NOW: FLARE
When I blinked, I was once again held by Starling’s hands in a dire chokehold, the vision of my eyes and the waking of my mind moments away from being gone. PerhapsIwas moments from being gone.
In my head, I heard my god.
Remember the flame you need is right before you.
In the fog of what I could still see, a glint on the priest’s sash caught my attention. It was the crest I had seen him wear nearly all of my life, a brooch of copper and silver flames pinned to his breast.
I flapped my right hand outward, still slick with Reed’s blood.
Father Starling was still quoting his scripture, eyes on my gagging mouth but not the rest of me, a smile on his face.
I heard Evangeline’s daring the two guards who still pursued her, heard Ilsit’s taunts at Gerard, heard Reed shout my name, but I forced my limp right hand up under the priest’s arm and, fumbling, found the brooch and ripped it from his sash.
He barely noticed. He was at his mission’s end.
He was killing the witch.
I flipped the clasp of the brooch open, found the part that wasthe needlelike pin, and brought my thumb down on it as hard as I could, ignoring the jolt of pain. I let the jewelry fall to the bone floor with a clacking noise, and I made a fist of my hand around my thumb, forcing the cut to flow and mix with Reed’s blood. Because now I understood what the fire god had meant when he said, “You can be your own torch with the breath of the zephyr.” Now I could clearly recall what Brother Air, the unknowable god, had meant when he defied the fate called Fear.
When the wind in the woods and the flame in the night meet... When the magic of zephyrs and torches come together, a thing of flare and flash...
And an old tale of my husband’s came to my diminishing mind, and I rasped out, “Father Fire, I am in need,” my sudden proof of life causing the serenity on the priest’s face to disappear.
When I lifted my right hand, it was encased in a ball of fire. I did not hold the ball—it was all around my hand, the bottom of it sitting around my wrist. Dully, I understood there was a tingling on my skin, but I was not in any pain except for the prick of the brooch pin. I could not turn my head due to Starling’s hold, but I slanted my eyes as far to the right as I could manage, my hand lifted as high as I could reach. It was breathtaking and beautiful.
Blood gifted by air magic, mixed with blood gifted by fire magic, could make a flame.
I heard the two guards, Gerard, and Bertram all cry out in fear, swearing, saying something about spell craft. Bertram’s distraction allowed for Reed to pull away and come for me, but Torm’s sword swung out, clipping him on the shoulder, detaining him momentarily.
Starling’s grip faltered, though he still held me up. He was frozen by his shock at my magic.
With the last bit of strength in me, I said, “Father Starling, witches have sacred texts of their own and one of mine says, ‘There will always be some fierce woman angry at the way of kings.’” Then I brought my hand to the side of his face.
92
NOW: FLASH
His call of agony was drowned out by the shouts of the others. When the priest released me to fall to his knees and claw at his head, I staggered back and had the foresight to hold my hand away from my body. I was grateful my longer sleeves, as always in colder weather, were rolled halfway up my forearms as Magda had always worn hers.
Bertram had shrugged off his shock and pelted towards me, sword out. “Keep her away from the river!” he commanded, advancing on me.
I was still trying to breathe again after having been nearly strangled to death, but I maintained my footing, backing away closer to the door. And though my neck was throbbing with pain, though there was an ache in my lungs, I grated out a laugh and said, “Why? Because the secret about the fate called Fear’s poisonous spit is not the only secret about it? There is more than the quenching of the thirst of the people above us? There is more than fueling Perpatane with some abstruse force?”
The young lord and I faced each other.
Over Bertram’s shoulder, I could see the rest of them. Gerard hadshoved Ilsit to the floor and then rushed to the kneeling priest’s side, as had one of the guards, leaving only one man to duel with Evangeline. Reed took both of his swords, made anXof them, and blocked a blow from Torm, forcing the older man to stumble backwards. Then Reed pushed, and the lord fell.
I still spoke to Bertram. I was unsure of what our next move was, but I knew there was a way through, knew that victory was no longer an improbable thing.
“Figured it out, didn’t I? The river, the founts, the little channel that runs along the floor above? The way all of them flow around the skull? They can all catch fire.”
“Shut your whore mouth,” Bertram said, sword extended, edging closer but wary of my right hand held out in front of me. “It’s time your blood finally ran. Long have I watched you defy the natural order of things. Your whole life you’ve been this way. This is a good day for a witch to die.”
“Or a lord,” said Reed, stepping up behind Bertram and skewering him in his back with a brutal thrust of the short swords until they pierced through the man’s stomach, causing Bertram’s mouth to hang open and his sword to fall.
Reed lifted a leg, his knee hitting Bertram’s lower back, and he yanked his blades viciously out of the dying man’s torso. Briefly, Bertram’s body swayed as if it was miming standing, and then it collapsed.
