Sea Witch Rising

by Sarah Henning

  We’re not to go in there, of course. No, we need to hop from one rock face with its hairline beach to the other, and then work our way around to the little lagoon where I first changed. Then up the switchbacks, through the woods, past the tiny vacant house and onto the sea lane with a direct shot to the docks and, by proximity, the warehouse.

  When we’ve hit solid beach again, Will squeezes my fingers and drops my hand. And it’s a funny thing, because I know if we survive this, it’ll be mine to hold again. The silence and steps return, until we’re past the castle, marble balcony skeletal in the low light. Past the sheer rock faces. And sloshing through the little shallow lagoon.

  When we get to the beach, I force Will to pause long enough that I can dry us both. “Purr klœdi.”

  Finished, I straighten the buttons on Will’s coat. “Wet footprints are a dead giveaway.”

  We push up the switchbacks, top the cliff, and put our heads down as we enter the woods, the eyes of Øldenburg Castle looming down. They can’t see us. I know they can’t. But my stomach twists under their watch, Niklas’s ring tight on my finger. I slip my sleeve down over my hand.

  Yes. I’m the one who buried your king and ended your line. Get a good look, because I’m not finished yet.

  I stop him on the edge of the woods, just in sight of the abandoned cabin. “Will, whatever happens today . . . don’t lose faith in your abilities and start sprouting flowers.”

  Will laughs. “Good pep talk.”

  “I’m serious, and I’m saying this now. Just hear me—you’re strong, William Jensen, and whatever comes—remember that.”

  He’ll need that strength if we survive long enough to see Father come. If we have a war on two fronts and no end in sight.

  Will’s eyes don’t break from mine. “I will, Runa.”

  Satisfied, I draw in a deep breath and drop his hand to raise my hood over my too-short hair.

  The streets are alive with the weekday buzz. A few brave ships ready for a day on the water, the promise of catch as lucrative as the idea of sea mines is prohibitive. We wade through, chins to our chests, trying very hard to blend in to the ebb and flow. Our disguises are good, fitting right in, but as the warehouse looms into view over the top of a row of shops, each lingering set of eyes sends my heart hammering helter-skelter against my ribs.

  Almost there.

  We’re to meet the girls in the alley behind a dockyard pub, Vœrtshus Havnestad. But when we cut around the building and into the alley that beelines to the back of the warehouse, only Agnata stands there.

  She gasps at the sight of us and rushes forward. Her face shines with tears, her dark eyes shot through with red.

  “What’s happened?” Will whispers, tugging her into the shadows of the building, against a rubbish barrel brimming with molded bread. “Where’s Sofie?”

  “I—I don’t know.” She sniffs into his shoulder.

  Will pries her off so that she can face us. We’re huddled together in the shadows, our rucksacks providing necessary cover, our backs to both the warehouse and the rest of the alley.

  She presses on, careful not to use names—this is something we discussed. “We were together on the mountain when she said her stomach hurt. Nerves, you know—she didn’t eat any of her bread this morning. And then, I waited. And waited. And when I checked on her, she wasn’t there. I thought maybe she got lost and had found another trail. I thought she’d be here waiting for me and she wasn’t.”

  Agnata begins crying again, and I nearly press a hand to her mouth to keep the noise down, but I fear it might make her even louder. “What if someone caught her? What if they’ve taken her to the castle to interrogate her about the murder? Or this plot or something else?”

  She finishes in a near shriek, and I try to counter that by keeping my voice calm and near a whisper. “Or she could simply be working her way here, as you said.” I glance to Will. “Should we wait?”

  Will immediately shakes his head. “There’s no time. We have a very small window. We’ll have to go on without her.”

  Agnata’s eyes grow big, those nerves we saw earlier nearly shooting fireworks straight out her eye sockets and into the dank of the alley. Her lips drop open, and I dig deep in my brain for a spell to silence her, but it’s too late because she’s already screaming. “Watch ou—”

  Blunt and unforgiving, something metallic comes crashing into my skull. The blow is nasty enough to knock me forward into Agnata, the surprise and the weight of the rucksack on my back ruining my balance. My hands are slow to react and protect Agnata or myself. But then she’s gone; the plaster of the tavern wall scrapes against my cheek, and I slide into a sandbag heap, half prone, half curved against the building.

  The head wound I suffered in Niklas’s royal chambers, scabbed over the last two days, is busted and liquid again, blood seeping from my wound into my hair and down my neck as I scream at this new body of mine to move.

  But it won’t.

  Next to me there’s a giant whoosh, and Will’s body hits the cobblestones, blood slinking across his hairline. Somewhere behind me, Agnata is screaming until there’s a metallic whomp and she’s quiet.

  My hands finally react, and I try to push myself off the wall. But as soon as I shift an inch, my vision swells and then contracts, all the blood seemingly rushing out of my body through the newest hole in my head.

  I’m banked in the shallows, beached, and fading fast.

  As the color slips away from my eyes and the world goes dark, I hear my name come from Sofie’s tongue. “Runa’s the most dangerous. Don’t let her out of your sight.”

  29

  Runa

  I WAKE TO THE SOUND OF LAUGHTER AT MY EXPENSE.

  “She’s a witch. Maybe we should burn her. Who’s got a stake?”

  More laughter. Close by, maybe even close enough to spit on, though I can’t see them.

  I’m somewhere dark and small. There’s room enough for just me and the chair I’m tied to with the types of rope sailors prefer. There’s a gag at my mouth, and it tastes vaguely like iron, the blood from my head wound leeching into the fabric. I’ve been relieved of my rucksack and Niklas’s ring, and even worse, of my friends—Will and Agnata are somewhere else altogether.

  “Hold your horses. No one is burning anything. Open flames near my father’s boats before he inspects them is definitely not going to earn anyone brownie points.”

  Sofie.

  The men laugh again. Throaty. German. Yes, clearly German.

  Great.

  Sofie’s speaking again, and the men’s laughter dies off as they listen. “Let’s record her confession of King Niklas’s murder first. After that, burn at will—away from the U-boats.”

  Footsteps head my way, and then there’s suddenly light, streaming in on my face, a door unlocked and thrown open.

  Two burly men in green uniforms pick up the chair I’m sitting on and plop me into a room twice the size of any I’ve seen on land, even in the castle. One rips the gag off my mouth, my hair caught in it, a fresh prickle of blood tinkling down the scoop of my neck and into the collar of the coat still sitting on top of my blouse and breeches.

  Dull pain drubs against the backs of my eyes as they adjust to my surroundings. The lights first. Sodium lamps blaze overhead, as blinding as the new day. Then the U-boats, lined up and ready for inspection—six altogether, the five Phillip warned Will about, plus the prototype Sofie described back at Katrine’s.

  Then the people. I count ten men all clad in the green uniforms, which bear the seal of Holsten—though the German pronunciation Holstein is scrawled beneath its red-and-white jags. Sofie stands before them, holding the mouthpiece of some sort of machine.

  “Runa, darling, aren’t you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?” she says with a smile.

  I scowl at her. “Sofie. How could you?”

  “What? Did you think I’d run forever for a crime I didn’t commit? Leave my family, title, and all the money that goes with it behind?�
� Her smile is brilliant, even in the sallow light. “Of course not.”

  She laughs, and the men laugh, and dear Urda, it’s annoying. Though it does nothing for my headache, I roll my eyes.

  Sofie continues. “And you’re going to give me back my life with the truth.”

  Smile on her face, she saunters up to me, puts the mouthpiece to her lips, and presses a few buttons. “My name is Komtesse Sofie of Holsten, Queen Consort of the Sovereign Kingdom of Havnestad. In the early hours of the twentieth of September, 1914, I watched as a girl named Runa murdered King Niklas of Havnestad in my wedding bed. The next voice you’ll hear is that of this girl, whose family and home are unknown.”

  With a tilt of her head, she comes closer, setting the mouthpiece right under my chin.

  I grind my teeth together. I won’t do it. I won’t. I won’t be recorded on that thing.

  Sofie leans in, her breath close enough that I can feel the heat of it on my scraped-up cheek.

  “You will speak your truth, Runa. I’ll get it out of you one way or another, and hear me now, if you’re difficult, your confession will be the very last thing you do.”

  I look her dead in those beautiful green eyes of hers. “Not going to happen.” Then I smile at her, fury in it. “Fœra.”

  Bloodred beams blast from the closed fist behind my back and straight up into the light above. The glass shatters, and I kick Sofie square in the stomach as everyone scatters away from the raining shards.

  Sofie’s training kicks in, and at the same time as I do, she yells, “Skjoldr!”

  Glass fragments bounce off our shields, tinkling like music as they hit the floor. From where they’ve scattered, the men watch, bent in posture with their arms thrown over their heads.

  One by one, the guards’ mouths fall agape as they stare at their commander’s only living daughter.

  “The komtesse is a witch!” a guard yells, a mixture of fear and righteousness frothing at his lips.

  Sofie stumbles to her feet. “What? No!” Her voice is high and pleading with them to unsee it. “No, I’m not.”

  “You are! Just like that dead sister of yours!” shouts a particularly brave guard. “Hung herself for being a witch, she did. Everybody knows it.”

  The surprise falls from Sofie’s face, anger in its place. And then she smiles at the man. “You’re right. I’m just like her.”

  She catches my eye, and again we say our spells at the same time. “Villieldr!”

  As we practiced, Sofie’s right arm goes up in violet flame, right before their eyes. It’s still weak, but it’s impressive, and the men’s confusion melts into strict, undeniable panic.

  Their eyes swing away from her only because my whole body has burst into purple flame. The rope, the chair, everything searing off into a stream of smoking, instant ash.

  Free from my bonds, I walk toward them.

  Sofie is advancing too. The men take in the flaming, witchy pair of us and stumble back. We’re everything they’ve been told witches could be. Powerful, unpredictable, logic-defying.

  “Burn us at the stake, will you?” I say. “What if we don’t burn?”

  Still, the braver ones draw their pistols with fumbling, shaking hands. But we’re ready for this.

  Sofie angles both arms out, protecting herself and the majority of my flaming form. “Skjoldr!”

  Shield up and safe, I close in. Again, I use Oma Ragn’s favorite fighting technique. Smite.

  “Fœra!” I scream, sweeping both arms out and away, encompassing the men. The red line of magic stuns them hard and, as dominos, they fall one by one into a heap on the floor. Prone. Disarmed. Useless for at least the next twelve hours. Still, to be safe, I add an extra layer of protection. “Ómegin. Rata.”

  Sofie helps me deliver the spell to each of the men.

  “You’re going to destroy that recording, aren’t you?” I ask, finally allowing myself to smile, while checking the back of my head for yet another goose egg and a never-healing cut.

  “Yes. Wouldn’t want a little thing like that hanging around for the wrong person to find.”

  “Good—it was a really nice touch.”

  She waggles her eyebrows. “I thought so too.” Then, she tips her head to another closet—this one larger than my little holding pen—something meant for actual storage.

  Sofie pulls a key from her belt, and the lock releases with a quick tug. And there, inside, gagged and bound in just the way I was, are Will and Agnata. Their eyes are huge at the sight of us. I pull up Will right away, slipping him off the chair, releasing his gag, then his hands.

  Agnata waits patiently for her turn, smiling beyond her gag, clearly expecting Sofie to begin untying her any moment.

  Instead, after Will is free of his binds, the three of us simply turn to Agnata and watch the realization creep across the angles of her face. Sofie cocks her head and shoots us a satisfied smirk. “Now, what should we do with her?”

  30

  Runa

  WILL PULLS THE GAG DOWN, PLACES HIS HANDS ON HIS knees, and sinks to eye level with Agnata. “What the hell were you thinking, selling us out?”

  Sofie doesn’t give her a chance to answer. “She was thinking she’d get a pretty penny, that’s what. How much was it?”

  Agnata’s lips snap shut.

  “Worth more than all our years together, then?” Sofie spits, eyes flashing. “More than my life?”

  Agnata’s desperation grows as we drag her and her chair out of the closet and into the warehouse proper. The girl’s eyes bounce from the guards piled on the floor to the ashes, to the glass littered and sparkling in the remaining sodium lamps.

  There, massive, looming, and flammable, are the U-boats, lined up as Will put it, “like pigs for slaughter.”

  “I—Sofie, you’ve got this all wrong. Please. Please, listen!”

  Sofie doesn’t respond except to disarm Agnata of her gemstone.

  “I met with them, yes, but it was only to help get information for our plan. It was—”

  “Agnata, save it,” I say, temper flaring enough that I might as well be spelling purple flames straight from my nostrils. “We know they let you go from the castle only so that you could supply specific details about our plan. We heard you talking to the guard last night outside the safe house.”

  I say “we,” and this was part of what Will, Sofie, and I discussed in the middle of the night, once we spelled Agnata to make sure she was in a very deep sleep. “You were planning to let them attack as penance for your role in the plot against the U-boats. They’d get Sofie and myself for the king’s murder, they’d get Will on the U-boats, and you’d get your freedom and a cut of the sale.”

  All the color in her face drains. “I did say all that. I did. But it was just because they needed to hear it.” She turns to Sofie. “You know how they are—they’re relentless. And they escorted me to Katrine’s, so I couldn’t get out of reporting back.”

  Will rubs his brow, and even my head falls to my hands. We’ve been compromised. Our safe house is no longer safe. And neither is Katrine. How could we have missed it? Yes, we’ve been focused on the spells, but last night? Last night a guard was mere feet from our haven. I raise my face and stare at this traitor. We were so fixated on countering her efforts, the guard became a distant memory.

  Sofie looks as if she’s swallowed glass. The komtesse moves like a woman possessed, busting open a retrieved rucksack and cocking a pistol sitting on top. My pistol, to be exact.

  “I—I . . .” Agnata tries to fight against her binds, the meat at her wrists bulging against her restraints.

  “Tell me now, are they going after Katrine? Do they have her? Yes or no?”

  Agnata bursts into tears, her head shaking. “No, no, no! They don’t know about her! Please! You have to believe me! Don’t shoot.”

  Sofie’s eyes swing to Will’s and then to mine, but she doesn’t stow the gun. It stays pointed at the girl—her friend, her handmaiden—as she looks to us to
tell her what to do.

  “We don’t have time for any more of this,” Will says calmly. “Your father will be here to inspect the boats in less than an hour. We can’t risk talking about this anymore.”

  Sofie’s hand begins to tremble, the gun barrel with it. In one step, I’ve gently swept her arm down and to the side.

  As she disarms the hammer, I squat down on eye level with Agnata. The girl sobs harder as I raise my hands in front of her face, amethyst peeking out of my palm. And then I use all the mercy I have left.

  “Ómegin. Rata.”

  If only there were a spell to pause time.

  With the Agnata affair, our window to execute our plan has shrunk. But at least knowing it was going to happen got us in the door and able to turn the tables, thanks to Sofie’s commendable acting skills. Yet there’s no calling this a success until it’s finished.

  Looming over us is Sofie’s father’s famous punctuality, because he’s not just on time, he’s early, especially if a deal is involved and he might finagle himself a better price with the element of surprise. Arrive early; find things imperfect, unfinished, or otherwise at fault; win a discount for disarray. That was how Baron Gerhard of Holsten ran—like clockwork, but ten minutes ahead of schedule. There’s absolutely no time to lose.

  We move the bodies first—Sofie and I working together to carry men one by one, head to foot. Will puts his back in it, throwing a man over his shoulder one at a time. He carries out Agnata next, slipping her off the chair and into one of the motorcars the guards drove down from the castle.

  We line them up in the overgrown summer grass behind the warehouse, and then each pick our man and get to work. Stripping away everything but their undergarments—boots, pants, button-ups, weapons. Then, we pile the boots into the car with Agnata, dress ourselves in the remainder, and run back into the warehouse for the final piece of our plan.

  We stand three abreast, spaced evenly before the six ships.

  “Ready?” I look to the cousins, on my left and my right. They nod.