Annalise Riker

The mayor, Barick, the watch member who escorted him, and I stepped down and into the courtyard.

“She’s not dead,” I said and Barick nodded.

“We think it’s some kind of charm, like yours.”

I didn’t think that was possible. I was already wearing the latest and best iteration of the enchanted pendant, it was based on something elves could do naturally. but even they couldn’t conceal themselves from other mages that well. It shouldn’t have been possible to give someone the appearance of having mana all over their body like that.

A single source could be faked, but what she had, could not.

“I knew there were no orphans in Ulasa,” Mayor Grath said with a shake of his head.

There were so many questions and clarifications I wanted to make, but his comment drew my attention for the moment.

“You know the girl?” I asked.

“Yes, she’s been staying with the Hasting’s for the past week, my partner told me about the ‘orphan’ they took in and I tried to tell them there were no orphans in my town. They didn’t listen. I should have been more adamant on determining her background and avoided all of this mess.”

None of this made sense to me. I turned back to Barick, hoping he hadn’t brutalised a damn orphan taken in by a family related to a baron. “What happened?”

“She attacked Alisa and tried to steal that doll. It was in the chest that we found on the second floor,” Barick said. “She then attacked Daral and bit Alisa’s hand, you can see it from here.”

I looked to confirm Alisa’s empty hand was bloody then at Daral who was still with the horses, looking like he didn’t want to be in this situation. “And, why do you think she’s a witch?”

The girl—Valeria—was curled up, her body shaking. “I’m not a witch.”

Her weak voice carried across the quiet courtyard. Valeria got one foot under her and wobbled to her feet. I was already feeling sick to my stomach, I couldn’t properly rationalise everything. but I was starting to think things had gone to shit.

I noticed the angry red marks across her ankle first and the singed hem of her pants. The people on the balcony gasped as they probably saw the same gash across her temple. Half her face had bloody streaks while her front was stained with blood I hadn’t seen when she was on the ground.

Mana shifted around her for a moment and the mud fell completely off her but left the blood. I knew my apprentices had seriously messed up. And, as their captain that meant I had seriously messed up.

Witches did not use mana—not directly.

“Hey!” Barick shouted at her. “Alisa, use the doll.”

He approached Valeria as Alisa looked at me. I had no idea what that meant, but I was already shaking my head, marching after Barick before he did anything else.

“Get away from me.” Another, larger, mana fluctuation accompanied Valeria’s scream.

Barick went tumbling across the cobble, his armoured shoulder making a horrible screeching sound as he slid to a stop. A crossbow twanged and I was already throwing the shield spell I had prepared at the girl.

Valeria lifted her arm and a cobblestone leapt out of the ground to follow it. My shield had reached her in time but was unneeded. The arrow smacked into the raised stone.

My mind blacked out the next moment. The hair on the back of my neck and up my arms stood on end at the same time as a shiver travelled up my spine. Valeria was screaming and writhing on the ground.

My mind was horrified by what it came up with to match the cause of the ear-piercing shriek.

A light drew my attention and I saw an equally horrified look on Alisa as she set the doll aflame. The last piece of this annoying, shitty puzzle fell into place.

The shield that I had placed on Valeria wasn’t helping, so I dropped the spell and channelled all the mana my voice could handle and shouted. “Stop! Fucking stop!”

The flames died and Valeria fell silent. I was already walking over to check on her, mana still coursing through my throat. “She’s a mage you damn idiots. She’s a fucking mage.”

My etiquette teacher would have skinned me alive for that language in this company, but there was no other feasible way for me to express how utterly…bad the situation was. I placed two fingers on the girl's neck and felt a racing heartbeat. She was staring blankly up at the evening sky with tears falling down the side of her face.

The courtyard was deathly quiet, so I let go of the mana I had been diverting. “The next person to do anything,”—I pointed at Alisa in particular—“I will drop you.”

I took a few calming breaths to help me think. “You said she attacked you for that doll. How?”

No one answered me and I was about to lose it and start screaming before Daral spoke up. “Just like she did with Barick.”

I took another deep breath to cool my anger, at them, at myself for the decisions that let this all happen. “So…you knew the girl used mana. It sounds like you knew the item she was trying to get back was a tool to hurt her and not once did you stop to consider she was a victim in all this?”

“We couldn’t sense her, we thought she was using a charm like the witch had been,” Barick said from where he had been thrown.

“She was free casting with an ability to suppress her mana? Does that not sound like elven magic rather than a witch?” Neither her casting nor whatever was going on with her mana was elven, but my comparison still stood, a witch coaxed surrounding mana using conduits like malice, there was nothing they could do to imitate a mage's immediate control.

Barick looked appropriately ashen at the prospect. Alisa had placed the doll down, and Daral still tended to the horses.

I didn’t think she was at all elven apart from maybe a distant relation, but the mere thought of the diplomatic incident this could cause gave me a headache. The collection of elven leaders had only recently normalised relations between us as the only duchy in Werl to border their forest.

I had been expecting people to try to speak up, but not the Hasting girl who had tears in her eyes. “Val—Valeria hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s not a witch.”

“No, she’s not.” I bent down to pick up Valeria and my heart broke when I held her limp body. Her eyes were at least closed and her breathing had slowed.

I felt truly evil as I worried about how much of this event would get out to the public. There was no local paper, though it might not take long for ones in the city to pick up on an incident involving an accused witch and the duke’s daughter. The influential people up on the balcony might keep their mouths shut, but the entire watch might know by tomorrow.

Valeria’s physical injuries would be overlooked as something a healer would take a few seconds to fix. Still, the wrongful accusation might spark memories of the witch hunts after the capital massacre. I wasn’t happy about it, and other women without a duke to shield them would be furious at the prospect.

Grandmothers probably still told tales of those times.

Papa’s position wasn’t at risk as long as he controlled the entrance to Equitier, but public outrage was something to be avoided.

Laws to protect women from witch accusations had lost support after the event as they were labelled sympathisers and if they weren’t witches they had nothing to worry about. With it being almost three generations ago the raw feelings of fear and anger against witches had lessened. My generation knew about the event though only through history classes. There were no witches left in Werl, is what people had thought.

An execution of one and a wrongful accusation may cause those feelings to resurface.

“Barick.”

“Yes, captain.”

“That paper you gave me, were there other names?”

“Yes, ma’am. An entire book full, we had only got through a fourth maybe.”

It was nice of him to suddenly sound respectful.

I turned to eye the people on the balcony, the two members of the watch, one with an empty crossbow and finally the mayor. “I think it would be best to close this matter. It would be a lot of wasted resources to open a full and thorough investigation into all the names in that book. The witch is dead and a kidnapping victim is recovered. We can leave it at that, right William?”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

He nodded without any of the energetic mannerisms he’d been using all night. A lot of the balcony looked guilty, except for the Hastings who were worried as they stared at the girl in my arms.

“I’ll see to it that any rumours that suggest otherwise be squashed,” he added.

“Ian?”

A head of brown hair popped over the railing of the balcony.

“Yeah?”

“Grab my things, Daral ready Ian and I’s horses. They’re in the stable over there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Barick had slowly walked over to me. “Captain…we acted completely within the law, we had ample evidence to—”

“Barick. You do not want to start this conversation while I’m holding her,” I said and adjusted Valeria’s head so it didn’t hang off my arm. “Why does she have a head wound and scorch marks on her ankle? She looks thirteen and weighs as much as a newborn foal. That casting could hardly give the three of you that much trouble.”

“It’s not like we were trying to kill her, ma'am. None of our spells worked, we mainly know mage targeting spells and they failed, Alisa also tried to put her to sleep and nothing happened. She’d just half buried Daral and we thought we were fighting something far more dangerous than it looked.”

That explained the muddy clothes on the boy.

I wanted to fault him for everything, but from what I knew so far it seemed to be an all around messy encounter. Alisa walked close as well, looking guilty. I was glad because I would never get that scream out of my head.

She started undoing the bindings on Valeria. “They don’t work, so there's no point keeping them on.”

“Why didn’t they work if she’s a mage? We didn’t expect them to and only used them since we had nothing else, but still,” Barick said and I didn’t know the answer. From what I could tell the mana originated from her hands and completely ignored the binding meant to block the flow from her mana reserves.

Daral came into the courtyard holding the reins of Missy and Potato. I’m sure the Mayor wouldn’t have appreciated us scuffing up his nice courtyard. Lucky for him I wanted to leave as soon as possible.

Let everyone forget about the whole affair.

Ian came over with the few satchels we had unpacked and attached them to the horses. He scooped up the doll after everyone else hesitated to grab it. “Well, mount up. We're heading back to the hut.”

“It’s not a hut…” A voice mumbled near my shoulder.

“Ah…yes.” I was in the middle of reducing my weight enough to jump up gently onto Missy, so I did not respond. The tangle of mana in my hand got hastily changed as I remembered to account for Valeria’s weight.

The stirrups on the far side of Missy caught my foot before I could slide off the saddle—little miss-calculation. Valeria cooperated as I shifted her to sit in front of me and I noted the spell wasn't affecting her. Alisa and Daral pulled off the spell just as taught and without any weird adjustments needed. Barick hefted himself up while Ian talked Potato into kneeling down for him.

My senses were enough to feel Valeria’s heartbeat through my thin travelling clothes. I’d taken off and shrunk down my armour after learning about the dinner plans.

Just to test, I tried to initiate a truth spell and felt the strand of mana meant for targeting slip off her. I wouldn’t have let it fully form. Truth spells were unreliable at best since all it did was count heartbeats and a few other medical indicators meant to expose lies.

“Do you remember where you lived before the…not a hut?”

Valeria shook her head. “I’ve always lived at the cottage.”

“And the witch forced you to stay with the doll?”

She shivered against me. “I can’t get far away from it.”

“What did you do for the witch?”

We swayed with the horse's slow trot down a long street before she answered. “She was training me to be a witch, but got angry when I started using mana, I was doing all the chores and other…stuff after that.”

A witch kidnaps a baby and trains them for years. Only to find out they’re one of the one in seven people capable of retaining and using mana.

“Who taught you to free cast like that?” She tilted her head and looked up at me with amber eyes, a confused expression on her face. “What you used to clean the dirt off you and fling Barick.”

“Oh, magic? The forest taught me."

There was a classic elven folk tale about their first mage learning magic from forest creatures. No one had been cruel, or stupid enough, to try to replicate the feat in modern times when it was easier and more effective to use spells refined over decades.

Almost every child experienced spells before finding out they knew if they could use mana or not. Puberty was the only time it became clear if they could ever interact with it and by then we had already been told what to do with it if we did.

I asked more questions but she didn’t know why her mana was weird. A treant had told her she was 'porous,' though I didn't understand what that meant.

The fact there was a fully grown, and probably ancient, treant in this forest was interesting news and explained why it was so peaceful, the thing had probably slaughtered every predator ages ago. Treants were very particular about having enough herbivores to eat up plants so they could replace them.

Daral rode up alongside me as we exited the town’s gates. They had closed for the night but the officers opened them once they saw who we were. “So, I’m assuming she’s not under arrest anymore?”

“I half expected you three to not have bothered with any legal procedure.”

“We followed procedure," Alisa said. “She attacked us and stole, we subdued her with appropriate force. When we realised she could read the books without the curses bothering her we decided that since you rushed us here the matter was time-sensitive and took steps to secure the information we provided to you.”

“Is that a lot of technical jargon to say you used the doll?” I asked, already putting together the story.

“Barick did,” Alisa said, and the boy in question kept his eyes forward.

I didn’t want to ask what they did to Valeria in front of her so I turned to other matters that might make her have a little less hatred towards us.

“Why didn’t you talk to them instead of resorting to theft?” I asked the girl leaning into me.

“I…didn’t think of that. I panicked. They weren’t supposed to even know it was gone, it’s not even valuable to anyone,” she said. “Would they have given me it if I asked?”

I looked at Daral who shook his head like I was crazy for even asking. “Things would have probably played out the same way, maybe with less heightened emotions from us and no head gash for the girl. After we found out she could read their language we were fully convinced she was a witch.”

There were only a handful of people in the duchy who could fluently read it and they were almost all in Equitier. so it wasn’t the most unearned assumption.

“Well if you were listening she was being trained as one,” I said. “She is no longer under arrest and she never was.” I said that last part to the three of them, and Ian if he was listening while examining the doll. “Like I said to the mayor—who hopefully understands it's in his best interest to keep this quiet—this never happened.”

I expected Valaeria to object and I had half a dozen diplomatic lines ready to go.

They’ll receive ample punishment for what they did to you, don’t worry.

It’s in your best interest not to make this official since you technically did help a witch.

We don’t want people to even have the idea that you could be a witch.

But, she stayed quiet. It made me feel worse.

I unfolded the piece of paper and read over Papa’s name again. I held it out for Valeria to see. “This is why we're here, that’s my father’s name. Can you tell us anything about this retaliation curse? It seems it was activated because the baron ordered an execution of your captor.”

Valeria glanced over at the doll. “I promise you can have the doll back even if you don’t answer the question.”

“Have it back?” Ian said the first sentence he’d said the whole ride. “This is fascinating, traditionally spellcraft and enchanting could never accomplish this. We should take it back and study it.”

“And it shouldn’t be possible,” I said and used a recall spell to pull the doll towards me.

Valeria almost jumped off the horse to get away.

“She can’t touch it,” Alisa said.

I held out the doll at arm's length. “That makes sense I guess. Daral hold onto this please.”

“No, it’s fine,” Valeria said. My spell that was still attached to the doll faded away as I felt the air around my wrist grab onto it. I let go and the doll stayed in place, following us. The girl had her palm out as if she was physically carrying the doll floating a few yards away. I couldn’t feel the subtle use of mana at all, just that more than usual was gathering around the doll.

A trained human mage could float an acorn while free casting for a few minutes. An elf could probably replicate what she was doing for the same time, but Valeria held the doll aloft the whole way back to the tarp set up by the cottage.

The shield enchantment attached to it had kept the books haphazardly strewn about the trap safe from the earlier rain. I wanted to chastise them for leaving potentially valuable information to the elements. There were hardly any texts written by actual witches in our libraries. On second thought that was probably on purpose, but they could still help specific researchers in private.

I picked up Valeria and helped her to the ground.

Ian and I followed while the apprentices took the horses back to the stream.

Valeria emptied out the remaining stuff from the chest. Pocketed an electrum coin, stuffed the doll inside and locked it again with a key that radiated malice. She seemed to visibly relax and sat to inspect the burn on her ankle.

“Ian, help her out with that, I’ll start mending the gash.”

I wasn’t the best at healing. I knew the basics of small wounds and setting broken bones, but anything else was beyond me.

Ian started rifling through a satchel and pulled out a potion. He approached Valeria who looked at it sceptically but didn’t budge as Ian had her hold her leg out away from the tarp.

I separated a portion of mana from my reserves and pushed it down my arm and out onto my palm in a thread. I began to tie a spell how I wanted. Imagining what I needed to accomplish and how.

The spell failed. I tried again to the same result as the truth spell.

I Tried again, modifying the spell to exclude the targeting portion that made it mana-efficient.

The cut visibly closed over while Valeria scrunched up her face. What I was doing wasn’t painful since pain relief was built into the spell, but Ian might have been the cause of that.

After we both stepped away a puddle of water floated up and cleaned off the dried blood on her face and stuck in her hair. The clothes were stained until she could get to some strong soap.

I sat down on the tarp next to her. While I felt bad for the situation she had just been through, I needed to get more specific information and her extended cooperation.

“So, are you the one who hit that boy with the seed pod?”

The briefest hint of a smile flashed across her face.