All I can do now is watch and wait. Watch my surroundings, watch my back. Wait to get stronger, wait for an opportunity to present itself. It always does.
Satisfied with my plan, I slip under the warm covers. Within moments, I’m asleep.
When I wake next, it’s daytime. George is standing in front of the fireplace, poking at a log with his toe. He’s fully dressed, wearing green trousers, a red-and-white-striped shirt, and some sort of vest.
“Good afternoon,” he says without turning around.
I roll my eyes. “Am I ever going to get rid of you?”
“Is that any way to greet your new best friend?” He turns around and gives me a grin. The front of his vest is brightly embroidered in red, green, and blue, and he’s wearing a gold brooch with an enormous red feather sticking out of it.
“You look like a Yule tree. You know that, right?”
“Wait ’til you see my hat,” he says. “Now get up. I’m starving and tired of waiting around for you.”
“What time is it?”
George sniffs the air hopefully. “Smells like supper. You hungry?”
“Not really,” I say.
Oddly, I’m not as hungry as I should be, given that I haven’t eaten in… I have no idea how long.
He nods. “John’s been adding things to your potions—infusions and whatnot—so you wouldn’t starve. I guess you’re still full from breakfast.”
I feel my eyes go wide. “Breakfast? He came in this morning?”
“Aye, he said he would. Remember?”
“I remember him saying he would. I don’t remember him actually doing it.” I frown. “How can you people come in and make me drink things without me knowing? Or remembering? That’s not right.”
George looks at me solemnly. “Maybe not. But the day you got here, we thought you were dead. You looked it; you were damn near to it. John stayed with you, made sure you didn’t die. He didn’t sleep for nearly three days.”
Three days? My stomach twists with an uncomfortable mix of gratitude, guilt, and something else I can’t name. I don’t know what to say.
“Anyway, when he couldn’t stay awake any longer, I stepped in,” George continues. “He wanted someone with you, in case you had a relapse.”
“It still doesn’t explain why I don’t remember any of this.”
“Ah.” George’s mouth twitches into a smile. “As I say, you looked pretty bad when you got here, so John brewed something up. He held you, tried to get you to drink it. As soon as the cup touched your lips, you went completely mental.”
“I did?”
“Aye. Started thrashing, screaming, cursing. You have a mouth like a pirate, you know that? It’s not very ladylike.”
In the most unladylike way possible, I tell him what he can do with his opinion.
He cracks a laugh. “Poor John. You kicked him in the stomach, drenched him with his own medicine, then banged him on the head with your cup. He brewed you more but this time added something to calm you down.” He smirks. “Knocked you out a bit, but it worked.”
“You don’t say.”
“Oh yes. No more privy-mouth Lizzie. Got real sweet after you drank it, all smiles and sugar. We decided that version of you was easier to manage, so we kept giving it to you. Do you know you talk in your sleep?”
“I do not,” I say, horrified.
He nods. “I’ve been with you every night and getting an earful. Swoony little maid, you are, going on about running off with some boy. Caleb, is it?”
Damnation.
“It’s nothing,” I say quickly.
“It’s the stuff of romance books. Who needs knights in shining armor or handsome princes when you have Ca-leb?” He draws out his name in a singsong voice.
“It’s not like that.” I feel my face go hot again. “He’s a friend.”
Then I stop. If George bothers to ask around, he’ll realize exactly who Caleb is. And if he knows I’m friends with a witch hunter, it won’t be long before he knows that’s what I am, too. I can’t exactly lie and say I don’t know him, not after I talked about him in my sleep. The only thing I can do is put as much distance between us as possible.
“But I haven’t seen him in years,” I add quickly. “We grew up together. Worked in the kitchens together. I liked it; he didn’t. So we went our separate ways.” It’s not too far from the truth, anyway. “I guess I just miss him sometimes. You said yourself it looked as if I could use a friend.” This isn’t too far from the truth, either.
George walks over and sits down next to me.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said anything. But not to worry. You’ll make plenty of friends here. Charming girl like you, who can resist?”
“According to you, I kicked John and cursed out everyone in the room,” I say. “I would hardly call that charming.”
“It was.” He laughs. “The cursing was the best part. It’s funny to hear something so salty coming from someone who looks so sweet.”
A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth.
George pulls me to my feet. “Come on. Get dressed so we can eat. There are clothes in the wardrobe. When you see John, be sure to tell him you’re sorry. That kick you gave him knocked him clear across the room.” Then he leaves, shutting the door behind him.
I cross the room, open the wardrobe. It’s empty inside, save for a single stack of clothing. A pale green silk tunic; tan close-fitting trousers. A wide brown belt and a pair of sturdy brown boots, both a size too big. A hairpin. Bronze and delicate, one end tipped with glittering green jewels, the other tapered into a sharp, deadly point. I twist my hair up into a knot and work it in. Then I step back and examine myself in the mirror fastened to the back of the wardrobe door.
I don’t like what I see.
The remnants of my illness are everywhere. In my skin, so pale I can see a network of bluish veins under the surface. In my eyes, the way the color seems to have faded, once bright but now a pale, watery blue. In my body, so thin I can see the ridges in my sternum, exposed by the deep V of the tunic. Even my hair seems muted: a weak, tired blond.
There’s no hint of the strength I worked so hard to build. No hint of the training I went through to get it. Nothing at all to show that, for a time, I was one of the best witch hunters in Anglia. Instead, I look fragile. Sickly. If I look better now than when I arrived, it’s no wonder they thought I was going to die. I think again of the healer and feel another pang of gratitude, guilt, and the feeling I couldn’t place before that now has a name: doubt.
John used magic to heal me. If he hadn’t, I’d be lying stiff and blue in that bed, the way that witch lay stiff and blue in my cell. Magic is wrong—I know this. Blackwell drilled into us, over and over, the danger of it. I spent two years fighting it, seven years recovering from it. I’m still not recovered. But if Caleb had been the one to pull me out of Fleet, if he’d seen how sick I was, would he have done whatever it took—even if it meant using magic—to keep me alive? Or would he simply have let me die?
I slam the wardrobe door harder than necessary and meet George in the hallway. It occurs to me that I have no idea how long I’ve been here.
“Two weeks, give or take,” George says as we walk to the stairs.
Two weeks. Of course, Caleb knows I’ve escaped. Is he pleased? Worried? I don’t know why he didn’t come back to get me, but something must have happened. For the first time, it occurs to me he might be in danger. What if Blackwell thinks he had a hand in my escape? What if he’s been arrested? What if he’s being tortured?
The thought distresses me so much that I careen into the wall, smacking into a heavy, gold-framed painting.
“Easy.” George reaches behind me to straighten it. “You all right?”
“Fine,” I say. “I guess I’m just nervous. You know?”
The words come out without thinking, but I realize they’re true. I am nervous. Facing all these people, dining with them. The wizard who rescued me, the boy who he
aled me, the girl who bathed me, the fool who befriended me. I’m indebted to each of them in some way, yet they are my enemies. They’ve shown me kindness, yet I’m prepared to kill them. The whole thing is so confusing that it curls my stomach into a hard, tight knot.
“Aye.” He turns to me with a sympathetic smile. “If it gets to be too much, just excuse yourself. Say you aren’t feeling well. Everyone will understand.”
“I’ll be fine.”
George stares at me a moment.
“Take a look around,” he says, spreading his arms. “I know you’re used to the king’s palace, but this is quite a fine home, too. Take this rug, for example.” He gestures to the rug that runs the length of the hall. It’s beautiful, woven in shades of dark blue, yellow, and green. “It was woven by a blind woman with a missing arm. Amazing, isn’t it? It’s over five hundred years old. Of course, it took her that long to finish it…”
“Is that so?”
“Oh yes,” he says solemnly. “See, the key to investing in fine objects for your home is to find artisans with as many disadvantages as possible. Greatly increases the value.”
I roll my eyes, but he keeps going.
“See this portrait here?” He points to the one I nearly knocked off the wall, of a sour-faced woman. “It was painted by a dwarf. Had to stand on a ladder just to reach the easel. You know, paintings done by dwarves are triple the value of paintings done by regular-sized men.”
I feel a tiny smile creep across my lips.
“And these—” George gestures to the brass candlesticks fitted along the dark wood-paneled wall. They’re each shaped like a fleur-de-lis. “The blacksmith had no arms, no legs. Can you imagine? He used nothing but his teeth and tongue to forge those. That’s extraordinary. You can’t put a price on that.”
I laugh then. I can’t help it. George places his hand on my arm and we start back down the hall. He’s halfway through a story about a deaf lute maker when I realize we’re downstairs already, standing in the middle of an enormous entrance hall.
Directly in front of me is a set of wooden doors. They’re flanked by large mullioned windows, each inset with a symbol in stained glass. A small sun surrounded by a square, then a triangle, then another circle that is actually a snake with its tail in its mouth.
The symbol of the Reformists.
It’s an alchemical glyph; a series of symbols, each with its own meaning. The sun for illumination: a dawn of a new existence. A square representing the physical world. The triangle a symbol for fire: a catalyst for change. The snake—an Ouroboros—for unity.
Combined, the shapes form the symbol for the creation of the philosopher’s stone: the substance for turning ordinary metal into gold. That’s not what the Reformists are trying to achieve—that’s for alchemists—but the end goal is the same: change. They’re trying to create change in Anglia. Change in policy, change in mind-set, a change in the way magic is viewed.
And much like the idea of changing ordinary metal into gold, it’s impossible.
“He can’t hear the lute, so you’ll never guess how he tunes it,” George continues. “He takes the neck and sticks it in his—what?”
I look over his shoulder and see them sitting around an enormous dining table. I don’t see who or what they are, or how many. I barely register them. Because what’s happening in there, in that room, the magic, no.
I take a step backward, then another. My heart picks up speed and my stomach tightens, the way it does before a hunt. Only there’s no one to hunt, not without giving myself away. I can’t even run, though I want to. I want to get as far away from this as I can.
Where there should be a ceiling, there isn’t. Just a vast expanse of sky, the entire universe spinning in the darkness above me.
I STARE AT IT.
At the sky, black and dark and empty as the moonless night I was arrested on. At the stars that spin against it: some white and bright, some small and glowing pale. At the planets that bob among them like colorful marbles, revolving in wide, lazy circles around a bright orange sun.
Then at Nicholas, who sits beneath it all: arms stretched upward, a benevolent God—or perhaps not—flicking his hand this way and back; a conductor, the planets and stars dancing to his tune.
I watch in horrified fascination as a line appears across the sky, a series of tiny numbers and glyphs appearing beside it. Nicholas turns to the man beside him. He’s dressed in all black like a clerk, a fat leather book in one hand, a pen poised in the other.
“Transiting orb, two degrees, Neptune in trine with natal Jupiter,” Nicholas murmurs. He pauses to allow the clerk time to write it down. “Tell him he’d be better off waiting. The fourteenth of next month, though no later. Whatever trifles he’s got, they can wait. He might consider a few days of restful silence as well. His wife, I know, will be glad of the break.”
Everyone around the table laughs.
It’s astrology; I know that much from training. Many wizards consult astrology tables, looking to divine answers in the planets and stars. They’re common enough; I’ve come across dozens in houses of wizards I’ve captured. But never, not once, have I seen a wizard create a full-scale replica of the sky like this. And, like the way he multiplied himself in front of me at Fleet, I don’t know how he’s doing it. I don’t know how it’s possible.
I back up another step. Then, just as if the stars directed him to, Nicholas looks up. His eyes meet mine across the table. He holds up a hand; the clerk stops writing. Silence falls. I don’t need to look, because I can feel them, the eyes of everyone in the room on me.
“Elizabeth!”
The sound of my name, shouted across the universe, snaps me from my daze. At once, the sky disappears, the stars disappear, the planets and the sun disappear. Into nothing, winking out as if they never were. It’s just an ordinary ceiling now, open to the rafters, a half dozen small chandeliers hanging at intervals over the table.
I look down to see a man striding toward me. I know him. Curly black hair, short black beard. Even without that dog’s head pipe in his mouth, I know him.
“You!” I gasp. It’s Peter. What on earth is a pirate doing here?
“Me.” He laughs. He clasps my shoulders, then plants a loud smacking kiss on each of my cheeks. I can feel myself blushing. “Pleased to see me, love?”
I don’t know. Am I? He seems harmless enough, kind even. But how harmless can a Reformist pirate really be? Before I can answer, Peter drapes his arm around my shoulders and pulls me into the dining room. Stone walls, stone floors. A row of stained glass windows on one side of the long, polished wooden table, a heavy cabinet on the other, piled high with food.
I stumble after him, uncomfortably aware of the stares still leveled in my direction, of the flush still on my face, of my heart still knocking against my rib cage.
“Looking so lovely, too,” Peter continues. “Far better than when I saw you last. But then, it’s hard to look good when your eyeballs are floating in absinthe, eh?” He thrusts me into the chair next to John.
“Father,” John groans.
I forget my discomfort for a moment and turn to him, incredulous.
“He’s your father?”
John nods. I notice he’s blushing a little, too.
“Naturally!” Peter booms, walking around the table and throwing himself into the chair opposite mine. “Where else do you think the boy got his good looks?” He waves his hand in John’s direction. “A specimen that fine can only come from the loins of a pirate!”
John groans again and buries his head in his hands.
“Dear God, please don’t let him use the word loins ever again,” George whispers, sitting down next to me.
“Why don’t we move on to introductions?” Peter continues. “Now, there’s Nicholas, of course. Him you know already.”
Nicholas smiles at me. In the ordinary candlelight, he looks less godlike, more man, and an ill man at that. His face is drawn and haggard, his skin translucent and gray.
He’s clutching another steaming mug of something I’m guessing John made for him.
“Welcome, Elizabeth.” His voice is warm. “I’m so pleased to see you’re feeling better.”
“Thank you,” I say. My voice comes out weak and timid. I don’t like it. I clear my throat and try again. “I am feeling better.”
“I do hope I didn’t startle you with my little display.” He holds his arms wide again. “I take it you’ve not seen much magic before?”
It’s a loaded question. If I say I have seen magic, he’ll want to know where and who performed it. He might assume there are other witches—if that’s what he thinks I am—living in the king’s household. He might start asking questions. One question will lead to another, and…
“No,” I lie at once. “That was only my second time. The first was at Fleet.”
Nicholas nods. “I assure you that everything practiced in my home is harmless, if not beneficial. I know I said this before, but perhaps it bears repeating. I promise that no harm will come to you here.”
His words, they’re kind. But I don’t believe them for a moment.
Peter claps his hands, moving on. “John and George you also already know, but this”—he gestures to the girl to Nicholas’s right—“is Fifer Birch. She’s a student of Nicholas’s, been working with him for years. She’s his star pupil!”
Pupil. I take this to mean witch. She’s my age, maybe younger. Thin, with dark red hair and pale skin dotted with freckles. She looks me over, her eyes drifting from my face to my hair to my shirt—which I now realize is her shirt—then back to my face. Her eyebrows are raised, her lips pursed. Skeptical. Finally, she turns away from me and whispers something to Nicholas.
“Lastly, this is Gareth Fish.” Peter points to the man still hovering beside Nicholas, his book still open, pen still poised. Tall, thin, cadaverous. He wears thin-framed spectacles and a thin-lipped pout, clearly irritated at the interruption. “He’s a member of our council and serves as a liaison between Nicholas and, well, everyone. Mainly the citizens of Harrow, of course, but anyone anywhere, really. Anyone who needs his help.”
The Witch Hunter Page 7