I was particularly interested to hear of the ‘incident’ at your college. I am assuming that the young woman would have been around sixteen or seventeen years of age (if she shared classes with you). It is very unusual for a fell-witch to avoid detection for that long. She must have been very careful, and I can only imagine her despair when they finally caught up with her. Yes, I’m sure that your tutors have told you over and over how much safer you will all be now that the fell-witch is off to the Winnowry, but I ask you, Marin, did you feel in danger before you knew what she was? Were you, at any point, burned alive or did you have any part of you blown off? Of course not. I’m sure you would have mentioned it in your monthly letters.
I sense that you want my opinion on the Winnowry, Marin, but don’t quite want to ask me. I suspect that their agents made quite an impression on you. Well, from what I can tell, they do a very good job of telling us that fell-witches are dangerous and must be controlled at all costs – there is good evidence for this, of course. We’ve all read the stories. It is like a terrible illness, they tell us. But in truth, we know very little about fell-witches – where the power comes from, why people are born with it, or why it only ever shows itself in humans (there have been no Eboran fell-witches). What I ask you to bear in mind, Marin my dear, is that when they have hurried these women off to their fortress in the south, do we believe they are treating them as victims of a terrible illness? Or are the more tractable ones used to keep the Winnowry powerful? They make their drug there, for one thing, via ‘purging’ (it seems awfully convenient to me that purging just happens to produce the most lucrative drug Sarn has ever seen); they hire the most controlled of their women out as mercenaries to any war or border dispute, and it seems to me that their agents – the same ones you will have seen whisking away your colleague – are the dangerous ones. Even the proposed winnowline (I sent you the sketches of the engine last year) relies on the indentured servitude of women who wouldn’t see the outside world at all without it. What do I think of the Winnowry, Marin? I think we need to keep a beady eye on it – power and money, and not salvation, lie at the foundation of it.
Do burn this letter if you feel safer doing so, Marin. Not everyone is as critical of the Winnowry as I, and your college elders may be feeling a little twitchy.
Extract from the private letters of Master Marin de Grazon, from Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon
Agent Lin hung suspended in the sky over the lights of Mushenska. The clouds and rain of earlier were gone, chased away by the incoming sea wind, and she was left with a clear night of stars and chill air. The bat she had been loaned for this mission was a source of warmth beneath her, its wings beating so fast that they were a blur. She had been told that its name was Gull, and indeed the name had been stitched into its leather harness. Someone cared for this creature enough to name it and personalise its belongings. She wondered if it had been the boy called Lusk – he had the look of sentiment about him. That was probably why he’d let Fell-Noon get away so easily. When she had left the Winnowry he had still been alive, although she didn’t think he’d be stitching names into anything for a while.
‘The rain will have washed away her scent by now, of course.’
She had been methodically sweeping the city for days, asking questions, looking for clues, and so far she hadn’t turned up anything. Agent Lin tugged on the reins and they swept down low over the city. The smell of wood smoke and cooking food, old hay and wet stone enveloped them, and Lin smiled slightly to herself. It was a dirty business, being the Winnowry’s attack dog, but you didn’t get smells like this in a poky little cell, and you didn’t get to feel the wind in your hair either. Most people, she suspected, didn’t understand quite what a boon that was, but most people weren’t wrestled from their crying mothers and locked up in a damp room for the majority of their lives. Fresh, clean rain was a thousand, thousand miles from the trickled moisture of damp down a rock wall.
‘Let me know if you smell anything.’ She leaned down close to the bat’s great ears. ‘I reckon you can smell your own kind better than anything else.’
She gave Gull the lead, letting the bat flitter back and forth over the city. She had never been particularly fond of flying with the creatures – they had a powerful odour all of their own, and the bunching of muscles and flapping of wings meant it was hardly a restful experience – but it was useful, and generations of careful breeding meant that these giant bats were the best of their kind available: clever, obedient, strong. The Winnowry held the secret of their bloodline, of course. Something else they were very careful to keep to themselves.
Eventually, Gull made several tight circles over a certain roof, and she took him down, landing with a clatter of claws against clay tiles. It looked like the roof of a tavern of some sort, judging from the busy chimneys and the faint smell of food and ale. Climbing down from the saddle, she caught some laughter and the sound of several shouted conversations floating up to her. Laughter was something else you didn’t hear much of in the Winnowry, of course. There was a small garden up here, she realised, where someone was growing vegetables and herbs, and a raised part of the roof revealed a small door. The scent of harla root and fever-leaf was faint, but Agent Lin had an appreciation for these things.
‘Why have you brought me here, Gull?’
The giant bat was shuffling about with its head down, its huge ugly nose wrinkling and snuffling. Out of the sky, they were awkward, ungainly creatures, spindly arms reaching through the webbing of their wings like a child caught in a sack. Agent Lin frowned slightly.
‘Do I need to remind you that Fell-Noon gets a little further away every moment we stand here?’ She paused, pursing her lips. Why was she talking to a bat? There were many advantages to being an agent of the Winnowry, but they mostly worked alone. This is what it led to: talking to bats. Better, she reminded herself, than decades shut off from the world entirely.
At that moment, the small door behind them clattered open, and an older woman with wild red hair streaked with grey stepped out onto the roof, lit by lamps in the room behind her. A strange parade of emotions showed themselves across her tanned face: surprise, mild annoyance, and then a deep wariness.
‘Here, what are you doing up on my bloody roof?’
Agent Lin stepped into the light, letting the woman see the bat-wing tattoo on her forehead and the green and grey travel tunic she wore. Winnowry colours.
‘Nothing to concern yourself with. You can go about your business.’
The woman was watching her closely, and she looked a great deal more worried than Lin would necessarily expect from a civilian with nothing to hide. That was interesting.