Blood Witch

by Thea Atkinson

  "You think I could have kept her away from you?"

  Alaysha couldn't answer that, but tried. "Still. The shaman should have gone to your wife first. She bore your child. You love her." She nearly choked on the clump in her throat.

  Yuri held his hand up. "She is worthy of being so only because she knows her worth. And yours. And the value of keeping the city intact."

  Gael's cough made Alaysha want to hurl something at him. She worked hard to keep her warrior's calm.

  "The truth is," Yuri said, "Saxa is even now telling the shaman what she needs and doubtless Theron is trying to ignore her."

  "You can't know that."

  His white brows lifted delicately. "I can't? I know her better than you do." He turned to Gael for confirmation.

  "She'll be giving him orders," Gael said.

  "Then why send for the shaman at all?" It was off point, and very useless question in the argument of who should be sent Theron first, but Alaysha didn't care. She was beginning to feel contrary.

  Yuri grinned. "The truth. Again it must rear its head, eh, Gael?"

  Gael chuckled and shifted his booted feet against the floor. "Saxa is a terrible seamstress."

  It wasn't an expected answer, and it was so far afield of what she believed of Saxa, that Alaysha couldn't help smiling. That explained the young wife's constant worry over breaking the threads despite the increasingly healing wound. She was afraid she'd have to stitch them again.

  "Is she truly alive?" she asked and only let go a breath when Yuri nodded.

  "Gael brought her straight to me. We might have to find a wet nurse for Saxon for a few days, but she will live."

  Alaysha relaxed, but Yuri wasn't done.

  "How did you do it?" he asked.

  Confused, she looked up at him. "Do what?"

  "Harness the power?"

  Even Gael looked interested in the answer.

  Ah, the reason he was here, finally. "I don't know."

  His narrow-gazed scrutiny indicated he didn't believe her, but he nodded anyway.

  "You will continue to walk daily with Gael," he said. "Until you are strong enough to begin the work of healing."

  "When will I see the fire witch?" She couldn't help hoping she would finally meet the woman who could make Saxa nervous and who could hold Yenic in her power and who could, if the rumors were true, control the very flame itself. He ignored the question and set a path for the door and she knew she had to contend herself to wait for the answer, knowing it would come in its time whether she wanted it now or not. She wasn't content, however, to wait for the next answer, and she threw the question at him before he could yank the door open.

  "Where's Yenic?" she demanded.

  Without turning to face her, he answered, and she could hear the smile in his tone. The satisfaction.

  "I'm having him flogged."

  Chapter 5

  Gael was left standing where Yuri had left, and Alaysha worked her way over to him. She knew her face was a mask of outrage, and at the same time she tried hard to tell herself she should be feeling nothing for the man who had let her believe he was her Arm, that they were the only two left from her tribe, that there were others like her. So many secrets he'd kept, he had no right to her concern.

  "Does he speak truth?" She knew by the feeling in the pit of her stomach even as she asked the question that her father wasn't lying.

  "Have you known him to speak otherwise?"

  Alaysha thought for a moment, remembering her discussion with Yuri just after his lead scout had tried to kill her and she'd ended up here. Yuri had told her he'd never lied to her, and despite some very harsh things, he had always said them. She tried to imagine Yenic's smooth skin stretched before the lash, laid open, and knew she couldn't keep a warrior's calm in the knowledge of that.

  "Take me to him."

  "You don't command me."

  She moved even closer toward Gael, and while she expected him to back away, he stood stoic. She caught an odd but fleeting expression on his face, as though he feared her, then it was gone.

  "I won't hurt you," she said.

  A slow smile spread across his lips, but he didn't respond. She marvelled at how much that smile could change his face, even when it was fleeting. His eyes changed from that smokey grey they appeared to be to that stunning green and blue she knew they were.

  She tried again, this time meekly. "It's a request, Gael. Not a command."

  He watched her thoughtfully. She wasn't sure what flitted through his mind, but it was plenty; she could at least see that.

  "Please. Every breath of delay means one less to stop this atrocity."

  "Come, then," he told her and without elaborating, was out the door. He didn't bother to check that she followed or if she struggled to do so. She made the decision to push down the discomfort she felt in her side and press on, no matter how winded or weak she grew. She was Yuri's daughter even with all that come to it, and at least the one thing she could claim was a stoic ability to do her duty.

  He led her through the courtyard past the well. The good people of Sarum had already begun filtering back to complete their daily chores, as if the attack was nothing more than a faded memory. The bodies had already been removed but for those of a couple of chickens and dogs. Several feral cats were picking at the carcasses and squabbling loudly.

  Alaysha had expected Yenic to be strapped to the pillory in the midst of the square as most criminals were so that any passers-by could watch and be warned. She'd seen a man flogged before when she was in her fifteenth season and the man had survived it. What had survived though were the charges the caller had shouted to the crowd each time his lash split the air: that insolence to the Great Yuri would not be tolerated. She'd found out later that man was Saxa's father and the insolence was to lay cruel hands on a woman Yuri had recently noticed and come to want. Doubtless the man had no knowledge of Yuri's desire when he'd beaten his daughter in public, and more likely even than that, it was probably that latest beating the drew Yuri's attention in the first place.

  Strange. She hadn't thought of that in a long time. She'd long ago learned to bury unpleasant memories; the power came within such an incredible memory that it was often as much a curse as the power. They came hand-in-hand, it seemed, the better to remember the paths of each drop of fluid. But it meant she stored a vast archive of unpleasantness, and to survive--to harden herself, as Yuri had taught her--was to place a good bit of soil over each thing that could cause her pain.

  The question was: why had that flogging caused her enough pain to bury in the first place?

  "Do you remember the last flogging in Sarum, Gael?"

  From behind him she saw his back stiffen, but he forged ahead of her without pause. She took advantage of his seeming vulnerability. Oh, her father would be proud, using a painful thing to control another person.

  "We will have to stop it," she told him.

  "Yuri commands me," he said from over his shoulder.

  "Yuri is angry. He's not thinking clearly. You can't do this to Yenic."

  "Yuri always thinks clearly."

  That was true, and Alaysha knew it. The other, nestled truth was that Yuri was not flogging Yenic in public. Insolence was a crime that could be used as a teaching tool. So why was this happening away from the courtyard?

  Logic told her it was about more than disobedience and anger.

  "He can't flog him where Yenic's mother will discover it, can he?"

  Rather than answer, Gael turned in the direction of the Keep and led her toward the back curtain. The river was beyond that, and a few strides east was the mountain Yuri had hewn a small castle into.

  The sick liquidity of memory started to move within her the closer she got. She followed Gael through an iron door set into the rock face's natural opening and then into the dank, dripping maw of what Yuri called the witch's home.

  It had been home, once. Just after Nohmah died and Alaysha had gone mad with grief. She knew how far in th
ey would have to travel, how many steps it would take to get to the bathhouse. How many drips of water would fall in an inhale, and beyond that, how many drops would fall in a turn, in a week, a fortnight. A season.

  She shuddered, but refused to let the memory take her. She was here for Yenic. He might have used her, he might yet have to prove he wasn't trying to manipulate her, but he didn't deserve pain. Not this pain, anyway.

  "You need come no further with me," she told Gael. She knew where Yenic would be.

  Gael halted and turned. There was still enough light from the outside that she could see his face and the torch on the wall sconce played with the shadows that kept trying to alter his features. She tried to read the strange expression she saw there.

  She interpreted it how she wanted even if he wasn't concerned for her. "I'll be fine." She stepped closer and without thinking, reached for his forearm. She felt him nearly snatch it away, but he did allow the touch.

  "You don't fear me," she said.

  He stared into her eyes. "I fear nothing."

  She gave him a questioning look.

  "It's not fear?" She echoed.

  "Fear is for those who don't know their own power."

  He was talking about her, whether he knew it or not, he was talking about her and maybe she was reading more into it all than was there.

  "Those that know their own power," he went on, "know its limits and prepare for them."

  "What are your limits, Gael?" She looked over the hair that shone even here in the shadows, the broad jaw and the way he towered over her, over nearly everything so that he was forever looking down at things. She looked him over and thought his limits must have something to do with feeling above it all.

  "My limit is that I know no fear." He pulled away from her at last, but let his forearm linger just beneath her touch. "Go to your boy," he said. "See if you can change what is about to happen to him."

  Alaysha watched him go back towards the entrance and stop just close enough to the door that he couldn't be seen from the outside unless someone was looking directly in. He put his back against the cave wall and slid down to his haunches. He could have been an innocuous boulder near the entrance, but Alaysha knew that if anyone came in, he would not let them pass.

  She took a deep breath and move deeper into the cave, veered right automatically, where outside light couldn't get in, and headed forward, lit only by the torches and beeswax candles in the crevices made of natural rock. A steady sweat of water ran down the stone, and into gunnels carved into the floor after centuries of movement. She knew she was climbing a slight slope because her wind came up, reminding her that she wasn't quite fully healed. Her wind had risen those years ago too, but only because she'd already used up most of her air with the grief of tears.

  Before she could stop it, the memory was upon her. She could hear Yuri's voice again, too if she tried, telling her to stop her whimpering. To steel herself like any great warrior would. How could a soldier kill if he cried like a baby over a simple death.

  She'd had the audacity to argue -- she was a girl, not a boy, and the simple death she had dealt was her nohma's. Had he no heart?

  He'd struck her, of course. A quick backhand across the cheek, and she refused to rub the pain out, instead facing him with tears running down her cheeks the same way they ran down the walls of stone. Then, though, as they didn't now, the fluid from the walls rose to a mist and clouded the cavern. It rained too. Hard, aggressive, and piercing rain that seemed to move straight from the gunnels, to the cloud, to Yuri's face, and to the ground again.

  "You can keep at me all day, Witch," he'd told her. "There's enough water in this mountain that you'll never psych it dry." Then he pulled her mercilessly into what he called the bathhouse.

  It was a cavernous enclave with holes in the earth so wide a man could bath in them. Some bubbled and frothed like wash water saturated with soap. Some lay stagnant but hot, sending wafts of steam to the ceiling. Now, as then, Yuri stood in the center of it all with his arms crossed, feet planted authoritatively.

  She wasn't surprised to see him step from memory to reality. Nor was she surprised to see the wooden table heaving with instruments of all kinds, the setup of shackles and wood that stretched Yenic's broad back out into one full length of arm. Fingertip to fingertip, the shackles pulled at his wrist and the manacles, with their Yuri-created finger holds pulled each muscle all the way from neck to middle finger as taut as possible. Yenic didn't even need the strength of his legs to stand so. The shackles kept him erect.

  Next to Yuri stood the carrion, as Alaysha called him. She'd probably been told his name once, but didn't care to remember it. He held a long leather whip in one hand and cradled the length of it in the other. She knew she had arrived in time, but she also knew she didn't have much to spare.

  "Please don't," she said, and while her father didn't so much as move, the carrion bobbed his head in her direction and gave her a lazy grin.

  "Too many memories, Witch?" he asked her.

  She'd never been flogged by the carrion; the only man who had been, she realized just then, was Saxa's father, but she'd certainly been beaten by the Carrion. Most times she told herself Yuri hadn't known about the punches to the stomach, and in truth, it might have been true. He never hit her where bruises could be seen – only in the ribs, the shins, buttocks. He beat the whimpering nearly out of her without worry of dying a witch-contrived death. Not that she hadn't tried, but because her power psyched always the most readily available fluid before it pulled at the liquid from a man. And the cavern had such an abundance of water it couldn't create a cloud large enough to hold the water before it came down again.

  In the days when her power was unpredictable, but weaker, she couldn't steal his fluid no matter how much she tried.

  Things could be different now.

  "I don't fear my memories," she told him and heard her father chuckle.

  "She's trained now Corrin," he told the man. "Far more powerful than she was when you first taught her."

  "Is that what he called it?" she asked. "Training?"

  Yuri looked Corrin over and new suspicion crept across his features so subtly and so quickly, Alaysha doubted Corrin saw it. She thought it time he discovered the truth of her childhood mysteries. Anything to keep the lash from Yenic's back.

  "What exactly was he to be teaching me, Father?"

  Yuri swung his gaze back to her. His face was controlled and complacent, but his eyes were sharp and bright even in the torch and candlelight.

  "He was to teach you what you learned – control over your weeping and sentimentality."

  "But not of her power."

  Yenic's voice. So he was aware and listening. Thank The Deities.

  "You would do well to stay silent," Yuri told him and Alaysha watched the subtle movements of Yenic's shoulders and wondered whether he was laughing or trying to take a breath. She moved toward him and spoke just loud enough for him to hear.

  "How long?"

  "A few moments, no more."

  She breathed relief. At least he hadn't stood like that for too long. She'd managed it herself for only long enough to receive a few staunch blows before losing her leg strength and having to hang there by her wrists. That didn't stop the beatings, though, no matter how much her wrists hurt.

  "You thought to flog him father, and then what? Have him return to his mother? What would happen then?"

  Yuri shrugged his indifference. "Perhaps you should tell me why a man would kill the last person who could explain an attack on his people and then not be disciplined."

  The carrion mumbled his agreement and Alaysha glared at him. "Careful, beast," she said. "Or I might enlighten Yuri of your training methods."

  Again, Yuri looked at Corrin, but this time there was no change in expression, even subtly. It was pure examination, that look. Taking in each inch of Corrin and assessing, processing, storing what he saw. That was enough to satisfy her. She turned again to Yenic and reached
for his rib cage where she knew the tattaus were. She touched his skin and felt it pimple under her fingers even though the flesh was still hot to her touch. "I know. You're cold in here," she said and Yenic grunted.

  "Never cold," he murmured.

  The way his voice sounded: intimate, warm, she had to remind herself he couldn't be trusted. Not yet. No matter how badly she wanted to be able to forgive him, she had to remind herself she just didn't want him to be flogged. No more. She turned to Yuri, leaving her hand on Yenic, thinking the connection could lend him some strength.

  "You know it would be foolish to harm him," she told Yuri.

  "His mother doesn't even know he's returned."

  "And so when she does she will find him abused, or is it that you plan to keep him here until he's healed? Because that would be foolish. He'll grow only weaker."

  Yuri shrugged. "Then he should tell me why he killed that boy."

  She could feel Yenic trying to twist around as he spoke and she reached for one of the manacles. It had a special catch that if pressed, would snap open.

  "I told you," Yenic said. "I didn't know he was the last one." His arm hung loose by his side, but it enabled him to swing to face them as he spoke.

  Yuri stepped closer. "Who were they?" It was clear by his tone that he believed Yenic knew.

  Yenic shook his head. "We saw them about a day ago and crept up to them. Listened to them."

  "We." Yuri didn't move but it almost seemed as though his voice had taken several steps forward. "Meaning you and the girl."

  "Aedus," Alaysha guessed. "Drahl's slave girl."

  Yuri nodded, inpatient. "Where is she?"

  "She stayed behind in the forest by the river."

  That information bothered Alaysha until she remembered how tenacious the twelve seasons girl could be. Surely, she'd be fine near the river, where she could drink if thirsty and forage for eggs or berries. That didn't answer why she hadn't come with him, and Alaysha wanted to know more than Yuri did.

  "Why did she stay behind?"

  Yenic's yellow-eyed gaze turned on Alaysha. "You told me to keep her safe."