From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 135
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
"Yes, if that's all right. I have neither the need nor desire to interact with them."
"Emma?" Pretoria asked.
"No. She has changed the calculus slightly, but my motives are bigger. As I haven't had an opportunity to feel simple magic very often, I want to take notes and compare."
Pretoria dusted off her hands. "Don't call it 'simple' magic in front of them."
"Why not? It is simple magic. The very basics. They know that."
"Nothing is 'simple' when you're starting from nothing. We don't know how hard it is going to be for any of them yet, even Sophia. They're all different, and calling it 'simple' to someone like Clara could hinder her development if it proves difficult," Pretoria said.
"Does the label matter?"
Pretoria set out three empty plates on each crate. "Of course it does. A witch is nothing without her feelings, right? If you're told straightaway that something is simple and you're crap at it, how do you feel? Like you want to keep trying, especially if some wunderkind walks in and makes it look like breathing? No. The early hurdles are the highest. We have to help our students over them, not make them taller."
"Some might say it's setting realistic expectations."
"And some might call that cruel." Pretoria motioned for Victoria to follow her to the dry ingredients closet, sparking a witchlight to float over them as she did. Students were less likely to wander into a place they shouldn't be if it was pitch black inside, thus there was no artificial illumination. "I know you hate the word, but you're a prodigy, Raven. So you can't just waltz in here, the most powerful witch in the world, and tell these girls what's easy and what's not. You don't have that right. Some of them have your picture on their wall, or Kat's. A single wrong word from one of you could crush them. Beetroot, dogwood bark and… pick any two leaves that look similar, would you?"
"Witchcraft can be unforgiving," Victoria said, selecting Pretoria's requested ingredients and setting them on a tray.
"You've been living with your Manifest too long. My girls aren't tearing apart the fabric of the universe or walking through walls, where a single lapse in concentration could kill them. They want to heal wounds faster and stop babies from coughing. They need the space to learn, and to make mistakes. Failure teaches you more than success, so we need to let them fail. Yes, even at 'simple' magic. Thank you." Pretoria took up the tray and headed back into the hall.
"You're very protective of them. You called them 'my' girls," Victoria said.
"Yes I did. They're far from home, all alone for the first time, living in the same building as their heroes, doing something no-one has ever done before. Those apprentices we had before all learned the basics somewhere else, except Ed of course. They had ideas in their heads that we, quite frankly, didn't do the best job at undoing. Or realised we were supposed to undo." Pretoria set down the tray on a table near the crates. "We're starting from scratch now, and we're going to do it right. They will need guidance."
"But not coddling."
Pretoria smiled. "That's for me to decide. So yes, I am protective of them, and that includes protecting them from you, too. No matter how good your intentions. Your education was… harsh, shall we say? And your reputation amongst our old apprentices earned?"
Victoria didn't disagree. It was the whole reason she had no intention of teaching. And, she would readily admit, why no-one had asked her to.
"My girls deserve better. And they'll get it. We call this a training hall, but it's really a classroom. My classroom. On paper, a doctor outranks a master, but when it comes to magic, Mistress rules over all. Okay?"
There was no malice in Pretoria's eyes, nor in her tone; it was a professional assessment, and one Victoria had no ready counter to. "I hadn't anticipated this level of passion from you."
"It's clear from how stringent you tried to make the requirements for getting in here the kinds of expectations you have. I do too, but in a different way. I've been doing magic longer than you've known it existed, and I'm younger than you. School was hard on you; Aunt Agatha was hard on me. I've learned from how I was taught as much as what I was taught. What I'm afraid of is that you have, too," Pretoria said.
Despite Victoria's ambivalence toward her treatment at university, the need to defend her alma mater still bubbled up. "I had some of the finest educators in the world instructing me. Is there nothing to be gleaned from that experience? Is it to be dismissed as inapplicable because it's different?"
"They taught you science and maths. Hard outcomes. Magic is… squishy. I can see by your face how comfortable you are with that, which only helps make my point. You've advanced mechanical engineering by decades, figured out how atoms work. Hard. Maths. What have you done to move magic forward since you Manifested? That others can do too," Pretoria added quickly.
"I've catalogued years worth of physiological interactions."
"To your Manifest. When's the last time you tried to make a poultice? A sleeping draught? You know… squishy magic?"
"I haven't had need to…"
"Exactly. Please, Victoria. I don't want to fight about this. You and Kat run your patch, I run mine. We have to trust each other. I won't have you second-guessing me. Not here, and not now. Unless you're going to do the same for Niamh, in which case I would be delighted to see how that turns out."
As much as Victoria was when she was in her books or down amongst the spheres, Pretoria was in her element, and exuded a confidence that Victoria simply couldn't match under the circumstances. Pretoria, like the Longs, was building something entirely new, ready to change the world with it. And defend it.
Not since her emergence from her time as November had Victoria felt the foundations of her identity on softer ground, and no argument against Pretoria's assertions presented itself. Education, and the pursuit thereof, had been at the very core of Victoria's motivations for virtually everything she'd ever done, but long ago she'd learned that there was a difference between teaching and demanding comprehension.
Somehow, Pretoria had managed to do both in a single conversation.
"You make very cogent arguments. And effectively, I might add," Victoria said. "Very well. I trust you to do right by our students. And EVE."
"I will take that as a compliment, while at the same time suggesting you try not to make everything sound like a terminal diagnosis. 'You'll do great, Pretoria! I have faith in you!' Like that, maybe?"
Victoria blinked. "I have every confidence in your proficiency. Mistress."
The grimace that twisted Pretoria's features kept twisting, taking on minor bends at the edges that might have been a smile struggling for life. "Better."
There was really only one room on the new campus that Katya had yet to make use of outside of making sure it wasn't going to fall apart the minute the contractors left: the exercise room. Now that Niamh was back however, she had every reason to be there.
One wall was lined with mirrors, the other three with padding, while the floor was strewn with mats. There were windows on one of the padded walls facing the airfield, all of them open against the muggy afternoon, but they did little to help the panting, bedraggled creature staring back from Katya's reflection.
Hair pulled back in a simple ponytail, she was clad in a sleeveless shirt and loose-fitting cotton trousers. Her chest and back had deep deltas of sweat diving from her neck, and the soft grey of her trousers was already darkening to the point she would soon look incontinent. But it was all to the good.
"You've been keeping in shape, at least," Niamh said, skin considerably less shiny, breathing steady. "Pret still the only one who will let you throw her around?"
Katya put her hands on her hips to help steady her breath, and didn't at all mind the tone in her arms it revealed. "The others knew we'd been training with you."
"Oh, flattery gets you nowhere with me, young lady. Still, I'll have to put a word in Alex's ear, at least. Can't have you lot slacking while I'm gone," Niamh glanced over at Katya. "What about Victoria, now that she's home?"
The fleeting image of grappling with Vita and pinning her to the mat sent a spider of something unnamable skittering up Katya's spine, but she quickly snatched it up and smashed it flat. "If you've thought up a way of getting her to do something she doesn't want to, I'd love to hear it."
Niamh chuckled, shaking her head. "Witchblade's changed a lot of minds right quick, but that one… well, she takes a defter touch than I've ever had. I leave that to you, boss. You ready to go again?"
Katya was, but after a few more rounds of throws and restraint escapes, only the barest sheen of dew showed on Niamh while Katya looked like she'd stumbled in through a summer squall.
She picked up a towel and threw it to Niamh, taking another for herself. She was sore and tired but satisfied, her mind already sharper for having the burrs blunted off from hitting the ground half-a-dozen times. But since they were done with the physical part, that only left the mental. "Niamh, how is Millie? Really?"
To Katya's surprise, stoic, unflappable Niamh turned away, pacing over to the window to look out over EVE and LAC through eyes as overcast as the sky. "She's having second thoughts."
"About?"
Niamh hesitated. "All of it. They're getting closer, Kat. The Germans know who we are. And they're more organised than anyone we've tangled with. I almost wonder if they did it on purpose."
Katya moved slowly over to the other window, to try to see what Niamh saw. "Lucie? Please elaborate."
"I can't figure out why they would risk coming over the border. Why snatch a French witch and take her back? They weren't even two miles into Germany when we found them. They didn't cover their tracks at all, either."
In the low clouds, patterns began to emerge. "You think they wanted you to find them?"
"It's possible."
"But they're all dead. You confirmed it," Katya said.
"Aye, I buried the bastards myself. Unless there was one we missed who was only there to report what he saw. Maybe. I don't know. I've had three centuries of practice being paranoid."
Katya said nothing, letting their thoughts play out separately to see if they reached the same end.
"Millie said it was about Elise," Niamh said. "That she can't kill people and be in love with a doctor. And… I suppose she has a point, but… she's scared. If they know, and word gets back to whoever they were working for… we aren't hard to find, are we? It's only a matter of time."
Several alarms went off in Katya's mind at once, but it was the tone Niamh had used that made the Firebird stir from her long slumber. "How do you know they were working for someone?"
The clouds above matched Niamh's eyes: grey and distant, portending rain. "If you're in the witch-torturing racket, you know what happened in France. They were scattered pockets, and they're all dead. But something about these Germans… they were so methodical about what they did to Lucie. Like they, I don't know, wanted something from it."
"They all do: a confession."
"But coming over the border into France to kidnap a single girl they already knew was a witch, then taking her back to Germany and putting a scalpel to her eyes? I won't be shocked if Josephine finds out the one who did it really was a doctor of some kind. It was too clean, they wanted her alive. Usually it's about causing pain, making her scream, punishing her for being a woman; typical misogynistic violence."
Katya swallowed hard as she felt the searing wings of the Firebird brush against the walls of her glass enclosure. "Lucie didn't scream?"
"No, she did. It's partly how we found her. But it didn't seem to be the point this time. I don't know, it's just a hunch. But I think we should stay home for a while. For Millie, and to see what happens."
When Niamh looked away from the window, the breeze that passed over them was cold for reasons that had nothing to do with sweat. "Kat, if something happens because of me, I'm sorry. I've been doing this for a long time, but always alone. There's never been… leverage…"
Whatever apprehension Niamh's supposition may have engendered, Katya's sense of responsibility raced right alongside it. But at least with it so omnipresent in her mind, she could turn it to some positive purpose. "We agreed to let you and Millie go together, Niamh. It's not just you."
"Aye, but there's a lot of blood on my hands, and I've always feared it catching up to me. But I imagined it would be me. Singular. I was too righteous… too uncompromising. I just killed my way out of problems. Now," Niamh nodded out the window. "Twenty-four innocent girls, Emma one of them. To say nothing of Alex. I hope I'm not the one who makes them a target because of her hubris."
Every family has its secrets, Katya told herself. And no-one was better at keeping them than the family itself.
Is that still true when your eyes are being carved out?
No, she couldn't think that way. The last few months of worry would crush her utterly if she allowed that kind of thinking to poison her. EVE wasn't a fortress, it was a place of learning and love. Within its walls was hope, help and healing.
And the Firebird. The Raven. The Red Knight and the Sword of Stars.
In a moment, fear transmuted into pity.
"We're all home now. Whatever happens, it happens to us together. And if anyone used to scared, isolated witches wants to come here with intent to harm…"
Arcane heat surged in Katya's breast, the roiling, molten core of her Manifest swelling closer to the surface. Deep within her, fire burned white hot, bright enough that, for a moment, she shared her eyes with the Firebird, and they swung out to survey her dominion. Her protectorate. Her home. Her loved ones.
"… that is hubris."
Katya took a deep breath, and the Firebird retreated once more, leaving the skin and clothing of her host bone dry.
A knowing, professional smile crept across Niamh's face when a knock came at the door. The look on the one who entered was as dark and foreboding as befit someone called the Raven.
"A courier has just arrived from Josephine. They brought a parcel."
The most well-furnished room in the entire complex was the conference room, to both impress and facilitate comfortable communication between 10 witches and whomever found themselves locked in with them. Millie had never really been sold on the expense, but given that the meeting she'd just sat down for had been called on such short notice, she could see the sense in it now.
Such cushy surroundings might go a little ways towards softening what was going to be said, but given that she might have to help say it, she wasn't sure anything could. All she knew was that Josephine had kept her word, and it was contained in a letter that Millie hadn't yet read, reinforced with 'evidence' of some kind. She hadn't asked what, she didn't need any more, but if the looks on Kat and Vickie's faces from the head of the table were any indication, it was damning and incontrovertible.
Elise sat beside Millie, ever the support she needed, never more than now. Niamh was still on the telephone with Josephine, and the meeting couldn't really begin until she was done. But the longer they waited, the more Millie thought about what she'd seen and done, and what she might be called upon to say. Though talking to Vickie had helped, something about being in a room with the entire seniority of EVE, Carice included, made everything so much bigger and heavier.
Witchscale may have been impenetrable to bullets, knives and fire, but to sights and sounds, it was as porous as cheese cloth. She didn't even notice her hand was shaking until Elise closed hers atop it.
"You are strong, ma chérie, you can do this. I am here with you."
More than anything, Millie wanted to believe it. She'd only hinted to Elise what had happened, and so couldn't be blamed for her optimism. "Thank you, my love. I will need it."
To the credit of the others who hadn't been privy to any of the details, they had refrained from asking what was so important that it had brought to a screeching halt the busiest time in EVE's history. They could see it plain on Millie's face, and the fact her knuckles were whiter than they would have been beneath her witchscale, while Sveta was trying very hard to look at nothing but the backs of her hands. Millie tried to think an apology loud enough for Sveta to hear, since she was unable to keep the reasons they were sitting here from percolating to the top of her mind. It was up to Sveta to filter it, as Millie was helpless against what she had allowed to claw its way into her skull and ravage her thoughts.
Carice, the only other witch with a psychic Manifest, was equally distant, the firefall of her hair wafting and blowing between the two electric fans working overtime to do their best about the close air of a room with nine people in it in July when all the windows were closed against eavesdropping.
Then the tenth walked in.
"We're going to kill Adolf Hitler, and if you try to stop me I'll cut your feckin' head off," Niamh pronounced, and hurled a thick binder onto the table. Every pair of eyes save two snapped to it like it was a live grenade.
"Who's Adolf Hitler?" Pretoria asked.
"The shiteheel responsible for what's in that. And in here." Niamh touched Millie's temple, and it took all she had not to jerk away. "Our last trip, we saved a French witch called Lucie. She'd been kidnapped by Germans and taken into Germany. We couldn't figure out why. Now we know."
No-one made a move to touch the binder at the centre of the table. It was bound in black, with well-worn edges, and thicker than any dictionary. The sheafs of paper within were identical and in perfect nick, the very image of German precision and efficiency.
"It's all in German, I presume?" Within Vickie's piercing blue eyes, the Raven flitted between the shadows.
"It is. I won't make you open it, I'll tell you what's in there: medical records. The off-the-books, underground, back-alley kind. The kind that are kept by someone stupid enough to write down what happens when you carve open a witch to see how she works while I'm still alive."
Witchscale bloomed to life, encompassing Millie and Elise both completely. Elise looked down at her hand in wonder while Millie looked at nothing at all.
