Witch Fall (6 page)

With complete power comes pride. Pride breeds corruption. Corruption begets vulnerability, which pride refuses to see. And so begins the vicious cycle of destruction. ~Jolin

Lilette wasn’t sure how long she’d been lying on the ground before death’s arms reached beneath her and picked her up. She struggled against it, willing her body to fight the poison coursing through her.

“Be still,” said a deep voice.

She immediately relaxed. Not death, but a man. Had he fought death off? She rested her aching head against his broad chest. “Hurts.”

“What happened to you?”

Rain began tapping against her skin. “Woman. Poison.”

“Hold on, little dragon.” He took off at a run. Later, she would remember little of it. Mostly just sensations. The muscles of his arms relaxing and contracting with each of his running steps. The steady beat of his heart, so different from the occasional thump of hers. The scent of his damp leather armor.

The way he held her and his smell tugged at the fraying edges of her memory, but she didn’t try to weave the threads together. She didn’t care enough to try.

He paused twice—the last time to slide open a door. A woman gasped. “What are you doing here? You can’t be here!”

He grunted, the sound vibrating against Lilette’s forehead. “Apparently I can.”

She struggled to open her eyes as he set her on a sleeping mat. “It’s her, isn’t it? Lilette?” said the woman.

“She’s been poisoned,” he replied.

After a moment’s hesitation, delicate hands pressed against her chest. “She’s cold. Her heart is weak.”

Lilette finally managed to blink her eyes open and stared up at one of the most beautiful faces she’d ever seen, pale green eyes a shocking contrast to her dark features. The woman’s eyes were round, her face longer. She was definitely not Harshen.

She pried open Lilette’s mouth and sniffed. “She’s vomited.” She came eye level with Lilette. “Were you pricked or did you consume it?”

Lilette’s body didn’t seem to be connected to the rest of her. “The spring rolls.”

The woman nodded. “What did it taste like?”

Everything was so blurry. She squinted, but it didn’t help. “Like . . . spring rolls.”

The woman disappeared and the man leaned over her. It was Han, his scarred face twisted with concern

This didn’t surprise her. Some part of her had recognized him when he picked her up. And somehow she didn’t want to kill him.

From close by, a bell rang. Lilette glanced out the window. It was full dark now. The woman came bustling back into the room. She positioned Lilette’s head on her knees and held a cup to her lips. “Drink it.”

Lilette didn’t have much of a choice as the liquid was poured into her mouth. She immediately gagged. She recognized the taste from a lifetime of clearing out old fire pits. A sludge of ashes mixed with water.

“Keep it down,” the woman warned. “It will absorb the poison.”

Lilette swallowed to keep her gorge from rising, but as soon as the mixture hit her stomach, she immediately threw it up.

“You want to live, you’ll keep it down.”

The cup was tipped back again. It was gritty and horrible, with chunks of charcoal sticking in her throat. Lilette swallowed, and with everything she had left she fought the urge to vomit.

The woman just kept pouring more down her throat. “I’ve summoned my eunuch. You better slip out of here before anyone sees you,” she said to Han.

He scoffed. “I think I can handle your tailless dog.”

The woman’s eyes hardened. “He won’t keep your secrets, and they’ll kill you if they find out you set foot in the harem.” Her face softened and she reached out and touched the jagged scar that stretched from his cheek to his mangled ear. “My son, I’m so sorry.”

He pulled away from her. “I don’t want your pity.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “Go. Before it’s too late.”

He cast one last glance at Lilette, his gaze unreadable, then turned and strode out.

The woman held the cup to Lilette’s lips once more. Tears dripped from her face onto Lilette’s cheeks as if they were her own. Lilette was certain the tears were not for her.

The woman stroked her head. “My name is Ko. Yours is Lilette?”

Her bowels cramped and she curled into a ball. “Yes.” She moaned in pain. “Han is your son?”

Grief crossed Ko’s face. “Yes.”

“Chen too?” Lilette gasped.

Ko shook her head. “No. His mother died a year ago.” That made Chen and Han half-brothers.

The eunuch arrived. He was younger than the first Lilette had met, his face practically boyish. “Alert Chief Wang that Madame Lilette has been poisoned. Quickly.”

The boy ran.

More eunuchs came. Ko ordered them to bring in more braziers, water, and stones to make steam. “We’ll sweat the poison from her. Seal up the windows.”

One of the eunuchs pressed his hands together and bowed to Ko. “Honored madame, you should go. We will care for the girl.”

Lilette squeezed the woman’s hand, silently begging her to stay. She wasn’t sure when she’d started holding it.

Ko squeezed back. “I will stay with her.” It wasn’t long before the stuffy heat of the hot season had grown unbearable. Sweat coursed down Lilette’s skin while the eunuchs fanned her. She silently willed her heart to keep beating.

Ko kept pouring water into Lilette’s mouth. Sometimes she threw it up, sometimes she kept it down. Chen arrived with Wang and the court physician, another eunuch with straggly gray hair circling his mostly bald head, his long mustache resting on his protruding belly.

The whole room of eunuchs rolled smoothly into their kowtows. Ko bent low but didn’t move from her position as a cushion for Lilette’s head.

Chen took one look at Lilette and kicked over a brazier. “Who did this?”

Eunuchs scrambled on all fours to scrape the coals and ash back into the brazier before it burned the house down.

When no one answered him, Chen knelt beside Lilette. His hands hovered above her body before coming to rest gently on her shoulders. “Who did this to you?”

She blinked blearily at him, the halos around everyone making her squint. “A woman.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

He rested a hand on her clammy forehead. “What did she look like?”

Lilette shut her eyes. “Her face was longer.” She had to rest. “Her eyes close set.” Another break until the dizziness passed. “She wore a five-clawed dragon ring with . . . with emeralds for eyes.” She lay back, exhausted from the effort of speaking.

Chen reeled back on his heels, his face flashing with disbelief that quickly melted to fury. He glared at the physician, who was already mixing powders into boiling water. “She dies, you die. Understand?”

The man bowed, clearly terrified.

Chen shot a final look at Lilette before storming out. Eunuchs followed him, closing the screen and sealing it to keep the steam from escaping.

Ko watched the physician dump in more powders, her brow creased. “What is that?” Han’s mother asked.

The physician stirred the concoction briskly. “Honored madame, it is poison to counter poison. Ashes from poisonous frogs, centipedes, and snakes. I also mix it with ground shells to trap her soul inside her body.”

Ko stared at him. “You’re giving her more poison?”

He tipped Lilette’s face up and helped her drink it. She choked and gagged. “This is just the first of her treatments. We must cleanse her body of toxin. Strip off her raiment.”

Eunuchs slipped her out of her tunic and proceeded to treat Lilette in ways she hoped to never experience again. When it was all finished, she was too exhausted to keep her eyes open and in too much pain to sleep. She listened to Ko humming as eunuchs fanned her.

Eventually, there was a flurry of dry air. A cool silk sheet was pulled over Lilette’s body.

“How is she?” It was Chen’s voice.

The physician answered. “I have done all I can for her.”

“And?” Chen’s voice held an undeniable warning.

The physician didn’t answer. Lilette knew what his silence meant, but she was too weak to fear death.

“Lilette.” She stirred a little. Her limbs were so heavy. “Lilette. Open your eyes.”

She blinked them open to find it was morning again. Chen stood above her. His hand was locked around the back of a woman’s neck. “Is this who poisoned you?”

It was his wife, Sima—or whatever her real name was. Only now her robes were the finest Lilette had ever seen. Her hair was pulled back in elaborate twists, with jeweled combs and orchids sparkling across the top.

Lilette nodded once. Chen’s eyes flashed.

His wife couldn’t seem to catch her breath. “I didn’t even know she existed!”

“With the amount of spies you have all over the palace, Laosh, I think not.” He threw her to the ground. As if from far away, Lilette watched as the woman scrambled to her feet. Chen advanced on her while the eunuchs remained prostrate.

Laosh reached the wall. There was nowhere else for her to go. Chen slowly drew his sword. “And she is not the first.”

His wife glared up at him. “You swore when you married me that you would take no other! You promised my father.”

He lifted his sword above his head. “Part of our arrangement was that you provide me with sons. Your barrenness voids our contract.”

Her eyes flashed a warning. “Kill me and my father will raise his armies against you. He’ll destroy your city, your people. Everything!”

“Even your father cannot save you from the law, Laosh.”

She screamed until the sword came down, silencing her. Lilette had just watched Chen kill his wife. She waited for the horror to come. The disgust. But it didn’t. Instead, all she felt was a numb detachment, like nothing she saw was real.

Chen stepped back, a look of revulsion crossing his face. “Eunuchs, clean this mess up. Send her body back to her father. He can go to the trouble of burying her.”

He strode toward Lilette, blood dripping from his sword. “She is dying?”

Silence was the reply.

He cuffed the physician. “Answer me!”

The man lay blinking where he’d fallen on the floor. “Yes, Heir. She is dying.”

Chen turned and left without a backward glance.

Lilette saw something that night, something that haunted her the rest of her days. ~Jolin

Lilette’s heartbeats grew farther and farther apart until she again floated in the uneasy space between life and death. As if from a distance, she sensed movement and unease. Finally, an explosion jolted her into consciousness. Even through the blankets darkening the room, she could see flashes of lightning. Wind blasted against the house.

Chen stood in the doorway, sword in hand, water dripping from his clothing. Before him was a woman, this one very different from the last. She was gaunt and looked about Lilette’s age. Her wet, chin-length hair, the color of ashes mixed with dirt, was parted exactly down the middle and tucked behind her ears. Her strange, floor-length tunic had a fitted bodice and billowed out below the hips.

She was one of the witches. Lilette tried to make her mouth work, to say something—anything—but she couldn’t move past the wall of pain and weakness.

“I am told you are the best healer, so heal her,” Chen said to the woman.

“I’ve already told you, I’m not a healer, I’m a potioner,” she replied in almost perfect Harshen. “But it’s true, I am the best—and an argument could be made that the best potioners are also the best healers.” A look of curiosity swept over her face as she took in Lilette. “What happened to her?”

Chen clenched his teeth. “She’s been poisoned, which is why I need a potioner.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “With what?”

He handed her a familiar-looking tea towel. “We found this in her house.”

She opened the towel, and her eyebrows came up as she surveyed it. She picked a few of the limp greens out of the spring rolls and held them up to the light.

She nibbled the end of one before spitting it onto the floor. She wiped her tongue on her rain-dampened sleeve. “A simple yet very effective variation of morte. It’s rather rare, only available from the black-market witches, and without the antidote, always fatal.”

She smacked her tongue on the roof of her mouth as if to clear out the aftertaste. “Have you questioned the poisoner? It would be helpful to know how much was consumed.”

Chen’s eyes flicked to the corner. The eunuchs had scrubbed the floor, but the blood had stained it a dark brown.

The woman followed his gaze and gasped. She turned to face Chen. “What happened here?”

He refused to look back at the stain. “The poisoner admitted to the crime and was punished.”

“So you just killed him?” the woman whispered.

Chen didn’t bother to correct her. “I am the heir. My word is justice.”

She clamped her mouth shut. “I want no part of this.”

She made to move past him, but he blocked her. “You would really let her die because of something I did?”

She glanced over her shoulder at Lilette as if she’d forgotten she was there. “I can at least provide the antidote.” She squared herself in front of the rotund physicker. “What have you given her?”

The man laced his fingers and set them on his stomach. “We are sweating her—”

The woman shook her head as if disgusted. “Clearly. The heat is going to kill me, and I’m perfectly healthy. What else?”

He frowned and glanced at Chen. The heir simply waved for him to continue. “The ashes of poisonous creatures to battle the poison inside her, and ground shells to trap her soul within her body,” the physicker said.

The woman blinked at him before turning to Chen. “Is he trying to kill her?”

The physicker sputtered a reply, but the woman ignored him. “Fine. I’ll help her,” she said to Chen. “But I want him out.”

The heir gestured to the physicker, who looked relieved as he left the room.

Kneeling beside Lilette, the woman brushed her hair off her damp forehead. “I’m Jolin.” She squinted at Lilette’s skin, as if she was seeing something puzzling there. From her pocket she pulled a contraption made from round bits of colored glass connected by thin wires. She set it on her nose and stared at Lilette.

Jolin pulled a rose-colored glass over her eyes and gasped. “It’s you.” She whirled to Chen. “This is the woman we’ve been looking for—the one our listeners sensed.”

Lilette almost wept for joy. Finally! She wanted to ask about her sister, but the pain was a wall she could not cross.

“She is my concubine,” Chen said steadily. “You cannot take her.”

Jolin frowned. “All keepers must come to Haven for testing.”

“Not this one.”

“Creators’ mercy—”

“Don’t invoke your gods on Harshen soil,” Chen warned.

“They’re your gods too,” Jolin murmured so softly Lilette was sure no one else heard.
Smart girl.

Jolin’s stormy eyes turned back to Chen. “All right, I’ll save her. We’ll discuss the rest later.”

He tipped his head, his lips pursed. “We will discuss nothing.”

She muttered something unintelligible, and a sense of purpose seemed to settle over her. Never taking his eyes from Jolin, Chen backed out of the room.

She pointedly ignored his retreating figure. “Open the windows and let this unbearable heat out.”

Ko shook her head. “We must sweat out the poison.”

Jolin started pulling seeds from a belt at her waist. “This heat is killing her faster than the poison. Open the windows and one of you” —she seemed to be struggling to find an appropriate word for the eunuchs— “
men
bathe her with water and fan her until she cools off.”

A breeze tickled the tiny hairs on Lilette’s body as some of the oppressive heat escaped. As cool water slid across her skin, she sighed in relief.

“I’ll be back,” Jolin said before she headed outside. When she returned a few minutes later, she held a handful of dark green leaves. “Out!” she commanded the eunuchs. “Can’t think with all these crows flapping about,” she muttered.

As they shuffled outside, Jolin ground the leaves in a mortar. Then she added cold water, each twist of the pestle seeming to instill her with a stronger sense of purpose. Moments later, she tipped the mixture into Lilette’s mouth.

It tasted fresh, green, and a little bitter. Lilette swallowed it reflexively, her body somehow recognizing it as something desperately needed. Suddenly, the cramps in her stomach eased. With some of the pain and unbearable heat diminished, a few of her muscles unclenched and she relaxed. She closed her eyes as her heart began to slow even more.

“Good. The antidote is already working.” Jolin leaned down so close that Lilette could feel her. “You will have to fight if you want to live.”

With some of her pain abated, Lilette found she could speak again. “I’ve never stopped fighting.”

Someone pressed an ear against her chest and said, “We came to look for you, you know. We felt your song, though we figured you were farther southeast. You’re one of us—one of the keepers. You sing and the world obeys.”

Exhaustion wore at Lilette, and the woman’s words became muddled in her head. Lilette wished she’d leave her be. She was so tired.

“I need you to stay awake, witchling,” Jolin said. “We didn’t come this far only for you to die now.”

“You’re too late,” Lilette managed. She could hear Jolin working over her mortar.

The woman gave a short laugh. “If you were in anyone else’s hands, you would be lost. Luckily, you’re in mine, and I’m the best.”

Despite her words, Jolin sounded truly worried. She began singing in the Creators’ language—the language of power. Lilette had long ago forgotten the words, but the sound and rhythm were as familiar as her own heartbeat.

Lilette felt someone pushing her up from behind. It was Ko. The pool of sweat in the hollow of Lilette’s throat now ran between her breasts. Someone poured something into her mouth.

“These herbs will speed up your heart,” Jolin explained. “Don’t die before they begin to work.”

She and Ko laid Lilette on her back again, and she felt herself shutting down. It was getting harder to breathe. Moments later, Lilette’s heart beat once and paused.

“No,” Jolin exclaimed. “Just give the herbs a moment to work. Just give them a moment.”

Lilette came back from the edge of something darker than sleep to answer. “I’m sorry.” Everything started to blur. She willed her heart to beat again, and it did—once. Then the room grew brighter, light suffusing everything around her until it flashed a blinding white.

The last sound she heard was Ko’s sobs. And then the strangest thing happened. Through the brilliance, a long, thin shape appeared. After a moment, the shape took the form of a woman and suddenly Lilette knew her. “Mother?”

Lellan reached out and cupped her cheeks. “Daughter, I haven’t much time. You must listen.”

Beyond Lellan was the most achingly beautiful music. It filled Lilette’s body with a longing, a pain deeper than anything she’d ever imagined. “I’m dying.”

Her mother’s smile fell. “Not like this. The work needs a martyr.”

Lilette tipped her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“We aren’t supposed to watch, and we certainly aren’t to interfere, but I cannot abide this. Terrible things have been set in motion. It will destroy the whole world.”

Lilette pried her attention away from the bewitching music to focus on her mother. “I don’t understand.”

Lellan pressed the pads of her fingers to Lilette’s forehead. Immediately, Lilette was inundated with scenes of chaos and destruction—whole cities burning, armies colliding with the force of a breaking wave, tornadoes and monsoons ripping life off the face of the earth. Last, Harshen sank into the ocean—the palace itself the final thing to disappear beneath the churning waters.

Reeling, Lilette let out a cry of horror. She told herself those terrible things hadn’t happened—that they could
never
happen.

Lellan closed her eyes. “Save those you can.”

Lilette took a shuddering breath.

“I have laid the groundwork for you,” her mother went on. “Everything you need has been prepared. Find Grove City.”

“But Chen . . . I’m trapped in his harem.”

Lellan’s eyes flashed. “Chen is right about one thing—you are a weapon, but not one he can wield. Prove that his weapon can turn on him.”

Lilette’s breath came short. She was slipping away, something pulling her toward the light and music. And she suddenly didn’t care about saving the world. She yearned for the music—only the music.

“There isn’t time. If I don’t stop this now, you will die.” Lellan gripped both her arms. “You are my daughter—a warrior of the world, not a plaything for princes. Will you do what is necessary?”

It took everything Lilette had to turn away from the music and light. “Yes.”

Her mother nodded. “Live.” The word came out as a song, and Lilette’s flesh responded to the command. She sank back into her body. Lellan knelt beside her and pressed her lips against her daughter’s forehead. “Light guide thee.”

Her mother stepped into the brilliance, which faded before disappearing altogether. The music grew farther and farther away. Tears welled in Lilette’s eyes, and an ache filled her body that had nothing to do with her illness.

Ko was slumped over weeping, her head in her hands. Lilette took a gasping breath. Her heart pounded, filling her with a burst of blood. She sucked air into her starving lungs.

Jolin jerked upright and pressed her ear against Lilette’s chest to listen to her heart.

“A drink,” Lilette mumbled.

A smile spread across Ko’s face.

Jolin slapped her thigh. “I knew I could do it!”

“Please,” Lilette begged, her throat so dry the words came out like two stones rubbing together.

Ko called to the eunuchs just outside the room. They scrambled to work, practically tripping over themselves to serve her. She sat back on her heels. “How is this possible? She was dead. You said so yourself.”

Jolin tucked her hair behind her ears. “It was the potion I gave her. It speeds up the heart.”