Bloodwitch (11 page)

“Looking for you,” Malachi answered. “I tried to talk to you in your dreamscape, but other magic pushed me away.”

Good
, I thought. “Last time I saw you, you threatened to kill me. Now you’re following me. The last thing I want is you harassing me in my
dreams
!”

I glanced at the guards at each end of the hallway. Their eyes were on Malachi, too, but they hadn’t jumped forward to throw him out.

“Actually, I saved your life.”

“Either way, I have nothing to say to you.”

“Then you can listen,” Malachi said. “Even better, you can
look
. Come with me.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I protested.

“You don’t need to leave the building to see what I want to show you. We’re just going to the east wing—have they shown you that yet?” Malachi asked almost politely, despite the hard look in his pale eyes.

“No.” I hadn’t even thought to wonder whether there
was
an east wing.

“I think you should see it,” Malachi said. “
Then
we will talk.”

He led the way. I remembered what Jaguar had said about this being a working building, and that there were some places I was not allowed to go because I would get in the way. I followed Malachi anyway, because I was curious now, and I knew Malachi couldn’t hurt me or abduct me while guards watched from every exit.

THE GUARD AT
the end of the hall glared at Malachi but did not challenge his right to be there, or to open the heavy door that stood between the north wing and the east.

Beyond that door, the world changed.

Gone were the frescoed walls, the plush carpets, and the elaborate candelabra. Simple tin lanterns hung at intervals, bathing the gray stone in flickering light and illuminating open archways all along the left side of the hall.

“Take a minute. Look around,” Malachi instructed me. His voice had gone soft and flat.

I approached one of the doorways and peered inside—then quickly looked away, because the men and women I saw there all seemed to be in the process of changing their clothes.

“Sunrise marks the change of shifts,” Malachi explained. “They’re readying themselves to work until sunset.”

“What kind of work?” I asked.

Malachi shrugged. “Cooking, cleaning,” he answered vaguely. “Some of them are skilled laborers—tailors, herbalists, and the like—but mostly the morning shift is responsible for the general drudgery required to keep a manor like this functioning.”

“It needs to be done,” I replied defensively. When I had lived at the greenhouse, I had helped maintain the grounds. There was no shame in working.

“Look here,” he said, gesturing to one of the next rooms.

Inside, a woman was leaning over a small, railed crib. When she saw us peering in, she pulled the infant she had been holding to her chest, then knelt.

“Sirs,” she murmured.

One child near her, a little girl with wide eyes, was old enough to stand and walk on her own. When she saw us, she didn’t speak a word, but huddled near the kneeling woman.

“Go about your business,” Malachi instructed. Shooing the toddling child away, the matron stood and set the infant down in its crib.

The woman’s coarse brown hair, which was tied back with a piece of cloth, had strands of gray in it. There were lines around her eyes and mouth, her hands had a fragile,
wrinkled quality to them as she bundled the infant, and the skin at her throat bunched loosely at the black collar that marked her status. She was barely my height and looked as if she might blow away in a strong wind, but her footfalls were heavy compared to those of anyone with a bird’s hollow bones.

She repulsed me a little. I had never seen anyone like her. Was this what humans turned into when they got older?

“These children will grow up here,” Malachi said to me. “Slaves from cradle to coffin. That’s the expression, anyway. It would be a waste of time and land to give them coffins and bury them when a pyre is so much more efficient.”

The small room was dim and gray, but the same runes that warmed the rest of the building glowed on the mantle. One child was sucking on a pacifier and another gripped a rattle; the broken rhythm it made as the child idly played with it was like rain.

“Do they go hungry?” I asked Malachi. It wasn’t the question he expected, obviously. I couldn’t imagine this fragile-looking woman or these infant children struggling in the harsh outside world that both Calysta and Malachi had described. When Malachi just blinked at me owlishly, I asked the old woman, “Are you cold, or hungry?”

She looked at me with a puzzled frown before she answered, “No, sir.”

“What is your job here?”

“I tend the second generations until they are four, sir.” When she saw the question still on my face, she elaborated. “I see that they are fed and kept clean, watch for illness, and teach them to mind their manners. I also speak to them, so they learn their language as well as a child of that age can.”

“Notice she didn’t mention playing with them,” Malachi said under his breath.

“She’s no different from the nanny who tended to me as a young child,” I replied, indignant. “Taro wasn’t always with me. I was taught to mind my manners, too.”

“Can you really look at this and see
nothing
wrong with it?” Malachi demanded. “Most of these children will never see the sun. They will never
play
. They will never be free to decide what they want to do with their own minds, bodies, and souls. They will never be allowed to love, or …”

His voice trailed off and his fair skin paled even more as a woman with golden hair and eyes stepped lightly down the hallway. Her simple gown was made of rich velvet, and though she wore a collar around her throat, it was made of wine-red leather.

She stopped to speak to someone in one of the cells at the opposite end of the hall, her voice too soft to carry. When she turned to go, however, she caught sight of us.

Her eyes widened as she looked at Malachi, and her body tensed.

“Alasdair?” he called.

Without reply, she turned and fled, her bare feet soundless on the stone floor.

Malachi collapsed, as if all the strength had gone out of him at once. His back struck the wall and he closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.

“I am not a good person, Vance,” he said. “I have spent most of my life doing whatever I needed to do to survive from one day to the next. That’s what
I
learned in these cells. You see, I was born here. I would have died here, too, if it hadn’t been for a man named Farrell Obsidian, who decided a six-year-old child deserved a chance to live.”

The words brought into focus why Malachi might be putting so much effort into me. He had been “rescued,” and probably thought I deserved the same treatment. I could see the parallels; we were both shapeshifters, theoretically we both had magic, and we were both born in Midnight. Malachi had been taken away when he was six and had obviously been raised by someone who had filled his head with stories of Midnight’s evil.

“I don’t need rescuing,” I said, trying to be patient with him now that I thought I understood his point of view.

“Yes, you do.” He drew a deep breath and straightened his back. “The vampires don’t know it yet, but they will never be able to make use of your power,” he said. “That’s what the pochteca told me in the market, and why they are willing to let Midnight keep you. That means Midnight has spent a lot of time and money on something it will not be
able to get from you. I don’t know what they will do once they know, but I doubt they will keep you in conditions as comfortable as those you are used to.”

Malachi was genuinely
frightened
for me. As long as he didn’t try to kidnap me again, I was determined to be kind—but firm. I challenged the logic of his statement, trying to convince him that he didn’t need to worry for me. “As old and powerful as Midnight is, do you really think they wouldn’t already know anything the pochteca could have told you?”

“Not this.” Malachi shook his head sharply. “Most witches’ power is essentially instinctive. They have it and will use it even if they never have any formal instruction. Midnight has never had a bloodwitch, so they have every reason to believe your magic works the same way. But the pochteca say that a bloodwitch is different. There is absolutely no way for you ever to use your magic unless you are trained by a blood relative.”

“Then maybe I won’t have magic,” I said. “I don’t
need
magic.”

“A quetzal can’t survive in a cage, Vance,” Malachi reminded me. “What will you do when they decide you’re not useful enough and toss you in one of these gray cells?”

The words made my stomach clench, but I said aloud, “I’m not human.”

“Neither was the woman we saw a few minutes ago,” he said. “The beautiful one with golden hair. She is a hawk,
and she was royalty before she came here, and now she is a slave.”

“How?” I asked. Jaguar said that Calysta had been a criminal before Midnight gave her a second chance. I wanted Alasdair’s whole story before I jumped to conclusions about her.

“Alasdair was sold,” Malachi answered. “Shapeshifters are born freeblood. That means Midnight isn’t allowed to pick them up and make them slaves on an idle whim. A shapeshifter can only be enslaved if he or she is sold in by their own kind … or born in, of course, as I was. The child of a slave is a slave, even if that child is a falcon, or a bloodwitch.”

“If shapeshifters can only be sold by their own kind, then it’s
Alasdair’s
kind who put her here,” I argued. “You say I should blame the vampires and call them evil, but it seems like Midnight’s laws would have protected Alasdair unless other shapeshifters thought she didn’t deserve freedom. You told me before that the princess of the serpiente would like to get rid of
you
the same way. You lay evil at Midnight’s feet, but you’ve made it clear that the world beyond Midnight’s walls is no different.”

“It’s … Vance, it’s
complicated
,” he said.

“Jaguar says you’re allowed to be here,” I said. “If they were so evil, why would they let you speak freely?”

“Because I’m not stupid,” Malachi retorted. “Midnight doesn’t care if I speak my mind because they know I won’t
overstep the line. I will warn you, but I won’t help you out of here, because a man who steals a slave or harbors a stolen slave loses his freeblood status. He
and
his kin are forfeit. I won’t endanger my people that way.

“I just came here to tell you this: I
will
find a way to buy you out. Once Midnight realizes they cannot use your magic, you won’t have any value beyond what they can sell you for. All you need to do is survive.”

“I am not in danger!” I protested, the last of my patience gone. “And I’m not a slave. I keep telling you—”

“It’s fine if you don’t believe me now,” Malachi said. “But when they give up on you, and you find yourself in a cage, and every fiber of your being says the only thing to do is to dash yourself against the bars until your body breaks, you will remember my words. Survive, and I will get you out.”

“How noble.”

I had been so focused on Malachi that I had completely missed the arrival of a strange man. I should have sensed him even if I hadn’t seen him; he was a vampire, and a cranky one, by the look of it. He was wearing trousers, a half-buttoned shirt, and a scowl that would have made me cringe if it had been focused on me.

Instead, I knelt. Malachi snatched at my arm, and I had to slam an elbow into his rib cage before he would release me and let me do what I knew I was supposed to do. This
wasn’t Taro or Jaguar or anyone who had given me permission to be informal.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the nanny doing the same. She reached out to the toddling child and encouraged her to kneel as well as she could. The parallel between us was, suddenly, more disquieting than anything Malachi had said to me.

“Alasdair told you I was here?” Malachi asked the new vampire.

“She did,” the vampire answered. “You frighten her.”

“
I
frighten her,” Malachi echoed. “So she runs to you, Gabriel? You’re the one who—”

The vampire, Gabriel, took another step forward and Malachi broke off. His hand was clenched in a trembling fist at his side, but he didn’t raise it.

“How is your sister faring these days?” Gabriel asked. His tone was courteous, but I could hear the sharp edge it held.

Malachi’s body rocked as if from a blow. He didn’t reply, except to turn stiffly and start toward the front of the building. He spoke not another word to me or the newcomer, who chuckled as Malachi fled.

I had forgotten until then the conversation I had had with Malachi about his family—specifically his brother, who had died “in a cell with no windows.” One of these cells?

It was too late to ask now.

“And who do we have here?” Gabriel murmured as he reached down to tilt my chin up.

“Vance Ehecatl, sir,” I answered. I bit back an explanation for my presence here. He hadn’t asked for anything but my name, and as far as I knew I hadn’t actually done anything wrong.