Blood Witch (2 page)

"Six turns?" Alaysha still couldn't believe
it.

"Yes. But fevered for only two. You've been
sleeping comfortably for the last few hours."

Alaysha wasn't sure if that was a blessing or
not. "Were there any deaths?" She wasn't sure she wanted the
answer, but needed to ask.

The wife grinned and looked incredibly beautiful
in that moment. She was a willowy thing; what Alaysha had presumed
as frailty before, now proved to be nothing more than slender
height. "Not one," the woman said. "It's almost as though you
weren't here."

Her face fell when she realized what she'd said,
and she stammered, trying to retract what she'd said. "I mean
–"

Alaysha had to interrupt her. "It's all right. I
know what you mean."

She tried to roll onto her side; her bum felt as
though it was on fire. "It's not as though the village is exactly
safe when its witch is burning alive."

She winced when a pain shot up her stomach, and
she fell back onto her back, defeated.

The woman noticed and touched Alaysha's forehead
lightly. "It's only the pain of wasting; you haven't used those
muscles for so long, they are angry at being called to
service."

"It feels like the last service they were called
to nearly rent me in two."

Yuri's wife licked her lips in thought. "It very
nearly did." Then she paused, thinking. "To be honest, I was
worried at first."

Alaysha looked up at her. "Yes?"

The woman nodded. "Yes, but when I watched you
very closely, I noticed any sweat you released quickly got
evaporated again – as though you were pulling it back in. You
didn't even make water."

"Strange," Alaysha murmured, not thinking it so
at all.

"Strange, yes, but I think it is this that saved
us in the end." The wife lifted a wooden bucket with some triumph.
"I kept it next to your bed."

"A bucket?"

"This and a few others, filled with water. We
had to refill them dozens of times on the first days. My brother
and I, anyway. It took too many trips for just one of us to keep
up."

Alaysha could imagine.

"It was a dozen buckets at first, all lined up
next to the bed. Then half. Then two and one. The same one has been
here, full, for a few hours now."

"I'm surprised you dared stay."

"Yuri sent me away during the first day of your
fever. Gael and I merely lugged water."

Alaysha tried not to show surprise. "My father?
My father stayed with me?" She tried to make it sound uninterested;
she knew the connection of their blood would have made him the only
one able to withstand her fever and its need for fluid, but knowing
he'd been by her bedside during the worst gave her a strange
feeling in her chest. She tried not to read anymore into it than a
man safeguarding one of his finest tools, but she wanted to believe
it was more.

"You said you and Gael lugged water?"

"My brother."

"And Yuri sent you away?"

The wife nodded. "He said you are too
dangerous."

"I imagine I was."

Alaysha didn't enjoy the feeling, but she knew
it to be true. Still, she wanted to stress that that danger from
her was in the past tense and there was no more to fear from her.
Not if she could help it.

"What of Aedus? Has she returned?" It was a
jolt, remembering the girl she had worked so hard to save from the
hands of her own brother who was willing to sacrifice her and any
others to get control of Sarum. Knowing that same girl had gone off
to ultimate danger again anyway.

The woman turned away and made a great show of
arranging the bucket next to Alaysha's bed without spilling any
water.

Alaysha had to press again. "Aedus? She should
have returned by now."

"They returned," the woman hedged.

They. Alaysha's stomach churned thinking about
the name she didn't want to mention. Yenic. She thought of her
dream and felt her face burn. She tried to tell herself it was the
intimacy of the vision that made her blush, not the shame of
feeling used by the youth she trusted and came to care so deeply
for. No. That last was not the reason for the flush of
embarrassment. It couldn't be. She'd been trained too well by her
father to care about anyone or to care about what anyone thought of
her. Yenic might well be a traitor to her if her father was right,
but she'd wait and watch, and decide for herself. She'd use that
tool her father had best given her: her stoic ability to do her
duty without thinking or feeling.

Still, she had to work at sounding casual when
she spoke, hard as it was to do so with the memory of Yenic's
honeyed gaze lingering at the edge of her thoughts.

"So they are here in Sarum."

"No. They returned empty-handed. Yuri sent them
back out this morning."

Empty-handed. That meant no Edulph. It was the
reason they left – to capture the man who'd put the entire city at
risk. The man who cut off Aedus's finger in order to bully Alaysha
into agreeing to kill everyone within Sarum's walls unless his
people were let free. Aedus's own brother.

"I'm sure Yuri was pleased enough to send Yenic
back out to search for him."

Alaysha noted the strange way the young wife
looked at her. Obviously the sour tone had escaped through her
voice after all. "My father doesn't trust Yenic." She tried in way
of explanation, but the girl's smokey brow just lifted in casual
disbelief.

"Your father trusts no one and does what is best
for Sarum." The young wife argued. "The two did not return with
Edulph's head as they were ordered. They returned instead with a
woman."

Alaysha remembered Yuri's 'orders' had been
countered by Yenic when they argued about bringing this other woman
to Sarum, so she knew who the woman was that the young wife spoke
of without needing to ask. Yenic's mother.

Edulph himself had been lucky enough to escape
Yuri's wrath when Aedus painted her brother with dreamer's worm,
sending him mad with hallucinations out into the forests. Even as
that small battle had been won, another, larger one, loomed heavy
on the horizon, one that involved both Edulph and Yenic's
mother.

There would be war if Yuri was right. The war of
men trying to gain control of the elements and thus of more than a
mere city. He had told her he'd wanted to avoid that, using her
throughout her life to unwittingly eliminate that concern by
killing all of the other temptresses: those of fire and earth and
air; in effect, leaving him the sole owner of the one witch who had
power over water.

But not to philanthropic desires. Oh no. Not
Yuri Conqueror of Hordes. He had other motives. Simple. Honest.
Greedy motives.

What did it matter that he couldn't control fire
or air or earth when he could manipulate the one person who could
drain the fluid from any living thing? He'd been content with that
victory, thinking the others were gone, until he discovered he'd
not eliminated them, merely assassinated the matrons. Two younger
ones lived still, filled with the passed down energy that enabled
them to control the wind and flame. One was Yenic's mother. The
other was lost to them: a babe powerful enough to harness the wind
but lacking control. A witch like Alaysha, powerful but ignorant
and needing of teaching.

Except Yuri wasn't the only one to know about
the witches. Now Edulph knew. And he was out there hunting for that
youngest while a woman Yuri couldn't control, a woman full grown to
her power, resided within his city walls. She could imagine how
fretful her father would be at that. She almost smiled until she
recalled that Yuri had reluctantly agreed to let Yenic bring his
mother to Sarum under pretense of teaching Alaysha to control her
power. She wanted that desperately even if the teacher was the
woman Yenic protected despite his letting her believe differently.
Yenic's mother: the witch of flame. A woman powerful enough to
bring lightening to a man's skin. She felt a sudden panic thinking
about that kind of control.

"She hasn't been to see me, has she?" Surely her
father wouldn't allow another powerful woman to see his own witch
cut down so and helpless. "Yuri hasn't let her in here, has
he?"

The wife poked at the fire absently. "Yuri has
not been here since she arrived."

The wife smoothed her linen dress down against
her hips and untied then retied the laces as though to unknot some
problem bothering her. Then in a moment, she took a breath and
strode to the fireplace.

"So she hasn't seen me?"

"She has been with Yuri."

"Yes. And Yuri has not come, so she has not
come." Why wouldn't the woman just say so? Why did Alaysha have to
work to get such simple information? It was wearying.

"Saxa?" she said, running through her memory to
find the name. "Saxa is it?" She waited for the woman to nod.
"Saxa, tell me no one but you and my father have seen me like
this."

"Gael."

"Gael?"

"Gael has seen you. He and I and Yuri. Theron
the shaman. No more."

That was good. Alaysha wasn't sure why, but she
couldn't stand the thought that the woman who controlled Yenic –
who ultimately owned him – would see her helpless. She sighed in
relief, and only when her own doubts were gone did she notice Saxa
hadn't stopped poking at the fire.

"You're afraid," she said, realizing it.

Saxa turned to her. "She's beautiful."

Alaysha looked Saxa over, took in the willowy
frame, the long plait of mist colored hair, the eyes the color of a
sword edge, and tried to imagine any woman more beautiful. She
found she couldn't.

"You have nothing to fear from another
woman."

Saxa chortled. "I didn't fear the violence done
to me by my father. I did not fear the birth bed." She dropped the
poker. "I do not fear. I accept."

If it was acceptance Alaysha saw in the woman's
eyes, then Alaysha didn't understand fear at all. "What is there to
accept, Saxa? You're wife to the heir. He has named only one."

Alaysha couldn't say why she was even talking
about this. What did she care who Yuri bedded or how they felt
about it? She cared only that she get better. Learned to harness
her power. She couldn't afford to care about any more people.
Caring about people got them in trouble. Caring for others came at
a cost she didn't want to pay.

Saxa seemed to understand. She smoothed the
ruddy madder color of her homespun linen shift again then squared
her shoulders.

"Yuri will want to know you're awake. I'll send
Gael to him. Would you like some broth?"

Alaysha thought about it. She expected a
gurgling in her belly that would warn her of hunger, but she felt
nothing. Still. She must eat to gain strength. She couldn't afford
to be caught here weakened.

"I'll have broth," she told Saxa. "And a leg of
whatever meat you have. And… ale," she said.

Saxa grinned. "You'll have broth." She turned on
her heel and went to the door where she shouted out into the yard.
Moments later Alaysha saw a blonde head bow beneath the doorframe
and straighten into a large man with biceps the size of a lamb's
haunch.

"This is Gael," Saxa said.

Gael had to be at least as many hands high as
Barruch. He wore his hair plaited, but most of that had come loose
and stuck out in sprigs; the stubble on his jaw proved he hadn't
pulled a blade over it in several days.

Even still, he was the most beautiful man
Alaysha had ever seen.

She tried and failed to sit up, but at least she
managed to keep the pain of doing so from stealing her face.

Gael offered a half smile that surprised her
until he spoke; she could easily recognize the disdain in his tone.
"Does it hurt, Witch?"

Alaysha thought she could happily psyche the
water from him in that instant.

Saxa interrupted. "Gael, Yuri will want to know
she's awake."

"Of course he will." Gael didn't move, merely
raked his gaze over Alaysha's form as she worked to pull herself
up. The grin on his face moved only slightly as she floundered
against the pillows.

"Gael?" Saxa put her hand on his arm. "Go."

When he left, she turned to Alaysha. "I see I
must ask forgiveness for my brother. He wasn't overly pleased to be
called to the service of water lugging."

Alaysha thought it was probably more than that,
but that Saxa was being kind. Alaysha found she couldn't meet the
woman's eyes. She mumbled instead to the fur that covered the bed
and that had crept up, leaving her feet bare. "No need. I'm used to
it." She eased herself back finally, giving up on the struggle to
sit upright.

"It's too soon," Saxa said, seeing her defeat.
"You're not strong enough to sit. After some broth maybe."

"And a leg of meat."

Saxa's hands went to the fur and pulled it over
Alaysha's toes. "Broth. No more until I can be sure you won't pull
out the threading."

"I haven't vomited since I was a babe," Alaysha
said.

"Nor worn shoes, it seems." Saxa strode to the
fireplace and reached for the ladle hanging on a peg. "Your feet
are calloused and filthy. I had a chore to clean the toenails."

"I prefer to be barefoot." She refused to admit
the times she'd stubbed her toes on stray roots or jammed a sharp
stone into her heel.

"So I see." Saxa dipped the ladle into the pot
hanging over the lowest part of the fire, then emptied it into a
wooden bowl. She tested it by raising the bowl to the edge of her
mouth. With a nod of satisfaction, she carried it back to the bed,
a wooden spoon in her other hand.

"It's not too hot," she said.

"What is it?"

"Lamb. Some wild carrots. A threshing of black
rice. My own mix of herbs. Some honey." She peered down at Alaysha
with what looked like mischief in her smoky eyes. "But you get only
the broth." She put one hand behind Alaysha's neck and eased her
head forward enough to tilt the spoonful of soup in.