DIETER
I let them cart me into Trier.
They are so afraid of me, the cowards. As well they should be. I did not merely control their bodies; I occupied their minds. I whispered their sins back to them and watched gleefully as they cringed away from me, shame fueling their fear, just as it should.
It’s snowing when they open the door of the wooden prison cart they escorted all the way from Baden-Baden to Trier. I blink in the light.
Ah, home.
We pass by the burned debris of the riots that followed my former kapitän’s traitorous act. More guards are posted in the streets; windows are boarded up. Winter approaches, the snow quenching the fire of rebellion. This will all soon be forgotten. In other times, perhaps, such resistance would take hold.
But I’m back now.
There is a pyre already built in front of the cathedral. Some of the city’s residents have gathered. No doubt rumors have preceded my arrival—the kommandant of the hexenjägers, brought back to burn.
I smile at them beatifically.
“This way.” The impertinent young hexenjäger pulls my chain, and I stumble forward, toward the cathedral’s main door. That one, Johann, he was trouble. But he has his weaknesses too.
If only I had possessed Otto before. I would have known of his treachery. I could have used him before he tore apart my pretty little prison.
But then again, if Otto had not enacted his silly plans, he never would have found my pretty little sister.
A smile twists at the corner of my mouth, and I do not bother to hide it. I like the way it makes the hexenjägers “guarding” me cower.
“I must have caused quite a stir to be sent straight to the archbishop’s office,” I say as we step inside the cathedral. “How naughty I’ve been.”
Jäger Kock, to my left, lets out a hiss of breath. I think he believed my skin would ignite the moment I touched foot on holy ground. I turn my head to look at him and slowly lick my lips, savoring the taste of his terror.
“Come on,” Johann says, jerking my chains.
“I will kill you slowly,” I tell him, my words light.
“Not before I watch you burn,” the jäger mutters.
I chuckle, following along like a good little boy. I can do that, you see. I can be a good little boy, go to church, say my prayers, burn the witches. Such a good little boy.
Johann holds open the door to the archbishop’s office, and I step inside, chains rattling. It is irksome, that metal rubbing my wrists. I hold my hands out to Johann. “Please, sir,” I say sweetly.
Johann ignores me, and Jäger Kock follows inside, intending to be a guard to protect the archbishop from my foul evil. The two men block my vision of the archbishop temporarily. I hear the old man start to stand.
“This is…” he says in his cracked voice. Is that fear I hear? I bite back a giggle at the rhyming thought. Fear I hear, fear I hear.
“Dieter Kirch, witch.” Johann spits the words out.
Tentatively, I feel for the magic. That potion—it broke me for a moment. I lost hold of my threads; they slipped through my fingers.
Just like my games with Fritzichen as children, those little links to magic are hiding in the dark, but I can still see them.
The jägers step aside.
I lift my head.
I meet the archbishop’s eyes.
And I smile.
Got you.
The archbishop sits down placidly at his desk.
“You can go,” he says to the jägers.
Johann’s brow furrows. Thinking, thinking, that one! Did his training teach him nothing? Ha, the irony. I giggle to myself. What good training the others received, to learn how not to think.
“And take off his chains,” the archbishop adds.
Johann’s consternation grows, but I hold out my manacled wrists obediently. He fits the key into the lock, and the iron falls away.
Johann closes the door behind him.
The archbishop moves to sit behind his desk. I take the seat across from him.
“Well,” the archbishop says.
“Well,” I echo. Another laugh bubbles up. Well, like the Well of magic.
How strange that I once thought such magic as that was important. I thought I needed it. That damn goddess tricked me. Made me think wild magic wasn’t as powerful. As easy.
The archbishop’s watery eyes meet mine. “I think a burning is presumptuous,” he says, hefting a sigh. “I’ll dismantle the pyre. A quiet retirement would be best. People will forget. In the spring, as I continue the Lord’s work…”
“The Lord’s work?” I ask. “Sir, you’ve never done that a day in your life. You have always worked for me.”
The archbishop blinks several times.
I stand up and start pacing. I like being able to stretch my legs. It was harder to think, all cramped in that prisoner’s box, but at least the men moved quickly, eager to be rid of me. “It’s that damn tree I did not factor in,” I tell him.
“The tree,” he says blankly.
“Oh, I know what you’re thinking—the tree that my little sister grew, that enabled her to break free of my bonds. Not that tree. That’s not the tree I’m thinking of, you stupid man.” I pause, take a breath. He cannot help that he is stupid. “No,” I say, regulating my tone. “I mean the Origin Tree.”
“The Origin Tree,” he repeats.
“Yes, exactly.” My pacing picks up a notch, step, step, step, turn, step, step, step, turn. “I had been so focused on the Well, but when I ripped the barrier, I saw much more than the forest folk ever wanted me to see. Something else Holda kept from me…” I sigh dramatically, even if the effect is lost on such a simple man. “Ah, well, I suppose I shall find out the truth about that tree soon enough.”
“You shall find out,” the archbishop says, nodding.
“That’s the tree I meant,” I tell him, leaning over his desk. In my excitement, spittle flies from my lips, but the archbishop is such a gentleman, not wiping it away, pretending it doesn’t land on his face. “The Origin Tree. I thought, before, that wild magic was just an untapped source that must be fed evil, must be tempered in some way before it can be used.” I giggle again. “How silly I was. Wild magic is wild, that’s all. And so am I. We are made for each other, no?”
“No,” the archbishop says, a flicker of something in his eye, something I do not like. No, no, no, no, no, you are not going to slip from me again, you are not going to hide from me. You are mine. I lunge across the desk, grab his arm, yank up those pretentious robes he wears.
There it is.
I trace my finger along the white lines of the scar on his arm. A decorative, curling letter D. Branding him had been difficult—getting close enough to do it half the battle—but the risk has paid itself off many times over. I can seep into any weak person’s mind and control them like a puppet, but that requires concentration. At best, it is a temporary measure. The brand, however, is a magical sigil, one that allows me true possession of a human’s body, of a witch’s magic.
“You are mine,” I whisper. You are still mine. There was just a little worry, before, when Fritzi nearly killed me, when she thought she broke my magic. But no. She did not. Not the way she thinks…
“I am yours,” he whispers back.
And so too is Trier. The entire diocese. The entire Empire.
Mine.
Fritzi thinks this is over. Weak and wounded, she thinks I will die at the stake. I know what our dear Mama would have advised—that I should go into hiding.
A god does not die. A god does not hide.
Already, I can tell that my men’s fear is spinning the legends of what happened to me into mythic proportions. Any of them—like that damned Johann—who would think to oppose me would never oppose the archbishop. And if they try?
I smile.
All will be well.
I pat the archbishop’s arm and pull the robe back over the brand on his skin. “Now first,” I say, “you’re going to write a very clear decree that not only am I not a witch, but I remain the kommandant, your trusted ally in the face of evil witchcraft. Actually…” My grin is feral. “Let’s go ahead and give me all the power of a prince. This diocese is a principality, no? It deserves a prince.”
The archbishop picks up a quill and pulls over a sheet of vellum. The nib scratches on the surface, ink bleeding onto the page.
“Good,” I say, looking over the desk at the praise the archbishop writes for me, the way he confirms that I did not bend to the temptations of the devil, but my weak hexenjägers did, led astray by evil. “What is it your Bible says? ‘Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.’” For so many, all it takes is a word written for them to believe it.
The archbishop continues writing.
Taking him had granted me power, of a sort. It had allowed me access to the city, enabled me to become the leader of the hexenjägers. But that was never the type of power I needed.
I need power like my sister’s. Magic. Strong magic.
Fritzi opened herself up to wild magic, and my brand opened her up to me. Will she feel it, I wonder, as I siphon off the power she taps into? Probably not. The wild magic is so much stronger than the Well’s after all, and she won’t notice as I divert a little back into me.
She is mine, I think, my mind stretching back, recalling the way her skin seared, her flesh burned, the smell ripe and delicious. My mouth waters at the thought.
She is mine, and so is her magic, and she doesn’t even realize it.
“I told you, Fritzi,” I murmur, “some scars don’t ever heal.”
“Some scars don’t ever heal,” the archbishop repeats hollowly as he lays down the quill.
I watch the ink dry, my smile spreading as I think of our mother’s death, our mother who died without screaming. Pity, that. I had thought that the only way to take a witch’s magic was to mark it as my own and then burn the body of the witch. With nowhere else to go, the magic came to me.
My sister showed me the foolishness of that. I do not need to kill for power.
I can do it simply for pleasure.
I frown, and the archbishop stills, like a rabbit under the shadow of a hawk.
That damn potion had been a surprise, enough to sever my original connection to magic, but not enough to break the ties that bind me to Fritzi and her magic. A clever trick, though, to use a potion like that. A trick I had not believed Ernst capable of manufacturing. I’ll give him that. He played a good game.
But I play a better one.
Wild magic is a flood, one I drowned in. But I learned to swim. And even if they dammed the magic up and tried to take it away from me, a river stronger than the Rhine pours from my sister’s brand, straight into me.
I flex my fingers, feeling the magic pooling inside me.
Oh, this is going to be fun.