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Chapter 5
The Witch
 

The details are important, but it's easy to get lost in the details. That was as true when I was teaching my students at Alton, and allowed myself to get caught up in the day-by-day aspects of teaching, as it is now.

I have much to answer for. If I had a conscience, the blood of my lambs would weigh heavily upon it. But if I had a conscience, I couldn't have sent all my lambs to the slaughter, could I? My poor lambs—I do murder you all, don't I?

At least, now, I rarely have to set foot in England, where I'm widely known as the great hero, Sir Cully, who sent an army of novices into the meat grinder of York's soldiers. Two survived; Alexander became as black a traitor as could be, and I'd not save his soul if I could.

And Gray I can't save. Even She can't. My poor boy; I grieve for you much more than Bear, even.

And the worst of it? I think that most, if not all of them, would forgive me without being asked. I know that Gray does.

I'd thought to escape, but it's not possible for such as me. So be it. I'll be Sir Cully of Cully's Woode until the day that I die.

Or, perhaps—just perhaps—longer. It's a harsh punishment, but it's deserved.

—Cully

Her name was Penelope.

That was important, at least to her.

At her birth, Father and Mother had, so they said, agreed that she should be given a proper name, although they had argued, long and hard, as to what a proper name was. Mother had thought perhaps she should be Priyanka, and Father—who, unusual for a sergeant in the Mumbai Guard—had learned to speak Hindi fluently, always said that if she had to have a goddamn heathen name, it should be Parmeshwari, because as an infant she squalled and screamed like a demon goddess, but there was no sense in discussing it futher—she would have a good English name, and enough of any nonsense to the contrary.

So she was Penelope. Penelope Priyanka Miller. Father always addressed her by her name, as did Sir Michael, although Father did, when in his cups, occasionally refer to her as "my beloved little bastard," as he had married Mother in a church in Brigstow, not in Mumbai, where she was born.

Mother did call her Priyanka, when she thought that nobody else could hear. A few times Father had heard, and—out of sight or hearing of the captain, of course—had cursed his wife in a combination of English and Hindi that would have peeled paint.

But he meant well by it. That was one good thing you could say about Father: he really did mean well.

He was so different than many soldiers, in so many ways.

More than a few of HM soldiers took "native" concubines, and of those many, almost all of them left their half-breed children along with the concubines on the docks when their ten years was up, and their ships set sail from the docks of Mumbai. It was just a matter of economy; it was only a little cheaper to have one's own whore than to rent the usage at the brothels that sprung up around the compounds, after all. "Even a bloody private's miserly pay goes far, very far, very far in Mumbai," as the barracks song said, and more than a few soldiers slept outside the walls, awakening only in time to put on freshly washed uniforms for morning formation, perhaps after a quick servicing.

And Father had, she suspected, done most of that, although he had used the perquisites of his rank to have his own "girl" tend his private quarters, inside the walls.

But leave Mother and Penelope on the docks when he sailed away? He had, so he had said—drunk and sober—never considered it.

Not Father. He was, in his own way, every bit as stiff-necked as you'd expect from a sergeant of the Guard, but when it came to Mother, and to Penelope, it was as though he was another man entirely. It had taken all of his legitimate savings and probably most of the graft that he had taken as the regimental quartermaster sergeant, but he had shipped both of them to Brigstow the week before he left for, for home, and met them at the docks with a most uncharacteristic display of affection, interrupted only when he set Penelope down with Hemashri, and turned to administer a remarkably savage drubbing to some longshoreman who had made a comment that Penelope hadn't heard, and probably wouldn't have understood then, although she would later.

He had taken a position with the captain—Captain Sir Miles Weatheral was always "the captain" to Father, whether present or not—as his butler, and if late nights at Everwood often found the butler and his master in the library drinking and even singing, none of the rest of the staff took official notice, despite the upstairs gossip. She wasn't sure whether it was Father's influence or the captain's natural tendency that while Father was always addressed as "Miller", and mother as "Cook," she was always "Penelope" to The Captain, who would always—always—ask permission from Father or Mother before taking her upon his lap, permission that was always granted, and a practice that had stopped when she reached her womanhood, although she had missed it, at least at first. The captain was a bachelor, and as a girl she had had dreams of him asking Father for her hand, although that had never happened, also of course. She was, after all, just a servant girl, and if the captain showed her more affection and respect than the other children of the staff, that had little to do with her and much to do with Father.

Still, when the upstairs houseboy tried to . . . take liberties with her, it was the only time that she had ever heard Father and the captain argue, although that was only because she had her ear pressed to the door. She wasn't able to follow all of it, but the final result is that the houseboy had, bruises and all, been sent packing, and she had been called into the captain's study, where he had stuttered and hemmed and hawed in a way quite unlike his usual self as he asked her what he called a favor, which she had of course granted, and then to swear to him—on the Bible that he had produced—that should any man ever give her such insult again, she would come directly to him, and to none other.

And it was one of the captain's acquaintances, for there always seemed to be younger men paying calls on him, who noticed her serving, and who asked the captain if he might have a word with her privately.

She hadn't thought much of it at the time; she had just assumed that he was in need of a girl, and that the captain would turn him down, perhaps after consulting with Father.

The young man, as it turned out, was a full fellow in HM College of Wizardry, despite his age, and Sir Giles had seen, so he said, a "spark" in her, and that would require testing.

Father had been appropriately shocked, but Mother just smiled, and Penelope had soon had found herself in Glymphtown, before a "board." Master Hollingwood himself had made the preparations that showed her spark, but it was clear that all the other masters and mistresses could see it without that, and while it was really several weeks later she remembered it as being days at most before she had found herself sleeping in a dank cell that was most depressingly unlike the much more comfortable servants quarters at Everwood in every respect.

Glymphtown, naturally—not, of course, the Residence of the College in Oxford. That was for finer folk, as HM College of Wizardry was largely a noble affair. But both ordinaries and fellows were always in need of clerks, and clerks who could not only read and write but help with at least basic preparations would always be able to find themselves a position in at least an ordinary's shop in a small village.

Most of the rest of the students were English, of course, and being English, to them she was just another Injan, of which there were several, as though there were no differences between Hindi or Sinds or Tamils that were worthy of note, them all being little and brown.

It was unpleasant, in all respects, save for two: the teachers, and the work. Magic was more than the laws and the "spark," particularly in these days when the sparks of the Great Wizards had long since been quenched, and it was more study than anything else.

Languages, ancient and modern; alchemy; glassblowing; pottery; heraldry—there was still much power there, if you knew how to look for it. And then there was woodsmanship and natural science, for the difference between a spotted salamander and a speckled salamander would not show in the liver, but only in the efficacy, and while, as tradition had it, there was indeed much use for the "eye of newt" in various preparations, it had to be the right sort of newt, as errors could be and were often disastrous, not the least of which was trying to use the death of even the most humble of creature as a source of power, as she was certain was what had gotten at least two students killed. The Dark Arts could, so it was said, be turned to noble purposes—the Red Swords were but an example—but that was a matter for the Great Wizards, and at best risky for the lesser ones of a lesser age, and utterly unsafe for a clerk-to-be.

The unsupported "spark" of a Glymphtown student could hardly do much damage by itself—even the spark of a senior fellow had to be carefully tuned and directed to be of much use—but she was fairly sure that what killed poor David was an attempt at a love potion that had gone bad, and she was always most careful, something that Master Hollingswood would occasionally remark upon to others of the students.

Which would have left her very lonely, if she was capable of loneliness, something that she denied to herself just as much as she looked forward to her occasional holidays at Everwood.

Her life's path was clear to her. She would become a clerk to a wizard, an apprentice in name who would never become more than that, and she hoped to one who would appreciate that a woman clerk would be of more use than a man during part of the month, and less during others, and not beat her too often for her inadequacies.

It was all very clear until the day that the old man in the robes of a knight of the Order had walked into the dining hall during dinner, spoken briefly with Master Hollingswood, who argued, argued some more, read the paper that the knight presented, argued yet again, and then threw down the paper and stalked from the room as the knight walked down the tables to where she sat, wondering what this could possibly be about, and stood before her, and said, "My name is Cully. I'm very sorry, but you're to come with me."

And now she walked through the bright Izmiri night behind the two knights, with the third knight behind her, in search of a witch.

At the thought, the wind began to pick up, and while the night was warm, she still found herself shivering.

A witch. Mother had told her tales of the moha karana, and they were similar enough to the English stories about witchwomen as well. Usually more than half-mad, unsystematic to say the least, and more often frauds than not.

More often; not always. Skills could be learned in other places than Glymphtown, after all, and could be passed down from mother to daughter. The Church didn't burn witches, and hadn't for centuries—although that couldn't be said for the Inquisition, where the Empire ruled. In England, the College did most of the policing of such, at least in southern and eastern England, although much less in Scotland and Ireland. Witchcraft—as opposed to wizardry—was always a matter of suspicion, as the arts could easily turn black, and there was power to be had in the necromancy that, when it was just a matter of a newt or bat or even a cat, could do quite a lot of harm, and much more so when it was something with a soul. Through Inja, the Kali cult was still being suppressed, although in fifty years the administration had made little more than a dent in it.

The Kali worshipers were, well, systematic. Not the same systems she had been taught in Glymphtown, of course—and woe to the student there, or at Oxford, who tried his hand at necromancy—but both the letting of blood and the killing without bloodletting each could be the source of much power. It was the only thing that did explain the new live swords, after all.

She was skeptical, though, and thought that Cully shared her skepticism. The source of new live swords being a Turkish madwoman witch? That didn't make sense, at least not to her.

No.

But. What else did they have to go on at the moment, except for exhaustion? They had spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening doing the tinkering that Cully had promised for the next day, and carefully hidden the completed work along with the rest of their gear. If this turned out to be the nothing that her mind told her it was likely to be, there would be questions asked in the village the next day, and when all the questions were the same, the answer would be that they had been doing something other than the tinkering.

So that had to be done, and sleep would have to wait.

Sir Guy, of course, grumbled a little—well, much—accepting Sir Cully's reproach with his usual ill grace.

About the only good thing about this was that this was the right time of the month for her. She could feel her spark burning just a little more brightly in her belly, as the part of her that was a woman said that it was time to create life, supporting the part of her that would someday be a wizard, at least of sorts, urged her to channel that otherwise.

There was no road up into the hills, just a winding path, but that didn't matter. A cook fire—or a fire of some sort—was burning somewhere up it, and that gave a direction, even if it didn't provide a map.

As they neared the top of the hill, Cully held up his hand, and she and Stavros stopped immediately, although Sir Guy walked on for a few more feet before turning back.

"What is it?" Sir Guy whispered.

"Shush," Cully said. "There's a shack of some sort, just through those trees." He turned to Penelope. "Can you sense anything?"

His hand went to the hilt of his sword, then dropped.

If the smoke rising slowly into the night marked it, the shack was a full hundred yards away, at least. A full fellow of the College would likely not have been able to spot the spark of an adept—even a powerful one—at this distance.

While this time of the month her own spark glowed more and more warmingly just above her womb, and her senses of such things were as acute as they could be, she certainly couldn't have.

If she had been where she ought to have been—sitting at a bench alongside the other students at Glymphtown—she could no doubt have detected the sparks of the boys as far as two or three seats down, and perhaps the girls even further, if they were at their peak.

But not across even a tenth this distance.

But she shook her head. "There's nothing that I can sense. We're not close enough, even if there's anything there."

He nodded. "Which means if there is, it's nothing of much power."

For a man who seemed to be smart and clever about most things, Cully was being amazingly stupid at the moment. "It means nothing of the sort, Sir Cully," she whispered back. "It just means that I can't feel the spark from here. It doesn't mean it's not there."

She could more feel than hear Cully frown in the dark, but it didn't feel like a reproach.

Sir Guy snorted. "Is there anything you can do?"

Well, of course she could. The tinker's gear wasn't the only thing that they had brought from England, and the bag that Master Hollingswood had given her was strapped to her back.

"Yes, Sir Guy. It will take me a few moments to prepare." Detecting a spark or the use of the Powers wasn't particularly difficult, and just a technical matter. She couldn't feel it with her own, but she certainly had the tools available.

"Why not just walk up and see?" Sir Guy asked.

In the dark, she could more feel than see Cully rolling his eyes. "Do what you can," he said. "But quickly."

Sir Guy waited with as much patience as he watched the girl, kneeling on the path. It seemed much of a production for something that could have been, and presumably should have been, settled by merely walking up the path and knocking on the door.

He let his hand fall to Albert's hilt.

Patience, Guy, is a virtue.

Well, as always, what Albert said that was more than true enough, but patience for this?

Coming all the way from England, lowering himself by pretending to be a mute slave, hauling a cart up and down the hills of Izmir, and now watching as a little Injan girl knelt on the ground, her shift riding dangerously up her thighs as she spread out her candles and potions, and because there was a rumor of a witch?

Patience is a virtue. Are virtues only virtues when your life is one of convenience? Are they to be practiced only when it is easy to practice them? And only when your own station in life is shown the respect that you believe it deserves?

Guy bowed his head. Saint Albert of Leeds, despite his noble birth, had taken a beggar's and a hermit's life. It was a matter of God's Will, Sir Guy was certain, that the rigors of that life had found Saint Albert dying in a hut outside of Almsbury, just at the right moment when his soul could, at his death, be sealed within the sword.

And the rumors that Morrolyst murdered me? You've never given those much credence.

Well, of course not. How could a White Sword be created by murder? It didn't stand to reason.

Albert said nothing further on the matter; it was hardly the first time it had come up.

Perhaps another time. In the meantime, it might be best to concentrate on the present. There's always the possibility that it holds some peril, you know.

He let his hand drop from the hilt of the sword. It wasn't the first time that Sir Guy had the feeling that Albert looked down upon him, and he didn't much care for it, truth to tell.

But, as usual, Albert had a point—granted, there were all those agents of the admiral's who had disappeared in the area, and maybe that meant something, or maybe it didn't.

Well, at least, the girl did seem to know something—if not necessarily her craft in the way that a fellow of the College would have, at least in terms of the contents of her bag and the basics of her trade. She had scratched a circle in the dirt of the path, and set out candles that she had insisted—almost silently—that she had to light herself, even though Cully was far handier with a fire kit.

With the candles in place and lit—and they were each of a different color and shape; Sir Guy assumed that there was a reason for it—she dribbled several somethings from several of the vials just inside the inscribed circle. He was sure that one of the vials contained frankincense—that was a familiar enough smell—and perhaps the other another spice, but was the third really urine? It smelled like . . . 

She murmured something, then took a knife from her bag and cut at the inscribed circle in four places.

"Davetsiz misafir," a voice said, out of the darkness. "How interesting."

Sir Guy raised his head, and reached for Albert, stopping only when Cully gripped his sleeve with strength that a man his age shouldn't have had.

"Stand easy," Cully said, rising. "We likely mean you no harm."

The dark shape stood on the path above them, and laughed. "I have heard that before," she said—and not in Turkish, but in English, and that with a smooth accent that would not have seemed out of place in a West End drawing room in Londinium itself.

"Interesting," the voice went on, "that you should appear here, sneaking about like thieves in the night, and tell me that you mean no harm."

"I didn't say that we mean you no harm," Cully said. "What I said is that we probably mean you no harm. It depends, I suppose, on who you are, and what you're about, more than anything else."

Another laugh. "Ah. Sir Cully of Cully's Woode—always one for honesty, except when it suits you to lie." More laughter. "Well, as long as you keep your kam in your trousers, you'll do me no harm, and likely give me no pleasure." The shape extended a dark arm. "Ah. And here we have a little girl playing with little toys." A quiet snicker. "Well, let's make it easy for you."

A murmured word, and the flickering flames of each of the candles grew brighter and brighter, until Sir Guy had to throw his arm over his eyes to avoid being dazzled.

And then the light dimmed—but not the quiet flicker of the candles that had barely illuminated the circle where the girl still crouched. The candles were still lit, and burned more than halfway down, but their light seemed to permeate the air about them.

With one exception. The hooded figure in front of them was still wrapped in darkness, and the light seemed to stop just short of her robes, save only for the eyes.

It would have almost have been reassuring if the eyes had shone red or yellow in the darkness, but they were just eyes, with the rest of her features hidden.

"You will come inside," she said, and Sir Guy found himself in lockstep with the three others, following her through the scrub brush, unable to do anything about the way that the brambles clawed at him as much as he was to ignore it.

He tried to turn his head to meet the others' eyes, but his body wouldn't obey him, anymore than it would when he tried to clamp his hand to Albert's hilt.

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Framed

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Chapter 5
The Witch
 

The details are important, but it's easy to get lost in the details. That was as true when I was teaching my students at Alton, and allowed myself to get caught up in the day-by-day aspects of teaching, as it is now.

I have much to answer for. If I had a conscience, the blood of my lambs would weigh heavily upon it. But if I had a conscience, I couldn't have sent all my lambs to the slaughter, could I? My poor lambs—I do murder you all, don't I?

At least, now, I rarely have to set foot in England, where I'm widely known as the great hero, Sir Cully, who sent an army of novices into the meat grinder of York's soldiers. Two survived; Alexander became as black a traitor as could be, and I'd not save his soul if I could.

And Gray I can't save. Even She can't. My poor boy; I grieve for you much more than Bear, even.

And the worst of it? I think that most, if not all of them, would forgive me without being asked. I know that Gray does.

I'd thought to escape, but it's not possible for such as me. So be it. I'll be Sir Cully of Cully's Woode until the day that I die.

Or, perhaps—just perhaps—longer. It's a harsh punishment, but it's deserved.

—Cully

Her name was Penelope.

That was important, at least to her.

At her birth, Father and Mother had, so they said, agreed that she should be given a proper name, although they had argued, long and hard, as to what a proper name was. Mother had thought perhaps she should be Priyanka, and Father—who, unusual for a sergeant in the Mumbai Guard—had learned to speak Hindi fluently, always said that if she had to have a goddamn heathen name, it should be Parmeshwari, because as an infant she squalled and screamed like a demon goddess, but there was no sense in discussing it futher—she would have a good English name, and enough of any nonsense to the contrary.

So she was Penelope. Penelope Priyanka Miller. Father always addressed her by her name, as did Sir Michael, although Father did, when in his cups, occasionally refer to her as "my beloved little bastard," as he had married Mother in a church in Brigstow, not in Mumbai, where she was born.

Mother did call her Priyanka, when she thought that nobody else could hear. A few times Father had heard, and—out of sight or hearing of the captain, of course—had cursed his wife in a combination of English and Hindi that would have peeled paint.

But he meant well by it. That was one good thing you could say about Father: he really did mean well.

He was so different than many soldiers, in so many ways.

More than a few of HM soldiers took "native" concubines, and of those many, almost all of them left their half-breed children along with the concubines on the docks when their ten years was up, and their ships set sail from the docks of Mumbai. It was just a matter of economy; it was only a little cheaper to have one's own whore than to rent the usage at the brothels that sprung up around the compounds, after all. "Even a bloody private's miserly pay goes far, very far, very far in Mumbai," as the barracks song said, and more than a few soldiers slept outside the walls, awakening only in time to put on freshly washed uniforms for morning formation, perhaps after a quick servicing.

And Father had, she suspected, done most of that, although he had used the perquisites of his rank to have his own "girl" tend his private quarters, inside the walls.

But leave Mother and Penelope on the docks when he sailed away? He had, so he had said—drunk and sober—never considered it.

Not Father. He was, in his own way, every bit as stiff-necked as you'd expect from a sergeant of the Guard, but when it came to Mother, and to Penelope, it was as though he was another man entirely. It had taken all of his legitimate savings and probably most of the graft that he had taken as the regimental quartermaster sergeant, but he had shipped both of them to Brigstow the week before he left for, for home, and met them at the docks with a most uncharacteristic display of affection, interrupted only when he set Penelope down with Hemashri, and turned to administer a remarkably savage drubbing to some longshoreman who had made a comment that Penelope hadn't heard, and probably wouldn't have understood then, although she would later.

He had taken a position with the captain—Captain Sir Miles Weatheral was always "the captain" to Father, whether present or not—as his butler, and if late nights at Everwood often found the butler and his master in the library drinking and even singing, none of the rest of the staff took official notice, despite the upstairs gossip. She wasn't sure whether it was Father's influence or the captain's natural tendency that while Father was always addressed as "Miller", and mother as "Cook," she was always "Penelope" to The Captain, who would always—always—ask permission from Father or Mother before taking her upon his lap, permission that was always granted, and a practice that had stopped when she reached her womanhood, although she had missed it, at least at first. The captain was a bachelor, and as a girl she had had dreams of him asking Father for her hand, although that had never happened, also of course. She was, after all, just a servant girl, and if the captain showed her more affection and respect than the other children of the staff, that had little to do with her and much to do with Father.

Still, when the upstairs houseboy tried to . . . take liberties with her, it was the only time that she had ever heard Father and the captain argue, although that was only because she had her ear pressed to the door. She wasn't able to follow all of it, but the final result is that the houseboy had, bruises and all, been sent packing, and she had been called into the captain's study, where he had stuttered and hemmed and hawed in a way quite unlike his usual self as he asked her what he called a favor, which she had of course granted, and then to swear to him—on the Bible that he had produced—that should any man ever give her such insult again, she would come directly to him, and to none other.

And it was one of the captain's acquaintances, for there always seemed to be younger men paying calls on him, who noticed her serving, and who asked the captain if he might have a word with her privately.

She hadn't thought much of it at the time; she had just assumed that he was in need of a girl, and that the captain would turn him down, perhaps after consulting with Father.

The young man, as it turned out, was a full fellow in HM College of Wizardry, despite his age, and Sir Giles had seen, so he said, a "spark" in her, and that would require testing.

Father had been appropriately shocked, but Mother just smiled, and Penelope had soon had found herself in Glymphtown, before a "board." Master Hollingwood himself had made the preparations that showed her spark, but it was clear that all the other masters and mistresses could see it without that, and while it was really several weeks later she remembered it as being days at most before she had found herself sleeping in a dank cell that was most depressingly unlike the much more comfortable servants quarters at Everwood in every respect.

Glymphtown, naturally—not, of course, the Residence of the College in Oxford. That was for finer folk, as HM College of Wizardry was largely a noble affair. But both ordinaries and fellows were always in need of clerks, and clerks who could not only read and write but help with at least basic preparations would always be able to find themselves a position in at least an ordinary's shop in a small village.

Most of the rest of the students were English, of course, and being English, to them she was just another Injan, of which there were several, as though there were no differences between Hindi or Sinds or Tamils that were worthy of note, them all being little and brown.

It was unpleasant, in all respects, save for two: the teachers, and the work. Magic was more than the laws and the "spark," particularly in these days when the sparks of the Great Wizards had long since been quenched, and it was more study than anything else.

Languages, ancient and modern; alchemy; glassblowing; pottery; heraldry—there was still much power there, if you knew how to look for it. And then there was woodsmanship and natural science, for the difference between a spotted salamander and a speckled salamander would not show in the liver, but only in the efficacy, and while, as tradition had it, there was indeed much use for the "eye of newt" in various preparations, it had to be the right sort of newt, as errors could be and were often disastrous, not the least of which was trying to use the death of even the most humble of creature as a source of power, as she was certain was what had gotten at least two students killed. The Dark Arts could, so it was said, be turned to noble purposes—the Red Swords were but an example—but that was a matter for the Great Wizards, and at best risky for the lesser ones of a lesser age, and utterly unsafe for a clerk-to-be.

The unsupported "spark" of a Glymphtown student could hardly do much damage by itself—even the spark of a senior fellow had to be carefully tuned and directed to be of much use—but she was fairly sure that what killed poor David was an attempt at a love potion that had gone bad, and she was always most careful, something that Master Hollingswood would occasionally remark upon to others of the students.

Which would have left her very lonely, if she was capable of loneliness, something that she denied to herself just as much as she looked forward to her occasional holidays at Everwood.

Her life's path was clear to her. She would become a clerk to a wizard, an apprentice in name who would never become more than that, and she hoped to one who would appreciate that a woman clerk would be of more use than a man during part of the month, and less during others, and not beat her too often for her inadequacies.

It was all very clear until the day that the old man in the robes of a knight of the Order had walked into the dining hall during dinner, spoken briefly with Master Hollingswood, who argued, argued some more, read the paper that the knight presented, argued yet again, and then threw down the paper and stalked from the room as the knight walked down the tables to where she sat, wondering what this could possibly be about, and stood before her, and said, "My name is Cully. I'm very sorry, but you're to come with me."

And now she walked through the bright Izmiri night behind the two knights, with the third knight behind her, in search of a witch.

At the thought, the wind began to pick up, and while the night was warm, she still found herself shivering.

A witch. Mother had told her tales of the moha karana, and they were similar enough to the English stories about witchwomen as well. Usually more than half-mad, unsystematic to say the least, and more often frauds than not.

More often; not always. Skills could be learned in other places than Glymphtown, after all, and could be passed down from mother to daughter. The Church didn't burn witches, and hadn't for centuries—although that couldn't be said for the Inquisition, where the Empire ruled. In England, the College did most of the policing of such, at least in southern and eastern England, although much less in Scotland and Ireland. Witchcraft—as opposed to wizardry—was always a matter of suspicion, as the arts could easily turn black, and there was power to be had in the necromancy that, when it was just a matter of a newt or bat or even a cat, could do quite a lot of harm, and much more so when it was something with a soul. Through Inja, the Kali cult was still being suppressed, although in fifty years the administration had made little more than a dent in it.

The Kali worshipers were, well, systematic. Not the same systems she had been taught in Glymphtown, of course—and woe to the student there, or at Oxford, who tried his hand at necromancy—but both the letting of blood and the killing without bloodletting each could be the source of much power. It was the only thing that did explain the new live swords, after all.

She was skeptical, though, and thought that Cully shared her skepticism. The source of new live swords being a Turkish madwoman witch? That didn't make sense, at least not to her.

No.

But. What else did they have to go on at the moment, except for exhaustion? They had spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening doing the tinkering that Cully had promised for the next day, and carefully hidden the completed work along with the rest of their gear. If this turned out to be the nothing that her mind told her it was likely to be, there would be questions asked in the village the next day, and when all the questions were the same, the answer would be that they had been doing something other than the tinkering.

So that had to be done, and sleep would have to wait.

Sir Guy, of course, grumbled a little—well, much—accepting Sir Cully's reproach with his usual ill grace.

About the only good thing about this was that this was the right time of the month for her. She could feel her spark burning just a little more brightly in her belly, as the part of her that was a woman said that it was time to create life, supporting the part of her that would someday be a wizard, at least of sorts, urged her to channel that otherwise.

There was no road up into the hills, just a winding path, but that didn't matter. A cook fire—or a fire of some sort—was burning somewhere up it, and that gave a direction, even if it didn't provide a map.

As they neared the top of the hill, Cully held up his hand, and she and Stavros stopped immediately, although Sir Guy walked on for a few more feet before turning back.

"What is it?" Sir Guy whispered.

"Shush," Cully said. "There's a shack of some sort, just through those trees." He turned to Penelope. "Can you sense anything?"

His hand went to the hilt of his sword, then dropped.

If the smoke rising slowly into the night marked it, the shack was a full hundred yards away, at least. A full fellow of the College would likely not have been able to spot the spark of an adept—even a powerful one—at this distance.

While this time of the month her own spark glowed more and more warmingly just above her womb, and her senses of such things were as acute as they could be, she certainly couldn't have.

If she had been where she ought to have been—sitting at a bench alongside the other students at Glymphtown—she could no doubt have detected the sparks of the boys as far as two or three seats down, and perhaps the girls even further, if they were at their peak.

But not across even a tenth this distance.

But she shook her head. "There's nothing that I can sense. We're not close enough, even if there's anything there."

He nodded. "Which means if there is, it's nothing of much power."

For a man who seemed to be smart and clever about most things, Cully was being amazingly stupid at the moment. "It means nothing of the sort, Sir Cully," she whispered back. "It just means that I can't feel the spark from here. It doesn't mean it's not there."

She could more feel than hear Cully frown in the dark, but it didn't feel like a reproach.

Sir Guy snorted. "Is there anything you can do?"

Well, of course she could. The tinker's gear wasn't the only thing that they had brought from England, and the bag that Master Hollingswood had given her was strapped to her back.

"Yes, Sir Guy. It will take me a few moments to prepare." Detecting a spark or the use of the Powers wasn't particularly difficult, and just a technical matter. She couldn't feel it with her own, but she certainly had the tools available.

"Why not just walk up and see?" Sir Guy asked.

In the dark, she could more feel than see Cully rolling his eyes. "Do what you can," he said. "But quickly."

Sir Guy waited with as much patience as he watched the girl, kneeling on the path. It seemed much of a production for something that could have been, and presumably should have been, settled by merely walking up the path and knocking on the door.

He let his hand fall to Albert's hilt.

Patience, Guy, is a virtue.

Well, as always, what Albert said that was more than true enough, but patience for this?

Coming all the way from England, lowering himself by pretending to be a mute slave, hauling a cart up and down the hills of Izmir, and now watching as a little Injan girl knelt on the ground, her shift riding dangerously up her thighs as she spread out her candles and potions, and because there was a rumor of a witch?

Patience is a virtue. Are virtues only virtues when your life is one of convenience? Are they to be practiced only when it is easy to practice them? And only when your own station in life is shown the respect that you believe it deserves?

Guy bowed his head. Saint Albert of Leeds, despite his noble birth, had taken a beggar's and a hermit's life. It was a matter of God's Will, Sir Guy was certain, that the rigors of that life had found Saint Albert dying in a hut outside of Almsbury, just at the right moment when his soul could, at his death, be sealed within the sword.

And the rumors that Morrolyst murdered me? You've never given those much credence.

Well, of course not. How could a White Sword be created by murder? It didn't stand to reason.

Albert said nothing further on the matter; it was hardly the first time it had come up.

Perhaps another time. In the meantime, it might be best to concentrate on the present. There's always the possibility that it holds some peril, you know.

He let his hand drop from the hilt of the sword. It wasn't the first time that Sir Guy had the feeling that Albert looked down upon him, and he didn't much care for it, truth to tell.

But, as usual, Albert had a point—granted, there were all those agents of the admiral's who had disappeared in the area, and maybe that meant something, or maybe it didn't.

Well, at least, the girl did seem to know something—if not necessarily her craft in the way that a fellow of the College would have, at least in terms of the contents of her bag and the basics of her trade. She had scratched a circle in the dirt of the path, and set out candles that she had insisted—almost silently—that she had to light herself, even though Cully was far handier with a fire kit.

With the candles in place and lit—and they were each of a different color and shape; Sir Guy assumed that there was a reason for it—she dribbled several somethings from several of the vials just inside the inscribed circle. He was sure that one of the vials contained frankincense—that was a familiar enough smell—and perhaps the other another spice, but was the third really urine? It smelled like . . . 

She murmured something, then took a knife from her bag and cut at the inscribed circle in four places.

"Davetsiz misafir," a voice said, out of the darkness. "How interesting."

Sir Guy raised his head, and reached for Albert, stopping only when Cully gripped his sleeve with strength that a man his age shouldn't have had.

"Stand easy," Cully said, rising. "We likely mean you no harm."

The dark shape stood on the path above them, and laughed. "I have heard that before," she said—and not in Turkish, but in English, and that with a smooth accent that would not have seemed out of place in a West End drawing room in Londinium itself.

"Interesting," the voice went on, "that you should appear here, sneaking about like thieves in the night, and tell me that you mean no harm."

"I didn't say that we mean you no harm," Cully said. "What I said is that we probably mean you no harm. It depends, I suppose, on who you are, and what you're about, more than anything else."

Another laugh. "Ah. Sir Cully of Cully's Woode—always one for honesty, except when it suits you to lie." More laughter. "Well, as long as you keep your kam in your trousers, you'll do me no harm, and likely give me no pleasure." The shape extended a dark arm. "Ah. And here we have a little girl playing with little toys." A quiet snicker. "Well, let's make it easy for you."

A murmured word, and the flickering flames of each of the candles grew brighter and brighter, until Sir Guy had to throw his arm over his eyes to avoid being dazzled.

And then the light dimmed—but not the quiet flicker of the candles that had barely illuminated the circle where the girl still crouched. The candles were still lit, and burned more than halfway down, but their light seemed to permeate the air about them.

With one exception. The hooded figure in front of them was still wrapped in darkness, and the light seemed to stop just short of her robes, save only for the eyes.

It would have almost have been reassuring if the eyes had shone red or yellow in the darkness, but they were just eyes, with the rest of her features hidden.

"You will come inside," she said, and Sir Guy found himself in lockstep with the three others, following her through the scrub brush, unable to do anything about the way that the brambles clawed at him as much as he was to ignore it.

He tried to turn his head to meet the others' eyes, but his body wouldn't obey him, anymore than it would when he tried to clamp his hand to Albert's hilt.

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