Leave Me Alone 

“I didn’t complete my Network school education so I could fluff your pillows,” Mildred said two weeks later. She sat behind Stephan’s desk, where the late evening light that slanted through his windows fell in warm rays. “I’m supposed to be conducting business, not taking off your shoes.”

His dinner tray hovered in the air next to him, waiting to be eaten. “I can’t eat like this!” he said. “I need to prop my feet up.”

“There’s an ottoman just across from you,” she said primly, casting her eyes on the clock to find it was well past seven. “Use that.”

“Position it for me.”

“No.”

“That’s an order!”

“This is a refusal.”

Mildred returned her attention back to the desk, which continued to be a destructive mess of paperwork and messages. She’d spent an hour organizing it that morning, only to return after her lunch with Marten to find it cluttered with new messages. The tips of her fingers kneaded her temples in a poor attempt to remove a lingering headache.

“My feet need a cushion!” Stephan insisted, rapping his side table with a fist. “Give me the ottoman!”

“No.”

He growled. The ottoman rested no more than two arms’ length from his feet. He could easily move it with a spell. She would put Stephan to sleep with a nap hex to get some peace and quiet again, as she’d done yesterday, but she needed him to answer a few questions so she could leave and go to bed.

“It’s your job to make me comfortable!” he bellowed, turning red in the face like a toddler throwing a tantrum.

“It’s my job to figure out this blasted mess. Who is the Coven Leader for Stilton? I’ve sent at least two messages and haven’t heard back.”

Stephan folded his arms across his chest. “I can’t answer any questions when I’m this uncomfortable and hungry, you shrew. You’re nothing like the rest of them, you know! They used to do everything I said.”

Mildred narrowed her bloodshot eyes on him. “Yes, and you ran them out after a month or two. Now the Middle Covens are a disaster that won’t be cleaned up by me taking care of you. You’re perfectly capable of moving the ottoman.”

“I’m an old man,” he said with a pout in his lower lip. “I shouldn’t have to work. You should!”

Mildred ignored him. In the end, however, she couldn’t do anything more until she found out who ran Stilton Coven. She could find no correspondences or record of fully paid taxes. Not that there were good records of anything else. She gritted her teeth and prepared herself by taking five long, deep breaths. Not even an all-girls school had challenged her patience or pride on this level. She walked over to stand in front of him.

“Fine,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’ll move your ottoman if you tell me about the Coven Leader for Stilton.”

Stephan’s eyes lit up in a triumphant smile. “Get to work then!” he cried, flapping a hand. “If my dinner is cold, I’m sending for another tray and you’ll regret it!”

Mildred pulled the ottoman closer with a spell, but it ran into Stephan’s toes. “Lift my feet onto it,” he said.

“Absolutely not. The deal was to bring the ottoman to you. I did that, now answer my question.”

Stephan pressed his lips together and stared at her. She suppressed the urge to slap him, instead using a spell to jerk his legs into the air. They moved so quickly he nearly toppled backward. She shoved the ottoman underneath him with her foot, slammed his dinner tray onto his lap, and said, “Who is the Coven Leader for Stilton?”

Stephan glared at her, frozen with surprise, until he slowly regained his composure. He stared at her with a smug expression of distaste.

“I don’t know who the Coven Leader is. Last I knew it was a male, but that may have changed.”

Mildred nearly exploded. She turned her back to him with her fists clenched, feeling her rage bloom into her face until it nearly overcame her. All for nothing!

“The soup is cold!” he howled. “Send it back right now!”

She stalked to the door and slipped into the empty hall, her composure shattered. Once in the cool, dark hall, illuminated by the occasional torch, she leaned back against the wall and released a deep breath.

The injustice of her situation burned white hot. How had she ended up with the most difficult witch on the Council? Rand might be a lech, but at least he set expectations. She certainly wasn’t wrong to deny Stephan so many ridiculous tasks; when it came to morals, she was rarely wrong about anything. Her Network education had nothing to do with nannying a tetchy old man.

Her hand warmed when a new message came through the silenda. It had been so long since she’d used it that the feeling startled her out of her irate depression.

A moment to meet with you? the message inquired, showing Lavinia’s quill between her knuckles. Just seeing Lavinia’s symbol brought a fresh wave of guilt and panic.

“Classes,” Mildred whispered, closing her eyes. “I’ve forgotten about classes.” She used silent magic to send a message back to Lavinia.

Yes. Come to Stephan’s office.

On my way.

Mildred remained in the hall, listening to the distant sound of Stephan’s demands for more soup until she could tolerate it no more and set a silencing incantation on the doorway. Lavinia rushed down the hall at a run five minutes later, her thin cheeks flushed.

“I’m sorry for the unexpected request, Miss Mildred,” she said, panting, “but I just . . . had to come see you.”

“What’s wrong?”

Lavinia’s breathing calmed. She hesitated for just long enough that Mildred snapped at her. “What? I’m very busy!”

“Have you forgotten us?” Lavinia asked, looking like a cast-aside puppy. Mildred paused with a flash of shame and embarrassment.

“Of course not,” she said. The lie burned on her tongue. “I’ve been very busy.”

“Yes, of course,” Lavinia said, fidgeting with the bottom of her sleeves. “And I understand. But . . . it’s just that . . . are you going to stop classes? I only ask because we don’t want to keep our hopes up that you’ll come back if you aren’t going to.”

“I’m not sure.”

Lavinia’s shoulders slumped in avid dejection. “I haven’t learned to transport yet,” she mumbled, her eyes on the floor as she scuffed the toe of her boot back and forth. “Or cleaning spells.”

Mildred stared at her with a shrewd eye. Either Lavinia was trying to guilt her into coming back, or she truly felt this worried.

“If I say no, would you continue to learn on your own?”

“A few things,” Lavinia said. “I’ve already been doing that. But I can’t learn to transport on my own.”

“True.”

In the time that Mildred had been teaching, at least half of the servants learned to read and passably wrote letters or copied poems. It didn’t seem unreasonable that they could continue learning on their own or teaching each other.

No, Mildred thought. They wouldn’t teach it correctly. They need me to guide them.

The thought rose so suddenly that she stopped to analyze it. Did the students need her—as opposed to any other teacher—or did she simply want to teach them? There was no doubt she longed for the easy days of the classroom compared to the hell of her current life.

“We miss you, Miss Mildred, not just the classes. We miss learning,” Lavinia said, tucking her hands behind her.

And I miss teaching.

She actually missed her students, the dusty smell of chalk in the classroom, and the expressions of joy on the faces of those reading for the first time. Teaching had given her a sense of fulfillment and progression that she imagined working as Assistant to Stephan could never give her.

Not so long as she was pushing ottomans around, anyway.

“Blessed be,” she muttered under her breath. “Lavinia, I appreciate you taking the time to communicate how you feel.”

“Does that mean you’ll teach us again?” Lavinia asked, breathless. “Will you come back? We want you back so badly! I have so many questions!”

Mildred’s mind spun with the same question. But when could she fit classes in? Would she have the energy to teach after dealing with Stephan all day? She brushed that aside to ask the most pressing question.

“If all of the students have been so worried about learning, why haven’t you contacted me through the silenda?”

“I have,” Lavinia said quietly. “But you never responded until tonight. That’s why I ran all the way here.”

“You have?”

“Many times, Miss Mildred.”

“When?” Mildred demanded, annoyed that she could be at fault in anything. She recalled ignoring one or two messages on the silenda while dealing with the Middle Covens, but had she ignored so many?

“Almost every day around lunch. I have questions about what I’m learning. The rest of the students won’t contact you because they think you’ve moved on like the rest of them.”

“The rest of them?”

Lavinia shrugged. Mildred schooled her face into a neutral expression. If she looked too stern, Lavinia would give up; the girl worried about Mildred’s disapproval above all else. Mildred had felt the same way about her mother. It had been a wonderful motivator, so for Lavinia’s sake she sought to never over-approve.

“The rest of the witches that work at the castle don’t think about the servants,” Lavinia said. “To some of them, like Miss Evelyn and Council Member Rand, we’re hardly human. A lot of them say we shouldn’t be educated.”

“Really?” Mildred murmured in surprise, recalling Porter’s worry about the rise of Elitism in the Council. “Who?”

“Rand said it to one of the fireboys when he caught him reading a newsscroll. Evelyn makes remarks all the time about maids not needing to know how to read in order to do their jobs.”

A worried stir moved through Mildred’s chest at the thought of Evelyn. Refraining from educating the lower class was the highest form of Elitism. Did her friend even realize the wave she was caught up in, or was she simply riding the popular opinions of the day? Evelyn must not know—she couldn’t. Evelyn was motivated . . . but tyrannical? No. Mildred refused to believe it, and wondered where the Elitism had begun.

“Lavinia, I must be honest with you. I simply cannot teach right now.”

“Oh.”

“I refuse to set up unrealistic expectations,” Mildred said, folding her hands in front of her. “I don’t have time. But I shall teach again, within the next few months, when I figure out my job.”

“All right.”

Lavinia’s voice had shrunk, as if it had curled away into a small place inside of her. Mildred felt a stab of guilt, and then annoyance. She simply couldn’t take on teaching, not even if she missed it.

“I shall contact you as soon as I’m able,” Mildred said, hardening her heart against Lavinia’s despondent face.

“Thank you, Assistant Mildred,” Lavinia said, her pointy chin drawn up. She avoided meeting Mildred’s eyes. “I appreciate your time.”

Resisting Lavinia’s wretched expression and the subtle accusation laced in the word Assistant wasn’t as easy as Mildred hoped.

The Elitists are now making it known that they don’t want education for the lower classes, she thought with a grim shudder as Lavinia departed without another word. If they keep growing they will eventually divide the Council.

The incantation around Stephan’s office should have faded, so when no sounds came from within, she cracked open the door to find him asleep in his chair, soup dribbling down his chin and onto his shirt. The bowl was empty. With a sigh of relief, she closed the door and transported to her room.

Let him wake up in the middle of the night and go to bed himself, she thought, settling on the side of her bed. Removing her tight boots felt wonderful, and she massaged the sore muscles of her feet. Her conversation with Lavinia floated hazily through her mind.

I have questions about learning.

A lot of them say we shouldn’t be educated.

The thought of Elitism amongst the Council made her sick. Open sentiments against education? It was nothing but passive oppression based on financial status. She stopped rubbing her foot to stare at a spot on the floor.

“They must be stopped,” Mildred whispered with the burn of a small, righteous spark within. “Or at the very least, subverted. I can teach.”

With a sigh, Mildred sent a message to Lavinia through the silenda.

Meet me before breakfast. I have decided to resume classes immediately.

The jostling motion of the carriage—and the privacy it afforded—soothed Mildred’s frazzled nerves. Because she’d never been to the Middle Covens, she couldn’t safely transport to meet the Coven Leaders. So for a few hours while she rode alone down the Central Highway in a carriage, she closed her eyes, let her mind go blank, and enjoyed thinking of nothing.

Her first month as Assistant had passed in a blur of paperwork, boundary lines, and classes. Evelyn came and went, kept busy by her new life as Council Member, leaving Stella as Mildred’s main crutch to lean on. Dinner with Marten remained her only anchor of normalcy. No one else could draw her into a meaningful discussion about her day, and she looked forward to sharing her thoughts with him. His gentle ways and dark eyes had a calming effect on her.

Stephan, little more than a thunderous gray cloud sitting near the fire, emitted occasional rumblings while Mildred worked frantically. They existed in a mostly tolerant silence, ignoring each other except for when she insisted he answer her questions. When Stephan became stubborn, Porter attempted to help.

Fed up with not knowing the identities of the Coven Leaders were, or even the locations of Coven boundaries, she packed her valise and declared, “I’ll be visiting the Covens for the next couple of days, Stephan. Try not to kill anyone with your apathy while I’m gone.”

He grunted and turned a page in his book.

A small Coven at the border of the Ashleigh Covens and the Middle Covens was Mildred’s first stop. For all the prosperity at the heart of Ashleigh City, rampant poverty ran through the rest of her vineyards, spilling south into the farming lands of the Middle Covens.

“Stop here,” Mildred called to the driver when a worn shack appeared off to the left. Smoke billowed from a rickety brick chimney, matching the fog that crept along the forest floor. Letum Wood had nearly engulfed the dilapidated structure in boughs and deadwood.

“Here?” the driver asked. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m always serious.”

“I’ll wait right here,” he said with a note of warning in his tone, keeping his wary gaze on the dead scrub oak. Mildred rolled her eyes and opened the door. If there was any danger, it certainly wouldn’t lurk in the trees. It would come from the frightening hut she was about to approach. Setting aside her fears, she strode up to the shanty and rapped on the door. Several loud thumps came from inside just before the door opened a crack.

“What do you want?” a deep voice growled.

“I want to speak to the Coven Leader.”

An awkward pause preceded his response. “Well? Go ahead.”

“I won’t speak to someone I can’t see,” she said. “I’d like to know who you are.”

“Then we won’t speak.”

He made a movement to shut the door, but she jammed the toe of her boot in the gap before he could. It slammed against her foot, and she winced. “I’m on orders from Council Member Stephan.”

“So?”

Of course Stephan’s name wouldn’t invoke any kind of respect. She couldn’t stand him either. She hesitated before trying a different approach. “I’m just here to help. I know the leadership hasn’t been what it should, and I want to change that.”

“Help what? Help us pay taxes we can’t afford while letting us wallow in poverty with bad roads?”

“What does this Coven need?”

His suspicious eyes stared at her for several seconds longer, then the door opened to reveal a man whose broad chest was matted with tight black curls. Dried mud and soot coated a sad pair of breeches with holes in both knees. The smell of body odor drifted into the chilly air. Mildred took a steadying breath through her mouth. Good heavens. He smelled—and looked—as if he’d died and clawed his way back out of the grave.

“My name is Mildred. I’m the new Assistant to Council Member Stephan.”

“Congratulations. I don’t have any problems except for you. Now leave.”

“I didn’t ask about you,” she snapped, irritated to find her patience wearing thin so early in the day. “I asked about your Coven. You are the Coven Leader, aren’t you?”

He shrugged his meaty shoulders. “Sure.”

“You don’t know if you’re the Coven Leader or not?”

“There’s no one else out here.” He gestured around with a paw-like hand. The icy branches of Letum Wood spiraled out in gnarled fingers, creating an intricate gray web and not much else. A haunting stillness emanated from the quiet forest. Mildred wished she could bottle it up and take it back with her to the noisy castle.

“Are there no other witches in your Coven?” she asked.

“No.”

“And what’s your name?”

“Bart.”

“This, by all accounts, should be the Northeast Middle Coven,” she said, motioning behind her. “It’s the smallest Coven in the Middle Covens. Does that sound familiar?”

“Sure.”

Mildred pushed aside her frustration. What had she expected? No one knew her. She hadn’t earned their trust, which meant she’d just have to take whatever they were willing to give.

“Can I do something to help you, Bart? Is there something the Network could help you with? Provide something that you’re not getting now?”

His heavy brow furrowed. “You can leave me alone.”

“That I can do. I’ll return in six weeks. Please send me a notice if you need any—”

The door slammed in her face before she finished. Mildred lifted an eyebrow, studied the slats, and returned to the carriage, unaware that Bart watched from the belly of his house as she climbed into the carriage and continued down the dirt road.

Mildred rode through five villages, some small, some sprawling into towns, all while meeting the same distrust she’d seen in Bart. It wasn’t until she passed a dead, bloated body on the side of the road and saw two young children with swollen bellies playing in a muddy ditch that she realized the extent of the poverty she dealt with.

Most witches stared at her when she introduced herself. Some pointed her to broken-down buildings, where she’d find other witches that were no more helpful. She wrote copious notes and spoke with every witch that didn’t run from her, but she found no real starting point. There weren’t many Coven Leaders willing to step forward, and most villages or towns didn’t want one.

How can I show them that change can be a good thing? she thought as they passed a shack with chickens running out the front door. She turned to her scroll and started her twenty-fourth list while they rode to Stilton Coven.

By the time they arrived at Stilton, the most prosperous city in the Middle Covens, Mildred’s bones ached, her hands were stiff with cold, and the tip of her nose shone as jolly red as a cranberry. The driver stopped at a two-story house that had been converted into the Stilton Coven office, and Mildred climbed free of the carriage. She had to knock twice before the office door opened enough for a small face to peer out at her.

“The Coven Leader is busy,” a squeaky voice said. “Come back next week.”

Mildred shoved her boot in the path of a closing door for the second time that day. “Tell him to clear his schedule,” she demanded. “I have business with him.”

The small face turned out to be a young boy, no doubt hired to send people away. Mildred pressed into the office, recoiling the moment she entered. Thick, choking smoke filled the room, washing over her with a sulfuric smell that left a metallic taste in her mouth.

“Blessed be,” she cried, waving a hand in front of her face. “What is that stench?”

“Medicine,” the boy said, woozy and wide-eyed. Mildred stepped through the fog, using silent magic to open a nearby window. It groaned in protest but moved upward.

“Where is the Coven Leader?” she asked.

“Where he always is.” The little boy motioned to the back of the room. Mildred marched forward, using magic to open every window as she went. The offensive odor poured outside, and the haze began to clear.

“Excuse me?” she called. “Excuse me?”

A witch with a paunchy belly, an overgrown beard, and a vapid, detached expression appeared from the mist. He lounged back on a chair and stared into moving shadows that only he could see.

“What’s his name?” Mildred asked the boy, who stumbled along next to her. She put a hand on his shoulder to keep him from falling.

“Carthage,” the boy mumbled. “You won’t fire me, will you?”

“No.” She grabbed a scroll and whacked the lumpy, insentient man on the arm. “Carthage, I command you to wake up.”

He remained entrenched in his stupor. His muscles displayed no form of life. If he hadn’t been puffing weakly on his pipe, which spewed an obnoxious blue smoke, she would have thought him dead.

“How long has he been like this?”

“He’s always like this.”

Mildred snatched the pipe from Carthage’s cracked lips and chucked it out the window. He gave an annoyed little stir and his forehead puckered, but then he slipped back into vague dreams.

“Fool.” She burst into a coughing fit. The three letters she’d sent sat on top of a pile of unopened envelopes. A roll of blankets lay across the floor. Hardened crusts of bread littered the pillow, and a few candle stubs sat on the desk. The rest of the two-story office was a mass of dust.

“It’s my guess he doesn’t conduct much business?”

The little boy shook his head, nearly falling from the effort. A flare of rage bloomed in her chest. A leader in such a deplorable condition! How could any witch figure out how to run a Coven with such imbeciles in positions of power?

“Very well,” she said, brushing off her hands. “I’ll take care of this.”

She returned to the wide porch of the office to find a small queue of curious witches on the lawn. Everyone seemed to hold their breath as soon as she appeared. Behind her, the house leaked putrid smoke like water through a thimble.

“Is there anyone here who works with the Coven Leader or has in the past?” she asked. Witches stepped out of the businesses lining the street to listen, but no one spoke up.

“Well?” she called. “Anyone?”

A man with unassuming brown eyes, a gentle face, and a groomed beard came forward from the apothecary shop across the street.

“I’ve worked with Carthage before,” he said. Although quiet, his voice carried over the crowd. “I’m the Assistant Apothecary.”

“What’s your name?” Mildred asked, taking a mental checklist of him. He stood tall and straight. He appeared clean. Three things she’d seen little enough of in the past few hours.

“William.”

“Very well, William. What can you tell me about Carthage?”

He glanced behind him as a striking woman with gray eyes and black hair stepped out of the apothecary.

“We hardly see him,” William said. “Trying to get an appointment is impossible. Every now and then he’ll leave to get a few supplies, but he often just ends up at the tavern or—” He motioned helplessly to the blue smoke spewing from the office.

“And who are you?” someone asked from the anonymity of the gathering crowd.

“My name is Mildred. I’m the new Assistant for Council Member Stephan. I’ve come to introduce myself and discuss the needs of your Coven.”

“We need food!” a woman cried.

“And jobs.”

“And our common schools back!”

A clamor of voices assaulted her.

“Silence!” she called. “All of you. I’ll take care of everything as best I can. In the meantime, I need a Coven Leader. William, how do you feel about taking over for Carthage?”

His light brown eyes grew wide. “Take over?”

The black-haired woman stepped to his side and put a hand on his shoulder. William calmed, as if her simple touch gave him physical strength. “It would be an honor to serve our Coven,” she said.

William looked to the woman with a questioning gaze. She smiled. He responded with one of his own, then turned to Mildred with a nod.

“Yes,” he said. “My wife, Lily, and I will help in any way that we can.”

“Thank you,” Mildred said. “Let’s start with clearing that office out. You, and you.” She pointed to two swarthy men standing nearby. “I’d appreciate you bringing Carthage out.”

They stared at her, and she felt a momentary shock of fear. What if they didn’t listen? What if they didn’t respect her authority?

No, she thought. I will not fail. I’ve failed at enough already. “Well? Get to it. We have a lot to do and not enough time.”

They hesitated a heartbeat longer, then started to the office together. She barely came to their shoulders when they slipped past her and disappeared inside.

“You, and you,” she said, pointing to a woman and a girl who appeared to be her daughter. “Do you have current employment?”

“No, Miss Mildred,” the mother said.

“Does someone clean this office?”

“No.”

“You’re hired. Please start immediately. Record how many hours it takes you until it’s spotless, and I’ll personally pay your wages. Leave all the paperwork and business to William and his wife.”

The two men struggled out of the house, holding Carthage by his chubby ankles and sweat-lined shoulders. His pinpoint eyes stared out at the crowd without comprehension.

“Take him to the inn to let him sleep it off,” she said, gaining confidence with every passing moment. All it took was a show of authority. “The rest of you, go home. I will return in one week to take your complaints and questions. Spread the word to your neighbors.”

The stunned faces gradually fell away, but not for some time after she strode back inside the office and began to throw things out the window. The mother and daughter tasked with cleaning reappeared. William, who wouldn’t let his wife inside a building with such foul air, joined Mildred, his shirt over his nose.

“Thank you for accepting,” she said, straightening. “Let’s get right to business.”

As Stephan maintained no requirements of his Coven Leaders or High Witches, Mildred devised her own to guide him.

“I want a report every two weeks on the state of the Coven and current problems,” she said while she paced back and forth across the front porch. He wrote her expectations down for the next half-hour. “And you shall be in charge of managing and communicating with the tax collectors . . .”

By the time they left the office, which still reeked of stale eggs and tobacco, night had long since descended. Mildred’s feet ached, her tired back felt cramped, and a dull headache throbbed at the base of her skull. They stood on the porch for a moment.

“Thank you for your help,” she said. William locked the door behind him but left some of the windows open to the chilly night so the building could breathe.

“Do you need a place to stay?” he asked. “Your driver is at the inn, I believe.”

“I’ll transport back to the castle,” she said. “Please tell him to return to Chatham in the morning. I shall be in touch within the next couple of days.”

Without a farewell or word of explanation, Mildred transported back to her bedroom. She heated a small cauldron of water, peeled off her stinking clothes, scrubbed her skin and hair, and collapsed into bed to stare at the ceiling.

It’s done, she thought. The first challenge had passed, and she’d handled it tolerably well. She reviewed each part of the day in methodical, precise detail, noting further additions to her mental list of ways to improve. At the very least, she’d reached out, met the residents, seen the poverty, and removed a corrupt leader. For the first time in over a month as Assistant, she felt like she might, with dedicated hard work, tolerate the job.

Fortunately, she wasn’t afraid of working.

She fell into a deep sleep while thinking that life was never as straightforward as her plans and wondering what Marten would have to say about that at dinner the next day.