Blood Witch

by Thea Atkinson

  Alaysha was two seasons older now, and this time, this first battle since the four men would be different. She didn't care how many she drank from, she would collect all the seeds and she would remember them all as they'd lived, fully fleshed, fully hydrated: and remembering them would give her the control until Nohma could finish the inkings and she was a full witch.

  A full witch in control of her power: seasons upon seasons after that, Alaysha woke with the phrase in her mind and a tear on her cheek. She'd worked so hard to bury all those memories and now they were returning. She well knew the difference between dreaming and early morning memories. The memories scoped into her pores and settled into her muscles so that she could feel again what it was like to poke through those eight seeds. She'd kept them secret for years until her father had seen her collecting them. That was when he realized her habit could be useful and ordered her to show them to him so he could count the kill.

  And she had done so after every battle, each time, all but the one time she killed her nohma. Those eyes were the only ones she'd not shown for the count. Those seeds were still hidden, separate from the others.

  She sat up to see Saxa already stirring something over the fire. The flames lent the only light to the room. Not quite dawn then. She had plenty of time to ride out to her cave in the woods just beyond the walls and collect her seeds before Gael came.

  She eased out of bed, throwing back the soft linen Saxa had given her for the warm nights. Mindful not to make extra work for the young wife, she smoothed it over the mattress and barley pillow. The smell of lavender crept to her nose.

  "Where are you off to?"

  It had been three days since Gael had caught her on the staircase, and he'd kept her working from sunrise to sunset ever since. She hadn't even seen Yenic or Aedus, and she suspected that was on purpose too. She kept expecting a break so she could steal way, but even the meals got brought to them in the tiltyard--not even a leagua outside the city walls where the terrain had not been touched by one of Alaysha's early 'battles.'

  "I'm off to get some time alone," she told Saxa who frowned with a moue both beautiful and dissatisfied.

  "Gael will be here soon."

  "I know."

  "Then you don't want to disappoint him."

  "I doubt he'll be disappointed."

  Saxa pressed a pottle of warm milk into her hands. "Here. At least drink something."

  Alaysha upended it and gulped. Even still, she realized at the last that this was nothing more than a diversion from Saxa to buy time. The door opened and in came the mountainous man himself and she knew she'd not get to her seeds today but would be subjected to more torturous exercises. She sighed audibly and followed him through the courtyard, ignoring the hissing she heard that came from those brave or stupid enough to do so in Gael's presence. Once, he turned on a man carrying a pig beneath his arm and cuffed him against the ear. The man quietly clamped his mouth shut and scuttled away.

  At first the sessions were mostly rehabilitation type activities: torso twists, squats, the type of things that would make her muscles scream before they would listen again to her brain. Simple enough as any combat warrior knew, but towards the end of the second day, Gael began to incorporate the use of water. They'd gone outside the city walls, to the section of forest that she'd first fought in and that had come back in the years to a nice lushness. The river that swelled alongside the city was in full bloat here, and it fed the terrain around it. A well sat close to a rock wall, that she knew travelers drew from and the occasional country maid watered her sheep from if she'd shepherded them too far from their fields.

  It was this well that Alaysha had come to hate by day two. She had to draw from it, carry the liquid a distance, and eventually drink it till she was bloated and nearly sick to her stomach from it. Almost at the end of day three, when she'd lifted until her arms were sore and her stomach muscles were taut in agony, and when she'd drunk enough she was just about to vomit, she refused to do it anymore.

  "You will do it, Witch." Was all he said. Throughout the whole of the rehabilitation sessions, he barely spoke, only barking directions when necessary, never giving praise, never encouragement. No casual conversation even came from his lips and she was tiring of his stoic manner and surly disposition that seemed about something that warred within him more than Alaysha's presence. Still. She couldn't be too sure with Gael.

  "I'm not afraid of you." She didn't have a weapon to hand because the work was never to be about combat, but she had tired of his bullying and more than that, of his silence.

  He sent her a long and icy stare. "I don't fear you either," he said.

  It was very nearly a challenge and she very nearly wanted to throttle the surliness out of him. If only she had her sword or her knife: anything to put a different expression on that face besides complacency or boredom, she'd give it a go.

  "You should fear me," she told him.

  He scoffed and spit on the ground at his feet. "Or you'll psyche the forest dry and me with it?"

  "Maybe just you."

  He regarded her thoughtfully. "Do it."

  She blinked in surprise and ogled the bucket she'd just filled and he had ordered her to drink from, then let her gaze move sidelong to the left where a rush of flooded river bloated the mossy bank. She was soaked through with perspiration and Saxa's homespun flax tunic was filthy with wet earth where she'd tripped once or twice. Her belly sloshed with each movement, it was so full of water. She was exhausted. Tired of being the good soldier. Her fatigue spoke to her the way visuals and logic couldn't.

  "You want me to try." The realization was so stark, her throat tightened on the words.

  He merely shrugged and the stunning but rare smile made a quick entrance and beat just as hasty a retreat. It was answer enough.

  "I won't," she said.

  "Because you can't."

  She knew he was goading her; she didn't care. "Do you have any notion how horrible this power can be?"

  Again, a lifted, bored shoulder in response.

  "You would be dead before you took a fourth breath."

  His mocking grin drew slowly across his face. "'I'm thinking I have about ten breath's grace, and I could kill you in two." He reached into the leathers across his chest and pulled out a small, but sharp dirk.

  So. This was how it was to be. Manipulation, goading, and ultimately, betrayal. This time, the manipulation was for his own death, not someone else's. Would that she could psyche the entire world dry and be done with it all. She wasn't sure why this time, with a man who obviously hated her and would use her to end his own pain, that she would feel the hurt all over again, but hurt it did. She had to swallow down the tears that wanted to travel up her throat and steal her eyes, but they clung stubbornly in a lump just under her jaw.

  She saw him step forward and thought: this is the moment. He will kill me. There was no fear in her, only resignation and sadness because she knew it was entirely possible in a moment of primal instinct, the power would unfurl. She hoped her combat training would take over her body and the muscle memory of a thousand lessons would help her defend herself as best she could before that happened. Even as she thought it, she knew the instinct had already assessed the danger and had coiled just behind the training, waiting for the second she would have no last choice but to thirst.

  He stooped in front of her, rather than lunging, and before she could jump out of the way, he had the bucket in his fist and the water flew at her in an icy curtain.

  It was frigid, drawn from the deepest part of the well, and the shock of it nearly akin to a very primitive sense of fear. She gaped at him, then tasted sweat and tears, and the sweetness of new water. Now he would suffer. Once she'd pulled the easiest of the liquid, she'd pull from him. She'd snake into his tear ducts and down into his veins, his lungs, his heart…

  She watched him collapse to his knees even as the mist began to gather in a bloated cloud above the trees. She could taste the wetness on his tongue, so
intimate it could have been a kiss, so sweet, so moist.

  She burbled over the mist of his lungs, bobbing on it as though on a jaunty river, his tears swelling in a happy gurgle. It might only have been two breaths, but the water was collecting.

  Then she realized with a jolt he was laughing. Holding his stomach, bent over, laughing.

  And that there was no mockery anywhere within it.

  The surprise of it was enough to bring a sense of pure shame for her quick temper, her willing rise to kill just for the sake of her ego. So quickly did the taste of him leave her mouth, that she broke into a run and lunged for him, sick with worry that it was too late. The tense shoulders heaved beneath her palms when she touched him.

  "You fool," she said as he peered up at her. "You could have died. I could have killed you."

  He gripped her knees with his arms and pulled her against him. "I'd have died happy," he said. "Your face. Oh Deities, your face. You'd have killed me a happy man."

  Her hands went to his hair, twisting within it in her confusion.

  "What are you doing?" she asked him, and stepped away before she could enjoy the softness of his hair between her fingers.

  He slapped his knees and heaved a sigh, reaching for and missing the trailing movement of her fingers as they left his scalp. "Enjoying the first real laugh I've had in so many seasons I'd forgotten I could do it."

  "No." She backed away, stumbling when her bare foot contacted a sharp stone. "I mean, what is all this?" She spread her arms wide.

  He managed to clamp down a stoic face before any other emotion had a chance to lay on it for too long, but still, she caught it, and she knew.

  "Gael, this isn't about my rehabilitation at all."

  He stood and bent to retrieve the bucket, more to avoid her eye, she thought, than anything else. She waited for him to decide whether he would admit it or not. He lifted his head to the cloud that still hovered in the trees, growing darker and threatening to let go its weight.

  "How long before it lets go?" he asked.

  She shrugged. "I don't decide."

  He seemed content with the answer, but moved toward the overhang of branches as though he didn't believe her. Within moments, the water came down in a hard sluice.

  Alaysha stepped toward the trees, the water collecting in her lashes and marring her vision. "Gael?"

  He upended the bucket in his hand and plopped it on the brown turf that had seconds earlier been lush grass.

  "Tell me," she said.

  "I could tell you I'm helping you to find a way to dry out that old Carrion."

  She swiped at her eyes. "How did you know about him?"

  She had reached the overhang and the rain eased off so she could just hear the pitter patting of droplets from the leaves hitting the ground.

  He blew his lips at her question as thought it mattered no more than the answer. She supposed it was accurate.

  "You could tell me that was your intent, but it wouldn't be true," she said to him, trying to prod him on.

  He plucked at a brown leaf, then another, and another until they littered the ground. "What if I told you I was just tired?"

  "Tired?"

  He stuck his hands out sideways so they both protruded outside of the tree overhang. "Of all this."

  "You mean living?" Alaysha wasn't sure she understood.

  "Living. Fighting. Feeling nothing…Feeling things that will come to nothing."

  She examined his face, trying to grasp the full measure of his words. "You were trained as I was, weren't you?" She didn't need an answer, she knew it was accurate, but she waited anyway, hoping he'd say more, help her understand him.

  "Very close to it," he said.

  She wasn't sure how many seasons Gael had; she could guess thirty, but she couldn't be sure--his size had a way of inflating everything about him, and she supposed his age was just one of those things. She imagined a cocky Corrin trying to break this gargantuan column of man who would have been just as large as a boy, and found she couldn't. She wanted to ask him more, but he'd already stood and the moment of vulnerability had gone.

  She followed him from the grove. The rain had stopped and the cloud she'd called was a mere memory. She scanned the area behind her as she walked. The damage hadn't been too bad; perhaps because of the gorging of water all around her, perhaps because she was full on liquid, perhaps because she hadn't let loose out of fear but of fury.

  Or perhaps she'd just caught it in time and had managed for once to decide to stop it.

  She couldn't help feeling a small twinge of hope that she was able to control the power and call it back, but she didn't have time to give it much thought.

  Just ahead, at full tilt, her skirts held high as she came, ran Saxa. A look of pure panic filled her face. She was yelling, taking in deep breaths and yelling again.

  And it sounded to Alaysha like she was saying Saxon had been abducted.

  Chapter 10

  Barruch had already been saddled when Alaysha gained the stables, Saxa close on her heels. Gael had sprinted off upon hearing that Saxon was gone and that his sister had already scoured the nursery. He'd shot off toward the stables with legs that moved faster than Alaysha had believed possible. His own mount fidgeted next to Barruch, Gael himself atop, fidgeting just as restlessly to be going.

  Yenic held onto Barruch's reins, arguing with the giant with every inch of his body and punctuating his words with short jabs of the reins.

  Alaysha stepped close enough to take them from Yenic and touched Barruch's white spot affectionately. He backstepped away from her, turning his nose discretely away. She couldn't say she blamed him; he probably believed she'd neglected him and left him to Yenic and Aedus, two people he loved but who she doubted fed him parsnips or peaches, knowing his penchant for breaking wind afterwards.

  "Everything is fine, Old Man," she murmured. "I haven't forgotten you."

  He sniffled at her ribcage, and whinnied shortly. He was ever mindful of blood. For a warhorse, he was terribly finicky.

  "This isn't the time," she told him and turned to ask what the plan was of the men.

  The men's voices rose, Gael's blowing over Barruch's back to where Alaysha stood, trying to re-establish trust with her mount.

  "You're not going," Gael was saying, to Yenic or herself, she wasn't sure.

  Saxa's hands had begun wringing around each other as she tried to explain that she'd only gone to the garden for a moment.

  "Did you see anyone?" Gael's mount snorted, almost echoing its master's disposition.

  Saxa shook her head. "Just an arrow in his bed. Oh Deities. My boy."

  In the end, it was Yenic who left on Barruch and Alaysha had to content herself with trifling things that could seem useful if looked at hard enough: chief among them collecting Aedus and sending her house to house, stable by stable, to question the good folk of Sarum. The witch at a woman's door would surely do more to halt the search than help it, and Alaysha agreed when Aedus said it with bald observation.

  Trudging back to Saxa's cottage, Alaysha had a thought.

  "I wonder if I might make use of one of your better linens," she asked Saxa, knowing the woman would offer it without question. Sure enough, Saxa produced from a fragrant trunk, a long slip of gauzy linen died the color of young grass. It smelled strongly of lavendar and cinnamon, and another, odd scent she couldn't name.

  It fit perfectly over her head with tails long enough to veil the lower half of her face.

  "Does Yuri know Saxon is missing?"

  Saxa shook her head. "There's been no time to tell him. I haven't seen Yuri in two turns."

  "Is that odd?"

  Saxa nodded. "When he's in Sarum, he always comes to me for his late night meal." Her hands began to coil within each other, and it was only then that Alyasha realized just how concerned the young mother was.

  "You don't think Yuri has him?"

  It was a touchy question but it had to be asked.

  "Why then the ar
row?"

  Indeed. The arrow reminded Alaysha of Edulph, but surely he couldn't have made it back inside the city walls, and even if he had, why steal the heir? Why not aim to kill the leader?

  It made little sense, but she couldn't think of anyone who would be interested in a frail child not yet off his mother's teat. She did know her father would be furious at Saxa. He had waited long for a male of his own body to train as his successor to his sacred Sarum.

  "What of the shaman?"

  "Theron? What use could he have for my boy?"

  Alaysha had her own thoughts. Yuri was obviously ill, and the shaman and Bronwyn and Bodiccia knew it, or were hiding it, or both. The evidence as to why was undoubtedly at the top of the parapet. She suspected the shaman had peculiar healing habits that were not quite so benevolent as Saxa's herbal healing methods; why else the secretiveness about who he was caring for at the top of the stairs.

  What he would do with a healthy child of Yuri's blood to strengthen the Emir's, she didn't want to guess.

  She'd had Gael to get her in the first time; now, she'd have to rely on her own cunning. Covering the tattaus was the first step. Gathering wild onions and carrots would be the next. Bodiccia always fed Yuri from the fields if she could, believing the wild things tasted superior to the growing ones. Of course she'd let a poor harvester come beyond the kitchen door, especially one offering sweet bounty from nature.

  She would need her sword, too, and pulled it down from its peg behind Saxa's fire pit. She wasted no time explaining to Saxa's curious gaze, rather, set about to fool Bodiccia into letting her close to the kitchen. From there, it was a matter of sneaking to the corridors and up the parapet stairs.

  She found she needn't have bothered with the basket of goods. Bodiccia was nowhere near the kitchens, and neither were she and Bronwyn at her father's chamber doors. Instead it was a middling youth and two burly warriors Alaysha recognized from her last campaign. Further proof that Yuri was not within, but was somewhere else in his fair city.