Winter Witch (20 page)

“Mareshka Zarumina.” Declan recalled both Majeed’s mention of the name and Skywing’s earlier use of it in the altercation with the guards. “The wizard from Korvosa!”

The woman frowned, puzzled. “I have been to Korvosa, but my name is not known there. And I am no wizard but a witch.”

Declan must have flinched at her last word, for she lifted a hand to wave away his fears.

“You are in no danger,” she said. “Your well-being is paramount to me.”

“Thank you,” he said, fumbling to stuff the pages he had been drawing into his satchel so he could once more hold his cloak shut.

Mareshka noticed the drawings. “What are those?”

“Just sketches,” he said. “Portraits of some friends I've been seeking. Well, two of them, anyway.”

“May I?” she asked. Before he could answer, she plucked them from his hand. She nestled the staff in the crook of her elbow, and Declan realized she was completely unaffected by the bitter wind. He wished he knew a spell to protect himself from the cold. He knew such charms existed; he had simply never bothered to learn one.

“You say you are searching for these people?” Mareshka asked. She studied Ellasif’s picture with a frown of concentration, then placed it on the bottom to look at the image of Liv.

“I’m looking for the first one,” he said. “She arrived in the city only yesterday. She is searching for the second woman, her sister.”

“You have met the sister?” said Mareshka. She raised one arched eyebrow in surprise.

“No,” admitted Jadrek. “I drew that from Ellasif’s description.”

“Really?” said Mareshka. “You have a remarkable talent. The resemblance is striking.”

“You know Liv,” said Declan. His heart was pounding with sudden hope. “Do you know where to find her?”

“Indeed I do,” said Mareshka, turning to the third drawing. Her expression fell as she saw the scribbled-out image of Silvana. “What is this?”

“It was a mistake,” he said. “I was trying to draw a picture of my master’s kitchen maid.”

Mareshka managed to look down her nose at him, despite the fact that he was a few inches taller. “I see,” she said icily.

“I can look for her later,” he said. “I need to find Ellasif. Can you please tell me where to find her or her sister?’

Mareshka’s good humor had evaporated, and looking past her Declan saw the reason why. A pair of blue-skinned trolls approached. Between the brutes shuffled Jadrek and Olenka, their wrists and ankles bound by manacles and chains of ice.

“I can do better than that, Declan,” said Mareshka. “I can take you to them both.”

Chapter Seventeen

The Crooked House

Mareshka did not return to them that night, but a captain with astonishingly blue eyes arrived with a contingent of six guards to escort the sisters out of the palace. When Liv demanded to know where they were going, the jadwiga politely explained that he had orders to convey them to comfortable lodgings in the city, where they would meet tomorrow with Mareshka Zarumina. He requested with equal politeness that Ellasif surrender her sword. She did not bother weighing her chances of winning past seven armed guards in the Royal Palace of Whitethrone. After their long conversation, she knew she could not count on Liv to aid in an escape. She only hoped the captain would remain nearby, so she would have a chance to reclaim Erik’s flying blade.

Outside, Ellasif saw the courtyard of the fabulous ice palace. Its gleaming walls contained a galaxy of colorful lights, most of them dancing upon the curtain wall but others carried on batons like torches by servants of the jadwiga. The captain ushered them into a carriage drawn by four dappled gray draft horses, their shaggy fetlocks concealing their hooves. His men perched on the footman’s steps while he escorted the vehicle out of the courtyard and onto the long bridge that sloped gently down from the palace into the city of Whitethrone.

Ellasif found herself gaping through the carriage window. The sight of the lighted city from above captured her breath. At such a distance, even the most monstrous denizens appeared as tiny planets moving among a thousand stars. She wondered what Declan would make of the sight, the reverse of his frequent stargazing.

For Ellasif’s benefit, Liv named the landmarks as the carriage wheels clattered over the skulls of the Bone Road: the Floes, the four islets between the city and the palace; the Spring Palace, which Ellasif had first seen from the inside; and the market square with its surprising array of colors. Wherever they encountered foot traffic, it parted for them. Ulfen thralls and goblins knelt as they passed, and even some descendants of Baba Yaga doffed their caps and bowed toward the carriage. Ellasif saw Liv smile as she rotated her wrist in a tiny wave to some of the more elegantly attired residents.

They crossed the city core and entered the Twohill district, where the carriage climbed the winding path to the top of the first, lesser hill. Upon its crown stood the largest wooden building in all of Whitethrone, the Crooked House.

It was, Liv told Ellasif, home to the greatest woodworkers of Irrisen. While other lands might view their carpenters as mere laborers, no nonmagical craft was held in higher regard in the land of perpetual winter. In Irrisen, no felled trees could be replaced without significant effort, so the witches had to import most of their lumber. Once the commodity became precious, however, the demand grew even higher and more particular. Thus, in Whitethrone—with the notable exception of the palace itself—there was no greater sign of wealth than a house constructed entirely of wood.

The Crooked House appeared to have run amok and consumed a hundred lesser houses, adding them to itself as it sprawled over the hilltop and spilled down onto the slopes with extensions and annexes, all in different architectural styles. The one element common to every wing and nook, however, was the style known as gingerbreading. The multi-layered carvings that decorated so many of the city’s homes were a point of pride among city residences, and only the poorest shared the same design with others. Most of these were first created by the master carvers of the Crooked House.

“Why is she sending us here?” asked Ellasif.

“Mareshka is a close friend of the mistress of the Crooked House,” said Liv. She explained that she had visited the place many times, but she too was surprised they had come here. Mistress Tatyana Rekyanova had left Whitethrone weeks earlier on a journey to Magnimar, in Varisia. The master woodworker often went on such trips so that she could personally select the finest lumber to bring back to Whitethrone.

When the carriage arrived, the woodcrafters of the house welcomed the captain as if expecting their arrival. The guards led Ellasif and Liv inside and through a bewildering maze of halls and corridors until they reached a sumptuous bedroom deep within the house.

“Perhaps she thinks we’d never find our way out of such a labyrinth,” Ellasif mused. Liv stuck out her tongue, and the expression reminded Ellasif how much her sister was still a child. Until the treacherous day at White Rook, she had lived a sheltered life, without benefit of the discipline Ellasif had gained from her warrior’s training.

At last they were left alone with a pair of guards standing outside their door. Ellasif noted there were no windows, and one glance up the chimney flue was enough to realize they could never squeeze through that narrow aperture.

Not that Liv had any intention of leaving Whitethrone, at least not yet. Ellasif assumed she had until morning to persuade Liv on that count, but first she endured her younger sister’s tour of the clothes that had been left for them. The nightgowns looked comfortable enough for sleeping, but Ellasif had no interest in trying on the white and pastel dresses she had seen on the women of Whitethrone’s streets. Liv might feel like a princess here, but Ellasif would rather walk about in sackcloth than look like one of these witches.

At least she relished the hot bath the servants had prepared. She sank down to her chin in the steaming water while Liv sat nearby and told tales of her arcane studies, the queer customs of the jadwiga, and comic anecdotes about servile goblins and ogres. Ellasif could hardly believe her ears. These were monsters, the same savage beasts that had harried White Rook all of her life, foes she had trained to kill before they could reach the mothers and children. She hid her disgust, but could not stand to listen to such foolish prattle. She nodded occasionally, pretending to listen to the rest of Liv’s stories as she concentrated on a course of action.

When the time came, she would drag Liv out of this wretched place whether or not she had come to her senses. They would set a course straight for the Grungir Forest, and if Lady Luck had ever heard their names, they would spy Declan coming from the opposite direction. It would take days, at least, before he could reach Whitethrone from Szigo’s grove, but there was no point in waiting for him to arrive. Ellasif did not wish to spend an hour more than necessary here.

The warm water soothed Ellasif’s sore muscles, and her eyes drooped shut. She woke to the sound of Liv’s laugh. “Sif! Wake up before you turn into a dried prune!”

The hot water had leached away the last of her strength, what little had survived her captivity in the cannibal’s house. She stepped unsteadily out of the bath and let Liv dry her with towels so soft and warm that they could have been the first breath of summer. By the time she donned a nightgown and lay her head on the pillow beside Liv’s face, she was fast asleep.

Ellasif awoke to the feeling that an intruder approached. She leaped out of bed so suddenly that she nearly caused one of the two chambermaids who had arrived with fresh linens to die of fright. Even after the shock subsided and she realized she had slept for hours past dawn, Ellasif fought fiercely to retain her clothes, which she suspected the fastidious maids intended to burn. Her one concession was to accept a thick woolen cloak of deep crimson. It was warm, and at least it wasn’t white.

Liv and Ellasif dined on pickled herring and biscuits. The bread was so dense that after a single bite, Ellasif set hers aside, trying not to think of the stories of witches grinding bones to make their meal. Even the damned food in Irrisen was white, she thought. Her feet itched to run away from this ghastly place. She let Liv finish her food before broaching the subject of their escape.

Before Ellasif could say a word, the door opened and the guard captain informed them that they had been summoned. Fearing that she had missed her best chance for escape, Ellasif followed the man down another serpentine confusion of corridors and up three flights to what appeared to be the top floor of the house. She eyed Erik’s sword, which hung at his hip in a new sheath beside his own sword. She wondered whether he carried it as a trophy of her capture or for some other purpose. Perhaps he meant to turn it over to Mareshka.

They entered one of two doors near the end of a long, oval hall flooded with light spilling in from spacious windows and skylights. To one side was a grand double door, and across the hall another pair of doors similar to the ones through which they had entered. Before them lay a white bearskin rug, the huge head of the beast pointed toward the windows; its twin sprawled on the floor on the other side of the room. Between the rugs, a dark rectangle on the wooden floor showed where a table usually stood, the ghost of the shadow that preserved it from the bleaching sun.

Between the windows hung framed landscapes of meadows overflowing with wildflowers, waterfalls that spilled into deep green pools surrounded by sun-dappled ferns, and deep forests in which bright fungus ringed the trunks of mossy trees. The illustrations were not painted but composed of many fragments of paper, hand-torn and pasted to a framed board. Much of the paper was coarse, with prominent threads of striking color running through the pulp, but somehow the artist had selected the conjoining pieces so carefully that they formed the effect of a unified shade even though each piece separately looked a different color. Other scraps were dyed in bright colors, apparently undiminished by the ample sunlight in the room. The lands depicted in the papercraft were of no place near Whitethrone, and each conveyed a feeling of longing for an as-yet undiscovered place. A fairy grove. A promised land.

The captain offered Liv the comfort of a plush divan, one of many throughout the room, all situated to offer the best view of the mounted artwork. He directed Ellasif to stand at her sister’s side nearest the door. Suspicious, Ellasif walked around to the other side of the divan, but the captain seemed satisfied.

“Wait here,” he said. “Do not approach those who enter from the other doors, and do not speak until you have been addressed.”

“You mean now?” said Ellasif.

“What?” The man looked more perplexed than cross.

“You just addressed me, so shall I speak?”

Liv giggled, and for a moment Ellasif felt as she had in the years before they had both left White Rook. Then Liv had been as much a daughter as a sister to her, and nothing delighted Ellasif so much as the sight of Liv’s smile or the sound of her laughter. Liv would be angry once Ellasif took her away from this illusion of happiness. Yet in time, Ellasif knew Liv would forgive her, knowing she had done what was best.

The captain did not waste his breath on a reply. He only frowned at Ellasif before walking across the room and opening one of the far doors.

In walked a tall blonde girl just a few years older than Liv. It took Ellasif a moment to recognize her as a servant from the house of Declan’s master in Korvosa. It took a few seconds longer to recall her name, which she had learned only after Declan had mentioned it. It was Silvana.

“What are you doing here?” asked Liv. Ellasif was surprised that Liv recognized the servant, and more surprised still that Silvana answered by raising a finger to her lips. She smiled at Liv as if enjoying a secret that would soon be revealed, but when her gaze passed over Ellasif, the smile vanished. At a sound from the double doors, she put her smile back in place and smoothed her pale green skirt.

“Ready, Mistress?” asked the captain. He moved to the center of the room.

Silvana nodded.

“Now,” said the captain.

The doors opened, and two footmen stepped in and moved to either side. Behind them, a pair of guards moved in and did the same. Behind them came Declan Avari. He blinked in the sunlight, and then he caught sight of one of the papercraft landscapes. He stared at them, mouth open and eyes moving from one to the next until his gaze fell upon Ellasif. A broad smile creased his face. He took a step toward her, and she saw her name upon his lips.

Ellasif could hardly believe her eyes. She had thought to find him on the western plains, assuming he continued his journey to Whitethrone. She wondered how he could have arrived so soon, but the explanation seemed less important to her than the proof that he had reached Whitethrone alive and well.

“Declan,” said Silvana before he could speak. He turned, his expression caught between joy and wonderment.

Ellasif scowled when she saw who followed Declan into the room. There were Jadrek and Olenka, the last two people she wished to see again. Her feelings at the sight of them were complicated by the thick manacles of ice that bound their wrists and ankles, and the double rank of guards who stood behind them, swords drawn and pointed at their backs.

After a moment’s hesitation, Declan ran forward and grabbed Ellasif by the arms. “Thank Desna and all your northern gods you’re all right,” he said. “By the time we got inside the house—”

“Declan,” Silvana repeated.

Declan beckoned the girl to join him, still talking and holding Ellasif’s arms, his smile beaming into her face.

Silvana’s voice was insistent, but Ellasif was not interested in her. She looked over Declan’s shoulder to see Jadrek gazing back, his expression a mixture of guilt and some sort of expectation. What was it? Hope that she would forgive his treachery? If that’s what it was, Ellasif thought, he would be waiting a long time for it. Declan kept talking, and Silvana said his name again, this time in the petulant whine of a spoiled girl. All their chatter was becoming annoying, and all Ellasif wanted to do was—

Without thinking, Ellasif grabbed Declan’s hair and pulled his lips to hers. He released her arms and drew her into a full embrace, kissing her back with such unexpected passion that she closed her eyes, releasing Jadrek from the death stare she had cast toward his heart.

Their lips parted for a moment.
That should do the trick
, she thought, but it was hard to think of Jadrek with Declan’s mouth so close to hers. Then he was kissing her again, and with each second it became more and more difficult to think of spiting Jadrek, or of anything else at all. The clamor of voices in the room faded away, and she and Declan lost themselves to the kiss.