I want to glare at the witch—but I do understand her confusion and rage. I wipe a hand over my face, schooling my emotions.
“I can’t tell you where your sister is.” Fritzi speaks before I can press that question further. There’s a manic gleam in her eye, and I think she’s not telling me everything, but I can wait. If I answer her questions, she’ll answer mine.
I hope.
I take a deep breath. “The first thing you should know is that you ruined years of plans to stop the hexenjägers.”
Okay. From her flashing eyes and the snarl blossoming over her lips, I could have perhaps stated that better.
Her eyes rake over my body. I’ve taken off my hexenjäger robes, but I may as well still be wearing them for all the hate she directs at me. Before she can say anything, though, I tell her about my sister and our plan to take down the hexenjägers from within.
I watch her closely, seeing the shift from distrust to doubt to tentative acceptance. She’s wary—which means she’s smart—but I think she believes me. I hope she does.
When I finally finish, there’s nothing but silence and darkness between us. I wait for her to say something.
“How many?” she asks finally.
My brow furrows. “How many?” I repeat.
“How many innocents died as you went along with this charade?” she asks, her voice rising. “How many people were burned alive while you waited to make your move?”
“Too many,” I whisper.
It was an imperfect plan, but… “We tried other plans first, some to limited success, some that failed,” I say, the only excuse I have. “We…we tried. It was just the two of us, separated and young and inexperienced, but it wasn’t enough.”
Fritzi remains still and motionless. She has learned the same lesson I have, it seems—silence begs its own form of confession.
“I had first thought that I could dismantle the hexenjägers from within.” I meet her accusing gaze head-on. “It’s tough to break through the indoctrination. Not just of the hexenjägers. Of the people, too, who learn that it’s simpler to obey, to look away. They don’t start with murder.”
“They ease you into it,” she says bitterly. “So why didn’t you succumb?” She waves her hand at my confused look. “To the indoctrination.”
“My father,” I say.
“He taught you to reject cults and see through lies?” Her voice rings with mocking.
“No,” I say. “He taught me the consequences of succumbing to them.”
She casts me a doubtful look, but I explain my stepmother’s fate to her.
“Aren’t you the little paradox?” she muses.
I can see why she says that, but she never knew my stepmother. When Father wasn’t around, she’d tell Hilde and me that religion is half politics anyway—which prince you serve determines how you pray. And the Holy Roman Emperor himself doesn’t seem to pray to anyone but whatever lover he currently has. True faith, she said, was personal. Not political.
But that’s the problem, I suppose. Because if you serve a prince that’s Protestant, and he’s killed by one that’s Catholic, suddenly you’re slaughtered for treason and damned for heresy, all in one fell swoop. And the Pope’s in Italy and the Emperor’s in Bohemia, and there’s no one to stop anyone else from raising a stake one way or another.
My stepmother didn’t really care about any religion. My father turned his into a weapon.
“So…you just wear a black cloak and crucifix as a disguise, huh?” Fritzi asks.
I pause. I feel her trust in me is fragile at best, and one wrong word will have her going for my throat. But I also feel like she deserves the truth.
“I believe in God,” I tell her. “I am Christian. But I reject the Church.”
Her lips snarl in disgust, and I see her whole body tense.
“There is a difference,” I say quietly, “between someone who holds a personal belief and someone willing to kill anyone who doesn’t share that belief.”
It’s not enough to convince her. I can tell that immediately. Her hands are curling into fists, her eyes darting back to the door, even if she knows she cannot throw herself at it bodily. To her, I suppose, the God I pray to and the one the archbishop murders in the name of are the same god. Maybe they are. I don’t know. I only know that when I pray, I do not pray for death.
I pray for forgiveness.
And I know that I am not alone. It is that knowledge, that faith—not just in God, but in the good Christians who do not wish to paint the city streets red with blood. The people who look at my cloak in disgust, the ones who dare to spit on me… They are my only source of hope.
Fritzi’s eyes are big and round as they watch me. She’s still wary, still unsure.
Still untrusting.
It would not help, I know, to point out that not every person who bends their knee in prayer agrees with the archbishop and his reign of terror. I don’t even bring that up.
Fritzi is a woman who doesn’t need words and promises. She needs truth and action.
I meet her eyes, and I do not flinch away. “I have shown you from the start that my actions are my own, and they’re not violent. And now I am asking for your help.”
She cocks her head but doesn’t answer.
“Can you bring me back my sister?” I ask, my voice cracking. Hilde would know what to do. She always did.
Fritzi’s eyes shift away from mine. “I cast a spell of protection on her,” she says. “I was trying to save her. That was all it should have done—just kept her safe.” She pauses, face falling. “I can’t undo it.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
She bites her lip. “Can’t as long as bringing her back would put her in harm’s way.”
That twists my stomach. Being beside me puts her in danger, a danger that’s so dire a magical force keeps Hilde away from me. A few days ago, I would not have believed this possible. But I saw the way Fritzi leapt out the window and magic pulled her back in. I saw magic protect her.
“But then where is she?” My voice rises in my desperation. It kills me that Fritzi flinches in fear, but I can’t help it.
She throws her hands up. “She’s safe; I swear!” But the worry in her eyes belies that statement. I have to take it on faith then. If she will trust me, I will have to trust her. And pray that Hilde is safe.
“Is the kommandant back in Trier?” Fritzi’s voice is so soft that I almost miss the question.
“Yes.”
I watch her body closely. I have seen her shake with rage before, but never fear. Until now.
“Did he bring back a witch? One like me?” She meets my eyes, emotion warring in the pale blue depths of hers. “Younger than me, but with magic? My cousin.” Her voice breaks. “Liesel. Does he have her? If you can free her and bring her to me, she can help us find your sister…”
Her voice trails off when she registers my sorrowful face. I know of no prisoners Kommandant Kirch brought back from Birresborn. At least, none were registered in the records. To my knowledge, Kirch and the troops returned with nothing more than the stench of smoke clinging to their cloaks.
“Can’t you do something to find your cousin?” I ask. “And my sister?”
“I’m a green witch,” Fritzi says, as if it were obvious. “I use herbs for spells that offer protection, strength, and things of that nature. My cousin is an augur—she can read the future in flames, or ask questions of the fire, and it obeys her. Not every witch is the same. We have different affinities.”
This makes me freeze, but I don’t think Fritzi notices the way my blood runs cold. Her words echo what Dieter told me this morning, outside the Porta Nigra. He knows, I think. About real witches, their powers.
“Kommandant Kirch did not tell me he had another real witch,” I say.
Fritzi’s jaw sets. “He does,” she snarls fiercely.
“Then you have an incentive to free the prisoners. Will you help me?”
She narrows her eyes. “What do I need to do?”
I don’t believe she’ll like the plan Hilde and I came up with, so I say first, “What can your magic do to help? If I can get you into the basilica where the prisoners are kept, can you do…something? To free them?”
She snorts in bitter laughter. “I told you, magic can’t just do anything. It depends on the witch’s affinity. A little rosemary isn’t going to be enough.”
I shake my head, still confused. When Fritzi sent Hilde…elsewhere, it seemed enormously powerful. And just now, with the protection spell she cast on herself, that was clearly strong. Why can’t she just save the others?
“Think of magic like a well,” she continues, sighing at me. “Each witch can use their affinity to tap into the Well, and pull up a draft of magic. Protecting one or two people is like pulling up a bucket. Magicking out a hundred people from a well-guarded prison would be…”
“Like pumping it dry?” I guess.
She nods. “Sort of. Things that take a lot of power put strain on the Well. There are people who protect the source of magic, who ensure that doesn’t happen. I would simply be unable to pull from the Well if it was something that big.”
I frown at her, trying to understand her analogy. “Perhaps, if these keepers of the Well understood that we were trying to save innocents’ lives…” My voice drifts off as she shakes her head. “Do you have to get your magical power from the Well? Is there some other source…?”
“No,” she says, her eyes flash with rage. “No, we are not touching that sort of magic.”
Interesting. She did not say it was impossible. Merely forbidden.
I don’t press her on that—not yet, anyway. Instead, I pivot. “You can save one person, though, as evidenced by Hilde. Do you know other witches? If we have enough, perhaps you could all work together. My escape route and your combined powers…”
There’s a different look on her face now. Not fury—sorrow. Her eyes slide away from mine, but she cannot hide the grief painted within them.
“Birresborn,” I say. I’d guessed this before, when she mentioned the kommandant, but I’m certain of it now.
Her head whips up.
“You were a witch in Birresborn. Where Kommandant Kirch took an entire unit to root out a coven.”
She nods slowly, once, a quick bob of her head.
Everyone in the village had been murdered. Almost everyone.
Liesel—Fritzi’s cousin. That’s how she knew she was a prisoner.
“Dieter took Liesel,” Fritzi says. “I know he took her alive.”
Two girls—all that remains of a whole village. My heart mourns for her grief. But then my mind locks on what she actually said.
She called Kommandant Kirch by his given name, Dieter. She spoke of him as if she knew him.
I open my mouth to question her, but I bite my tongue. Now is not the time to raise her ire, and besides, it could simply be a matter of her overhearing his name in the chaos.
“If we can’t use magic,” I say, “we’ll have to use my original plan.”
“Well, what is it?” she asks when I pause.
“You’re not going to like it,” I say.
Fritzi rolls her hand for me to continue.
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “Step one, I arrest you.”
“No!”
“I told you that you wouldn’t like it.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I need to get you into the prison, next to the prisoners, so you can teach them the escape routes.”
“There has to be another way!”
I stare her down as she glares at me.
I see the moment when something breaks behind her eyes.
There is no other way.
“I can teach you the paths in the aqueducts.” I draw my finger in the dust on the floor, tracing the outlines I have memorized. “There’s a door that leads directly to the aqueducts from the basilica, and, once inside the tunnels, there are paths that split up and branch off. I teach you; you teach them.”
“They can’t stay in the tunnels forever,” Fritzi says. “They’ll be found.”
“Each route ends at a safe house with supplies and disguises. From there, the market—”
“—it’ll be crowded—”
“—then from there, out the city walls—”
“—and to safety.” Fritzi blinks at me. “How are you going to get them out of the cage and to the aqueduct?”
“Gunpowder and a hypocaust,” I say.
“Gunpowder, I get,” Fritzi says. “What the hell is a hypocaust?”
“A heating system under the floor,” I say. “When the ancient Romans built the basilica, they built a heating system using hollowed-out spaces under the floor to keep the building warm.” I’m actually really proud of this—it took a lot of research to formulate this plan, and I’ve had no one but Hilde to appreciate my efforts. Fritzi raises her eyebrow, so I sketch the basilica’s floor plan in the dust.
“See?” I say, drawing arrows, “This is where the cage is. The floor is made of brick, but underneath the floor are pillars. I’m going to blow up this part,” I say, drawing a squiggly line, “which will open up one section of the flooring. You simply have to tell the prisoners to be on this side of the cage. Then the floor will give way, they drop down, and the hypocaust is linked directly to the aqueduct.”
She frowns at my rough sketch.
“You thought of everything, didn’t you?” She says the words flatly.
“I tried.”
Her jaw tenses. “You really do need someone on the inside.”
“I cannot warn the prisoners myself, much less teach them the routes.”
She looks up at me, and I see the fierce determination in her eyes. “When?” she asks.
“The burning is in two days.”
She swallows. “So you’ll drag me to prison tomorrow.”
“If you can memorize the routes tonight.”
She nods tightly. “That’ll give me one day to communicate to all one hundred prisoners.”
My heart thuds. It’s too risky; I can’t ask this of her—
“Yes,” Fritzi says. “I’ll do it. I know Liesel’s been imprisoned—she’ll help too. We can work together.”
She’s just agreed to my plan, and both she and her cousin have actual magic that could aid it. But still, my gut twists with bile as I think about how this means I’m going to have to drag Fritzi into the prison and lock her behind an iron cage myself.
When I first pulled Fritzi through the tunnels, I had only thought of saving her to use her in this plan of mine. But now that the time has come… I am reluctant to let her leave my safety again. It’s a ridiculous thought; I cannot very well leave her in the house fort for all time, and she’s likely safer in the prison than out of it, with the way the kommandant has the men searching for her.
The thought makes my fists bunch. I will do this to save the innocents. But if anyone hurts her, they will pay.