A small cot lay near the entrance—mine for the duration of my stay, I was told. The girl placed the two stones she carried at the end of the wooden table, adding them to a row of six other gems similar in shape though boasting different hues. A small, jeweled case lay at their center, polished so it gleamed.
“Most asha fall sick that first time,” she said. “Some may encounter no more than a small wave of dizziness or a fever lasting a few hours. But for bone witches, it can be fatal. It took me three days to recover.
“I had the most curious dream then. In it, I found a black cat, which I hid in my room. It was a beautiful kitten with the shiniest fur and the softest paws. People came and went asking for it, seeking with their blurred faces and watchful eyes. I was never sure why I lied, only that it was important that they not know I was keeping him, that something terrible would happen should they discover him.
“My kitten would change form at odd times. Sometimes it was a black dress and then a dark mask and then a beautiful obsidian gemstone. It didn’t worry me in this dream that I owned a cat that didn’t always stay one.
“Finally, it turned into a majestic-looking sword, as black as shadows—its hilt to its blade steeped in creeping, moving darkness. I knew then that I need not hide it any longer and raised up my sword.
“But the dream ended, and I woke.”
She took a sip from her wooden bowl and laughed softly. “Would events have been different, I wonder, if I had died then? Perhaps the dream was some kind of prophecy, a portent of what was to come. But I cannot predict the future like the oracle or even my sister Lilac. That is not the kind of magic I wield.”
Her fingers moved lower, tracing the long, raised scar on her thigh.
“The only sight I seem to possess nowadays is hindsight.”
2
She was a beautiful woman. Her long hair billowed out behind her like a cloak of sun-kissed yellow, and her eyes were dark caves from where blue gems glinted. She was young, in the way a woman of sixty might carefully tuck away the years around her to appear twenty. She looked nothing like a bone witch ought to look. She was soft and willowy and comely, and everyone in Knightscross was afraid of her.
My mother told me later of the fear the lady inspired when she first rode into Knightscross. Her horse was a beautiful palomino with a glossy chestnut mane, and the woman herself wore a robe of varying blues and dark greens, as if to mimic the colors of the ocean. Silvery fish adorned the edges of her dress, swimming into view and back out again whenever her skirts rustled. She wore a waist wrap of pale lavender with an embossed pattern of pearls. Gemstones attached to long pins were woven into her golden hair, and they glinted each time she moved her head.
On a chain around her neck, a heartsglass swung. It had metalworks of hammered gold and tiny jewels, the surface glossy mirrored and silver sharp.
But it was also empty.
“Crone,” muttered the bravest in the crowd. “Crow.” But even the most courageous of the lot melted away at her approach or were led away by those with better sense. The villagers knew she was the worst of witches, a demon in womanskin. But the king had decreed otherwise, and whatever their breed of cowardice, they were neither traitors nor fools.
She arrived within two days of the attempted funeral, though the news had not yet traveled to Murkwick, the nearest township fifteen leagues to the east. She strode down the path leading into the square without a word, villagers trailing behind her despite themselves. She marched straight into my home, where my family had shut Fox up in the forge, away from the terrified mob.
“Milady,” she said to Lilac, “I would be grateful if you could calm the people gathered outside. It wouldn’t do to have your family’s livelihood burned for so poor an excuse.” Next, she turned to Rose. “And might I ask you, milady, for a treatment of wortroot and farrow, lavender oil and bathwater.”
Rose and Lilac—reasonable, respectable witches by comparison to the frightful woman, an accursed bone witch—hurried to do as she commanded.
“Where is she?” was her next question, and my father showed her the room I shared with my sisters. She found me curled up on my small bed, forehead burning from the strain of the magic.
I was in no condition to remember what happened, but my mother told me everything. The witch bathed my face and chest with bitter herbs and sweet water. She measured sage and fallowtree in a bowl and spooned small doses of the concoction into my mouth. When evening came to dust the sky with tiny, twinkling stars, my fever had broken. The furnace in my mind reduced to kindling, I slept undisturbed until dawn the next day while the witch stood guard.
The sickness was gone when I awoke, and in its place was the woman, sleeping in a chair at the foot of the bed. I rose to a sitting position and stared at my visitor. A soft haze surrounded her, a subdued light both familiar and frightening.
“My dead father was my first summon,” the lovely woman said without opening her eyes. “Don’t know what came over me, I’m sure. I was his daughter, but he thought I fared better as his property. Denied me even the smallest freedoms and imprisoned me in petticoats and sewing lessons. Had he lived longer, he would have confined me to a convent or deeded me over to a wealthy merchant to wed. Perhaps I did it to show him there was more to me than as someone else’s dowry. He was not as imposing dead as he was alive though, and he was most unwilling, so I sent him back quickly. Sick as a dog for four days for my trouble. You seem to have fared better, with only two nights’ worth of illness. My name is Mykaela. You might have heard of me.”
Six months ago, a visiting merchant told my father of a daeva that terrorized the town of Lardbrook ninety leagues away. A strange woman they called Mykaela of the Hollows had killed it, he said. Surely no one else in Odalia had hair so pale or skin so light.
I trembled. “Yes. They call you the bone witch.”
“Your parents tell me you’re quite the precocious child.” The woman smiled, two rows of pearly whites against scarlet lips. “That’s not the worst they call me, and that will not be the worst they will call you.”
Bone witches were not a respectable trade. They said bone witches gave sleeping sicknesses to innocent princesses with the prick of a finger, and they said bone witches ate the hearts of children who strayed too far into forests. Bone witches did not truly serve the Eight Kingdoms as they claim, because they dabbled in the Dark runes just like the False Prince and his Faceless followers. Bone witches raised armies from the dead. Bone witches could raise daeva—like the one that had killed Fox.