The King Slayer Part 7

"Schuyler told us what happened. I'm relieved to see that you're safe, and on the mend." He says this last part almost as if it's a question.

He settles me in a plush seat beside Fifer, then looks to John, sitting beside the fireplace and staring into the flames as if he can read them.

"John?"

He turns his head.

"I wondered if you'd be so kind as to make Elizabeth a tonic?" Nicholas smiles, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "She's a bit pale and appears to have a chill."

The room falls quiet, and I feel as if everyone in it is watching me, watching us; trying to piece together what's happening while it's still falling apart.

"You can help yourself to my stores," Nicholas prompts. "They're right where you remember them."

John rises from his chair and finally-finally-looks at me. "Of course I'll make you something. I won't be long."

Fifer jabs her elbow into my side. We both watch as he walks from the room, his hands jammed in the pockets of his coat, the one he still hasn't removed despite the warmth in the room, almost as if he hopes he won't be asked to stay long.

Nicholas turns back to me.

"The Knights of the Anglian Royal Empire." This is how he begins. No questions. "They were after you. They knew where you were. They knew you'd be alone."

"They didn't know I was alone," I say. "Not for certain. Fulke-he's the one I killed, the one who came in first-was sent to watch over me while the other one, Griffin, searched the house. And they were only looking for Peter. They thought John was dead."

Fifer starts to speak, but Nicholas holds up a hand to stop her. "Go on."

"Fulke said they were ordered to bring me back to Blackwell," I continue. "I didn't ask why; I didn't think I needed to. I know too much, both about him and about you. I thought that was why he wanted me back, just as you said at my trial. But now I'm not so sure."

I pause, thinking again about Griffin. About the look on his face when he saw me cut, when he saw me bleed.

"Griffin, he acted the way he always does," I say. "He didn't seem worried that he was here, in Harrow, surrounded by enemies. He didn't seem worried that he could be caught. He didn't seem worried about anything, not until he cut me. Until he knew I didn't have my stigma." I recall the way Griffin threw me against the wall, over and over, demanding to know what happened to it. "Why? It should be nothing to him if I don't have my stigma."

Nicholas steps to the window overlooking the front of the house, moonlight falling through the panes and illuminating his expression. There's a world of difference in the way he appears now compared to when I first met him, alone in my cell at Fleet. Thin and haggard and gray then; now bright and full of life. Even so, there is a gravity in his face that hasn't changed.

Finally, he speaks. "Elizabeth, I want you to tell me about Blackwell."

I open my mouth to say-I don't know what-but shut it as John steps into the room, carrying a copper goblet. He's flushed and disheveled, his coat finally gone, the sleeves of his blue cambric shirt pushed up past his elbows. His eyes are bright and he's grinning. He looks and acts so much like the John I know that I'm able to manage a brief smile in return.

"I'm sorry it took me so long." He hands me the quietly smoking cup. A scent drifts from the top and there's something about it that makes my stomach curdle. "It's wormwood, dill, and h.o.r.ehound boiled in wine," he tells me. "It's nice, and I think you'll like it. At the very least, it should warm you up."

Wormwood. I know enough from his notes that while wormwood is used in soothing tonics, it's also the primary ingredient in absinthe-which is also the primary ingredient in the ale I drank too much of the night I dropped witches' herbs in front of the king's guard, got arrested, and nearly lost my life.

Another jab from Fifer.

I nod my reluctant thanks but John doesn't acknowledge it, already moving back to his chair beside the fire. After a long moment, I turn back to Nicholas.

"What about Blackwell?" I set the cup down on the table beside me. "What do you want to know about him?"

Nicholas switches his attention from John back to me. "I want to know about your relationship with him."

"Relationship?" The word, in conjunction with Blackwell's name, confuses me. "I don't think I understand."

"When you trained with him, did he single you out in any way? Did he train you differently, or treat you differently? Did he provide you with anything-weapons, advice, warnings even, about what was to come-and not the other witch hunters?"

"No." Then I reconsider. "Not really. But I do remember something he said to me once, after I completed a test. It was toward the end of training and by then, I knew what he was like. And what he said was so unlike him, it was hard to forget it."

Nicholas is watching me closely. "What did he say?"

I hesitate. I don't like talking about training. I didn't then, and I don't now. Not only because reliving it forces me to remember things best left forgotten, but because it forces everyone in this room to remember who I really am.

I don't want them to remember they should hate me.

I hope for a smile from John, or a look of rea.s.surance, something to let me know it's all right. But he's drifted away again, head bowed, hands clasped tightly together. Closed off.

So I go on without him.

It was the maze test, the second-to-last test before our final. Those who were left-there were eighteen of us then-were given four days to get through it. We had no supplies. No food, no water, no weapons, no provisions except our wits, our knowledge, our courage, and our resourcefulness: better news for some than for others.

We were led to the test at midnight; they always began at midnight. The night was thick with fog; it was like walking inside a cloud. Then we saw them: ma.s.sive hedge walls, stretching too far and too high to see where they ended. The fog clung to them like wisps of snow, twisting and curling around the branches, making them look alive, as if they were breathing. As if they were waiting to devour us.

Three days. That's how long it took me to get through the maze. I'd been attacked, twice, by things inside; things I couldn't name. Creatures that looked like wolves but snaked around corners like serpents. Things that flew like hawks but looked like bears, wearing their teeth and claws and size. My clothes were in shreds, as was the skin on my right arm. I lost a boot along with a big chunk of my hair when something, I still don't know what, grabbed hold of me and almost didn't let go.

When I finally made it out, it was morning. Dawn, or just before it. There was dew in the gra.s.s, pink in the sky; there were birds and sun and freedom and success. I crawled out on all fours, b.l.o.o.d.y and sweaty, hungry and thirsty, and so, so tired. I got as far as I could manage-ten feet, twenty maybe-before flopping to the ground. I wanted to cry; I wanted to sleep. Instead, inexplicably, I started to laugh.

Maybe it was joy, maybe it was madness. But to know I was sent in with the expectation that I wouldn't come out-the feeling went beyond relief.

That's when I heard it. The tiniest noise, footsteps in the gra.s.s, the heel of a boot on a twig. I rolled to my back and there he was. Blackwell. He stood over me, a shadow between me and the sun. Turning light to dark in the way only he could.

"My lord." I scrambled to my feet and dipped into a clumsy curtsy.

"Elizabeth."

I waited. His eyes, cold as wet coal, looked me up and down. Took in my tattered clothes, my missing boot, the hank of hair missing from my scalp. I swiped a lock of what was left behind my ear, to try to hide it. My hand came away red.

"You did well," he said finally.

"Thank you, my lord." My voice was a hoa.r.s.e whisper, leagues away from the wild, shrieking laughter of just moments ago.

He stepped toward me; I willed myself not to back away. He took another step, then another, until I was staring directly at his doublet: fine cloth of gold and trimmed in emerald velvet, sleeves slashed to show the white of the fine linen beneath.

"Look at me," he said.

I did.

Tall. Dark hair, shaven nearly to his scalp. Short, closely cropped beard. Well over six feet. Attractive, if one could get past those hard, cruel eyes.

"You were a mistake," he said.

I didn't know what to say to that, if I should say anything to that. Finally, I settled on "Yes, my lord."

"Yet with all that, here you are. Again. Still. Here." He began to circle me, the way a wolf does its prey. It took every ounce of control I had to stand in place. "Why do you think that is? Why are you here, Elizabeth?"

I had a thousand replies, none of which I could voice. Because of you? In spite of you? No thanks to you? Instead I said, "To learn, my lord."

"To learn," he repeated. "And what, pray, are you learning?"

He was behind me now; I couldn't see him but I could feel him, and every hair on the back of my neck stood on end, shrieking their warning. His words were mild but I could hear the pique behind them. I didn't know how I'd displeased him but then, I never did.

"How to serve you."

He stepped around me so that he was facing me again. But I didn't relax. And I didn't look at him, either. I kept my eyes on his golden tunic, the still-rising sun glittering off the fabric.

"How fortunate am I to have such a servant in you."

He was taunting me, I knew that. Once again I didn't know how to respond, so once again, I repeated myself. "Yes, my lord." It had become a mantra.

Blackwell looked toward the maze. I didn't know what other recruits were inside, or who had already returned. It occurred to me to wonder: Was he waiting for me? Was that why he was here? Or was he waiting for someone else?

"Do you think, Elizabeth, that you will make it through training?"

This, I knew the answer to. I didn't have to hunt around for what to reply and I didn't hesitate when I did.

"Yes, my lord."

Blackwell nodded. "Yes. I see that you believe that. And I can see you wish me to believe it, too." He smiled, or at least gave the nearest approximation to a smile I'd ever seen from him. It transformed him. It turned him from someone you would fear into someone you could almost trust.

Almost.

"And do you know? From what I saw today, I very nearly do believe it."

My heart swelled, and I felt a flush of pleasure race through my limbs all the way into my cheeks, burning bright with what was, from him, the highest of praise.

"I think, in time, you'll either be my greatest mistake or my greatest victory."

"Then what?"

Nicholas's voice snaps me back to the present. For a moment I'd been there, at Blackwell's, at the mouth of the maze. I could almost feel the dew on my hands, the smarting in my scalp, the burn of sunlight in my eyes.

I look up to find everyone watching me.

"Nothing," I say. "He walked away, and that was it. I didn't see much more of him, and I didn't talk to him. Not until the night of the final test."

"The test in the tomb," Nicholas clarifies. "After which you received your stigma."

"Yes." I rub my eyes. The weight of the evening is bearing down on me, and all I want is for it to be over.

But Nicholas presses on. "Elizabeth, do you know how stigmas are created?"

There's a shift then, a tension that springs from his words and coils around the room. I feel it in the way Fifer stiffens beside me, see it in the way Schuyler moves to stand behind her. The way John jerks his attention from the flames, past me to settle on Nicholas.

The front door opens and Peter emerges from the entry hall into the room. "My apologies for being late." He shrugs off his cloak, holds it out. It's plucked from the air by an invisible hand-Hastings, Nicholas's ghost servant-and disappears from the room. "The ground is harder to dig into, what with the cold. Nearly broke my spade on that second grave-" He stops himself. "How are things here?"

"Enigmatic," Nicholas says mildly. "Though we're working to change that." Peter pulls up a chair beside John, who doesn't acknowledge his father's presence.

"I don't know how stigmas are created," I answer Nicholas's question. "No one had them before us, so there was no one to tell us how it was done. A lot of our guesses were ridiculous and most didn't make sense, but we all agreed that it had to be some kind of spell."

Nicholas nods. "Magic-all magic-works the same way. It is the direction of a witch or wizard's power into an external object, be it a person or thing. A love spell placed on a slip of parchment. A healing enchantment planted within a potion. A protective charm embedded into a ring. A curse placed onto a tablet. A stigma given to a witch hunter."

The hair on the back of my neck p.r.i.c.kles in warning.

"Magic, the order that is magic, is to seek unity and balance within all things," Nicholas continues. "The power that is inherent in your stigma: that of strength, of healing, of preventing death or in some instances the death of others"-a glance at John-"disrupts that balance. It is to give power to do what no human, magic or non-, should be able to do. To attempt a spell of this consequence would deplete their magic. All their magic."

"Magic can be depleted?"

Nicholas nods. "When a witch or wizard casts their magic into an object, say, a letter intended to entice, a potion meant to heal, it decreases. How quickly it is restored, and the degree to which it is restored, depends on the spell, as well as the witches or wizards themselves. For an old wizard, or a wizard compromised in some way, their magic may never fully return. The same is true of a curse. My own magic was depleted somewhat by the curse Blackwell set upon me. And while I am not fully restored, I am quite close." He looks to Fifer, who manages a small smile.

"If the spell to create a stigma requires so much power that it could deplete a person's magic entirely, how could it be done?" I say. "There were sixteen of us. Sixteen stigmas, which means sixteen spells, sixteen witches or wizards giving up their power to give us ours-" I stop as I realize. "They didn't give up their power, did they? Their power was taken from them. Stolen."

In the silence that follows, I come to understand the remainder of Blackwell's plan. The first, I already knew: to take the witches and wizards we captured for him and turn them into an army in order to overthrow the kingdom. And now, I know the second: to steal the magic of those who resisted in order to empower his men so they could never be defeated.

"But it still doesn't explain why Blackwell wants my stigma," I say. "There's nothing special about it. Its power isn't any greater than anyone else's. Griffin's, Fulke's, Caleb's-"

"No?" Nicholas breaks in. "Are you sure about that?"

I hesitate. Think of the things I can do; used to do. I think of my strength, my speed, the way I could hunt better and fight fiercer than anyone. How I rose to the top of the ranks, how I was Blackwell's best witch hunter, second only to Caleb. But that was because I wanted it, because I fought for it. It was because of me.

Wasn't it?

"You said yourself there was no precedent," he continues. "No one to tell you how stigmas were created. Did it occur to you that someone had to be first? Someone had to be a test subject in Blackwell's experiment?"

In time, you'll either be my greatest mistake or my greatest victory.

"A wizard's power is not c.u.mulative," Nicholas says. "Magic is not c.u.mulative. Blackwell could not take power from one man after another, or one woman after another, in order to increase his own. Again, the laws of magic, and that of balance, do not allow for it. You only take on the power, the magic, that is greatest of the two. He would not risk diluting his own power, as it were, with that of a lesser witch or wizard. So, no. He is not trying to increase his power." A pause. "I believe he is trying to restore it."

There it hangs: the truth on a knife's edge. The dawning realization of what Nicholas knows, what he's been trying to get me to piece together on my own.

I leap to my feet. Peter jumps to his, too; he turns to John as Fifer s.n.a.t.c.hes my hand, saying something to me in a soothing tone but I can't make out her words through the rush of blood in my ears and the words Nicholas says next: "I believe your stigma came from Blackwell. And for reasons I cannot begin to fathom, he needs his power back."

THE FOLLOWING WEEK IS NOTHING short of agony as we pick apart what it means, what it could mean, for Blackwell to be after the stigma.

Arguments between Peter and John are an almost hourly occurrence. Instead of being frightened by possessing Blackwell's power, by possibly becoming a target of that power, John is determined to use it. He wants to do what Gareth kept me in Harrow to do: He wants to kill Blackwell. Peter, once heartened by his son's desire to throw himself into this fight, has since turned tack, pleading with John to leave Anglia, for him to take me on his ship-the one Peter gave him when he left pirating-and sail away from Anglia, as far as it will take us.

But John won't quit; he can't. The stigma won't let him. The balance of magic is tipping, and not in John's favor. I have a cause for the change in his behavior now. The distance, the violence; every day he heals less, every day he fights more. Blackwell's magic has taken hold of him, and every day that pa.s.ses it grows stronger.

For now, his secret-and mine-is still safe. But for how long? Each day I train with Schuyler and Fifer, and each day I get stronger, more agile, more battle ready. But John trains alongside me now, and whatever improvement I make he outpaces tenfold. The disparity between us cannot be ignored, and it can no longer be hidden.

It's a problem without a solution, at least, not one I've been able to land on. And I'm running out of time. This morning a pair of fat, creamy envelopes arrived at Mill Cottage, sealed with wax and stamped with a double quatrefoil, Lord Cranbourne Calthorpe-Gough's badge: our summons. John's duty to the Watch has officially come to an end and he and I are to report to the camp at Rochester within twenty-four hours.

Rochester Hall is located in the northernmost part of Harrow, in a town named for itself: Rochester. It's a two-hour walk from John and Peter's home, down a pretty country lane bordered by hedgerows and bramble-covered wood fences, the landscape dotted with trees, red-roofed farmhouses nestled in low-lying valleys, and fields littered with cl.u.s.ters of sheep in their dirty, tangled winter wool coats.