Something moved behind Gailon. Marie gasped. She saw the knife first, the quick flash of silver, then saw the blood spray the air. Then Gailon’s dark eyes, impossibly wide, still bright with stupid surprise as he fell away.
Silas stepped forward, quickly pocketing the knife. Cries filled thechamber. Her daughter was crying. And then Silas’s face swam before hers as he picked her daughter up and rocked her from side to side.
Marie,he said quietly, speaking directly into her daughter’s ear.I can feel you here, witch. Listen closely. There’s going to be a man. Perhaps you’ve already met him. I can control him, but only to an extent. He is going to have a set of keys in his pocket. What happens in that cell I cannot control. Do you understand?
It was not as if she could respond. The connection flickered. A spark of hope flared in Marie’s chest. Perhaps all was not lost yet.
Good,he said at last, the ghost of a smirk on his lips.I thought that you might.
Marie opened her eyes. She was back within her cell. Even in the silence, she could hear her baby crying. Marie stilled, shutting her eyes to the darkness. Worrying would not help her now. Like it or not, she needed to trust Silas to do his part. So, she sat very still. And she waited.
Later, Marie heard the thud of footsteps leading to her cell, the telltale jangle of keys. The click of the lock rang in the air, and the door to her cell groaned open.
“Hello, witch,” the guard crooned. He smiled, flashing stained teeth.
Marie sat up, staring at him with slow regard. “Come to take your fun, I suppose?” Her gaze flickered over his smile, the eagerness of his body. She lowered her voice to a soft coo. “Thentakeit.”
He stepped closer. “Where is your magic?” he taunted, his breath the sourness of whiskey and stale tobacco. The stench turned her stomach. “Where are your spells and hexes, witch?”
“Come closer,” said Marie, “and I will gladly show you.”
Marie did not dare move, not even when he was suddenly upon her, his hands roving greedily along her body. The guard pushed her flat on her back with enough force that she gasped. What did it matter? She was without her magic, not a witch any longer, just a woman now. He struck her in the face, then planted a drunken kiss along her shoulder.
Marie squirmed, her hair coming undone from its tignon. His hands squeezed along her waist, over her breasts.
Marie reached for the cloth at her head, the material slipping between her fingers.
“Little witch,” he crooned into her neck, fingers hastily working at getting his trousers undone.
Marie touched his throat, the gesture almost tender. He smiled drunkenly, his expression glazed with pleasure. And then he gasped, eyes bulging as Marie coiled her tignon around his neck. He reached out, clawing blindly for her. But Marie held fast and squeezed and squeezed, even when she felt him going slack against her. The guard flopped and flailed like a cold fish in her hands, but she stayed fastened upon him, viperlike, watching as the light slowly ebbed from his eyes.
He stilled, dropping upon her like a heavy stone. Marie rolled his body from her and heaved herself to her knees. She was frozen like that for a long moment, rooted to the spot, her body coated in sweat, her breathing ragged. But then the cry of another prisoner in the distance startled her into action. She quickly patted along the guard’s chest, over his shirt, and then his trouser pockets. Finally, her hands closed around the keys. She brought trembling hands to her neck, to the little space at the back of the collar, and fit the key inside. The collar unlocked with aclick,clattering to the dirtied stone.
Marie climbed to her feet. She cracked her neck, her magic flowing back to her in a warm rush, banishing the soreness from her bones. She looked ahead and saw the barest speckle of light in the distance.There.There was her path forward.
Marie spared one last look to the man at her feet, those eyes staring up at her wide and unseeing. “There,” she spat, “there’s your fucking magic.”
Marie found him soon enough. When she made her way through the jailhouse’s back door, she saw a man turn into an alleyway just across the street, saw the familiar flash of dark spangled robes. She quickly followed, crossing the empty cobblestoned road and slipping into the alley.
He stood with one hand clutching a wicker bassinet, the other Gailon’s staff. She might have laughed under less dire circumstances—the alchemist had certainly wasted no time.
“Silas,” she said quietly. She couldn’t forget that the last time they’d met, he’d seen fit to collar her.
“Marie,” he said. There was a smirk in his voice. His eyes fell over her battered form. A muscle in the side of his jaw ticked. “You look like hell.”
She did laugh now. “I’m Catholic. Everything’s hell.”
He looked different. The blue of his eyes was darker, nearly black. His reddish-gold hair had lost its luster—it was a paler hue, edging closer to light wheat. Not quite the snowy-white hair of the Brotherhood’s ascended.Not yet.Marie stopped cold. He was changing.Ascending,the Brotherhood of the White Hand called it—those last sacred rites into the upper echelons of their mysterious ranks. But she did not care. Because there in that wicker basket was her daughter, sleeping soundly, with no recollection of this entire hellish ordeal that had befallen them both.
Before she could remember her wits, she pulled the alchemist into a fierce embrace.
“Thank you,” she murmured into the crook of his neck.
“Don’t,” Silas grunted. “Let me go, Marie.” His voice was strange. This was a warning.
She let him go at once, remembering her senses. She reached for the bassinet, but Silas held it back. “First, you must give me something that I want, witch.”
“Are you so depraved of spirit you would use a child as a bargaining chip?”
