Treacherous Witch

“What is power? Power is our ability to shape or influence reality. Sorcery is the manifestation of that power.”

Interview with Queen Shikra III, as told to Master Anwen

She wrote back to Aurelia in golden ink using the gold-lined paper in the palace. Priska would deliver the letter on her behalf. She could say nothing revealing as the message would no doubt be intercepted, but at least she could reassure her grandmother that she was all right.

“Wait,” said Valerie, as the maid was about to depart. “What’s your family name, Priska?”

A slight hesitation. “Steward, ma’am.”

They were one of the most well-known and respected families in Jairah. For centuries, the Stewards had been proud to serve the royal family, dealing with all things related to the upkeep of the palace. There was Steward blood in the royals and royal blood in the Stewards. Malkoha was one of them. She wondered how Priska and the old scholar were related.

Valerie met Priska’s eyes through her vanity mirror. “Crescent.”

“I know it, ma’am. On the High Road?”

She nodded. “How does it compare? Serving the Drakonians?”

Priska bit her lip. “I shouldn’t say.”

“You know I won’t say anything.”

“Well... Most of our menfolk died during the war. They kept the women, but they no longer respect us. Our name means nothing.”

There was an unspoken rule in court not to mention the ladies’ family names. The Drakonians could do it if they wished but not the Maskamery. She still hadn’t learned Lady Flavia’s family name, despite repeated hints.

It was all part of the Drakonian dismantling of the Maskamery way of life, she thought. The things of value to them—family, the silvertrees, the priesthood—they had stripped away. And they were imposing their ideas of social status: masters and servants, husbands and wives, lords and courtesans, on to a culture they didn’t even try to understand.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

“It’s... it has gotten better since Lord Avon arrived,” Priska said, surprising her. “He has less tolerance for misbehaviour. Perhaps you can influence him.”

“I can try.”

She had her doubts about that, but she thought about it as she made her way through the palace and into the gardens. Was Lord Avon kinder than his predecessor? If so, that was a damning indictment on Lord Turnbull. She hadn’t tried to influence him because she hadn’t expected to be here for long. All her energies had been focused on escaping the palace.

That, and the task she had been given. She was despairing thinking of how she could prove to Avon that they were making progress in breaking the seal and so avoid getting her family—and herself—into trouble, but Anwen himself hopped out of the greenhouse and waved a stack of papers at her in glee.

“I’ve solved it!”

“You have?”

“This proves it—well, not incontrovertible proof, we must test it, of course, but I have a working theory.”

He thrust the papers at her, and she took them in bemusement. Above them, a flock of goldfinches twittered in the trees. It was a beautiful spring day.

“A theory about what?” she asked.

“Why your spell isn’t working.” He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his sleeve, then returned them to his nose. “Did you bring the items I asked for?”

“Yes, I...”

“Then come!”

She followed him to the summer house. He’d cleared away the books and other clutter from the room. Instead, she found a row of five stools. On three of the stools were three items: a glass of water, a copper coin, and a dead beetle pinned to a sheet of paper.

Valerie blinked.

“Your items,” said Anwen. “Place them here.”

He gestured at the two empty seats. Confused, she set down the papers on the nearest stack, then deposited the items as he’d requested: one of her slippers and a scrap of cloth from her sewing kit.

“Now,” said Anwen, “I want you to perform a spell on each of these items.” He drew out a pocket watch from inside his waistcoat. “First, the water. Can you turn it into wine?”

She felt like a student being tested by a teacher. Back at the convent, High Priestess Glynda had deigned to show her eager acolytes some magic tricks once or twice. She’d turned water into wine, rearranged the words in a textbook, and given a toy mouse the ability to fly. It had whizzed around the classroom several times to the bemusement of the school cat before plummeting back to the floor in unglamorous fashion.

“Parlour tricks,” Glynda had said. “You’ll see charlatans copying these. They’re good for dazzling a crowd and not much else. Real magic is work. Now, let’s get back to these equations...”

Parlour tricks. She picked up the glass of water and focused her will. The water turned a deep shade of red.

“Excellent!” said Anwen, already looking at his pocket watch. “Pass it over, let me try it...”

He drank the wine with great appreciation, smacking his lips, until the liquid turned clear again.

“Ah—six seconds. Good, good. Now the coin...”

For each item he had her perform a different spell. She turned the copper into gold, changed the dye in the cloth from blue to red, the slipper from silk to velvet, and the beetle she couldn’t do anything with. Anwen timed the duration of each spell: two seconds for the coin, nineteen seconds for the slipper, and thirty-three seconds for the cloth.

The results felt underwhelming. She hadn’t tried much magic like this before, only the occasional trick to amuse her cousins. It wasn’t satisfying in the same way as weaving spells into her needlework; it didn’t last.

“Fascinating,” said Anwen, who had recorded the results on his blackboard. “This is the order I predicted, though it’s interesting that there’s a difference between the coin and the water... Why do you think you performed so much better with the slipper and the cloth?”

“I don’t know. I’m used to weaving magic into cloth, I suppose.”

Anwen jabbed at the air with his index finger. “Indeed! I had the great privilege of interviewing Queen Shikra shortly before her death. The things she told me were a revelation. Turned all my theories upside down—I scrapped the entire first draft of my book and started again. When you weave your spells, you normally do so in your workshop, correct?”

She nodded.

“And you’ve been working there for two years, honing your craft. The same workshop, the same tools? Every dress you’ve made in the same place?”

“Yes, I...”

She didn’t understand.

Anwen beamed. “That’s why it didn’t work here in the palace.”

“What? Because of the place?”

“Let me explain with a story. Some years ago, I read an historical account of a Maskamery king who went to war. In the capital, there was a hospital where a nurse became very famous for her healing. People flocked from miles around to be treated by her. The king himself thought highly of her because she had saved his nephew’s life after a hunting accident. When the war began, the king ordered the nurse to join the Maskamery army. Yet somehow, on the battlefield, her great healing skills deserted her. She could barely manage the most basic of tasks: dressing a wound, treating a sore. None of the miracles she had performed in the hospital. The war ended in ignominious defeat, and the king had the nurse beheaded as a traitor.”

“But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t work her magic outside the hospital?”

“I theorised that the explanation was related to the connection between the silvertrees and sorcery. Every sorcerer is blessed by a particular silvertree, likely near where they grew up. If the war took the nurse away from her homeland, perhaps that was why her magic deserted her. But Queen Shikra told me that the reality was much more complicated. The nurse couldn’t perform her magic during the war because the battlefield wasn’t her domain.”

“Domain?”

“Yes—domain. That is the term the priestesses used. Magic is power, and your domain is where you have power.”

“Then it is the place—the hospital. The workshop.”

“She said to me—ah... let me find it...” He grabbed the papers from the stack, shuffling through them until he found the passage he wanted. “Here. Read that.”

It was a transcript of his interview with Queen Shikra. Valerie took the offered paper, squinted at the handwriting, and began to read:

“A domain is a sphere of influence, embodied in all the ways that people have power over nature, the land, and each other. You have power over anything that belongs to you. The beastmasters have power over their animals. The armourers have power in their smithies. The healers have power in their clinics.”

She put the paper down in her lap, shaking. If only she had known this! If she had trained as a priestess, she would have been taught all this and more.

“You have power over anything that belongs to you,” Anwen said. “You see—the cloth and the slipper. Your items; therefore, within your sphere of influence. The beetle, on the other hand, represents my area of expertise and is the object least familiar to you. Hence you were unable to spell it.”

“But I...” She swallowed. “None of the magic took. You saw that, it all vanished in under a minute...”

“You are new to the palace, aren’t you, my lady?” Anwen asked gently.

She nodded.

“And do you have power here of any kind? Things you might influence?”

She suppressed a choked laugh. No, none at all. She was a prisoner, the very opposite of a person with power. She was sleeping in a room that wasn’t hers, wearing clothes that weren’t hers, and serving her sworn enemy. Where could she hope to find any sphere of influence in the royal palace?

“Well,” said Anwen, “that is the problem we have to solve.”

It was progress, at least. She hoped Anwen would report it as such. She’d asked the scholar if she could borrow the transcripts of his interviews with Queen Shikra, and he had happily obliged. Valerie made her excuses to leave early at dinner and spent the rest of the evening in her chamber, poring over every word.

The queen’s voice. If only I could speak to her. She could have taught me so much.

The transcripts were illuminating. Power, according to the queen, came from a variety of sources. The least power that anyone could possess was power over themselves. Mothers had power over their children. Commanders had power over their armies. Social status, professional status, ownership and belonging, promises and debts, even something as simple as familiarity with a given space or tool could provide a source of power. All of these things came together in a complex invisible web that determined the abilities of a sorcerer at any given time.

Anwen had asked the queen about her power: Can you describe your domain?

She traced the ink of the queen’s response, rereading the words over and over.

My domain is Maskamere.

By the time Lord Avon summoned her to his chamber, she had a plan. He invited her to share supper, and she sat down opposite him for a plate of bread, cheese and olives.

“I spoke to Master Anwen,” he said, pouring them wine. “He seems to think he’s discovered the problem.”

Valerie tore a piece of bread and cheese. “I think I have the solution.”

Avon raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”

“It’s like Caius said, my lord. I’m not strong enough. I need a place of my own to practise my magic, to become used to it here in the palace.”

“You wish to practise sorcery here.”

She knew he wouldn’t like it, but she ploughed on. “My quarters would do. I could turn the sitting room into a workshop and start sewing again. I just need—it has to be mine. My own quarters, tools, fabric—”

“And how do I know you haven’t already spelled your tools and mean to bring a cursed object into the palace? Or that you intend to magic your way out of here?”

Well, he was right about one of those things, but she didn’t miss a beat. “The palace is protected against cursed objects, my lord. Or at least it was when Queen Shikra was alive.”

“What does giving you a workshop have to do with breaking the seal?”

“It gives me power. I need that to work out how to break the seal.”

Avon’s eyes bored into her, but she didn’t look away. He still intimidated her, but—well. That was another problem: his power over her.

The answer she had given him corroborated with Anwen’s story. She knew that. They’d come to the same conclusion together. She’d given Avon no reason to object beyond the very reasonable risk that giving a sorcerer power in his own palace might not be a good idea. But if he wanted that door open, he’d have to take the risk.

Avon exhaled, leaning back in his seat. “Very well. You shall have your workshop.”