Winter Witch (19 page)

“Don’t say that.”

“You know it’s what they would do.”

In all the time she had been searching for Liv, Ellasif hadn’t truly faced the fact that she could never take the girl home. The death of Red Ochme changed nothing. Hers was not a lone voice calling for Liv’s death. All of the villagers feared and hated witchcraft—as did Ellasif, if she was honest with herself. She made an exception for her sister because she loved her. None of the others at White Rook would ever do so.

“We can go south,” said Ellasif. “We can live in Korvosa or Magnimar or any city you choose. They have summer there, all the seasons. You’ll be free of this eternal winter.”

“But this is where I’m free,” said Liv. “Don’t you understand? Just as Red Ochme chose you as her successor, Mareshka wants to teach me everything she knows. I can be like her, not just a weird village girl who frightens the neighbors because she knows someone is going to have twins. Here, the monsters don’t come to capture me. They bow when I walk past. They treat me like a princess.”

“That’s good,” said Ellasif, devising a new plan. “We can use that to get out of here. It’s better if we don’t have to fight everyone on the way out.”

“You aren’t listening to me,” said Liv.

“That’s because you aren’t thinking clearly right now. I promise, once we get away from here, we’ll talk about it more. For now, though, you need to trust me.”

“Why can’t you be the one to trust me?”

Ellasif felt her temper rising. “Because you’re probably under some sort of enchantment,” she said. “We can deal with that later, but right now, you need to let me rescue you.”

“Is that so?” asked Liv, her own cheeks flushing to match Ellasif’s. “I’m the one who wants to stay. Maybe you’re the one who needs rescuing.”

Olenka and Jadrek might think that was exactly what they were doing, but really they were only obeying the orders of the White Rook elders, who wanted to prevent Ellasif from returning with her sister. But then there was Declan. She knew as soon as she heard his voice in Szigo’s grove that he had come to rescue her.

She was still not certain how she felt about that. Her first reaction was indignation. She was not Liv, a frail young woman who needed rescuing. And yet she felt a certain thrill that someone considered her worth saving for herself, not simply because the elders commanded it.

“Don’t be insulting,” said Ellasif, but she could not help wondering where Declan was now, and whether he truly was coming to save her.

Chapter Sixteen

The Bone Mill

Outside the walls of Whitethrone, the wind slipped a knife through the gap in Declan’s sealskin cloak and slashed his shivering arms. He had borrowed the garment from one of the astronomer’s “other” servants, too grateful to point out that he was not Majeed Nores’ servant but his apprentice, a position for which he had paid handsomely and about which he was having the profoundest of second thoughts. How to deal with Majeed—who seemed perfectly content to have been abducted to Whitethrone and the most spectacular observatory he had ever seen—was a question Declan would answer after he had found Silvana.

Or her corpse.

He had to fight the urge not to seek out Ellasif first, but he had no idea where to begin looking for her. At least in the case of Silvana, the first place to look was not far from Majeed’s new home. Declan tugged the cloak tight as he walked onto the windswept plaza. There he paused, seeing that Jadrek and Olenka lingered behind, hesitating at the edge of the compound. They had followed him here from the observatory, but one whiff of the place had them both shaking their heads, refusing to go further. Declan could hardly blame them. The atmosphere was foul, even in the brisk winter wind.

He shivered and went on alone, muttering curses about this land that never saw a spring, much less a summer or an autumn.

The open plaza lay just to the east of the great gate. It was paved in huge, irregular gray stones mortared in white, giving the ground the appearance of a shattered plate or a vast frozen cobweb. Across the fractured lines, workers swarmed between a variety of stations, each dedicated to a different function.

Some were scaffolds, built around huge cauldrons from which clouds of steam spilled over the sides and crept with menacing purpose across the ground. The pungent smell of vinegar brought tears to Declan’s eyes, but the sweet stench of rotting flesh lying beneath it explained why this compound lay outside the city walls. Declan watched in revulsion as masked thralls drew chains on pulleys that raised boiled corpses from the soup. They dropped the gray bodies into carts, and ogres lugged them along to the next station.

There, human thralls with scarves tied firmly around their faces hooked the swollen cadavers with implements resembling fisherman’s gaffs and pulled them onto long slabs. Already rent open by the rough treatment, the cadavers were then flensed to the bone, their overcooked flesh slopped into long, open, oval troughs at the base of each slanting slab. From there, the flesh and bones took separate paths.

Teams of goblins carried the troughs on their shoulders. Declan thought they resembled the pallbearers at a southern funeral, carrying the coffin to the gravesite. Unlike true mourners, however, the goblins jabbered and poked at each other, slopping organs and half-rendered fat from the trough to leave a horrid trail of offal in their wake. They arrived with what remained of their cargo at a bank of kilns where slaves in leather masks and aprons shoveled the gore into stone trays. These they shoved into the fire, while they pulled out other trays and shook the charred remains into baskets for more goblins to carry away to yet another station. On the other side of the ovens another team collected the fully rendered fat in large clay urns. A tall man moved among them, tallying their production and directing other workers in packing the urns onto carts, which they drove back into the city.

Declan followed the bones. These the goblins brought to a different set of kilns, where men arrayed them in a single layer on trays. Once the bones were baked dry, the men scraped off any remaining detritus and tied them into neat bundles. These the goblins took to their final destination: the mills.

The structures lay upwind of the more noisome stations, and Declan was not surprised that this was where he saw the most humans involved in the operation. Most were common laborers, likely slaves or peasants of this rough land, but a few held themselves with a bearing that suggested they might be of the nobility—though what would possess one of the witches or witch-kin to work here, Declan couldn’t imagine. Perhaps there were multiple levels of aristocracy.

The buildings looked nothing like the sort of mill he remembered from Korvosa. Those back home were big, barn-like structures powered by waterwheels along the Jeggare River, some for grinding grain, others for sawing huge shipments of timber. Here, above conical buildings of bone-white stone and pine, the arctic winds howled through frames of sailcloth shaped like a gargantuan child’s pinwheel. Beneath the incessant wail of the wind, Declan heard the mechanical clatter of gears and wheels inside. It was here that Majeed Nores told him he would find a record of Silvana’s death, if she had come to the fate most common to unwelcome visitors in Whitethrone.

Declan walked among the mills, searching for someone who seemed to be in charge. A number of men carried shallow boxes in which they made notes after conferring with the workers. Those were likely the overseers, but there were so many of them that Declan suspected they themselves must report to a superior.

“Collection or appointment?” asked a man Declan had not noticed arrive beside him. His voice was muffled under his scarf, but he spoke in words Declan could understand.

“Sorry?” said Declan.

The stranger pulled the scarf down to his neck. “Are you here to collect a vial? Or are you arranging for one to be made?”

Declan realized he stood beside a mill through whose open doors he spied tables full of black felt shadow boxes. In each tiny nook rested a ceramic jar similar to the one his father wore around his neck. If these were the same as the one Nagashar Avari wore, then they surely contained the bones of the departed. Declan had found the practice distasteful when his father explained the nature of the memento, but to see them produced in such quantities was even more unsettling.

“Um, neither,” said Declan. “Inquiry, I suppose.” His mind was awhirl with possibilities. He had always known his mother was from the north, but his father had never offered specifics. Declan had assumed she was Shoanti, but his recent travels had opened his imagination to the possibility that she came from the Ulfen or Kellid people. Never had he imagined she could be one of the jadwiga.

“Yes?” asked the man. He had fair skin and high cheekbones, but he lacked the thick musculature of the stereotypical Ulfen. Here was a man bred to life in the city, not the wilds. Declan searched the man’s face for some similarity to his own, but saw none. Perhaps if he could remember his mother’s face better, but she had died when he was still just a boy.

“Silvana,” said Declan.

The man threw an exasperated gaze to the sky and let loose a puff of frosty breath. “Of which family?”

“Oh,” said Declan. “I don’t know. It would have been in the past two months or so.”

The man shook his head. “Silvana is a common enough name,” he said. “Without the family name, it would be difficult.”

“I see,” said Declan. The man turned to go, but Declan said, “What about Avari? Pernilla Avari.”

“Avari?” the man said. “I am certain there is no such family in Whitethrone.”

“No, of course not,” said Declan. “She took her husband’s name.”

“Oh,” said the man. “In that case, let me consult the ledger. When would this have been?”

Declan did the arithmetic. “About fifteen years ago.”

The overseer stared back at him, gaping.

Declan dug into his purse for a bribe, but the man frowned at him, as if insulted by the gesture. “I’m sorry,” said Declan. “She was my mother.”

The man considered that information. “And your name?”

“Declan Avari.”

Again, the man hesitated, weighing choices in his mind. At last he said, “All right, come with me. This could take a little time, but we can at least step out of this wind.”

Inside the building containing the little urns, the overseer showed Declan into a side chamber. There he fumbled with a lamp until Declan, impatient, reached over and lit it with a cantrip.

“Ah,” said the man. “Thank you, sir. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He made a little bow as he departed.

Declan noticed the change in the man’s tone. Before, the overseer had been indulging him at best, but now Declan sensed he meant to please him. If Declan were half-jadwiga himself, and the natives of Whitethrone revered witches, then he could probably use that to his advantage. Perhaps he could persuade the man to make the effort to inquire into all Silvanas.

As he waited, Declan considered his next steps. If he should turn up no evidence that Silvana had been “rendered,” as Majeed had so callously put it, he could be more or less assured that she had found employment as a servant. It could take days or weeks to find her, even if he were able to draw a decent likeness of her from memory—and his failure to conjure her face with the charcoal so far made that doubtful. It occurred to him then that he should do the same for Ellasif, and perhaps for her sister, whose image he had drawn from Ellasif’s description.

He had had the foresight to bring along his satchel. It wasn’t that he expected the servants to steal his spellbook, but he felt more comfortable having it near since he had been casting spells so much more often lately. Besides, after his magical drawing followed Ellasif’s teleportation to Whitethrone, Jadrek had thought it best for Declan to have his drawing materials close at hand.

He removed a sheet of parchment and the last nub of his charcoal from the satchel and set to work. Within a few minutes he had a decent likeness of Ellasif on the page, but he continued to add detail, smudging lines and painting contours with his fingers. He lavished pigment on the tight braids of her hair, and he redrew her mouth twice, unsatisfied until he had captured the proud triumph he had seen when she drove off Jamang’s imp.

The memory reminded him that he had not seen Skywing since the inferno at Szigo’s grove. He had hoped the little drake had arrived in Whitethrone with him, but he had not heard so much as a psychic peep from him.

Skywing?
he tried to call out with his mind.
Where are you?

He received no reply, but as he finished the drawing of Ellasif and began one of Liv, he tried again. This time he thought he picked out a distant sound. It was not even a word, just a sensation of feeling lost and wishing to rejoin family.

Skywing?

Declan felt a pang of loneliness, and couldn’t be sure whether it came from the dragon or himself. He did not miss his father, not exactly. He loved the man and their extended family of servants back at the inn, but he loved Isadora and Rose just as much, if not more. All the same, so long as he knew he could see them again one day, and help support his brother’s family with a little money now and then, he was content not to see them soon. He felt a certain fondness for the friends he had made at the Theumanexus and the University, but his life would not be so very hard if he never saw them again.

But Ellasif was another matter. He wanted to see her again, and soon. He needed to be sure she was safe, and that he did all he could to reunite her with her sister, whom he knew Ellasif loved more than anything else in the world. If he could see them happily reunited, he would know he’d done a good thing.

Yet if he were very honest with himself, he hoped it would not end there. He would like Ellasif to remain a part of his life somehow, and that couldn’t happen until he found her.

He finished the sketch of Liv and frowned at it. It was much harder to know how well he’d captured her image, since he was working from a memory of what he’d sketched from Ellasif’s description. He decided the result looked like a younger, softer version of Ellasif, perhaps a little skinny but with a shy, girlish beauty. It might be enough to evoke memories of people in Whitethrone who had seen the girl in the past year or so. He wished he understood more about the situation that had brought her here. Ellasif had been stingy with details, and Jadrek and Olenka even more elliptical in their answers when he had asked them.

It must be one hell of a story, he decided.

Skywing?
he tried again.

He heard a distant reply.
Stay there. Coming.

Smiling, Declan stood and opened the door to peer into the mill. There was no sign of the man who had promised to help him. If this was going to take much longer, perhaps he would leave and return later. He decided to wait until Skywing arrived, then to fetch Jadrek and Olenka and go off together to inquire about Ellasif and Liv.

In the meantime, he tried once more to sketch Silvana’s face from memory. He traced the outlines, but then he realized he could not remember how she wore her hair. It was long and fair as spun flax, but had it fallen loose over her shoulders, or had she tied it in the back? He left that alone and tried to give the eyes some definition. That was even worse. Disgusted with the results, he scratched out the image to start again.

Here
, sent Skywing.

Declan could feel the dragon was nearby. Shouldering his satchel and picking up his sketches, he left the waiting room and walked out of the mill. As his eyes adjusted to the daylight, a tall shadow loomed before him.

She was a woman of forty years, perhaps more. She was tall, but the shadow that had surprised him came from the head of a long staff carved to resemble the head of a bearded warrior, complete with a horned helm.

“Declan Avari,” she said.

“Yes,” he replied lamely.

Behind the woman, Skywing dove toward Declan. He veered away suddenly with a little screech.

Run
, the drake sent.

“Why?” said Declan, repeating the question mentally as he tracked Skywing’s path through the air.

The woman turned with a start, her gaze following Declan’s. She hissed when she spied Skywing, her hand straying to her hair, as if checking to ensure he hadn’t struck her with any droppings.

Silvana is gone
, sent Skywing.
Run!

Declan took a step back from the woman. “Who are you?”

“A friend,” she replied. “My name is Mareshka Zarumina, and I have long looked forward to our meeting.”