‘Insistent and flammable. All I know is that the father made the match, and the girl was not amenable. And the suitor thought to convince her…’
‘Ruin her for anyone else?’
She nods. ‘Her mother knew about her daughter’s talents, also knew enough to be able to contact a Visiting Sister. They got her out of the city, and onward.’ Fenna shakes her head. ‘She’s not said much but I fear the father would have handed her over to the church to save his own hide and reputation.’
The Visiting Sisters are so-called, for what man takes an interest in a woman’s relatives unless they’re there to cook or clean or bed him? Thus they pass beneath notice, dismissed as easily as women’s words are as gossip. Unofficial, whispered, a thread and a lifeline. For a long time unsuspected, until recent years.
‘She passed through more than two dozen hands, an atlas-worth of towns and even more villages, walked through forests untravelled, along rivers to break the scent if – when – they come with dogs, and spells were laid in her path to send any pursuers astray. All before she came to me. The trail’s as broken as it can be.’
I shake my head, a little morose. ‘You can’t vouch for the quality of those spells or the ones casting them.’
‘Mehrab, if you doubt everything and everyone, you’d never help anyone. You may as well give up and lie down, waiting for death.’
‘We’re all just waiting for death.’
‘Gods, you’re cheery! What happened?’
I pause, poking at the tender spot inside me, the prideful part. ‘In the woods, today. I chased a hare, deeper than I’ve ever been. The creature disappeared, but I found – was caught in – a trap. Cut as a penitents’ path in a clearing – held me like a cobweb holds a fly.’
‘So far out?’ She shakes her head. ‘Did you see anything?’
‘No. But Ifeltsomething, some awareness of me.’
‘How’d you escape?’
‘Rage. I’d thought to try and re-carve part of it, dig the channels so the magic flowed differently, but I threw a tantrum instead, stabbed my dagger into the earth at its centre.’
‘Iron?’
I nod.
‘Odd. Odd place to set such a trap. The hare – ordinary or otherwise?’
‘Couldn’t tell you. Didn’t seem anything peculiar about it, but how can one tell a shifter-witch from its animal shape? The whole point’s that they’re indistinguishable, so unless you see one mid-change…’Or you can get your hands on it, feelits bones and being. I shrug. ‘But it moved fast, and I followed longer than I usually would have.’ I think back to how I felt, to the searing hunger as I ran. ‘But I wanted the damned thing, I wanted to catch it, kill it, a burning desire all out of proportion with anything I’ve ever felt’ – or in a long time, at least – ‘and so I kept going. The usual aches and pains didn’t stop me. I felt… younger.’
And I only realise these thingsnow. Now that I examine them – the arrival of my unexpected guests distracted me from considering earlier – and if Fenna and Rhea had not been here would I have given the incident in the forest further thought? Or would it have drifted off, the spiderweb thread of memory dissolving?
‘Something laid long ago? The trap? Forgotten and unsprung?’
‘Until me.’
‘Until you.’
‘Cannot say. I’ll avoid that part of the woods in future.’ I sigh. ‘And where to next for you, Fenna?’
She shakes her head. ‘I think north. There’s word that the Darklands have changed – rumours trickling down that the Leech Lords are gone. Gone in one night, so they whisper.’
‘How? Who might have done that?’ I frown. It seems unlikely. Too great a thing to have happened, quickly or otherwise.
‘I know. Hence my going north. I’ll see the Briars in Silverton first, maybe they know something.’
I nod. Ructions in the Darklands, traps in the forest, a new fosterling. This morning the world seemed so simple, hidden here deep in the woods. Nothing and no one to bother me. Then: that hare crossing my path. Me, filled with the lust of the hunt, the certainty that if I didn’t take that creature for the stew pot then starvation would be upon me. Yes, my snares have been empty; yes, the offerings from the village have been fewer – but it’s the start of spring, there’s less need of me, no colds and agues at the moment. Soon, however, birthing will begin and I’ll be called. Hunger is not so close to me – in the cellar are bottles and barrels of preserved food – starvation is not anywhere near. Why was I so sure it was?
I don’t share these questions – don’t need anyone deciding that living out here is affecting my mind, that aging is taking my faculties so soon. These thoughts are my own and I’ll keep them to myself, at least until I have answers.
‘Ah, well,’ I say. ‘We’re not strangers to strangeness.’
‘No, we are not.’ She sniggers. ‘But speaking of strange…’
