Pacze Moj, page 10
Word said nothing.
Chapter XXI
The seventeenth floor was abuzz. The High Council room was full. Men’s voices filled the chamber past the chandeliered ceiling and out through the open windows in layers: nasally whispers, whines, baritone accusations, booming retorts about finances and business, health and safety, internal security, taxation, the state of the kingdom, the upkeep of roads, port levies, grain transport, the price of cod, the need to update this codex or replace that judge, the restructuring of the school system, propositions to introduce mandatory retirement for holymen or the introduction of a self-reporting pole weapon registry.
Gremius Orelius sat unlistening. His mind was on none of what was being said. Seven days and the witch still hadn’t been found. He was not satisfied. He tapped his fingers on the ebony table and waited for the Speaker-of-the-Chambers to bang his gavel and return a semblance of order to proceedings. Though he operated in the highest political sphere, Gremius was not a politician. He was a soldier. The gavel banged. The voices died.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen. Thank you. If I may, I would now like to turn our attention to the next item on this afternoon’s agenda.” He flipped through some papers and fixed his glasses. “Which is,” he peered, “the issue of—ah, yes—last week’s failed witch burning. Gremius, perhaps you would like to take it from here?”
Gremius cleared his throat. All sets of eyes narrowed on him. Ah, yes, he repeated the Speaker’s words in his head, they all blame me for the failure. And he blamed them, so all was fair. “As you know, gentlemen, searches continue, as does the perimeter. Access to and from the city is restricted,”—slow, a man coughed—“and,” Gremius continued slightly louder, “I am confident the witch will surface eventually. There aren’t many places to hide and even witches need the basic necessities: food, water. They may not die without them, but their bodies will start to break down no different from ours. As I am sure you gentlemen know. In the city she can’t hunt, she can only scavenge, but she’s one among enemies. Someone will see, someone will report.”
A Councilman spoke up: “And this perimeter, this chokehold on inter-city commerce, when will this end?”
“When the witch is caught.”
“It is a trade-off, perhaps we should consider—“
“It’s a necessity, Councilman.”
“Perhaps. And only perhaps if we know the witch is still in the city. She could very well be outside the walls by now. As the days go by, that must at least be a viable hypothetical.”
“She’s still here,” Gremius growled, “These hypotheticals are what she’s counting on. I know witches, gentlemen. I know how they think. I have caught thirty seven of them. If we scale back the searches or loosen the net, she will slip by. It’s her only chance. She knows it, I know it, you should know it. If trade suffers for two weeks, King forbid a whole month, then so be it. It’s a price we should gladly pay.”
He knew the room was against him. Witches didn’t kill or harass their homes or families, meaning: the honest ones didn’t understand the danger; the majority simply didn’t care. They cared more about silk profits and corruption and—
“With all due respect, it’s not a price we pay. It’s not a price you pay, either, Gremius. We have enough coppers to last us years. But there’s an entire class of city-dwellers whose lives depend on moving wares on a weekly, if not daily, basis. There are inherent dangers about which we can do little: price fluctuations, demand. There is also highwaymanship, which has been rising in tune with the northerner rumblings.”
Another cut in, “Just days ago, my men found a merchant’s cart, broken and looted, horses gone, not five miles from the city gates. We live in troubled times.”
What endless demagoguery, Gremius thought, listening with a smile. Politics had taught him as much. Smile always, even when you’re about to shiv someone in the spine, even when you’re about to get shived, and no matter how insincere you look or how painful it is to keep those corners of one’s mouth raised for entire minutes at a time.
“…our people eat grain, which, even if it can enter the city on time and without undue harassment,” the first Councilman was continuing, “they will not be able to afford if they can’t sell their wares. And if we limit the outgoing as well as the ingoing trade, then grain quantities will fall, demand, we may assume, will remain the same, causing the price per unit of grain to rise, and our hypothetical merchantman will not only have less coppers due to lost income but will also need to spend more coppers to buy the same amount of grain…”
Gremius wished he could rub his eyes; or, better yet, his brain. He was amazed at the ability of each Councilman to repeat the same slogans over and over and in response to whatever question was posed or issue tabled. Then, after all the talk, everyone would smile, a vague consensus would sometimes be reached and, in practice, nothing would change. The Speaker banged his gavel. “Gentlemen, gentlemen. Thank you. If I may, I would now like to turn our attention to the next item on this afternoon’s agenda: the funeral for the slain Prime Vicar Ustinov.”
“I’m glad they caught the bastard,” someone muttered.
Yes, he would need to see the King. Only the King properly knew the gravity of the situation. What the Councilmen, elected for five-year terms, failed to grasp—or, more accurately, didn’t care to grasp—was that a burden on trade for one month or three months or five was a short-term problem. Witches were long-term. There was a war going on that was far older than anyone in this room. Only the King remembered its beginning. Only Gremius had studied its history. What was the loss of one-third of one month’s textile profits in contrast? Witches posed an existential threat to humanity. No expense could be spared. No witch could be overlooked. He suddenly felt the weight of his job settle squarely on his broad shoulders. Maliphus Prefectus, he remembered, had faced crises, too.
Chapter XXII
The sausages lasted for days, water was not a problem. Esmerelda pushed onward, toward the north and swamps and Coven. She strayed from the river only to sleep. By sunlight, it was her constant companion. But all companions die, and when the first signs of human habitation came into view, creeping up from over a rolling hill as the end of trees and the semi-flats of sparse crops grown on hard, rocky land, Esmerelda followed Word’s advice and turned east. Northeners were not welcoming of strangers. She respected their sense of suspicion. She bade the river farewell, knowing that she had been lucky—it was the closest term she could find, however little she believed in it: she could have been spending the rest of her eternal life beneath its serenely mirrory surface. She took one final skin-full of water; and so long, and the river was at her back.
She skirted the rough fields, keeping out of sight. Humans, too, were neither seen nor heard, but their labours made for a new companion, and useful. Nightly excursions into the growth rewarded Esmerelda with fresh food: deep red tomatoes, thin carrot and pale yellow lettuce—less nourishing than meat, but nutrition nonetheless.
In these outlying homesteads the ground was rocky. The crops grew sparse and weak. She scrounged sometimes for half an hour before her fingertips squeezed into tomato flesh or felt carrot leaf. Perhaps it was the night: darker here than in the south. Perhaps the rocks, or else neglect. The stone cottages were never lit, the humans might have been gone. Esmerelda did not check. With every bite and swallow, she was thankful for what they might have left behind.
But as the land turned from rough to barren, even these maybe-homesteads eventually became mere piles of rubble. Fields ended. Wilderness returned. The wind lost its predictability and blew colder, there was a sickly moisture in the air. Esmerelda drank little and ate small portions of vegetables that had kept. In the evenings she looked for nuts and insects. Companionless, her sleep was more troubled even as fear of pursuit lessened. Her escape must have been noted by now, she told herself before she closed her eyes each night to keep sharp, but reason always added, whispering, that her chance of being caught was slim. Still, sometimes the wind blew hard through an oddly-shaped rock crevice and whistled a sound that sounded like the royal horn and Esmerelda felt her skin bump and bristle. She awoke once clutching at the screaming mouth of Daniel McAlister. Daniel McAlister, of course, was dead.
The closer she came to the swamps the stranger she felt. The swampy climate bred surreallity and bad dreams as much as insects, which seemingly multiplied by the step: bad insects—edible beetles giving way to mosquitoes and other stingers. Clouds of them nested above never-drying puddles of putrid water and attached themselves to her as she passed. They liked the smell of the sweat that soaked into her clothes. Her instinct was to swat at them, but that was both ineffective and too energy-consuming. She merely sweated more; more clouds came. She gave up. After a time, the stings and bites stopped. A swarm of fat black flies buzzed around her neck and in front of her face. They chased the smaller ones away, or maybe ate them.
As night fell, it became a chore to find a dry spot to sleep. Even high ground was spongy. She looked for thick trees and solid roots. Most were reptile-trunked with skinny, water-sucking spider-roots. Travel among them—their touch—brought back memories. She’d been a girl then, afraid, barefoot and in ragged clothes that stuck to her body, exposing how delicate and unprepared it was. The sound she remembered loudest was of her own breath: pulsating and violent in light, hushed in the dark. Her feet had been bloody; now, her boots were warm. Now, she had a clear destination; then, there had only been the indescribable pull, the feeling of unbelievability and wait-for-death coupled with a hope that through the extinction of one life another would begin. It was exhilarating and insanity, and dangerous: not every young witch who let herself be taken by the pull made it to the Coven, survived. Exhaustion stopped the bodies of some, the swamp itself sucked in those of others. Before, during her first flight, she’d not known any this. But as her boots now squished and squashed into the ground and mud, Esmerelda felt unease at the thought that her way took her undoubtedly over numbers of still-living, though immobilized and overgrown and covered by water and dirt and mossy things, witches who would remain like that, parts of the swamp, until forever. Maybe they could hear the thud of her footfall pass overhead. More probably, their sense of hearing had gone out a long time ago. Why was there not more help, more guidance? The answer was the core of reality: “The weak die, the strong survive—even among the Sisters,” a Coven mother had explained.
It is difficult to describe where the swamp begins. It is only possible to know once one is inside it. To a human, who seldom ventures this way at all, this feeling means retreat, backtrack. To a witch, it is being close to home—a concept that finally makes sense. One morning Esmerelda awoke in the swamp and knew she was close to the Coven. It was an aftertaste of the pull, which never truly fades away.
She came upon its entrance at dusk, unexpectedly as always. The sensation was as unassuming and unreal as it had been the first time. A sudden softness of the ground, the increased elasticity of long branches, feet sinking into bog, and the small windowless wooden shack as natural-looking in the middle of the vast, uninhabited swamp as a turtle in the sky with birds. She fell to her knees and wept.
The Coven is a huge underground ship suspended by psychokinesis just below the surface of a section of the swamp that, legend says, reaches to the very core of the planet. The core heats the water and sometimes even the surface bubbles. That much Esmerelda knew. The heat was a ready source of power, that she was taught; and she herself had done several tours of suspension duty—dreary, tiring work that requires both coordination and concentration. The shack is the Coven’s uppermost compartment, one of its few entrances and exits. On its own it doesn’t look like much. But that’s by design. Always there is a single witch on sentry duty inside. Esmerelda had done that duty, too. It was preferable to the other. She liked being alone. Now, she rapped her tired knuckles against the door of the shack and waited for a response and the comfort of friendly company.
She knew from experience that the sentry-sister would be expecting a new face. Witches left the Coven and returned, of course, but those trips were planned. An unplanned knock meant fresh blood. Moments later something stirred, the door opened, and Esmerelda smiled at the smiling face that greeted her. It was young, it was pretty, it was Veronica’s.
Esmerelda recognized her friend before her friend recognized her, which wasn’t surprising given what she must look like, she thought: dirty, tired, presumed dead. “Veronica,” she said in a hoarse voice that hadn’t spoken for weeks, not even to herself, as the young witch’s eyes narrowed in anticipated recognition. It was good to be home. Except that when the friendly eyes widened again, they disappeared the smile from Veronica’s face. Shock? Esmerelda wondered; it must be shocking to see the dead walk. But where she next expected the return of brightness, followed by a hug, warmness, she received a stinging slap to the cheek.
“You done be traitor us!” Veronica hissed.
Before Esmerelda could say a word, the hissing continued, gaining in pain and rage: “I saw ogled with own ones the paper, how could you do it to us?”
“Sister Veronica…” Esmerelda said.
“None sister! No more sister. Enemy betrayer and fiend. You are the marked now. I seen ogled the paper with my own ones!”
Again Veronica struck her. This time with a fist to the stomach. Esmerelda stumbled backward. All will and energy seemed to flow out of her body in one sweat. She lost her balance and fell onto the spongy ground. She hadn’t the strength to get up. The swamp—it was sucking her in. Veronica came forward out of the shack and raised her arms and all manner of crooked, broken branches rose from the swampland around them both and hung in the air like daggers. Esmerelda closed her eyes and concentrated, pushing against them, holding them in place, keeping them from converging on her. Fat black flies swarmed around her face and beat their wings against her closed eyelids.
For weeks the Coven had been the destination, been salvation. That evening chained to the burning spike when escape was only a lost hope, she had craved the Coven, felt its magnetism. When death rose around her as fingers of flame she felt fulfillment for having performed her duty, felt a part of the sisterhood. When dry throat and hunger belly growled and she ingested dry tomato seeds in the damp, she knew that safety was almost within reach. She drove herself on toward this shack, toward her only true family, and now here she was and there was Veronica’s jaw, her slightly yellowed teeth grinding against each other. Veronica’s power was stronger than Esmerelda remembered. And Esmerelda was tired. The branches inched closer, she knew. Was it simply a misunderstanding? Esmerelda opened her eyes and the world was darker. Night was falling, fireflylight dotted the greyness. Flies buzzed. Veronica the maid, Veronica the broken girl whom she’d helped nurse back to health, with whom she’d hunted Daniel McAlister, there was madness in her now, bloodlust against a fellow sister.
“There’s been a terrible mistake,” a human would say. “Please,” she would beg, “if only you would check to make sure.” But witches did not make these kinds of mistakes. One did not turn on a friend by mistake. Everything was pondered over and decided. Girls like Veronica neither set the agenda nor had a say in the execution, but they carried out what they were told with obedience and a precision that made misunderstandings impossible. Where was the broken girl? Gone; but she’d been gone for years now. This is the Veronica that Esmerelda knew, the one with whom she’d hunted and who she trusted. Personal bonds were fickle. All relationships were triangular. Esmerelda bound to the Coven, Veronica bound to the Coven, Esmerelda bound to Veronica. But snap one string and the whole lost its shape.
Concentrate, Esmerelda heard.
But Veronica’s teeth didn’t loosen. Her mouth hadn’t opened. Esmerelda looked around but all she saw were wobbling sticks and fireflies. There was nobody else.
Concentrate.
Veronica didn’t as much as flinch. Did she hear this voice, too? Esmerelda shut her own mouth. Maybe the voice was her own, maybe she was talking to herself. Too much time alone could do that, even to a witch.
She is stronger, but you will have your chance. You must take it and run. Concentrate.
Esmerelda’s mouth remained closed, too. She wasn’t talking to herself. What was it that Word has said: companionship is important for a man’s sanity? Voices in one’s head. The demons had taken her, the commoners would say. Insanity, a witch doctor would diagnose. Some of the girls come through the swamp suffered from it. Some temporarily, others forever. Imagine hearing voices forever. Imagine—
Now!
It was many things at once. The disappearance of the flies and the concentration on the sticks and it was Veronica coughing and waving her arms and then the sticks felt light and Esmerelda slammed them against Veronica’s body, which crumpled to the floor, screaming, “Traitor! Traitor at top, come, catch, traitor at top!” before the scream was muffled and and the flies flew down the young witch’s pulsating throat.
