Of course she did. It was Cate who had chosen the nameAcanthi, she who had recruited each member, she who had found the forest on Calléum’s northern coast, a two-day train ride from the capital. It was she who, one by one, had saved each child from unloving,unmagical homes, she who had spared the young men fleeing the war, the pregnant girls, the old women abandoned. The Prohibition had been the reason she’d begun Acanthi, but it was only once she had stood in the forest, teaching her father’s witchcraft, her grandmother’s witchcraft, her great-great-grandmother’s witchcraft, in defiance of the Royal Institute and the Prohibition on magic, that she realised how deeply she adored it. Catherine Weyer’s second-greatest heartache was the collapse of that coven.
Cate looked about the forest and remembered the tents and New Year’s luncheons and the songs and the ceremonies. They had once planned to be nomadic, like the witches of yore, but Cate had fallen in love with their temporary haven, and so Acanthi instead made its permanent home in Caelin Forest. She ached for that early era.
Once Agytha was laid to rest beneath the blanket of moss and soil, Cate and Moira returned to the city of Alliaster. They pitched their tent on a hilltop behind the Ollianne Shrine. There was a festival down in the street – what a heinous contradiction, the joyous cheers and the drums, the shaved ice and fireworks, while the witches of Acanthi mourned.
Only two of them remained, now.
Cate sat outside the tent, unpicking her threads with difficulty. The young witch’s wards were many. They expertly hid the tea shop. What a ridiculous nameTheodorahad chosen for herself. She kept on, trying to spot the young witch in some future scene that would benefit them, and found nothing.
At once, sat against the hilltop, she was struck with a vision – Liutprand, the knife, the blade wet with blood, her daughter dead. That old, false prophecy. It tortured Cate, that vision; it visited whenever she was glum or reflective, the ever-pervasive reminder of her threads’ failures.
Cate stuffed her traitorous threads away and rose. She threw open the canvas flap to their tent. Moira was within, winding poppets. The aged witch wiped at the tears upon her cheeks.
‘My patience is gone,’ said Cate, ‘and with it, any compassion I had left for that girl.’
Moira sniffed. ‘Perhaps we can try and speak with the daemon Salamander. They say he knows all that happens in the city.’
‘Even I am not so arrogant as to make deals with daemons,’ said Cate, shaking her head. ‘For all my distaste for the Prohibition, I would not risk bargaining with the only spirit to face daemotion in over two hundred years.’
‘So, we will invade the shop another way,’ said Moira.
‘Indeed,’ said Cate. ‘Let us forget about Lio and the blonde woman, and focus on the wards themselves. She’s playing a dangerous game, the little girl from the valley of the willows.’
‘What is your intent, Catherine?’ asked Moira.
‘Those wards are valuable,’ said Cate, pacing. ‘And valuable things can be stolen and repurposed, can they not? Her talent for wards makes her arrogant. She does not see how those wards could be used against her.’
Moira smiled nastily. ‘She is not the only one with a talent. Are you suggesting we use mine, Catherine?’
‘I am,’ said Cate.
Moira ran her fingers over the phials of blood at her belt, eyes glinting. ‘Agytha would be cross with us.’
‘Well, it was Agytha’s kindness that killed her,’ Cate said. ‘We will chip away at the witch’s wards, one by one. Wewill steal them; we will reconfigure them. Their number is myriad, and that is ourluck – she may not notice what we mean to do. Let us pray that Agytha will forgive us in the next life, Moira. It’s time to hunt the customers. We will use your blood magic at last.’
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
No matter how many times Theodora tried to lure the witches, Acanthi did not fall for her tricks again. The witch dragged Lio to the Alliaster Cemetery, to the gardens of the Royal Institute, to the roof of the National Aquarium, but no matter the location nor time of night, Cate and Moira would not take their bait.
‘I think she’s intent on punishing me,’ said Lio to Dot a week after Agytha was warded. ‘Theodora barges in at two o’clock, four o’clock, drags me to some frozen corner of this horrible city, still in my pyjamas. Any moment, my death could be upon me. I tell you, my nerves are shot. Why did I believe that letter was from Opal?Whydid I leave my job? I had a visa approved for ten years.I’d just learned to hide the accent.They never give out ten-year visas to Calléans. Theodora will abandon me somewhere out there and the moment she does, Cate will pounce – and that’ll be it for old Lio.’
‘Wouldn’t Theodora’s wards simply portal you back to the shop?’ Dot asked.
They were in the kitchen, and Dot picked at her bandages. Belchamber continued to change them for her when she asked, even though he knew as well as she did that there was nothing to heal. They served to censor – for herself, and for the customers who were for the most part well-meaning, but who on occasion with a strange entitlement insisted to know what was beneath and if it wascontagious. One man, despite having no idea what had happened to her, assured herthat pineapple ointment was the cure.
‘The wards won’t save me if that sodding witch isn’t there to work them,’ said Lio. ‘She might hate me, but this treatment is perfectly inhumane. One of my colleagues in Kölldin was a prisoner of war after the battle of Assylis Bay. For years, they kept her in Arranfol. They fed her gruel, had her do hard labour, but even then they let hersleep.’
‘You did try to break Theodora’s wards,’ said Dot softly. Lio did not seem to hear her. He went on complaining merrily, slicing his apple, and was about to reach for the kettle when Dot forced herself to ask, ‘Lio,whydoes Theodora hate you? Is it to do with Opal?’
Immediately, she knew she had erred. He let out what seemed to her an exhausted huff, took up his plate of cut fruit and stomped down to the tea shop, muttering about ‘nosy witches’ and ‘basic privacy’. Dot should have felt hurt or, perhaps, annoyed. Instead, she experienced a small spark of elation. Lio had called her a witch.
The house returned to equilibrium. Dot continued her slow, spell-less study of magic, and grew increasingly furious at her lack of progress. It was as if she had learned to read a language with unprecedented fluency, only to find herself utterly unable to speak it.
Theodora was out, often, looking for another solve to their Acanthi problem. Belchamber was busy with the administrative operations of the tea shop, the Raven’s Attic, the factory on Stirrup Street and so on. Lio grew more morose, grumpy and directionless, and even took up writing poetry, which he hid whenever Dot walked into the room (Belchamber had confided in her that the young man had even submitted, by mail, several pieces and been quickly rejected). Rupert, however, had hollowed.
The boy had grown moody, easily startled and, more than once, Dot found him staring out of the living room window as if trying to catch sight of the witches somewhere along the street. The thirdtime she found the boy doing this, she tried to think of something comforting to say to him, but he quickly noticed her and his ears turned pink and he fled from the room.
Dot scribbled a letter to Archie but could not bring herself to send it. She took pains to think about Seafarthing as little as she could, lest the guilt and terror roll in.
