Ellie sighed again.
It doesn’t matter. It can’t.Ellie was going home, where she would slowly turn into a lonely old lady. Better that than pining over a woman who would try to erase or alter Ellie’s mind.
But even as she reasoned with herself, Ellie touched her lips, still swollen from kissing Prospero, and tried to tell herself there were far, far more important matters to think about just then.
Unfortunately, neither Ellie’s mind nor her body entirely agreed.
22Chief Witch
A building not too far from Prospero’s home and the Tavern of No Repute housed the Congress of Magic. The edifice looked like someone melded a great hall and cave-like warren. The stone of the building was old-fashioned to some people, and newer immigrants sometimes thought it was terribly foolish, but thenaturalwas what transmitted magic: Stone. Wood. Water. Earth. Fire. Theoretically, air could be useful—as with blood and bone—but air was difficult to sustain, and the fleshly elements tended to be complicated in other ways.
So all meetings and ceremonies were held in stone rooms with a fountain and earthen bowls, and so it had been for as long as the chief witch could recall. In the land of Crenshaw, most buildings were stone or wood. Every third street had a fountain.
Tradition wasn’t always foolish, no matter what the New Economists muttered and yelled.
Right now, it was hard to keep the fountains clean. The sulfurous water ran yellowish, and the stink of it had begun to permeate everything. Still, water conducted magic, and so they kept the fountains flowing although it looked more like something foul than pure.
Will the foul water pervert magic itself?
That was part of the reason the Congress of Magic was having another meeting in the seemingly endless array of meetings that went nowhere. Of course, getting nowhere took a remarkable amount of yelling.
And the odd curse.
The representatives from each of the twenty-six magical houses passed his job around like the steaming pile of garbage it was, and the current chief witch wasn’t sure why he’d been tasked with this odious duty again. He hadn’t done anything particularly ill-mannered before getting punished with the assignment.
Maybe it was simply because he wasn’t the only witch who wanted a chief witch who didn’t impose absurd costume regulations. He tugged on the ends of his massive beard.
On acutely unpleasant months, Walter would list the benefits of the job like a little song in his head, but it was a short list. The best—possibly theonly—reason to take cheer in his responsibility was he was old enough that he wouldn’t have to do it another time.
Witches lived for centuries, but they weren’t immortal.
Definitely not lately. More and more, there were sudden deaths among the eldest of the citizens.
That decline in longevity was the biggest evidence of the problem. If the elders took centuries to die, why were they suddenly dying? Why was the water purification not enough? What were they to do when new arrivals came? They needed the immigrants, needed their magic, but they had a health and safety crisis in Crenshaw.
“Gil, if you wiggle that stone at me again, I won’t apologize for what happens.” The chief witch, Walter, modulated his voice so everyone in the hall heard him. Here, whoever held that position was in charge, and whether he wanted the job or not, Walter would have the respect that came with the damnable title.
“You can’t excuse her ladyship from attending whenever the mood strikes her,” Gilbert grumbled. He had been landed gentry a couple hundred years ago, not as old as Walter but old enough to shake off a fewaffectations. He was an uncommonly handsome white man who looked young still, perpetually dressed in a smart vest and coat, polished boots, and hat.
“Lady Prospero’s hob said she was unwell,” the chief witch started.
“Is it the miasma?” someone asked in a trembling voice.
“No. It’s likely exhaustion from trying to come up with a solution,” he assured them all.
Truth be told, Walter wasn’t sure Prospero’s absence at this month’s meeting was necessarily a bad thing. That woman did what she wanted, when she wanted, how she wanted. When he wasn’t chief witch, he rather quietly cheered her on.
“Thinks she’s better than us. I came even when I had the boils. Not her hoity-toity-ness. You just excuse her, Walt?” Gilbert yelled.
“My title, if you will.” The chief witch hammered on the table. Rules were rules, and when that officious duck pizzle had held the chair, he’d insisted on titles even at social gatherings. “I’d hate to have to badger anyone tonight.”
Titters came from across the room, but Gilbert bowed.
“I apologize, Chief Witch.” Gilbert cleared his throat and gestured across the room to the twenty-four other house representatives and assorted staff. “We all have days we are not well. Agnes has been passing gas since she walked in.”
Agnes, Lady of House Grendel, made a rude gesture at Gilbert. “Because we’re drinking poison!”
Her once red hair was slowly developing streaks of white almost as pale as her skin, but the streaks were such that it created the illusion that she’d run bloody hands over white hair. Walter wouldn’t put it past her, but he also worried she was sickening. That all of them were. The symptoms varied.
