Cold iron chains trailed up my arms from thick wrist bindings and over my shoulder to connect to a lock dangling against my back. Similar restraints hugged my ankles, their chains climbing up my legs to the same lock. The footsteps of me and my captor reverberated off the stone walls of the underground hallway, along with the clicking of chains.
They gently gripped the crook of my elbow to lead me through a doorway, warning me about the ledge since a sack blacked out my vision. A bleeding and swollen lip wouldn’t let the taste of blood leave my mouth. I fidgeted with my tattered clothes, unable to remember if they were always this uncomfortable and prickly or if I’d gotten used to luxury.
The hand left to unlock and open a slab of iron masquerading as a door. “Move it, witch.”
The cold voice belonged to Faraya, who forgot her gentle touch and yanked me in after her. A chair scraped against the stone, and she pushed me down onto it. The hard seat was made of a solid wood block and had legs that didn’t balance right on the rough floor.
I whined at the rough treatment and shifted to get the chain out from under me, hunching over the table to stop the lock from digging into my back.
The sack was ripped away, leaving me squinting into the bright mage light. Facing me over the table was the younger alchemist, or instead witch, from the cavern. Faraya placed a pencil and paper between us, retreating to lean against the wall.
…
Earlier
Jeremy reiterated to Janette that he only needed my services as a scribe, which eventually got him permission to take me away. He led me out across the front garden to the inner gate and turned towards the bastion.
There were no carpets or flower-filled vases to decorate the plain stone and wood interior. Every surface was made to take the brunt of the horseplay the knights on break were partaking in. Their boisterous talks were a surprising contrast to their stalwart appearance when standing guard.
I knew how relaxed and personable they could be and didn’t expert them to keep up the facade around friends. However, the ruckus in the canteen we walked past begged me to reconsider them as a whole.
We descended past a knight with the blank look I was more used to, and now all I wanted to do was break it. Jeremy motioned for another guarding a door to input the mana code for it, and I wondered if not being able to do it himself was annoying.
I didn’t know for sure, but I suspected this would be where the stairs leading up from the tunnel near the inner wall ended up. The stone blocks were harbouring larger masses of moss and fungi the deeper we went due to the damp air. Dormant enchantment fields let us advance uninterrupted through iron gates and into a hallway with far too much it for my senses to pierce.
We passed doors made of the stuff and into a regular office, if you ignored the gloomy atmosphere and lack of windows. When the door closed, my senses were blocked from everything outside. Faraya worked behind one of a pair of desks in the light of a faint mage orb. I couldn’t understand how she could accomplish anything in the suffocating room since it was getting hard to breathe.
“People aren’t going to ask why I’m down here?” I asked.
“Eh, people don’t like asking about unpleasant things,” Jeremy said. “Which is mostly what takes place down here, and we can always say you’re an alchemist.”
Having used that excuse myself, I couldn’t disagree with him.
“Our uncooperative guest tore up the new translator's attempt and keeps pointing at yours,” Faraya said, standing to hand me the paper with an attempt at witch’s scrawl on it. “Do you know why?”
“Yes,” I said, trying to read through their work and spending ages examining each symbol to understand what they were trying to say. “She can probably tell mine was written by a witch? This is awful.”
“They look the same to me,” Faraya mumbled and took back the paper. “Mind writing for us instead?”
I sat in the plush desk chair, the only reason anyone could withstand spending any amount of time down here, and started writing.
Faraya watched over my shoulder and took the paper when I was done legibly writing out the question for a name and location. She exited the iron box and went to a room further down the hallway. A lock clicked, and metal hinges creaked, opening a door that crashed shut seconds later.
Jeremy leaned against the wall, and I kicked out my feet as Faraya’s muffled shouts drifted over to us.
“Janette doesn’t seem that mad at you anymore,” I offered for conversation.
He rolled his eyes and put a finger to his lips, attempting to make sense of the shouting and the pauses where Faraya waited for the witch to speak. I picked up some paper scattered on the desk to read through while we waited, but Jeremy took it out of my grasp.
“Better for you know to see these,” he said.
Faraya came back exasperated, slamming the door shut behind her. “She’s not talking. I still think she understands us, and a few well-placed fists can get her talking. Unless we want to try sticking Valeria in the room?”
“Absolutely not,” Jeremy said. “We gain nothing from letting her know we have someone like Valeria.”
“I’d go in with her,” Faraya argued. “The witch is in chains. I don’t think she’s a threat.”
“It’s not the physical threat I’m anticipating. Information is king, and if it leaves that room, there will be consequences.”
“What if we also put me in chains?” I asked. “Pretend I’m another witch you captured?”
Their faces scrunched up, and mouths opened to tell me how dumb that idea was. But they looked at each other, silently communicating with tilts of their heads and raised eyebrows. Slowly, their expressions relaxed.
“I don’t hate it,” Faraya finally said and scrutinised me. “Except she looks like she came from a tea party.”
She approached and towered over me, lifting my hair. Without a Janette around to hide behind, and this not being a stranger, I let her. “We get her a change of clothes, chain her up, add in some dirt…could work.”
Jeremy left the room while I changed into a frayed brown sweater and pants that hung off me. Faraya grunted while fastening the drawstrings to get them tight enough, and I rolled up the sleeves so my hands could poke out. She went to the corner of the room to scoop up some black gunk that had been gathering there, and I shrank away while she smeared it over my face.
“Sorry about this,” she said without much pity.
“It’s fine, I’m not exactly new to—argh.”
Her fist jabbed out into my open mouth. I doubled over in my seat, covering my mouth and tasting blood. It trickled through my fingers to drip down my clothes.
“Why?” I mumbled, licking where my teeth had pierced the skin.
“If we’re going to do this, we might as well make it believable.”
I childishly mocked her voice in my head and let go of the urge to launch her into the wall.
Jeremy came in with iron chains dangling in his arms to find me pouting and prodding at my swollen lip. “This is the smallest size—why is she bleeding?”
I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. “I bit my tongue.”
He didn’t believe me for a moment. “If Janette asks. This never happened.”
“I don’t see why you’re so afraid of her,” Faraya said, pulling me up and securing the chains around my limbs.
“You didn’t grow up around her,” Jeremy said, not offering us any more on the matter.
…
The woman across from me was at least a few years older than I was. She wore the same unremarkable brown clothes and dull chains, though they fit her larger frame better. My hair probably looked as tangled up as her faded blonde curls, and I scowled at the lack of grime on her face.
Faraya had gone too far with her attempt at making me look like a prisoner.
She snarled at us, her language making it seem like she was about to spit on me between her hissing.
“Ask what her name is,” Faraya requested of me with all the scorn she could muster when the vitriol dripping from the woman’s mouth stopped.
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“No,” I said with partially fake contempt.
If she was surprised by my impromptu act of defiance, she didn’t show it. However, I did regret it when she walked up to push and rub my face not-so-gently into the table.
“Okay. Okay!”
The witch watched me with curiosity as I wrote out the question and twisted the paper for her to read. “Ulia.”
She had to repeat it for me to confirm she wasn’t scoffing.
“What’s the name of her mentor?”
I wrote it out but Ulia violently shook her head and pointed at me, hissing in her strange language. I shook my head back and pointed to my ears, offering her the pencil.
‘Which coven are you from, Betrayer? Region? Name? Why do you not speak *****?’
Faraya nodded in approval of me answering the questions despite not knowing what she asked. I wrote down that I was from the north and said my name was Patela. As for not being able to speak her language, I told the truth that my mentor had never taught me.
That perplexed her, and she furiously scratched out questions as to why that was and how it was possible since every witch spoke it. Ulia also wanted to know who my mentor was, but I denied her the same way she had me.
‘Where are you from?’
Ulia turned her nose up at that question and flung the page back at me. I glanced back at Faraya and hunched further over my writing.
‘They let me do alchemy sometimes. Do you have a recipe that could help us escape?’
She read through my new question and looked into my eyes, considering my ask. Ulia put pencil to paper. I had to stop her halfway and request that it be simple since I didn’t understand the symbols she was using.
That earned me a scoff.
It took up a whole page of small writing to fit it all. She held it up to me for enough time to read through it, then tore it up and stuffed the strips into her mouth. Faraya dashed forward to stop her, grabbing her cheeks and shaking her head.
It worked for some of the pieces that fell to the floor, but most were lost to her digestive tract. I repeated the recipe to myself a few times to make sure I remembered, wanting to avoid writing it out again in front of Ulia. The problem was that nothing in the recipe suggested creating something explosive, so I was sure she’d given me the alchemical way of making something like peanut brittle.
“What did she say?” Faraya demanded, gripping my hair as lightly as she could while making it look real. “Was that the recipe? Write it out!”
Her demand sounded genuine, but I shook my head in her grasp. We locked eyes, and I pleaded to let me play this out longer, hoping to reassure her that I would remember everything of value.
She let go and pressed a finger into the paper. “Ask her why she was here. Who paid for her services.”
Ulia viewed me with less hostility and didn’t snatch the pencil when I offered it.
‘I go where the Mother tells me. We are not for sale. The ***** only follow righteous causes.’
‘What cause is that? Where are you from?’
‘Liberation from the *****.’
Despite her warming up to me for not revealing the fake recipe, she shook her head and didn’t answer the last question. Faraya glowered from over in the corner of the room, but if the witch she worked with was anything like my mother, then it wasn’t scary at all.
I diverted from the interrogation-type question to pretending like I was disobeying Faraya and asking more personal questions to establish what Jeremy called rapport. These mundane questions got me incredulous stares and short, hesitant answers.
Faraya put on a show of angrily shouting in my face, spittle flying everywhere, about the contents of my writing. Then placed the sack over my head and pulled me outside. I welcomed it, taking deep breaths in the fresh, mana-rich air.
I hadn’t caught the gradual decrease of the mana in the room. There was still too much iron around the prison for it to be close to the outdoors, but it was better to be outside the enclosed cell.
“You okay under there?” Faraya asked. “You’re panting like an overworked dog.”
“Mhm.”
I ignored her offered hand at the doorway, stepped over the ledge, walked past Jeremy and dropped into the desk chair before taking off the sack.
“So?” Jeremy asked, looking between us.
“She got the recipe.”
“I got a recipe,” I clarified. “I don’t think it’s what we want.”
“I was surprised she gave it up so easily, so I suppose that’s expected,” Faraya said. “But she played the role of captured witch beautifully. Do this a few more times, and we might get the real one.”
It was almost as if I’d had some practice at being a captive. “Only if you don’t hit me every time. And be prepared with some attractive bribes for every recipe you want written down. Extra for translations.”
“Do you know where she learnt this behaviour from?” Jeremy asked, ignoring my demands.
I lifted my arms and rattled the chains still hanging off my limbs like unsightly jewellery until Jeremy stopped talking badly of me and started freeing me. Faraya wet a handkerchief to dab at the grime on my face while Jeremy failed to brush my hair.
Because of the decent treatment, despite Faraya’s actions causing it, I wrote out the recipe without insisting on the keys to the palace.
…
Faraya wanted to get back to interrogating the other prisoners brought in with the witch, including Pennie and Oleza. That couldn’t happen while I was there because I wasn’t supposed to be seen by the knights meant to help her.
I exited the bastion with Jeremy, adjusting my dress’s bow again and giving up, leaving it undone and flowing in the wind. “Did you speak with Talia yet?”
“I’ve been busy, but I’ll get to it.”
“What about the lessons on lock picking?”
He side-eyed me while we skipped the queue to get through the inner gate. “You were serious about that? Why?”
I massaged my still-swollen lip since Faraya didn’t know the spell, and I’d forgotten the incomprehensible formula Annalise had given me. “Do you think I should go to Morris…or Janette for healing?”
Jeremey rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything when I followed him up to his office.
“Is Bresden on duty today?” he asked the knight outside his door.
She checked her pocket watch before answering. “No, sir, but I saw him at training this morning. He’s probably downstairs at the staff canteen, fleecing someone out of their roe.”
“Could you please get him for me? He doesn’t need to change into uniform for this.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who’s he?” I asked, sitting at his desk and playing with the leaves of his new plant.
“Someone who’s going to occupy you while I get some work done,” Jeremy said, sighing as he slouched into his chair. “My counterparts in the other duchies are on me for updates on how Drasda ‘almost fell.’ Dukes are offering troops to indefinitely occupy our streets so the violence doesn’t bleed over to them. And the people are on the verge of calling for someone’s head.”
“Shouldn’t you also be in that meeting going on then?”
He flapped a hand at me. “Political theatre, all the real information they have came from you, which I passed onto them. Thank you for that, by the way. I’m told by people smarter than me that the cavern wouldn’t have collapsed, but I wouldn’t want to put that to the test.”
I shrugged. “I live here too now.”
“You don’t find yourself thinking about returning to live among the witches? I'm sorry, but out of professional curiosity, I have to ask.”
It was a fair question, and I didn’t care that he was asking it. “I haven’t been seen as a witch for…seven years now? They can’t sense mana, but I'm sure they’d figure it out and push me out if I tried to join.”
Jeremy raised his eyebrows, hands steepled, waiting for me to say the specific words he wanted to hear.
“Which I don’t want to do,” I said slowly. “I like it here more and more every day.”
“That’s good to hear.”
There was a thump at the door that was nothing like the polite knock Jeremy usually got. Before he could let the other person know they could come in, the door swung open. A burly man entered wearing a white vest that fit snuggly onto his physique. Black and grey curls sprouted from his tanned chest to partly cover a faded mark above his heart.
“Yes, boss?”
“Ah, Bresden, this is Valeria. I owe her a few favours, and since you owe me, I was hoping you could help.”
Bresden took his hands out of the baggy pants draped over his boots to tap his fist to mine. “She’s a bit young and”—he placed a flat palm atop my head to show that I only came up to his ribs—“to be bullying you for loan payments.”
Jeremy sighed dramatically. “You’d think…Consider her a part of your contract exceptions.”
“What’s a loan?” I asked, but Jeremy shooed us out of the room and forbade Bresden from talking more about it.
I waited for him to lead us somewhere, but he made a comment about me being the boss. So, I started walking to the same secluded area of the palace Jeremy had taken me to.
“What kind of favours are you calling in that he’s waving my contract?”
“He was complaining about money, so I gave him some of mine. What contract?”
Bresden chuckled. “Sweat of you, my kid guards their roe like a crazed dragon. I used to run around with another group in my youth. I was the best burglar in the duchy since I worked out how to break through the old enchantments.”
“Grew a bit too much and stopped being able to squeeze through windows, had a kid, and decided to go legal. Thought the watch would be a good option since they’re just a lawful gang, but got caught with my hands in the armoury. These people let me join up as long as I only used my talents for them.”
“Like teaching me how to get through a lock?”
“Really?” Bresden asked skeptically. “Why would you need to know how to do that?”
We made it to the same room with covered furniture Jeremy and I had used, with the window still open. “Seems like a useful skill to know?”
That was a good enough excuse because he shrugged and made the steel rings on his fingers uncoil. They sprang up, forming the stick-like lock picks I’d used at Clem’s.
“We should have stayed at the tower office. If I could teach you to get through one of those locks, then you’d get through anything. But, these will do.”
He closed the door and turned the lock, kneeling next to the handle. “The first thing you need to understand is what a key is trying to accomplish with any given lock. Most have built-in protections to avoid tampering, yet they can’t go too far with such a small space. Well, maybe that’s the second thing. First is to never, and I mean it, never try to get through an enchanted door.”
I knelt beside him and nodded with no intention of listening to his first rule.