“I know what a Pythia is,” Mircea said harshly.
Perhaps it was his wet clothes, which even the tavern’s impressive fire hadn’t yet dried, that were the problem. Or his equally soaked shoes and stockings, an issue I also had, with my toes squelching unhappily in my boots. Or the tobacco-loving table nearby, whose smoke kept drifting into our faces.
Or perhaps there was a more magical reason for his mood. The two women who had invited us for a drink, and who had arrived at the small tavern shortly after we did, had put a spell around our corner of the room. It cut out the noise so we could talk, but it was eerie, watching the usual evening madness take place without the din that should accompany it.
A wet dog slipped through the door alongside some patrons and headed straight for the fire, where it shook itself all over the people clustered there. That was followed by a lot of yelling and throwing of bread, which the dog happily gobbled up. And then ran to the back of the tavern, to bark at the turnspit cur on its wheel, which was running in place to keep the many haunches of meat that the cook was working on rotating over the secondary fire.
The cook shooed the mongrel off, which ran through the middle of a game of pitch-penny, jumped over a table full of card players, and stole a pie off of a man’s plate before pelting back out the door, his work finished here.
I looked after it briefly, watching it almost trip up another group of patrons trying to get in. I was supposed to be paying attention to the conversation, but after the events of the evening, other things were taking precedence. Like making sure that we weren’t surprised again.
My throat hurt from the almost hanging, which even with a dhampir metabolism was likely to take a day or more to heal. The bitch’s rope had left a throbbing line around my skin, which had eaten into the flesh far enough to be a potent reminder of just how close I’d come. I kept wanting to rub it, even thought that would make it worse, but I didn’t.
I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction if she was watching, and every instinct I had said that she was.
Just like I had all day, I felt her presence, her malevolence, like a pressure between my shoulder blades. It was my imagination; I knew that. A reaction to the fight that still had me on edge. The witch had no reason to be here, considering that she had what she’d wanted, although why she did, I didn’t know.
The vampire should have let me hang, like he should have walked away before then, using the attack on me as cover to beat a hasty retreat with his prize. Instead, he’d given it up in exchange for my life, and now we had nothing. The mystery around that was another of the things distracting me from the conversation.
The rest was mostly down to food.
I continued watching the room while stuffing down as much as possible, because a dhampir’s stomach was never satisfied, and over the years I had learned to fear hunger above all else. No food meant no strength, and no strength got you killed. Food was therefore always a priority, and the tavern the vampire had chosen was well stocked.
There were no fewer than three wooden platters in front of me, filled to overflowing with roast pigeons, black pudding, oysters fresh from the sea, mussels stewed with wine and anchovies, pickled herring, fresh crusty manchet rolls, and a nice, fat duck.
I looked up to see the younger witch, looking a little bedraggled with a missing cap, wet hair and a soaked dress, staring at me with an odd expression.
“Forgive me,” I rasped, and pushed the duck at her.
She stared at me some more.
“Ah, don’t mind if I do,” the older woman said, and wrenched off a leg.
She had a flagon of the dark, sweet beer that the tavern specialized in and waved it at a serving wench for more. The woman bustled over, then paused in confusion at the fact that she suddenly couldn’t hear anything. But the witch flapped a hand at her, and sent a spell along with it I supposed, because the woman left her pitcher and wondered off.
The older witch refilled her flagon and looked at me. I held mine out and she topped me off. “Many thanks.”
“No trouble,” she said cheerfully. “They have decent beer here, I’m glad to say.”
“Yes, but not a patch on the double-double they once had.”
“Double-double?”
“Extra strong,” I said, her question confirming my suspicion that they weren’t from around here. “In England, they have small beer, very weak, mainly to replace the water, which can be dangerous. And normal beer, called double, as it is twice the strength of small beer. And finally double-double, which was a nice, robust drink, and kept well, but the queen had it banned for causing too much drunkenness.”
“Shame, I would have liked to try it.”
I nodded. “T’is hard to get these days. Most taverns no longer make their own beer, but buy it from breweries, and of course, nobody will make what the queen forbids—”
The young witch slapped her hand down onto the table, hard enough to cause the dishes to rattle. “Can we stop. Talking. About beer?” she seethed.
We all looked at her.
“This is on the brink of becoming a disaster—it already is a disaster!” She flung out an arm at the tavern, which was one of those closest to the end of the bridge that had just gotten the muck blasted off it for the first time in centuries.
Soaked men and women kept staggering in, looking bewildered, because the Circle’s people had cast a blanket spell to blur their memories. They knew that something had happened—their dripping clothing was a testament to that—they just weren’t sure what. And by the time they finished drinking themselves into a stupor, tonight would seem like a dream.
At least, that was probably the hope.
How true it was, I didn’t know. Like I didn’t know how many people weren’t coming in, because they hadn’t survived. Either through the fight or the flood that had followed it.
How many had been swept over the side of the bridge, into the cold embrace of the water? And then thrown through the churning rapids to come out the other side, or what was left of them? I tried telling myself that most had fled before the portal was loosed, and that was true.
But not all, as the bedraggled types who kept dripping all over the floorboards could attest.
I was dhampir, with a vampire’s resilience married to the human will to survive, yet I had despaired of my odds with that current. What ones would a human have had? And how terrible to die like that, through some cataclysm they couldn’t have predicted or even understood.
My eyes found an old woman, her clothes steaming in the heat of the fire, looking about with red rimmed, uncomprehending eyes. “My grandson,” she said to the man next to her, a veined hand on his arm. “Have you seen him? Has anyone seen him?”
No one had.
She started going from table to table, describing him and asking the same thing, and received the same answer. And I suddenly lost my appetite, pushing the platter in front of me away. Only to have Mircea push it back, the long-fingered hand as pale as newly bleached linen in the firelight, because he was tired, too.
“Eat. You need to keep up your strength.”
“Why do you care?” I turned accusing eyes on him. “Why do you care about me at all?”
“I paid good gold for your arm. I want it strong.”
That was no answer, and we both knew it. But this was no fit time nor place to discuss it. After a moment, I pulled the platter back and resumed eating.
For her part, the younger witch looked somewhat ashamed of her outburst, but the older one was as practical as ever. I thought she might have made it through that bridge and out the other side, to toast her success at the nearest tavern. As she was doing now.
She downed a good pint of her drink, wiped her lips with the back of her hand, and patted the young woman’s shoulder. “It’s not a disaster,” she said. “Not yet.”
“How is that?” the younger witch wrapped her arms around herself. “My first solo mission, and I’ve already screwed it up.”
“Everyone has to learn—”
“Ca— the Lady didn’t.”
The old woman spared her a glance. “You know that isn’t true. She struggled, too, especially at the beginning—”
“But she always figured it out!”
“As we will.”
“I don’t see how,” the girl said miserably, and took a drink. She made a face; she didn’t seem to like the tavern’s beer as well as her counterpart. But she didn’t ask for anything else, although they had a good selection.
She had the air of someone who thinks she deserves bad beer.
“The Lady?” Mircea said sharply. “You are not Pythia, then?”
The young woman flushed, but met his eyes. “No. I am her heir. She is . . . busy.”
“Busy?” Mircea’s tone didn’t change, but something in his eyes flashed. Enough that the girl sat up straighter in her chair. “From what I understand, we have a witch with the ability to possess bodies who is set on doing who knows what sort of mischief. She has already loosed more than a dozen revenants onto the countryside, wiping out an entire village—”
“What village?” the older woman said.
“—and has just shown that she has no compunction about fighting in public, putting large numbers of lives at risk. Yet you tell me your Lady is busy? With what, pray tell?”
“If you know what my Lady’s office is, then you know I can’t tell you that!” the younger woman said, showing a bit of fire of her own. “I shouldn’t be telling you anything!”
“He won’t be allowed to remember it,” the older witch said, looking at the vampire. “You understand, that is the price?”
Mircea nodded, and I carefully kept on eating. Because the older woman could charm him all she liked, but with his mental gifts, it wasn’t likely to avail her much. But that wasn’t my problem.
“You, too,” she told me. “If we are to team up, while we will try to keep you as innocent as possible, there are things you may learn. Things you cannot be allowed to retain. You understand?”
I shrugged. “Yes.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “A memory charm doesn’t trouble you?”
“Not as long as I get paid.”
The young brunette made an unhappy noise. “A mercenary! I should have known! That’s what we’ve been reduced to?”
“She is my servant, and you are dealing with me,” Mircea said, pulling their attention back to him. “And you have not answered my question.”
“Nor will we,” the older witch said. “But you can rest assured, the Pythia’s task is more troublesome than this. In fact, this would be an easy enough affair, what we call a snatch and grab, if not for Morgan’s somewhat unique ability.”
“Morgans,” the younger witch corrected unhappily. “There are others.”
“Or so she says,” the older witch sneered. “Forgive me if I doubt her veracity.”
“Would one of you please explain precisely what is happening?” Mircea asked, with the air of a man whose tether is fraying.
“No,” the young witch said, and drank beer.
“If you want my help, you will change that tune,” he snapped. “I am not stepping off a cliff with no idea where to find the bottom. And if I am not to be allowed to retain these memories in any case—”
“We will tell you what we can,” the older witch said, shooting another glance at the younger.
“What is a Pythia?” I asked, as it seemed like it might be relevant. And because, unlike Mircea, I didn’t know.
“The Chief Seer of the Supernatural World,” the older woman said, readily enough. “But her job is more complicated than that. She—and to a limited degree, her court—have the ability to slip time’s leash and travel to different centuries—”
“Beg pardon?” I said, because I’d obviously misunderstood.
But she just kept talking.
“—which is, of course, a very dangerous thing to do, and is limited to times of extremis—”
The young witch snorted into her beer.
“—of which there unfortunately have been many recently. But nonetheless, the Pythia has been doing an excellent job of managing things—”
“Managing what?” I asked, confused.
“A great many affairs, in a great many times—”
There was that word again, and it made no more sense now than it had before. “A great many times?” I repeated.
“The Pythia can travel into past moments, days, even years, as easily as we walk through a door,” Mircea said, surprising me. “She causes a . . . type of portal . . . to open up, but instead of going to a different place, it goes to another time.”
“Or both,” the older witch said. “We can do both.”
I decided to ignore her, because my head was spinning enough as it was.
“I know how it sounds,” Mircea told me. “But the past doesn’t cease to exist once we have moved through it. It is still there, although that door is closed to us. She, however, has the key.”
I tried to process this. I tried valiantly. I failed.
“But . . . why would anyone want to go to another time, even were that possible?” I asked.
“Because of this!” the younger witch said, gesturing about again and looking angry. “Have you not been paying attention?”
“She was being strangled,” the older woman pointed out.
“Not all of the time!”
“I believe that you have come back for this Morgan woman, yes?” Mircea asked, determinedly dragging the conversation into line.
“Yes, precisely,” the older witch agreed. “She used some old, forbidden spells to slip through the centuries—”
“Centuries?” I repeated blankly.
“—which happens occasionally, by fanatics wanting to rewrite history or desperate sorts attempting to get rich. Knowing the future is, after all, a sure-fire way to do that. And the best way to know the future is to travel into the past.”
“And then the Pythia goes after them,” I said, finally understanding what they were saying, even if I didn’t believe it.
“Yes, well, at times.” The older woman topped off her drink, which she appeared to have made a good dent in. It had been that kind of night. “Fortunately, most of the would-be time travelers manage to blow themselves up long before they shift a single day. The spells are dangerous in the extreme, and even when they do work, navigating through a different era is more difficult than people think. We of the Pythian Court spend years in training, and even we often hit snags. The mages in question usually find themselves in trouble long before we arrive to cart them back home.”
“Plague,” the younger witch said dourly. “Or some other disease. Or bad food,” she added, frowning at my feast some more. “Or saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, because they don’t know any better . . .”
“Yes, it’s always rather nice when they take a knife to the eye before we catch up to them,” the older woman agreed. “I’m Hilde, by the way. I don’t think we introduced ourselves? And this is Rhea. I’m sure you understand why we do not wish to give our full names.”
Actually, I didn’t understand, but then, that was proving true for most of what they said.
“Dorina, usually go by Dory,” I reached across the table to take her hand. “Don’t have a last name.”
The younger witch looked surprised suddenly, and her eyes flicked to the vampire before she could stop them. But then she looked down into the depths of her tankard, and stayed that way. The older, on the other hand, never so much as batted an eye.
Experience, I thought, also keeping my face neutral.
“And the illustrious Lord Mircea completes our little group,” Hilde said pleasantly. And then her forehead wrinkled. “Ah, that explains a few things.”
“What does?” I asked, trying to withdraw my hand and being denied.
I could have forced the issue, but something in her expression stopped me. “Yes,” she murmured, her eyes half closed. And then they opened to skewer me. “Did you know you carry a tracking spell?”
“What?”
The younger witch grabbed my hand and then cursed. And a moment later, my skin tingled and I heard a snap. Of the spell, I assumed, as it suddenly felt like I could breathe again.
“She spelled me?” I said, furious.
“So, that is how she found us,” Mircea said. “I had wondered.”
“But she was there first!”
“Yes, she is smart, that one. There aren’t many coven witches in the Circle’s chief stronghold these days, allowing her to guess where we were heading as soon as we approached the shop. I thought it odd that Mistress Ellaria would claim to have a concealment charm over her entrance to fool the Circle when she has been there for generations. She is well known to the locals and such a ruse would hardly fool the Corpsmen for long. They likely visit regularly to ensure that she is acting only as an herbalist, and not using forbidden magic.”
I nodded. The Corps was the strong arm of the Circle, their bully boys who enforced their laws. And they were very good at what they did.
“That’s why everyone looked at me like I was mad when I fell in,” I said. “The damned thing had just gone up, and they didn’t know.”
He inclined his head. “Mistress Morgan likely cast the spell to slow us down, and buy her time to intimidate Ellaria into helping us.”
“And to set a trap. That’s why they already had the broomsticks; they flew into the courtyard under concealment spells!”
“Very likely,” he agreed. “And once we were in back, and they knew that we had the ring, they struck. It was well planned.”
I glowered, feeling less like singing the damned woman’s praises. Possibly because my hand felt like it had been plunged into a bowl of stinging nettles. Like most malevolent spells, this one hadn’t gone quietly.
It and its mistress clearly had points in common.