Archive of Our Own ^beta

It rained overnight; the courtyard below is a tapestry of bright puddles. Unblinking, jaw set, Sosotri watches as the girl she'd sent with the message returns. The girl picks her way around the puddles and smears of dung, so slowly that Sosotri could scream. Sosotri's grip on the curtain is white-knuckled and aching as she urges the girl to go faster.

When the girl finally knocks at Sosotri's chamber, the door swings open before she can complete the gesture.

"Well?" Sosotri asks. The girl's hands are empty, but perhaps her cloak has pockets?

The girl blinks rapidly, hands twitching at her sides. "Begging your pardon, but she could not help."

"Could not or would not?"

The girl frowns. "Can't," she says finally. "Can't, therefore…won't?"

"You gave her the note?" She'd written it in both Court Gaknyk and the local tongue. "She can read, can she not?" That would be just her luck: being forced to collaborate with an unlettered as well as untrained worker.

The girl shrugs. "I don't know, one way or the other." After a moment, as if expecting Sosotri to put that statement under interrogation as well, she adds, "I described what you wanted just the way you said: silvery plant, long fibers, useful for many workings. And when I gave her your note, she looked it well over. Said sorry but no. No idea what any of this meant, she said, nor how it involved her."

Sosotri's jaw aches. With effort, she draws a breath and says, as calmly as she can, "You will have to take me to her, then."

"No!" The girl shakes her head rapidly, then composes herself. "No."

It had been difficult enough to convince the girl to take the message in the first place. Simply sheer bad luck on the girl's part that she was delivering Sosotri's morning meal just as Sosotri discovered that the demon's abscondment.

She could order the girl, a second time, to do as she was told, of course. Sosotri is a ranking member of Their Majesties' court and due all obeisance, particularly from a house servant of a minor noble. On the other hand, she does not want gossip getting around about her need of help from the local cunning woman. The less pressure she exerts, the fewer tales will be told.

"I am very sorry, miss, but they're missing me in the kitchens and I have a –"

"Mage," Sosotri murmurs without thinking. Her mind is elsewhere, sorting through both the immediate problem (where the demon went and how to get it back) and the larger ones (how to retether it without anyone learning of the issue). She needs spiritflax and an inverse candle, the latter to track the demon, the former to tether it.

"Miss?"

"I am not to be addressed as 'Miss' like any common ladies' maid or low-courtier's daughter. You will use the title that I have earned through great study, enormous discipline, and uncommon talent. Mage."

The girl's shoulders sag, though, to her credit, she does not look away. "Mage," she repeats, her voice hollow. She must be chided and corrected by the pompous and overbearing a hundred times a week. "My apologies."

Sosotri regrets the correction; she regretted it as she was speaking. She sounded so much like her former teachers in all their fusty, unceasing pettiness. It is important, however, that she claim the respect she is owed, lest it fade and vanish.

"I do need to visit this woman," Sosotri says, "and as soon as I can. if you cannot take me, do you know who might know the way?"

Relief brightens the girl's expression. "Everyone around here knows Carrick! Throw a mudpie and you'll hit someone who knows!"

That is far from helpful. Sosotri pinches herself to keep from pointing that fact out, and instead asks, "But surely there is someone you might recommend accompany me?"

"My cousin Tolly in the stables, ma'am. Mage."

"Thank you," Sosotri says, but the girl lingers there. It occurs to her, too late, that the girl is waiting to be dismissed. She clears her throat. Respect she will, and must, claim, but she will never be comfortable with this variety of social behavior. "You may go."

The girl sketches a quick bow before turning and all but running back down the passage.

Her supply of spiritflax is ruined by mildew and an incursion of spectral pillweevils. The weather has been terrible throughout the entire progress, so the mildew was an unpleasant, but hardly surprising, discovery. The pillweevils, on the other hand, suggest something potentially more unsettling. This manor is not infested, but what of the others through which the court has progressed this season? She had not thought to investigate; no such possession had occurred in two centuries. That is not an excuse that will pass muster, however, should her oversight ever come to light.

First, she will regain the demon. Then, using some excuse or other, she will beg Their Majesties' leave to retrace the progress. She will find the infestation and remove it. No one need be the wiser about her mistakes and omissions.

Before any of that can happen, however, she needs fresh spiritflax.

*

Tolly the stablehand gives her a dazed-looking roan palfrey before leading her off the manor grounds. She requests a quiet route, one that will not cross paths with many others, and he complies, heading through a meadow still damp with rain before finding a narrow path along a melt-swollen creek. The sun is highest now, warm enough on her face, and the puddles are shrinking, starting to wink out. They ride beside the creek for perhaps half a varsti, then splash across. On the other side, a path starts up right at the bank, bearing straight ahead through a slowly gathering forest. Like shy courtiers in an overly-large hall, the trees are patchy and isolated at first. They thicken and draw closer, reaching further to the sky, throwing shadows across the path, the farther the horses travel.

Sosotri feels the witch's cottage before it emerges into sight: a warmth, like approaching a common hearth, quiet but strong. Banked. On their tethers, her demons grow restless, start to shudder and caw. She pinches out a swift command and, sulkily, they settle back. When her horse nickers gently in complaint, she pats its neck awkwardly. She has no talent with ordinary creatures.

The witch's cottage is built among three ancient trees, the roots of which tangle outward for a good thirty strides. The structure, shaped like a fat wedge of savory pie, is moss-covered drystone; the moss nearly glows in the shadows.

"So it's you," the witch says from the threshold. She directs Tolly to a small outbuilding to water and tend the horses before standing aside for Sosotri to enter.

Inside, the cottage's plastered walls make the space seem roughly circular, rather than triangular. Sosotri cannot help but wonder if this is an attempt to mimic a real mage's tower. (She misses her tower! She never wanted to come on along on the court's progress. None of this would have happened if she were at home in her tower, with all her supplies neatly organized, free of mildew and the threat of infestation. No demon, not even the worst-behaved of her menagerie, would have dared abscond from her tower.)

"I need a skein of spiritflax," Sosotri tells the witch, finally taking a good look at the woman. She is roughly Sosotri's age, with the crow's feet and smile lines to go with it. Taller than Sosotri, however, she has the height and broad build common to the area. Sosotri, like most of the inner court, is Gaknyki, bird-boned and slight.

"So I've heard." She makes no move to retrieve the stuff, nor to offer Sosotri the customary hot drink. Instead, she settles comfortably at her table, which is covered with beans and drying herbs, and resumes sorting a pile of beans into three smaller heaps.

There is no logic to the sorting that Sosotri can descry. Large pink beans join smaller yellow round ones, while, one pile over, oval pink beans crowd irregular black lentils.

"Any wise practitioner should have the stuff, no matter how…." She stops herself. Inept, she nearly said. "Anyone."

"Ah," the hedge witch replies. "If you say so, my lady."

"I don't say so! Everyone does. Spiritflax is a basic element in any number of healing techniques. Pastes and poultices, the sort of thing you clearly specialize in –"

"Pastes?"

"Ointments. Slicks. Thickened herbal potions."

"Ah," she says again, exactly like the last time. "If you say so."

"I --" Sosotri feels her pulse pound behind her eyes and along her cheekbones. "What's your name?"

"Carrick," the witch says. "And you're Sosotri Raxenplimsti, if I'm not mistaken."

Sosotri blinks, taken aback. She is hardly a well-known figure; even among the Congress of Mages and the Miraculous, she is rarely considered significant. Her position at court is uneventful and demands very few public responsibilities. She would never admit any of this aloud, of course. Nonetheless, it is passing strange that a backwoods hedge witch should not only speak to her so casually, but know her by name.

Those are issues to consider later, if ever. She has far more pressing problems at the moment.

"Carrick. I must speak plainly: I need spiritflax, quite urgently."

The witch glances up from her beans. When she frowns like this, her expression darkens; Sosotri, despite herself, feels the change as a sudden chill. "Possession of the means of efficacious lashing, not to mention demonic binding, is forbidden to those without formal training and congress enrollment."

Sosotri waves one hand. "Certainly, that is the law, but we both know, of course, that --"

Carrick twists around to retrieve a large basket from the floor; having been dumped out, a small tricolor cat stalks away in disgust. Carrick goes through the basket's contents, removing balls and hanks of yarn as well as a few half-finished pieces, empty sleeves and the top third of a sturdy jumper. Her attention is given over nearly entirely to this activity. "I have neither that training nor congress enrollment. I'm just the local cunning woman. You understand, I'm sure, that such things are well beyond the capability of someone like me."

She is telling Sosotri something, something important, that runs against the actual words. Sosotri gets the strong impression that she is, in fact, being chided for some mistake or offense. That is absurd, however. Who is this hedge witch to chide Their Majesties' sorcerer? And on what basis?

Sosotri draws herself up, shoulders back, chin lifted. When she speaks, she uses the same tone she uses during divination and summoning. "I really must insist that you hand over all the spiritflax you possess."

Carrick scratches the side of her nose. "This is official business?"

"Yes, of course," Sosotri replies. What would a local cunning woman know about the intricacies of court etiquette and business? Sosotri is an official of the court, so, in all the ways that matter, this is official business. "I'm here, aren't I?"

"You're here because Lal Duckworth can't be trusted with a baby chick, let alone a summons from Their Majesties' court," Carrick says.

"I don't know who that is or what it has to do with me. I need that spiritflax."

"She's the kitchen girl you sent over here, half-crazed with fear, like the thirty-eight imps of Skorbzy were hot on her scent," Carrick says, still serene, if faintly amused. "Swore her to secrecy, made her carry your sigil-dark note, burning up her hand, and for what?"

"The sigils protect against spying eyes," Sosotri notes. "I didn't want it falling into strange hands." When Carrick narrows her eyes, Sosotri adds, "Or her reading the contents."

"As if Lal Duckworth or anyone in the service can read!"

"I don't know Lal Duckworth!" Embarrassed by speaking so sharply, Sosotri stops, holding up her palm to ask for a moment, and clears her throat. She has no idea why she's arguing, not with this witch and certainly not about the standards of literacy among the servant class. "Excuse me. Ma'am. Lady. Your wise --"

"Carrick is fine," Carrick says, still rooting among her yarn. After another few moments, during which Sosotri fights a losing battle for patience, she holds up a small hank of lightly-spun fiber. "This isn't mine. What could it be? I have no idea where it might possibly have come from."

"That's spiritflax," Sosotri tells her before it occurs to her that Carrick might be being ironic. "Northern variety, most likely. Cunning workers in the north like to draft it together with trout gut for luck and hardiness."

"Salmon, actually." Carrick tosses the hank at Sosotri's chest. She fumbles to catch it. "Use trout and all you'll get is fish scales in your bed and burps for days. Salmon's what you want for reliable insight."

"But you don't know anything about spiritflax."

Carrick tilts her head slightly. Lowering her gaze, letting a vague smile play across her lips, she says, "What would a common-as-grass hedge witch know about real sorcery and true power?" Her tone is sharp, mocking: a fairly credible imitation of far too many wizards and mages with whom Sosotri has dealt.

"I --"

"Someone like me could get in serious trouble knowing that sort of thing," Carrick continues, voice sharpening even more, until each syllable is its own thorn. She's squinting at Sosotri now, pointing at her. From her other hand, another skein of spiritflax untwists and starts to creep across the table like a thin silver caterpillar. "Possessing that kind of equipment is dangerous."

"There are constraints in place," Sosotri starts to say, for everyone's own good and protection. The likes of you, most of all, who merely occasionally brush up against the eerie, are unprepared to weather its full stormy face. But she stops herself. The words are as hollow as most; they get their meaning from power, from their enforcement, not from anything intrinsic.

"Don't tell me about constraints," Carrick says, voice hot and eyes dark. "I know all about them, far more than you could ever dream."

Sosotri has tucked the skein into her cloak and she bows now. "Thank you for help, however dilatory it was. Should you ever need aid or assistance, please don't hesitate to call on me." She turns to go, then recalls herself and adds, "Within reason, of course."

"What do you need the spiritflax for?" Carrick asks.

"That," Sosotri says, her limbs going a little cold, a little jelly-like, "is irrelevant."

"It's just that it occurs to me, it's a little odd, isn't it? Sending a kitchen girl who can't read? Then, coming here on your own? Wouldn't it be easier to send one of the baron's men? Maybe even a low courtier?"

"I didn't mind," Sosotri tells her, her mind working fast. Gossip from a kitchen girl would be bad enough; from a witch, it could be disastrous. "The court is quite busy at the moment, of course."

"Yes, I suppose so. The gentle beasts of the forest won't slaughter themselves."

They regard each other silently. Sosotri resists the urge to chew her lower lip, or snap her fingers and toss a forgetting curse. Carrick's smile has returned, and with it, warmth to the room.

When Carrick indicates the cluttered table, saying, "please, just sit," Sosotri does so. She also twists the thin rings on each of her fingers, dialling through the ten layers of force, searching out evidence of compulsion. She finds none, only the wide, radiant warmth of Carrick herself, running around the room and out through the countless roots.

"What do you want?" Sosotri asks.

Rather than replying, Carrick gestures with two crooked fingers. The second hank of spiritflax reverses course and approaches her. She starts plaiting it. "You don't remember me at all."

"I've never been to this province."

Carrick glances up, smile flickering. "I haven't always lived here."

As much as she'd like to know what Carrick means, Sosotri forces herself to stay on task. "I need to start my working," she says, "it is a matter of some urgency. Great urgency, if I'm being honest."

"Go right ahead."

"Here?"

"Where better?" Carrick is on her feet now, looking through a cupboard. She glances over her shoulder and, for a moment, Sosotri is sure she is being teased. "Unless you prefer practicing in Baron Shui's drafty old horror of a manor. Alone, watched nly by your demons and the ghosts of centuries of Shui victims."

Before Sosotri can form a response, Carrick hands her an inverse candle. It is beautifully wrought, the length of Sosotri's forearm, warm and fragrant with the wax of bat-bees, dark as good soil.

"Where did you get this?" Sosotri asks.

Carrick shakes her head. After a moment, she says, "I made it."

"That is a far greater offense than possessing spiritflax," Sosotri points out. "Even harvesting from the bat-bee is forbidden. They're consecrated to Their Majesties!"

"I know," Carrick says, sounding as unbothered as if Sosotri were noting the weather conditions along the Hobb Peninsula, thirty thousand varsti to the southeast. She drags her chair closer so they are side by side. "So. Which of the wee fellows got away?"

Somehow, this witch knows everything. Enough, at any rate, to bring Sosotri low.

Sosotri cannot speak. She tries, but everything flees her at once: her reason and logic, her attitude and composure, even her breath. All that remains is panic over the mistakes she made and those she is about to make.

"It's all right," Carrick says, her hand on Sosotri's shoulder a warm pressure. She should not be so kind. Why is she being so kind? "We'll get it back before the sun's down."

"Why are you being so helpful?"

About to sweep her piles of beans into a bowl, Carrick pauses. She doesn't look up when she replies, "Why shouldn't I be?"

"That's ridiculous," Sosotri tells her. "There are many, many reasons for withholding assistance."

"Such as?" Carrick resumes clearing the table. The beans tick and patter into the earthenware bowl; the yarn and projects whisper back into the basket. She glances at Sosotri. "Well? Go on."

She'd thought it a rhetorical question. Sosotri exhales. "Professional envy, personal ambition, status conflict, ideological conflict…. Many reasons. Personal dispute."

"I don't like you, so I don't help, something like that?"

"Yes," Sosotri says, "I suppose."

"Ah, well." Carrick stows the basket in a cupboard, then, dusting off her hands, assembles a small platter of cold food. Before Sosotri says anything, Carrick lifts the plate toward the window. "For Tolly. Since we'll be indisposed for a bit."

She'd forgotten about the stablehand entirely, but Sosotri simply murmurs, "Of course."

While Carrick's gone, Sosotri sets the candle in the center of the table, then weaves the 13-directional star-shaped net of spiritflax outward from its base. The work before summoning and divination is quiet, purposeful: do it wrong, miss an overcross or forget a twist, and terrible things – homunculi tumbling into reality, shreds of ancient ghosts billowing around, magnetic poles reversing -- can happen. Do it right, and no one will ever know the difference. The absence of disaster is, in Sosostri's estimation, a distinct sort of virtue.

Carrick sucks her teeth, taking in Sosotri's net. "My word."

She is not defensive. She is instructive. "It's a standard location and entrapment pattern."

"Lots of points," Carrick says, touching the outermost point in the net closest to her. "Spiky."

"The better to catch it when it appears."

Carrick rubs her chin, paces around the table. She disapproves, but what does that matter? Sosotri is about to snap at her, demand to know what's wrong, but Carrick simply smiles blandly and shrugs. "Shall we start?"

"I suppose you would do this differently."

"Of course I would," Carrick says. "I'm no sorcerer. I want to find and capture something, I light the candle and call it back into a circle."

Sosotri swallows against a sour rush. "And that may be adequate for your needs, but my own are far more…" She meets Carrick's eye. "Complicated."

Again, that insipid smile. "I'm ready whenever you are."

She could argue all afternoon (all week! The woman is truly that maddening), but Sosostri must remember that she has far more important matters at hand.

She uses a variation of the ancient ritual gesture to the Queen in the Flames to light the inverse candle. Carrick's attention cloaks her movements, slows her a little, makes her more aware than usual of how she performs and completes each stage of the invocation. When she has circled the net three times widdershins and turned her back on the thirteenth point, the candle's wick finally catches.

Shadows erupt from the hollow candle, spilling outward, jostling each other, piling and shifting like avalanche snows, until the entire canin is filled with mutable, multiple darknesses. Amid the tumult, Carrick remains still, her hands clasped in front of her, her gaze steady. Her expression might even be one of interest, but not only is that impossible to discern, it is irrelevant.

Sosotri raises both hands into the shadows and draws down handfuls of them. She tosses them at the net, chanting praise to the Queen in the Flames as well as the legions of imps and demons in her service. Across from her, Carrick is singing; perhaps she has been from the start. Her voice is warm and liquid; Sosotri does not recognize the words. They seem to address something other than the shadows: where Sosotri's chants pin the shadows, writhing, to different points on the net, Carrick's sweet, rumbling song soothes them, untangles their bunches and snarls.

Sosotri's demons, too, respond to the song. They remain as obstinate and rebellious as ever, but feel slightly less poisonous, a little more cheerful, than she has ever known them to be.

The infernal darkness recalls its origins; now the challenge is to trace the demon's path through the shadows, pull it back and tether it again. Sosotri proceeds through the search, guiding her inner eye around the corners and up into the vaults that the shadows recall. The demon is here, somewhere, just out of sight, scampering off whenever she nears its trail.

Carrick's song dwindles away. The demon, caught between the edge of one shadow and the weight of a second, thrashes in and out of perception. One of the net's innermost points lengthens and sharpens, managing to graze the demon before it squirms free. Across the table, through the guttering shadows cast by the candle, Sosotri reaches for Carrick's hand. It is broad and warm, a strong grip, as together they press down, slowly, steadily, until the demon is trapped on the point. With her left hand and the spiritflax, Sosotri wraps the demon thirteen times. Each wrap sees the shadows lighten and disperse, lifting like steam off dew, until, finally, she has a perfect binding knot.

Tawny late-afternoon sun slants across the cabin floor; the cat is calling for its dinner.

And Carrick is still holding her hand. Still regarding her, still warm, still here.

"What did I tell you?" Carrick asks.

"Before the sun goes down."

"Exactly." She squeezes Sosotri's hand; her thumb brushes back and forth over Sosotri's own. "Now, we'll eat."