Page 134 of When the Sky Breaks

Sorcha

March 1858

It was early spring, cold sleet lashing against the windows. We’d settled into the cottage in a cozy haze of comparative peace and normalcy.

Irene had outfitted the house with surprising competence and a notable lack of malicious compliance. The furniture was right—up to and including the wool mattress and silk sheets Neal had listed to be imported from London—and there were even a few sheep and an old, sleepy donkey stabled in the barn down near the coast.

A few weeks after our arrival, the Inner Court had sent Alexi in from Edinburgh as Emissary Liaison. He appeared occasionally at the house but remained entirely disinterested in his work, choosing to take up lodgings all the way in Glasgow rather than stay on the island and visited only once every two weeks. We’d had no other word from Iksura since New York, since we’d sent in the final dismissal of her legal claims on the Outer Court title. I was skeptical she’d actually been put off so easily as with legal investigation, but I counted it as a blessing nonetheless.

I remained in utter awe at how much easier it was to manage the Court here—with all our libraries and resources close by—than it had been for my father in Santa Fe. Ansel commuted back and forth to Edinburgh a few times a month and I could get a telegram or a runner there and back in not even two days. I cross-checked old journals and the rate at which we were handling complaints and supernatural threats was better now than it had ever been. I fought to prevent the newfound knowledge from solidifying into resentment over his choice to stay in New Mexico. Kadish visited monthly—saying he could only stand the pastoral quiet for three days before he had to go back to the city. The cold and the still and a warm bed every night had calmed my symptoms to a manageable point, and even Neal was beginning to relax.

I was out talking with my sheep, sitting with my legs tucked beneath me on a bench Cavan had left down in the barn expressly for that purpose. I told the animals everything—new complaints coming into the Court, my pregnancy symptoms, stories about my parents, gossip from the village. And then suddenly I saw Glen was sprinting down from the house, coat flapping behind him.

“We’ve a problem, Lady Sorcha,” he panted when he arrived. “A big one.”

Two battered young girls stood in my office, cloaks saturated and dripping onto the wood-plank flooring. The girls were younger than me, easily by ten years, tall, with pale blond hair, worn clothes, dark smudges under their eyes, and—notably—rounded rather than pointed tips to their ears. Human. That was unusual enough—it was exceedingly rare for humans to seek out the Outer Court. Most didn’t even know it existed.

“Would you two like to sit?” I asked as Glen ushered me into the office, taking my soaked wool jacket and passing me a mug of something warm and vaguely herbal.

“We’ll get the chairs wet, ma’am,” one replied. She was half a head taller than the other, looked slightly older. Her English was good but heavily accented, something Nordic? Or maybe Russian?

“Fair enough,” I agreed. “How can I help?”

“The Forest Witch is hunting people again, ma’am,” said the same young woman. “Her men torched the cottage, ma’am. We got out. Our parents and the little ones didn’t . . .”

She trailed off, and I felt my chest tighten.

“Why did she come after you?” I asked. I was shuffling through the papers on my desk as the young woman talked, looking over my bookshelves. I was new at it, so my knowledge was nowhere near as extensive as Ansel’s, but I knew my folklore. And I’d never heard of a Forest Witch with soldiers who torched cottages. I’d gotten a few reports in from Edinburgh that Iksura was getting more aggressive but . . .

“Our papa saw a beast in the woods,” the young woman said. “Strange one. Started telling stories. Then these men, men with uniforms, started coming around the house at odd hours. They didn’t say anything. Just watched.”

“And you know they’re related to this Forest Witch, how?” I asked.

“Everyone knows,” the other girl, slightly shorter, slightly younger, piped up.

“She lives in the big castle up on the wooded hill,” the older one said. “The men wore her insignia.”

My stomach dropped. A witch in a castle on the forested hill somewhere to the north and to the east with enough clout and funding to have soldiers wearing her insignia—Iksura cracking down harder than usual on human-supernatural interaction in the lands nearby the Inner Court—no. She’d started burning children alive now?

“What does she look like?” I asked, then handed over a pad of paper and a pen. “And sketch her insignia for me here.”

“Black hair, grey eyes, pretty in a way that’s frightening, ma’am,” the younger one said as the older drew. “Wears strange clothes. Old-fashioned like in a storybook. But she keeps the bandits away, and the wolves too. So nobody asks questions. She’s been there longer than anybody can remember.”

I fought back the urge to sob. Even after all the atrocities Iksura had committed in her attempt on the Outer Court throne, I convinced myself that her brutality against humans near her Court was somehow an exaggeration. But if the wet and miserable young women across my desk were anything to go by, the stories may well have been understatements.

“How did you find me here?” I asked, keeping my voice calm, clipped, professional.

“We ran for the next town and there was a big logging crew there,” the older girl said as she passed the notebook back to me. “Trapper told us to come down to Scotland if we had seen something that didn’t make sense and thought we were in danger. He was tall and real pretty. Brown eyes. No beard. Little points on his ears.”

I nodded. Likely one of Ansel’s roving field patrols—who should have helped the girls himself. I’d have to make sure word wasn’t being passed around that we were taking in strays here in Islay.

I looked down at the rough-drawn insignia—a circle woven of vines with a crown at the center—Iksura’s.

“Someone will take you two into town,” I said, “and within the week we’ll get you passage somewhere safe. What skills do you have?”

“We speak English,” the older girl said quickly. “And I was training to be a dressmaker back home.”

“We’ll leave you in Bath then,” I said. “There’ll be work. Housemaids. Dressmakers. Something. Would that suit?”