“Perhaps,” said Mareshka. “But there is no lasting harm done.” She waved the head of her staff before the broken window. With an icy hiss, a film of water spread across the ragged gap. In an instant, veins of frost crossed the surface, and as they watched, the white lines faded to leave the window perfectly clear once more.
Ellasif glanced around the small room. A staircase occupied two segments of the hexagonal walls, a bone handrail following it down to the lower floors. Ellasif frowned as she noticed that the bones appeared to be both real and human. In the center of the room stood a pearlescent basin of clear water, from which emanated silvery light that shimmered on the walls and ceiling. The only other furnishings were three nearly identical chairs with cushions of red velvet. The center chair had a higher back than the others, lending it the appearance of a throne.
Ellasif saw that they were in one of many slender spires rising from the perimeter of the palace she had previously seen only from the shore of the city. Inside the central citadel dwelt Queen Elvanna, daughter of Baba Yaga and a jadwiga of such power that Ellasif would count herself blessed if she never saw the woman, even from a safe distance.
“So I guessed right,” said Ellasif. “You were spying on Szigo the whole time.”
“Not the whole time, of course,” said Mareshka. “I have many duties in service to Her Majesty. You were fortunate that I peered into my pool when I did. I knew Szigo was cross with you, but did not realize his anger was great enough to risk my displeasure.”
“Thank you for your intervention,” said Ellasif. She kept every trace of sarcasm out of her voice, for she knew that Mareshka’s timing was far too good to be true, for a witch or anyone else. Doubtless she had known of Ellasif’s capture for hours or perhaps even days, intervening only when necessary. She also remembered what the witch had cried out just before transporting them back to Whitethrone: He must not see me like this. She could only have meant Declan, but Ellasif did not understand what she meant by that. She had an inkling it had to do with the witch’s ability to change form. After all, Ellasif had seen her arrive at Szigo’s grove in the shape of a white raven. What other forms had she adopted?
Had Ellasif seen her before? The thought gave her a cold shiver. For an instant, she felt an impulse to drive Laughing Erik’s sword through the witch’s heart. The only way Ellasif could be truly safe from her magics was to kill her before she could cast an enchantment. That was the lesson she had learned from the elders of White Rook.
That was also the reason they had drowned her sister.
“Declan Avari is on his way to Whitethrone,” Ellasif said. She swallowed to clear her throat, which had shrunk as she thought about the difference between killing Mareshka and killing Liv. “I have fulfilled my part of our bargain.”
Mareshka smiled and traced a line in the water with her finger as she walked around the basin. “That is not entirely so,” she said. “You agreed to bring him here, not to accompany him part of the way.”
“I can go back and find him,” said Ellasif.
“But as you say, he is already on his way here. Why do I need you to fetch him now?”
“He was fighting off trolls when I was attacked,” said Ellasif. “Even after he leaves the Grungir, the sentinels along your border and the packs of winter wolves are bound to find him.”
“And all have instructions to let him pass when they do.” Mareshka waved a hand as if to dispel an unpleasant odor. “You are finished with that business.”
Ellasif suppressed the urge to raise the sword she still clutched in her hand. Mareshka seemed far more dangerous than Szigo, and she doubted she could kill the witch before the woman could utter a spell or invoke the power of that staff of hers. Besides, killing her would eliminate the one person she knew who knew where to find Liv. She had to suffer the witch to live, at least a little longer.
“You bargain like a Chelish devil,” Ellasif hissed. “I did what you asked, and it’s no fault of mine that your servant attacked our caravan. For all I know, you ordered the attack yourself so you could renege on our deal.”
“For all you know, I did,” smiled Mareshka. “But in fact I did not.”
“Then you never meant to honor your word,” said Ellasif. “Among my people, we would nail the rune of falsehood upon your forehead.”
“I find that easy to believe,” said Mareshka. “Your people are savages, little better than the trolls, and no less odious.”
“No matter what you think, they are still my people, and Liv’s. We belong with them, not here among witches and monsters.”
“Ah,” said Mareshka. A sparkle of amusement glittered in her eyes. “Perhaps we should ask what Liv thinks of that?”
Mareshka led her down from the scrying pool through increasingly larger chambers in the tower. At the bottom, she nodded to a pair of footmen dressed head to toe in various shades of white except for their dark blue tabards that bore the image of a white raven.
The men escorted them over carpets of bearskin and through passages lined with many-layered panels of wood carvings. They passed halls in which young jadwiga listened to the lectures of their elders, who demonstrated spells cast before mirrors, over braziers, and beneath icicles dripping from the naked feet of hanged men. They marched through a parlor in which the chatting jadwiga all fell silent as Mareshka walked by. At last the servants opened a pair of white doors filled with gold filigree.
Inside they found a sumptuous parlor that eschewed the blanched colors dominant throughout the rest of the building. From the deep red carpet to the terraces of green foliage and bright flowers, the room was alive with color. All of the walls were lined with shelves on which stood silent ranks of books interspersed with crystal skulls, leather masks, wands, orbs, and countless other arcane implements. In the center was a ring of tables forming three quarters of a circle surrounded by chairs. Upon one of those chairs sat Ellasif’s sister.
In the time they had been apart, Liv had transformed from a coltish girl to a young woman. She was still lithe, but the gentle swell of her breasts and hips had forever altered her profile, which was once slender as a willow switch. Her hair was more blonde than red, and the soft lines of her face far more feminine than Ellasif’s, but no one who saw them together could mistake them for anything but sisters.
“Liv,” cried Ellasif, running forward. She dropped Erik’s sword onto the table and squeezed her sister half to death.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” said Liv. “She said she would find you, but I thought you were gone forever.”
Through her tears, Ellasif turned to see what Mareshka had to say for herself. Obviously she had not told Liv about her earlier visit. The witch merely smiled in a perfect imitation of maternal affection.
“I will leave you two girls to catch up,” she said. She withdrew, and the footmen closed the door behind her.
Ellasif knew Mareshka’s departure provided only an illusion of privacy, but she could think of no way to ensure they would not be overheard by a witch who could view and hear things happening hundreds of miles away.
“Are you all right?” asked Ellasif. “How are they treating you?”
“I’m fine,” said Liv. “Better than fine, really. Don’t you know where we are? We’re in the Royal Palace! Have you ever seen such a fabulous place? Every day is like walking through a dream.”
“I’ve seen it before,” said Ellasif. “I came here a year ago, looking for you. Did you think I would let a day go by without trying to find you?”
The gleam of tears on Liv’s eyelashes confirmed her suspicion that Mareshka had never told her of Ellasif’s previous visit, nor of the bargain they had struck. Ellasif opened her mouth to explain what she had done, but stopped herself from speaking. How could she explain to Liv that she had come to trade another person for her?
It had seemed reasonable back when Mareshka first proposed it—a s
tranger’s freedom for her sister’s—and Ellasif would not hesitate to slay a hundred men to rescue her sister. During the journey from Korvosa, however, Declan had become more like a friend, no longer a hypothetical hostage to exchange. Ellasif was no longer certain she could go through with the deal, even if she could believe that Mareshka would honor it.
“We have to get out of here,” said Ellasif quietly. She went to the entrance and peered through the crack between the doors. The footmen stood outside, guarding the way. It would be dangerous to try only to subdue them. Ellasif was confident she could slay at least one of them before the other could raise an alarm. The trick was to silence them quickly.
Ellasif retrieved Laughing Erik’s sword. She would not be able to invoke its power to fly while remaining quiet, but all she needed was its keen edge. “I can kill one before he shouts an alarm,” she said. “Can you distract the other? You call for them, and I’ll wait behind the door there.”
“Why?”
The question took Ellasif by surprise. “What do you think I’ve been trying to do for the past year? I’ve come to free you.”
“You don’t need to free me,” said Liv. “I’m perfectly safe.”
“But you don’t belong here, Liv. It’s not your home. It’s nothing like White Rook.”
“That’s true,” said Liv. “At White Rook, everyone wants me dead.”
“No, they don’t,” said Liv. “They were just afraid you were a witch. We must show them they’re wrong.”
“They aren’t wrong, Sif,” she said. “I may not be jadwiga, but I am a witch.”
Ellasif flinched at the affectionate shortening of her name. The last person who had called her that was Jadrek. “No,” she said firmly. “You aren’t.”
“Not when I first arrived, perhaps,” said Liv. “But I’ve learned so much since then. I can cast spells. Look.”
She raised her hand, but Ellasif grasped it and pulled it down. “You don’t have to cast spells,” said Ellasif. “You can stop being a witch.”
“It isn’t a choice,” said Liv. “It’s what I am. You were the first to know, the night I was born. We didn’t understand it before, but Mareshka has taught me so much since she brought me to Whitethrone. I was born to be a witch.”
“That was the tiren’kii, not you,” said Ellasif. “It’s a curse, not who you are. We can find a way to remove it. I know a wizard—”
“No,” said Liv. “The tiren’kii is a part of me. When I’m ready, I will call it out myself. It will be my familiar, just like Mareshka’s ice sprite. You have to accept the truth, Sif. I’m a witch.”
Ellasif scowled, aware that she was losing the argument but unable to think of another way to counter what her sister was saying. “At least don’t call yourself that,” she said. “Say you’re a wizard or a sorcerer or something! It doesn’t matter, as long as we get away from here. I’ve spent every day since you vanished trying to rescue you. I would have rescued you the day...the day of the river, if only I’d realized what they were going to do.”
“I know,” said Liv. “Red Ochme knew you’d give your life to protect me, so they waited until you were away. But you don’t have to protect me anymore. I’m safe here. If I returned to White Rook, they would only try to finish the job.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You know it’s what they would do.”
In all the time she had been searching for Liv, Ellasif hadn’t truly faced the fact that she could never take the girl home. The death of Red Ochme changed nothing. Hers was not a lone voice calling for Liv’s death. All of the villagers feared and hated witchcraft—as did Ellasif, if she was honest with herself. She made an exception for her sister because she loved her. None of the others at White Rook would ever do so.
“We can go south,” said Ellasif. “We can live in Korvosa or Magnimar or any city you choose. They have summer there, all the seasons. You’ll be free of this eternal winter.”
“But this is where I’m free,” said Liv. “Don’t you understand? Just as Red Ochme chose you as her successor, Mareshka wants to teach me everything she knows. I can be like her, not just a weird village girl who frightens the neighbors because she knows someone is going to have twins. Here, the monsters don’t come to capture me. They bow when I walk past. They treat me like a princess.”
“That’s good,” said Ellasif, devising a new plan. “We can use that to get out of here. It’s better if we don’t have to fight everyone on the way out.”
“You aren’t listening to me,” said Liv.
“That’s because you aren’t thinking clearly right now. I promise, once we get away from here, we’ll talk about it more. For now, though, you need to trust me.”
“Why can’t you be the one to trust me?”
Ellasif felt her temper rising. “Because you’re probably under some sort of enchantment,” she said. “We can deal with that later, but right now, you need to let me rescue you.”
“Is that so?” asked Liv, her own cheeks flushing to match Ellasif’s. “I’m the one who wants to stay. Maybe you’re the one who needs rescuing.”
Olenka and Jadrek might think that was exactly what they were doing, but really they were only obeying the orders of the White Rook elders, who wanted to prevent Ellasif from returning with her sister. But then there was Declan. She knew as soon as she heard his voice in Szigo’s grove that he had come to rescue her.
She was still not certain how she felt about that. Her first reaction was indignation. She was not Liv, a frail young woman who needed rescuing. And yet she felt a certain thrill that someone considered her worth saving for herself, not simply because the elders commanded it.
“Don’t be insulting,” said Ellasif, but she could not help wondering where Declan was now, and whether he truly was coming to save her.
Chapter Sixteen
The Bone Mill
Outside the walls of Whitethrone, the wind slipped a knife through the gap in Declan’s sealskin cloak and slashed his shivering arms. He had borrowed the garment from one of the astronomer’s “other” servants, too grateful to point out that he was not Majeed Nores’ servant but his apprentice, a position for which he had paid handsomely and about which he was having the profoundest of second thoughts. How to deal with Majeed—who seemed perfectly content to have been abducted to Whitethrone and the most spectacular observatory he had ever seen—was a question Declan would answer after he had found Silvana.
Or her corpse.
He had to fight the urge not to seek out Ellasif first, but he had no idea where to begin looking for her. At least in the case of Silvana, the first place to look was not far from Majeed’s new home. Declan tugged the cloak tight as he walked onto the windswept plaza. There he paused, seeing that Jadrek and Olenka lingered behind, hesitating at the edge of the compound. They had followed him here from the observatory, but one whiff of the place had them both shaking their heads, refusing to go further. Declan could hardly blame them. The atmosphere was foul, even in the brisk winter wind.
He shivered and went on alone, muttering curses about this land that never saw a spring, much less a summer or an autumn.
The open plaza lay just to the east of the great gate. It was paved in huge, irregular gray stones mortared in white, giving the ground the appearance of a shattered plate or a vast frozen cobweb. Across the fractured lines, workers swarmed between a variety of stations, each dedicated to a different function.
Some were scaffolds, built around huge cauldrons from which clouds of steam spilled over the sides and crept with menacing purpose across the ground. The pungent smell of vinegar brought tears to Declan’s eyes, but the sweet stench of rotting flesh lying beneath it explained why this compound lay outside the city walls. Declan watched in revulsion as masked thralls drew chains on pulleys that raised boiled corpses from the soup. They dropped the gray bodies into carts, and og
res lugged them along to the next station.
There, human thralls with scarves tied firmly around their faces hooked the swollen cadavers with implements resembling fisherman’s gaffs and pulled them onto long slabs. Already rent open by the rough treatment, the cadavers were then flensed to the bone, their overcooked flesh slopped into long, open, oval troughs at the base of each slanting slab. From there, the flesh and bones took separate paths.
Teams of goblins carried the troughs on their shoulders. Declan thought they resembled the pallbearers at a southern funeral, carrying the coffin to the gravesite. Unlike true mourners, however, the goblins jabbered and poked at each other, slopping organs and half-rendered fat from the trough to leave a horrid trail of offal in their wake. They arrived with what remained of their cargo at a bank of kilns where slaves in leather masks and aprons shoveled the gore into stone trays. These they shoved into the fire, while they pulled out other trays and shook the charred remains into baskets for more goblins to carry away to yet another station. On the other side of the ovens another team collected the fully rendered fat in large clay urns. A tall man moved among them, tallying their production and directing other workers in packing the urns onto carts, which they drove back into the city.
Declan followed the bones. These the goblins brought to a different set of kilns, where men arrayed them in a single layer on trays. Once the bones were baked dry, the men scraped off any remaining detritus and tied them into neat bundles. These the goblins took to their final destination: the mills.
The structures lay upwind of the more noisome stations, and Declan was not surprised that this was where he saw the most humans involved in the operation. Most were common laborers, likely slaves or peasants of this rough land, but a few held themselves with a bearing that suggested they might be of the nobility—though what would possess one of the witches or witch-kin to work here, Declan couldn’t imagine. Perhaps there were multiple levels of aristocracy.
The buildings looked nothing like the sort of mill he remembered from Korvosa. Those back home were big, barn-like structures powered by waterwheels along the Jeggare River, some for grinding grain, others for sawing huge shipments of timber. Here, above conical buildings of bone-white stone and pine, the arctic winds howled through frames of sailcloth shaped like a gargantuan child’s pinwheel. Beneath the incessant wail of the wind, Declan heard the mechanical clatter of gears and wheels inside. It was here that Majeed Nores told him he would find a record of Silvana’s death, if she had come to the fate most common to unwelcome visitors in Whitethrone.
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