Bloodwitch Read online

  “I should kill you,” he answered. “It would be simplest, and safest. You could disappear in this forest and Midnight would never know who was responsible. But as it happens, I’m sick of having blood on my hands. I’m sick of making sacrifices for the good of—” He broke off mid-rant and swallowed thickly. “I want to bring you to the pochteca—the Azteka traders. They will know where you came from and whether you have magic. They are your family, Vance,” he said, imploring. “Your real family. They are also the only people I know with the power to protect you if you agree to run.”

  My own kind, maybe even my own parents. I knew I should hate them for abandoning me. Why did my heart beat faster at the thought that I might get to see them?

  “And if I don’t agree to run?” I asked.

  “The market itself belongs to Midnight,” Malachi answered. “Any guard there will be able to bring you back to your … masters, if you wish. All I ask is your promise that you will speak to the pochteca first. Hear what they have to say.”

  “Then I can go home?” I believed him that the market would be a safe place for me; Mistress Jeshickah had mentioned Lady Brina going there, so it had to be part of Midnight. But if I was so dangerous, why would he risk letting me go?

  “If you still want to.” He put a hand on my shoulder to turn me and looked me straight in the eye, his expression so intense that I couldn’t look away. “But I need to ask you for a favor.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say I didn’t owe him any favors, but my mouth felt locked shut. All I could do was listen to his words.

  “If we get separated and you go back to Taro, you will not tell him that I knew who you were. I recognized you as a quetzal and offered to take you with me to the pochteca. We didn’t talk much, and I never learned anything more about you. Can you do that?”

  “I can—” He looked away, and I broke off, feeling shaken. I rubbed my hands on my arms. “I don’t lie to Taro. Especially for someone like you.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It will be okay.”

  “Now you’re sorry? Why?”

  “Because you’re a child, and it’s not right that you have so many people meddling with your mind.” He looked through the trees and announced, “It will be light soon. We should pack up and get on our way. It’s not far.”

  MALACHI WAS A liar.

  The market wasn’t “not far.” The market was very far.

  We walked all morning, until my body hurt and I was hungry and tired and grumpy, and we still weren’t there. I might have been grateful that Malachi didn’t make me carry anything, like his heavy pack or the tightly rolled bundle that had once been his camp, but I suspected I was burden free because he considered me useless, not because he wanted to be nice.

  When the sun was high enough in the sky to make the glistening snow blinding, I gave up.

  “I’m starving,” I announced. “I’m cold. My feet hurt. My legs hurt. My back hurts. Why aren’t we there?”

  Malachi looked at me incredulously. “First, you don’t know what the word starving means,” he said. “Second, we’re not there yet because you lack the endurance to keep a reasonable pace in human form and the strength to cover any real distance by air. Third, I will accept that you are probably hungry, since you have the metabolism of a bird.” He looked around for a moment and picked a mostly snow-free log to sit on. He slung his pack around and took out a tightly wrapped brick of something and a knife that looked sharp enough to make me step back. “We can’t afford to stop for lunch—I don’t want to risk getting there after dark—but you can eat this while we walk and it’ll keep you going.”

  What he handed me then was a greasy-looking block that didn’t seem to resemble anything I’d ever eaten. “What is it?” I asked.

  “Food,” he snapped before closing his eyes and drawing a deep breath. “It’s called pemmican. The meat in this one is mostly rabbit. It also has berries and whatever else Torquil had on hand and felt like putting in this batch.”

  I still wasn’t sure it was edible. “What’s a Torquil?” I asked.

  He started putting his belongings away again, ignoring the question long enough that I didn’t think he was going to answer. At last he stood up and said without looking at me, “He’s family. He’s back home, and I haven’t seen him in a while, because I’ve been here chasing my nightmares.”

  “Why would you chase a nightmare?”

  Malachi sighed and shook his head. “Because the rest of my family is in those nightmares.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He was silent again for a long time, but this time it seemed thoughtful, as if he were trying to figure out how to explain. In the meantime he started walking again, and I followed.

  “I have—had—a little brother. Shkei,” he said, so quietly that I had to close the distance between us and walk lightly in order to hear. “He died … just a few days ago. I had a chance to save either him or my sister. I had to do something horrible, and even then I couldn’t save both of them. Just one. I saved my sister. She’s home now. I came back here because I wanted to be near my brother in his last days, but now I think I’m just not ready to go home and look my family in the eye.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Before Calysta the worst loss I had ever suffered was one of the songbirds in my home. I had found it and cried over the still body. Taro had been the one to explain to me that animals had short lives, and that sometimes they needed to pass on.

  It seemed silly, now, to care so much about such a little creature.

  “How did he die?” I asked.

  “In a cage with no windows,” Malachi answered. “He died cold and hungry and in pain, far away from his family.”

  The answer, so flat and cruel, stopped me in my tracks. “Why?”

  “Because the world outside your cage is harder than you could ever imagine,” Malachi answered.

  “Why am I still following you?” I shouted.

  I wasn’t expecting him to answer, but he did anyway. “Because you’ve never had to do anything for yourself or make a single important decision on your own. Trying to fight me and find your own way home would be too hard.”

  “You’re the most arrogant person I have ever met,” I grumbled.

  Apparently that was funny. Malachi burst out laughing, so hard he had to stop and lean against a tree. Gasping, he said, “You spend your time with trainers and Brina and you think I’m arrogant?” He shook his head in awe. “Little quetzal, they have been so very careful with you.”

  “Lady Brina isn’t arrogant. She’s brilliant,” I retorted. “And I don’t know what a trainer is.”

  “Your crush is cute, but your taste is deplorable,” Malachi commented. “Tell me, have you ever seen Lady Brina with blood on her hands? It tends to get in her hair, too, just like paint.” He stayed leaning against the tree, but he was no longer laughing. Instead, his voice was savage. “As for the trainers, well, a trainer’s job is to transform a free soul into a perfectly obedient slave. Taro, for example. They call him the gentleman trainer, because he can be oh-so-polite while he strips an individual of all hope and dignity. He is careful and methodical, which I’m sure is why they assigned him to you.”

  “Stop! Just stop it, you hypocrite!” I shrieked. “You hate Midnight, and Mistress Jeshickah. I know that. You feel guilty about your brother and about whatever you did to save your sister. But that didn’t stop you from flattering Lady Brina when you came to the greenhouse to trade. It didn’t stop you from accepting her hospitality. If Midnight’s so evil, why are you part of it?”

  Malachi’s brows lifted with surprise. “The quetzal is growing a spine, is he?”

  “Stop that, too. You don’t get to ridicule me. You don’t know me. I just want to go home.”

  “And … you expect me to do what about that right now?” he asked lazily. All the energy he had put into his grief and then his anger seemed to have drained away, leaving a tired resignation. He had also evaded m
y question.

  “You said you missed your family,” I said, trying to reason with him. “Taro and Lady Brina are my family. I miss them. Why don’t you understand that?”

  “I do understand,” he said quietly. “And I pity you. Come on, little bird. Walk with me a while longer, and then we’ll go our separate ways.”

  I walked after him. I disagreed with many things Malachi said, but that didn’t mean following him was worse than freezing to death. Besides, he was taking me to the Azteka. I didn’t intend to stay with them, but it would be interesting to meet the people I was supposedly related to, whose myths I had heard from Lady Brina and seen in her works.

  Unsurprisingly, we didn’t talk much the rest of the way. I didn’t want to hear anything else he might say, and apparently that was fine with him. Sometimes Malachi whistled or sang softly in a language I did not know, but at other times there was nothing but the sounds of the forest and our own footsteps.

  It took a long time for me to dare to nibble at the food he had given me. It was as greasy as it looked, though the berries and meat gave it enough texture to be palatable.

  A fine drizzle started to fall as the afternoon wore on, which suited my mood just fine. As the snowy brush parted abruptly to reveal a beaten path, Malachi said, “We’re still a fair walk to the market, but I want some privacy for our conversation. Wait here for me.”

  I didn’t say anything, but my expression must have spoken for me.

  “Or don’t,” Malachi added. “You won’t get far in the time I’m gone. If you go through the woods, you know you’ll just wander, lost, until I find you again. If you follow the path, I’ll find you even more easily.”

  With that he shifted shape and took to the skies.

  I had little hope of actually escaping, but I still wasn’t going to give up the first real chance I’d had. I returned to my quetzal form, but this time I didn’t go higher than the tree line. At first I fluttered from tree to tree, following the road toward—I hoped—Midnight’s market. I quickly realized that such a method of travel was even slower than going by foot, so I returned to human form and started out at a jog.

  I came up short as a large, spotted beast emerged from the trees in front of me. I stumbled back, only to run into Malachi, who must have dropped down just behind me.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered as the massive feline moved closer, then changed form. “She’s one of the pochteca I mentioned.”

  As the woman who appeared in the jaguar’s place looked up at me, my chest tightened. I knew that skin, that hair, those eyes. We didn’t actually look alike, but the high cheekbones, the shape of the mouth … Except in the mirror, I had never seen such familiar features.

  She must have noticed the resemblance, too, because she smiled warmly. She reached out, and I returned the gesture in kind. She didn’t shake my hand but grabbed it instead and held it tightly as she spoke to me rapidly in a language I had never heard.

  Malachi interrupted for me. “My friend doesn’t speak Nahuatl,” he said. “He says he was separated from his parents when he was young. I found him lost in the woods.”

  “Poor boy,” she said in heavily accented English. “And I can sense power in you, too.”

  “That’s what he said,” I replied, trying in vain to take back my hand. “But I don’t have magic.”

  “No, of course not, if you haven’t been trained,” the pochtecatl replied. “We are born either with or without the power, but we aren’t born knowing it.”

  Malachi pulled me back, reaching forward to disconnect me from my overjoyed new would-be friend. “Vance, let me speak a minute.”

  Not likely, I thought. He had found this woman in the market. That meant she was more likely to be on my side than he was. I told the Azteka woman, “Don’t trust him. He’s kidnapped me. He threatened to—”

  The sudden rage in her gaze as she looked up at Malachi was enough to silence me. He, on the other hand, quickly protested. “Yaretzi, I’m glad it’s you. Your magic will show you I’m telling the truth. They had him. He ran away. They don’t know yet where he is, or that we’ve seen him. If he’s really a bloodwitch, you know we can’t let them have him back.”

  “Are you mad, Obsidian?” Yaretzi demanded. “Boy, who do you belong to?”

  “I don’t belong to anyone,” I protested. Why did everyone keep expecting me to be a slave?

  “Vance,” the pochtecatl said, “do you want to stay with Malachi or me, or do you want to go home?”

  “I want to go home,” I answered. I didn’t need to think about it.

  “Where is home?” she asked.

  “Back with Lady Brina and Taro,” I answered, even though I knew the greenhouse probably wasn’t an option. My attempt to travel through the woods had been a poorly planned disaster, but the reason I had left was still valid.

  “Then come with me.” Yaretzi grabbed my arm and started leading me up the road.

  “You don’t need to do this,” Malachi hissed, pulling the pochtecatl away from me. “He’s a kid.”

  “He’s theirs,” she snarled back. “I won’t take that risk any more than you will.”

  “So you’ll let Jeshickah keep a bloodwitch?” Malachi demanded.

  “He’s no more dangerous than the blind girl they keep, Itzli’s spawn Celeste. This boy’s probably just another one of that traitor’s by-blows.”

  “I’m standing right here,” I objected.

  They both ignored me.

  In a soft, pleading voice, Malachi said, “You know as well as I do that he will die in there.”

  Yaretzi didn’t say anything else but instead started pulling my arm again. Her obvious anger intimidated me, but Malachi at least seemed to believe she was planning to take me back to the people I wanted to be with, so I didn’t fight.

  Malachi hurried behind us, grabbing her arm and trying to slow her down.

  All three of us jerked to a stop as someone else pinned Malachi’s wrists behind him. “Is this Kateinas giving you trouble?” the stranger asked Yaretzi.

  Neither of us had a chance to reply before Malachi slammed his head back into the newcomer’s chin, then whipped around, freeing himself. His hand darted toward the hilt of the knife at his waist—and then he froze.

  “Go for it, Obsidian.”

  I was shocked to discover that the figure in front of us, dressed in fur-lined leather and a black, ankle-length cloak clasped with a silver brooch, was a woman with black hair and startling wine-red eyes. She was flanked by two men, both in strange uniforms that were nothing like the formal jackets I was used to, who carried short swords in their hands. All three of them were staring at Malachi with similar expressions of seething hatred.

  “We’re on Midnight’s land, Hara,” Malachi said. “If the guards see you with weapons bared—”

  “It’s funny, how you’ll invoke their laws to protect yourself,” the red-eyed woman answered, “even when it is obvious you were trying to break them moments before.” She told Yaretzi, “I’m sorry if this creature has inconvenienced you. We can take him into custody if—”

  Malachi didn’t let her finish. Instead, he dove past the guards’ blades, grabbed me, and started into the woods. When I tried to struggle, he warned, “They will kill you, if they realize what you are. Run. We need to get to the market.”

  I didn’t have time to consider. Malachi’s panic was infectious. I ran as if my feet had grown wings.

  A FEW IMPOSSIBLY long minutes later, we stumbled against a low stone wall. Malachi hoisted me up and over it. I was still struggling to regain my footing when he joined me, then sank down to the ground, panting … and, crazily, laughing.

  “Been a while since I had a run like that,” he said between gasps. “You’ve just nearly met the princess of the serpiente, Vance. Hara Kiesha Cobriana. She was probably on her way back from a delivery of tribute. Nothing more than bad luck we ran into her.”

  “She—” I had to stop, struggling to catch my own breath. “Sh
e doesn’t like you any more than I do.”

  “She likes me a whole lot less,” Malachi responded, with more cheer than the words seemed to deserve. “Given the excuse that she was coming to the aid of a merchant, she would happily have executed me.”

  “How many people want to kill you?” I asked as I looked around and tried to plan what to do next.

  We were at the back of a small alley between two wooden stalls that backed up to the wall. Through the gap ahead of us, I could see people bustling back and forth, their faces down against the rain.

  “Many,” Malachi answered, “but the kings and queens of the great shapeshifter nations bow to Midnight. Starting a scuffle here in the market would be impeding trade, and in Midnight, there is no worse crime. That means we are safe here.”

  “That means I’m safe,” I said. I stood up, half expecting Malachi to grab me, but he didn’t. “Would she really have killed me?” I asked. “Or was that just a threat to get me running and save your own skin?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t have much respect for the so-called royals,” he said, “but I do not believe even she is stupid enough to let a bloodwitch fall into Midnight hands.”

  “You did.”

  “I’m a sentimental fool,” he said. “Also, after murdering Midnight’s precious quetzal, they would have made sure to eliminate any witnesses—namely, again, me.” Raising his voice, he shouted to a passerby, “You! Bloodtraitor!”

  The man who turned, a scowl on his face, was dressed so similarly to the guards at the greenhouse that my heart simultaneously lifted with relief and clenched with guilt. The greatcoat I glimpsed beneath his heavy leather fur-lined cloak was the same deep burgundy color; even the trousers and boots were the same style. It was obviously a uniform.

  “What are you up to, Obsidian?” the guard asked warily. He did not enter the alley but cast a cautious look about.

  Malachi pushed himself to his feet and said in a heavy voice, “I believe I’ve found something of yours. Vance, this man can take you back to your—” He broke off and shook his head. “Back where you want to go.”