Nasty Little Witchling

The sun was bothering me through my eyelids. I tried to pull the hood down further, but the fabric was taut. I cracked my eyes open to see the setting sun shining directly into my face.

I had missed lunch.

Annalise wasn’t wearing her armour and had let me keep her cloak, so the ride was far more comfortable than yesterday. I tried to twist my body away from the sun and bury my head into her.

Something flicked me through the hood's fabric. I pulled it down and craned my neck to look at Annalise for an explanation.

“Next time you listen and accept my offer to share the tent, did you even get a moment of sleep last night?”

I yawned in response.

Daral and I had found a log bridge over the river near the entrance to the cave we’d escaped from. The boys wouldn’t be down for long, so we hurried across with only a minor slip into the shallows at the far end. We carried on downstream since Daral said that’s where camp would be.

He had some kind of darkvision spell which was a lot better than my senses, my toe was still sore from kicking the rock earlier.

It took a long while, but we eventually found the stables of the inn and then the place itself. It was quiet by that hour of the night, yet we could sense people moving inside. We thought the boys had to be related to the inn somehow since they had a permanent camp in the cavern nearby.

Daral grabbed a piece of chalk off of the blackboard sign touting the day's specials and prices. Forty-five roe for a meal and board seemed like a worse robbery than the boys.

He scratched out a short message, ‘Stop the thieves. or else!’

“Will that work?”

Daral shrugged. “They know the watch wouldn't bother coming all the way here for this. It might scare them though.”

There were a few other mages in the inn, so we moved on quickly. The camp was much farther away than I remembered and we managed to it back before the next person’s night watch. We put the stuff back where it belonged and placated an annoyed Alisa when she stuck her head out of the tent for us making too much noise.

I couldn’t sleep at all after that and spent the rest of the night with the horses, playing with mana. I was interested in what the flying foxes had been up to with theirs, it was the first animal I’d encountered to use mana without affecting anything.

I had been trying to ignore the doll and what it would mean for me in the future, but I had been harshly reminded only hours before.

Would working at the ducal estate, like Annalise offered, leave me in the same position I was in with Mother? They’d want to store the doll in a safe place I’d need their help to get to. Would they let me leave? For starters, would they even hold up their end of the agreement if I translated and assisted like I said I would?

I liked Annalise, but a captain and daughter of a duke wouldn’t be dealing with me anymore once I was handed off. Someone else would decide my life and have every opportunity to force it whichever way they wanted.

A finger poked into my cheek and I realised I was still looking at her. “I’ll sleep better if I had a hammock.”

“We’ll be stopping in a village tonight, so you’ll have to deal with a bed.”

The horses seemed excited by that, they didn’t enjoy their travelling feed.

“Is that bigger or smaller than a town?” I asked as my head flopped back into her.

“Smaller, did the witch ever take you outside Ulasa? Some of those names we saw this morning were from other cities.”

Earlier, before I fell asleep, I’d mumbled through the book of names that we’d found her father’s in, to see if there were any others with the curse. There were, but since none of them would have been responsible for the witch's death it wouldn’t have activated for them.

A few of the names and items they found interesting or worrying. Including some of the more recent names, they recognised from Kiteer.

“No, she left me behind when she did.”

I’d actually been quite upset whenever she did that when I was younger.

“If you’re awake, can you translate another book?” Ian asked from behind us.

I pretended I didn’t hear him, but the thoughts from before hounded me. It was better to make myself useful.

“Which one do you want?”

…

The village didn’t have any walls, rather trees grew so close together that they created one. It seemed strange, but then I thought about it and found it strange not everyone did that. I wasn’t pleased when it was Barick who answered my question.

“You’d need dedicated mages specialised in those specific spells. Not easy when mage assisted agriculture is one of the lowest attended classes in Equitier, and probably every other academy school.”

“And, they’re people like me who only did it to grow personal ingredients,” Ian added.

“Too expensive to want to be a glorified farmer after five years,” Alisa said.

I felt quite embarrassed since I enjoyed growing plants and interacting with nature. I was also sure the treant wouldn’t have been too happy about it.

I had the saddle to myself as Annalise and the others led their horses by the reins towards the opening in the trees. Whoever had grown the trees hadn’t managed to escape having to use a plain gate.

A donkey-drawn cart was already at the gate with a young woman talking to someone in a uniform similar to, but distinctly not from the watch. The cart had a flap over it, though the bottoms of barrels still peaked out the open back.

Coin was handed over. The guard wrote something down and the cart was allowed through. Except when the woman moved past she threw up a hand gesture to the back of the man's greying head of hair.

The man saw us and scrunched up his face so the wrinkles on his head moved to his brow. He quickly glanced back at the woman and turned back to us with a smile. “Welcome to Tamil, fellow blessed ones.”

After no one responded I looked down to the surprised faces of the others.

“That’s against the law,” Barick said, with the shock still evident in his voice.

“Not here young man, here we take those laws in the spirit they were written, not the words used.”

Annalise raised a hand to dissuade Barick from saying anything else out of his gaping mouth. “What spirit would that be?”

“Duress of course. We conceded to the lessers at the time out of self-preservation. There’s no watch here to tell us we can’t speak the truth. And, we make sure the servants know the consequences of speaking out against their superiors,” he said and nodded to me on the horse.

I wasn’t going to say anything, Annalise put her hand on my leg anyway. “She won’t say a word.”

“You trained ‘em right,” he said with a nod. “Wish I could say the same about the rest, gotta be careful what you say ‘round the travellers. Don’t want word gettin’ out and all.”

Annalise started removing coins from little metal cylinders with an empty strip along it for ease of removal. “Very true, you never know who you’re talking to.”

“Oh, no. You can go on through,” the man said.

“There’s no toll? I saw that woman pay.”

“Of course she had to pay, look around us. Blessed ones built all of this, they have to contribute somehow.”

“I see that…What was your name? Are you part of the group that built it? ”

“Ghaven, member of the Tamil Overseers. High member Zara and others are in charge of the trees. You should stay at the Sefra Inn if you want a chance to meet them, it also caters to people like us. Hope you have a pleasant stay.”

“Thank you,” Annalise said and grabbed Ian by the collar when he wasn’t moving with the rest of us.

The path inside was made with perfectly shaped square cobblestones that led between buildings that were made out of still-living trees. Their opposite gate was in view already with only a few dozen buildings on the street, and a few cobbled paths leading off to more.

A weak ripple code told everyone not to say a word and Annalise whispered the same to me.

The Sefra Inn was proudly written across one of the larger buildings, an extra floor standing over the rest of the two storey ones. I slid off Missy and we handed off the horses to a smiling attendant at a separate stable entrance. I made sure Daral had the satchel with the doll in it as we exited, and made our way inside the inn proper.

It looked about the same as the one inn I had been in before. A single desk with keys hanging off hooks behind the mage sitting there. The woman was all smiles when she saw us.

Annalise asked for two three person rooms and was told it would be forty roe, not including meals. I glanced up at the sign that said the three person rooms were going for twenty roe per bed. I knew my mathematics was bad but…

“Sorry, I meant two rooms with three beds,” Annalise said.

“Oh, don't worry about those.”—she waved at the sign—“That’s to try keep the you know what’s out. Will you want a mundane locked room for the girl?”

Her expression soured when she glanced over at me behind the others.

Annalise placed a silver and a few bronze coins onto the counter. “No, thank you.”

“Have a pleasant stay, dinner will be ready to serve in an hour,” she said. “Your room numbers are 304 and 305.”

We stood around awkwardly until the woman informed us the rooms used enchanted locks and the keys were used only for the others.

We all went up the stairs in silence and then another set to get to the top floor. I was patiently waiting to find out what everyone was going to say. These people in the village seemed to have the same attitude as Jacob’s grandmother.

I was going to be very upset and disappointed if they thought the same way that made Trissa upset. My expectations lowered when I thought of how the grandmother was the mayor’s mother and how a duke’s daughter may be significantly worse.

“What kind of shoddy year one work is this?” Ian said as he crouched in front of the room number we were told. “This is leaking so much mana they’d need to be infused every week.”—he put his palm to the door, it clicked and he turned to us with his jaw dropped—“It's not even coded…”

Annalise reached over him and opened the door, ushering everyone inside despite us having two rooms. Bags were dumped down with loud thuds and clinks of glass, Ian looked a bit guilty about that.

“What in the everloving—” Alisa said before Annalise cut her off.

“Wait.”

A spell formed in her palm and it felt like I was dunked underwater. A haze blurred the room around us. I couldn’t feel any mana beyond a few steps in each direction. It made me realise how far I had been extending my senses, and how much I was missing out on now that it was restricted.

“What in the everloving fuck was that old ass supremacism, my grandpa doesn’t even say shit like that…anymore,” Alisa finished.

“I knew it could get bad in small villages, but going back to saying ‘blessed ones’ is something else entirely,” Daral said.

“Why aren’t those two in restraints already?” Barick asked angrily.

“I was going to knock that receptionist's teeth out,” Ian said and we all turned to look at the abrasive, but passive alchemist. “My parents aren’t mages and aren’t rich, it was disgusting thinking they’d get fleeced like that because of it.”

“It’s that bad?” I asked from the seat I’d taken on one of the beds.

“It’s illegal,” Barick said.

“And immoral,” Ian said.

“The mayor’s mother talks like that,” I added, more to try to get her in trouble than anything else. I was happy they all seemed to hate the idea of her looking down on Trissa. Annalise hadn’t said anything, but I wanted to trust that her thinking face was going towards saying something mean about the people downstairs.

“Captain, what's the plan? Split up and arrest them?” Daral asked.

“No.”

“No? They’re breaking the law,” Barick said.

“The way they’re breaking the law is too blatant, too natural. This isn’t individuals being supremacists, this is a systemic problem in the village that has to start at the top. Extra toll fees and prices for people is not something you can just get away with.”

“This entire place is built to collapse without mages,” Ian said. “The enchantments are everywhere and all these trees need constant upkeep to stay alive. These things would wilt within days without mana.”

“It must be this High member, Zara,” Barick said. “And the rest of these Overseers. A watch should have been established in a village this size, especially as its a main route between two baron controlled cities. We have to find out what’s going on.”

“We don’t have time to deal with this, we have to get back to Drasda and the duke. The time it would take to root out this problem could be better spent finding a cure.”

“Ehhh, you might have a problem with that approach,” Daral said.

“Which is?” Annalise asked.

“My father is a baron in a neighbouring duchy and if he heard that a duke’s kid went through and took advantage of a village operating like an apartheid. The newspapers would either be flooded with it, or he’d get something out of it.”

Everyone looked at him.

“I left so I didn’t have to think about politics, doesn’t mean I can’t,” Daral said.

“We can tell the baron about it so he can’t say we did nothing,” Alisa said.

“Tell the baron the exact story he wants?”

“Okay enough, the Baron of Kiteer isn’t hostile to my father, telling him will work fine.”

Daral shrugged. “It probably isn’t much of an issue anyway. These mages couldn’t even sense Valeria had mana from an arm's length away. These overseers might be just as bad.”

“You couldn’t sense I had mana,” I said.

“We thought you had a charm disguising it, that’s not the same.”

“We could use that to spy on them?” Barick said. “See where these overseers meet and how many of them there are. I can’t sense anything through all these leaky enchantments and living plants.”

“We’re not sending Valeria to do anything of the sort,” Annalise said.

I sat up to participate in the conversation, but Barick had already given up and moved on to another topic.

Ian brought out two separate maps of the region. The older one had no mention of Tamil and only listed the area as an Inn like the one from last night. The newer map did have it as a village, but only as an unnamed symbol.

I let them argue and discuss what they should, could, and would do.

I was laid down with my hand stuffed in my pocket playing with the silver ring I had taken from the boy’s hideout. I didn’t know why I had taken it, but I was enjoying having it in my possession. The minor guilt of stealing it was assuaged by it probably being a stolen item to begin with.

My hand brushed up against the other item in my pocket, the electrum coin. And I considered how to use it in order to pay my share for the room. Forty split six ways was a weird number.

The boys were soon banished from the room by Alisa who wanted to shower and change out of her travelling clothes before dinner. The haze around us vanished and I yawned to fix my ears that still felt blocked.

Annalise and I were left alone and I thought about what I wanted to say as she moved about the bags.

“I don’t mind trying to help,” I said, propped up on my elbows to be able see her squatting by some of the bags.

“You shouldn’t need to, you’re a civilian and a child at that.”

“It sounded like I’ll just be walking around trying to sense people from afar. You’d let Ian do it, but they’d notice him, so the civilian thing is just an excuse. And I’m almost fifteen…I think.”

“Fifteen is still a child and what do you mean you ‘think?’”

I shrugged. “I didn’t know what a date was until a few years ago, so I just know it's in the beginning of fall.”

“It’s already the beginning of fall.”

“Oh, well whenever the trees turn yellow then?”

“That’s mid fall once the temperature drops and days get shorter. Which is already starting.”

“Well maybe I also messed up my age and I’m sixteen, could I help then?”

She looked up from her bag to glare at me through her long eyelashes. “...are you really okay with going out and doing this?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll be careful?”

“Very.” I was only supposed to walk around the different buildings and try to find the most concentrated mana sources that would hopefully signify the overseers. The trees didn’t feel like they bothered me as much as the others made it seem for them.

I was also not going to be able to sleep for the rest of the night since I’d slept most of the day against Annalise. Might as well do something useful.

Annalise sat cross-legged and thrummed her fingers on her leg. Disturbing her would lessen my chances to help, so I kept quiet.

“Only from far away and under the cover of darkness and if you’re not back within exactly an hour”—she pulled out a pocket watch and tapped it—“we’ll come find you and drag you back here.”

“Yes, but…I’m not too sure how long an hour feels like. Seconds, yes. Minutes, kind of. Hours, nope.”

Alisa came out of the lavatory to Annalise trying to teach me to read a watch. It wasn’t going that well.

It was my turn to shower next, but I had no idea what that was and needed them to show me. I had to push mana into the handles to get it started and it didn't work for me until I imagined I wanted it to pelt me with water.

After my shower, Annalise insisted on letting me have some of her clothes that she’d shrunk down. I talked her down to only letting me borrow them for the night's excursion due to them being darker colours than my own. The size felt a bit weird on me since the arm and leg holes had to be shrunk in line with the rest of the tunic and pants.

I didn’t protest as much to the small dagger she strapped to my hip and listened intently to the best places to stab someone to make them let me go.

Alisa was looking at her like she was mad.

I’d prefer throwing a bunch of air, water, and rock at someone. But if they got too close I was glad I had something.

I tried to hand the coin to her, explained what it was for, and added that she could round up what I owed because of the clothes and dagger. She put it back in my hand and told me to hold onto it.

We joined the boys after Annalise had showered and changed to head down for dinner. The server, the same person from the desk, wanted to seat me in the back and looked annoyed when she was told no.

They had to avoid ordering me the mana-infused meals, but I was fine with that since it was mostly meat. The salad was a bit boring and leafy though.

It was a short meal since we didn’t feel comfortable talking about anything of importance, so we quickly headed back to the room, surrounding ourselves with the mana shield again. Everyone had bits of advice for me and what kind of information I needed to gather. Strength of enchantments, defensive structures, number of mages, and how strong mana reserves felt.

I was ready to escape by the time they were done. I felt jumping out the window and trying to catch myself on a cushion of air was a great idea, but I was outvoted by everyone else.

Annalise would come down and help distract anyone still in the lobby to let me slip out onto the dark street. We’d seen some mages with light orbs come by, other than that there weren't the usual lamps lighting the street—probably to keep the non-mages inside.

I snuck down behind Annalise as she casually strolled into the lobby. She shook her head which meant she couldn't sense anyone. Neither could I, so I dashed across the room and into the chilly night air.

I’d also been handed the cloak that was shrunk slightly to not drag so much. I pulled up the hood to hide myself better from the wind and people.