof beats, then…nothing.

  Her shoulders sagged. She gathered up the book and the stone, bundling them into a canvas tote bag. She left her offering for the scavengers. On her way back to the trail, a fallen feather caught her eye. Long, tawny, and speckled, frayed at the edges. She slipped that into her tote bag, too. A little piece of the wild to join her in the long, empty walk—and a longer subway ride, alone and in silence—back to civilization.

  * * *

  Civilization was the West Village, a stone’s throw from the Hudson River. Civilization was an $11.5 million townhouse from the nineteenth century with a restored brick facade, squeezed shoulder to shoulder with neighbors clad in mud-brown and bone. Civilization was plank hardwood floors, three fireplaces, and an oil painting of Nessa and her husband placed above the mantel in a sitting room neither of them ever set foot in. She came home to the aroma of roast beef wafting through the house. Gerta, the maid, puttered and clanked pans around in the kitchen. Nessa drifted past the open doorway and climbed the mahogany staircase, bound for her little nook at the back of the house.

  The windowless, octagonal room was the size of a walk-in closet—their actual walk-in closet in the bedroom was bigger—but this room was hers. It was cluttered with easels and never-finished canvases, a collection of half-imagined grotesques in oil and charcoal. A wrist in chains here, ending at a bent elbow, the rest of the figure waiting to be drawn. A single trammeled wing, bound in cord, and a baleful eye drawn as a smear of ocher pigment. She’d abandoned that one too, her initial burst of inspiration fading to a tepid trickle.

  Her latest attempt had come further than the others, but not by much. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was painting. It was a chaotic storm of black and gray, a vague, angry flurry. She’d taken to picking up stray feathers, adding them to the canvas with a glob of black paint to fix them in place. The new feather joined the others: she placed it on instinct, a scatter of quills rising from the canvas in a pattern that felt right. She reached for her palette, then stopped. She wasn’t feeling the muse, not today.

  She hadn’t heard the front door, but the hallway floorboards groaned under heavy footsteps. Her husband, Richard, walked in while he loosened his silk tie.

  “Hey, hon,” he said, leaning in to land a perfunctory kiss on her cheek. “Have a good day off?”

  Nessa bristled at the intrusion, but she forced a smile. “Fine. How was the meeting?”

  “Top notch. Looks like the Tribeca deal is a go.” He paused, glancing at the feathered canvas. “You take your meds this morning?”

  Nessa bit her bottom lip and swallowed the first response that came to mind.

  “Yes,” she said. “I did.”

  He gave her a wink and a smile. “Just gotta check on my girl. So, uh, what’s with the feathers?”

  “Trying something new. Playing with textures.”

  Richard shrugged. “Can’t you paint something nice for once? Like a pretty landscape or something? Something we could hang up in the house and show our friends.”

  Your friends, she thought.

  “Maybe next time,” she told him.

  * * *

  Dinner. Nessa and Richard sat at opposite ends of a long glass table in the dining room, Richard’s end festooned with piles of paperwork, folders, and brochures. He worked while he ate, flipping through photocopies and blueprints, sucking down a bottle of abbey ale. Nessa picked at her plate. Rare roast beef steamed on the square ceramic dish, leaking blood beneath piled spears of asparagus.

  “So I may be taking on some more work at the college,” she said.

  “Huh,” he replied, not looking up.

  “They’re expanding the anthropology track. So I might end up teaching another class or two. It’d be a good opportunity for me.”

  “Huh.” He flicked his gaze toward her, just for a heartbeat. “Did you take your meds?”

  Nessa stared at him, her eyes cold, as she set the unlabeled prescription bottle down next to her plate. She shook it, louder than she needed to, and tapped a pair of tiny pink pills into her open palm. Her eyes never left Richard’s downturned face—his attention already back on his paperwork—as she tossed them into her mouth and washed them down with Perrier.

  “I’m working on a new paper,” she said. “Studying the impact of tourism upon the Jarawa tribe in the Andaman Islands. Dr. Milbourn thinks it could be a milestone for me. It’s important work. Might even lead to tenure.”

  “That’s nice,” Richard mumbled through a mouthful of roast beef.

  “I’ve been thinking about going on a killing spree,” Nessa said.

  “Huh,” he said.

  After that, she didn’t bother saying anything at all. They ate in silence, and she was about to get up and leave, pushing back her half-finished plate, when he noticed her again.

  “Almost forgot,” he said. “I’m gonna be gone for a couple of days. Leaving tomorrow afternoon. Lodge trip.”

  “Lodge trip?”

  “Yeah. Just, you know, bunch of guys getting together, doing guy stuff.”

  “And what kind of”—she paused—“‘guy stuff’ do you have planned this time around?”

  He finally met her gaze and gave a defensive shrug.

  “You know. Stuff. Just a bunch of guys hanging out at a hunting lodge, drinking beer and swapping stories. It’s good for business: a lot of my contacts are lodge members. A lot of good prospects, too.”

  She didn’t reply. He smiled, a nervous laugh bursting from his lips.

  “C’mon, hon, it’s how business gets done. You learn more on a golf course than you ever do in the boardroom. It’s not like I’m having an affair or something. You…do know I’m not having an affair, right?”

  She wasn’t sure what bothered her more: that he probably was, or that she didn’t really care anymore.

  “Have fun with the boys,” she said.

  Then she retreated to her small room and considered the canvases. One she’d started last week. It called to her now, a sketch in charcoal. Three faceless figures, draped in flowing robes, danced around a black bonfire. No matter how she drew the lines, though, endlessly sketching and erasing and smudging with the heel of her hand, the dynamic of movement eluded her. The women were supposed to be wild, ecstatic, mad with dance and wine and freedom.

  She knew what that had felt like, once. She just couldn’t remember. And when she looked into her own heart there was nothing but a leaden gray stillness.

  Nessa couldn’t even remember what had inspired her to start working on the picture. She wasn’t sure who the women were supposed to be. But they felt important. She picked up a charcoal pencil and tried again.

  Four

  A slate-black sky cast a shroud over Detroit. Full dark, new moon, no stars.

  The Mourner didn’t mind the dark, but she didn’t care for the murky weather. Her home was west, in the arid desert deeps. She wore a gown of ivory white, a wide-brimmed hat, a lace veil, opera gloves. Her fingers were too long for her hands—too long for anyone’s hands—and they wriggled bonelessly like worms as she glided down a back alleyway.

  She stood at the heart of the alley, and her voice emerged from under her veil as a slithering hiss.

  “By the pricking of my thumbs…”

  “Do not finish that line,” called down a voice from above.<
br />
  Steel-toed boots rattled off rusted metal as a young woman jaunted down the fire escape. She wore an olive utility jacket over a worn chambray top. Her skin was dark, her eyes a faintly glowing brown, like flashlights shining behind a pair of stained-glass windows. She slid along the handrail for the last flight of stairs then jumped down the ladder, flipping her legs over a rung and dangling upside down in front of the Mourner. Her dreadlocks swayed like woven serpents.

  “You’re in my house now,” she said. “Save the bullshit for that cave you live in.”

  “Dora,” the Mourner said in an icy rasp. “Always a pleasure.”

  “If it was a pleasure, you’d come and visit more often. You’ve been hiding away from the world, sister. That’s not good.”

  “It’s not the world I hide from. The creature who once thought himself my master is on the move once more. The Kings of Man are machinating.”

  “Ink.” The dangling woman turned her head and spat onto the concrete. “Yeah, that shit’s been flooding the streets out here. Smells like magic, tastes like poison, and it’s got the Kings’ fingerprints all over it. You ever get a good look at an ink junkie?”

  “They…vibrate in a disconcerting manner,” the Mourner said.

  “They comply. It’s not like a heroin nod. Ink junkies forget how to ask questions. Whatever you tell ’em to do, they do it. They’re open locks for whoever knocks. It’s the motherfuckin’ status quo in a syringe. You think that’s why she called for a sit-down?”

  “I suspect we’ll learn anon. She never conjures without grave cause. Though I’m troubled by the implication.”

  Dora shot a questioning glance at her. “The implication?”

  “The last time she summoned us,” the Mourner replied, “this coven had three members.”

  A fog drifted in.

  Cold tendrils of gossamer mist wound around them, carrying the peaty musk of graveyard soil and incense. Wild dogs brayed to the night, their howls rising over the purr of a motor.

  “And yet, even with our strength diminished, we will be as we must,” the Mourner said in a low whisper.

  Dora looked to the alley mouth and murmured her reply. “Bloody, bold, and resolute.”

  The long shadow of a Rolls Royce limousine prowled into sight. The smoky-silver heirloom car stopped on a dime and its back door swung wide. The Lady in Red emerged.

  She was a vision of a golden age, as sleek as her ride, draped in vintage scarlet. Her long, dark hair flowed behind her, kissed and braided by fingers of fog. Around her throat, dangling on a slender chain, she wore an antique iron key.

  “How now?” asked the Mourner.

  Even silent, the Lady carried traces of dark laughter in her eyes. Amusement and the promise of malice. Dora uncurled her legs from the fire-escape railing. She tumbled in midair and landed on her feet like a cat. The young woman crouched low for a moment, a subtle bow, before rising to her full height.

  “Where we would revel in chaos and freedom,” the Lady said, “our enemies would fetter every human soul in stagnation and rust. But I have seen portents, I have divined, and I know things. The table is set for a grand game. All the pieces are present. Would you like to play?”

  “Speak,” Dora said.

  “Demand,” the Mourner added.

  Dora folded her arms and gave the Lady a hard nod. “We’ll answer.”

  “After centuries of waiting,” the Lady said, “my eldest daughter is here. Reborn on this world at last, and already hurtling toward her doom. She has no concept of who she really is, what she really is. And the wheel turns, as it always has.”

  “You wanna wake her up?” Dora asked.

  “I want to break the wheel.”

  “Break the wheel,” the Mourner echoed. “You speak of changing the fabric of the universe.”

  Dora broke into a grin. “She speaks of flipping some goddamn tables and whipping some moneylenders. Finally. I’m in.”

  The Lady favored her with a faint, cold smile and raised a finger.

  “Patience. We can’t afford a direct confrontation, not yet. We’ve endured this long by evading the eyes of the Kings and the courts of hell alike. We will begin with my eldest. We’ll guide her from the shadows. Train her. Test her. Lead her to the crucible and toss her inside. If she survives, she’ll be our finest weapon. Now then, a fledgling witch requires her tools.”

  “She’ll need the powers of air and fire,” the Mourner mused, “to evade, fly, and sear those who hound her. A Cutting Knife, then.”

  The Lady nodded. “There are four Cutting Knives in this world. The man with the Cheshire smile has corrupted one to his service. Adam has corrupted another. The third is veiled from me. Now the fourth…that one might be reachable. It rests in the grip of a fool, but a well-guarded one, locked away.”

  The Mourner’s veil rippled. “I have a key for that lock, one we’ve both made use of in the past. Faust owes me a debt. I will call upon him and collect.”

  Dora glanced sidelong at her. “Really? Daniel Faust? We’re working with gangsters now?”

  “Every witch has her favorite instruments. He’s one of mine. And what of you, sister? What will you toss into the cauldron?”

  “She can’t fight and fly if she can’t see or hear. She needs a witch’s mirror, a good one.” Dora snapped her fingers, turning to the Lady. “The Oberlin Glass. I’ve been keeping tabs on that beauty for a while now. I was going to make it a gift to you, but under the circumstances…”

  “A gift to my daughter is a gift to me. Open her eyes. And as for my part, I’ll buy sand for her hourglass. I’ll send an ally to act as a stumbling block in her hunters’ way.” The Lady’s gaze went distant, searching. “I know the name of every living witch, and I know the bones of the dead. Yes, she’ll do. The agent. Harmony Black. She will serve as my champion in this matter.”

  “Her?” the Mourner said. “She’s never bent the knee to you, never acknowledged you as her rightful queen. Why grant her the honor?”

  The Lady chuckled. “She has lessons to learn. So I’ll send her in the right direction with the wrong clue and a spur for her righteous pride. Standing at her shoulder, I will whisper honeyed words of poison into her ear, and she’ll never know I was there. I’ll employ her, punish her, and teach her, all at the same time.”

  “Damn.” Dora arched an eyebrow. “You’re hard on your kids, you know that?”

  “You turned out all right.”

  “True,” Dora said.

  “You have your tasks.” The Lady flung up her hand, pale fingers curling as if to snatch the blackened sky. “I am for the air. Scurry and scatter, both of you.”

  “When shall we three meet again?” the Mourner asked.

  “Before the battle’s won,” the Lady said, “in a storm of our own brewing. I will provide the lightning.”

  “I’ll bring the thunder,” Dora said.

  The Mourner turned her gloved hands. Her long, boneless fingers squirmed.

  “It will rain in the desert before our work is complete,” she hissed, “and the noonday sun will hide its face from our deeds.”

  “As it should,” the Lady replied.

  Five

  In the borough of Queens, as the sun dipped low and Astoria’s bars lit up neon blue and white, Marie sat on the edge of a cheap Ikea futon and huddled over her overheating laptop. Home was a cramped apartment in a second-floor walk-up over a convenience store, the bars of a cherry-red fire escape looming outside her narrow window. The building’s decor hadn’t been updated since the 1950s, all exposed brick and vintage nickel, though somewhere along the way “old and outdated” had magically transformed into “warehouse bohemian chic.” Same apartment, five times the rent.

  Marie was lost in the screen, hunting down property records, pecking through databases. On the opposite side of the futon, her roommate Janine had her head buried in The Mycroft Encyclopedia of Heraldry, Seventh Edition—a hardbound beast of a book that could double as the world�
�s biggest doorstop.

  “Don’t drop that thing,” Marie muttered. “You’ll break your foot.”

  “The sacrifices we make for proper historical recreation.” Janine lay back on the futon and sighed dramatically, stretching in her fluffy argyle sweater. “So when are you finally going to come to an SCA meet-up with me? The kingdom has need of bold warriors, Lady Knight.”

  Marie tapped at the keyboard. There it was: the kill house outside Monticello, with a listing for the owner. Roth Estate Holdings, registered with a Manhattan address.

  “Not my bag,” she said.

  Janine tilted her head. “Like heck it isn’t. You’ve had your knighthood…thing for as long as I’ve known you. You’re seriously going to pass up the chance to wear real armor and lug a sword around?”

  Marie fumbled for words, trying to explain. While she talked, the screen flooded with listings of other Roth properties. Almost all of them in NYC, mostly in parts of town where she couldn’t afford to breathe the air.

  “If it wasn’t the right liege, if it wasn’t the right cause, it wouldn’t be real.” Marie glanced over at Janine. “This is normally the point where I’d hold up my badge and say I’ve already found my liege to serve, but they took that. So.”

  Janine closed her book, watching her. “Yeah. So…you okay? I mean, I saw the news before you got home. Sounded pretty nasty.”

  Nastier than that, Marie thought. As far as she knew, the news had only talked about a couple of cops coming under fire. The drug stash and the tortured corpse in the basement were still officially under wraps, pending investigation. Nothing she needed to tell Janine about. She changed the subject with a nod at her roommate’s book.

  “Isn’t that a reference copy?”

  “Perks of the job.” Janine hugged the enormous book to her chest. “Librarians can take home reference books any time they want.”

  “I’m pretty sure they can’t.”

  “It’s a secret librarian rule. You wouldn’t know. Seriously, are you okay?”

  Marie’s phone buzzed against her hip. She pulled it out, shooting Janine a look.