Bloodwitch (26 page)

We all reached Jeshickah’s room. Alejandra lingered in the parlor, but I continued forward as if hypnotized. Kadee stayed a pace behind me but did not leave me alone. We held our breath as Jeshickah knelt beside her men.

Jaguar stirred first, his black eyes flickering open for a moment before drifting shut again. I watched tension drain from Jeshickah’s body.

“Your clan is not loyal to me,” she said to Kadee as the others began to gently rouse, as if from a deep sleep, “but you are more useful outside these walls. Take the mutt from the cells and go. Vance …” My heart stopped as she paused to consider. “Jaguar lives, so the offer for you to stay remains open. I look forward to seeing what he might make of you.”

My heart gave a little conflicted thump at that comment—a combination of terror and pride. Would I feel that way for the rest of my life?

“Thank you for the offer,” I replied, “but I think it would be better for me to leave, for now.”

Why did I add that “for now”? To be polite, or to hold on to hope?

“Let’s go,” I said to Kadee. I did not want to face Taro or Jaguar. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but if I stayed here until they woke, they could probably convince me to stay forever.

Just outside the door, though, something occurred to me. I turned back to ask, “What will happen to the Shantel?”

“That’s really not our concern,” Kadee whispered, looking at the slowly waking trainers. I could tell she would also rather be gone before they were able to focus on us, but I wanted an answer.

“You demanded blood price from the Azteka,” I said to Jeshickah. “What will happen to the Shantel?”

“He was working for Midnight,” Kadee asserted before Jeshickah could speak. “By Midnight’s law, a nation is not held responsible for the actions of those they have already exiled for betrayal.”

“It seems to me,” Jeshickah replied, “that our late guard was not exiled, but rather sent to Midnight on an errand. I will deduct his years of service from the account. I think Shantel royal blood will pay the rest.”

She stood and shut the door to the cell in our faces, ending any argument.

“That’s going to go over well,” Kadee said under her breath.

“Let’s get Malachi,” I replied. The fact remained that the Shantel had—without my knowledge or consent and
with no concern about who might be hurt beyond the vampires—turned me into a plague-bearer. A dozen humans had died, at least, and in some ways it was my fault.

More died than that
, I realized, thinking back to Calysta. She had killed herself for freedom before I even realized we were in a cage. And the Shantel didn’t deserve to enter a marble cage as punishment.

Alejandra had already gone by the time we stepped into the hall. When we opened the door to the lower cells, we found Malachi standing right behind it.

“Much obliged,” he said to Kadee. Then, “Vance … I’m sorry.”

He had said that to me too often, it seemed. I almost said something sharp, as I had most of the other times, but I realized that no one else was likely to express sympathy. Malachi was probably the only one who would ever understand what the trainers, Midnight’s evil masters, had once been to me.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “Are you all right now?” The last time I had seen him, he had been completely unresponsive.

“Sometimes the only thing louder than the past is the possible future,” Malachi answered unintelligibly. “It’s … overwhelming.” He pushed past us as if desperate for fresh air.

Kadee and I exchanged a glance, then hurried in the same direction. When we caught up to Malachi at the front
gates, his eyes still held a wide, dazed expression as he stared up at the stone edifice that was Midnight proper.

Kadee asked, “Where to now, Vance?”

I looked around, but there was no guidance to be found here.

There was only one other place I knew, so that seemed as good a place to start as any. “I guess I will go look for the Azteka,” I answered. “I don’t know where Alejandra went, but I hope I’ll find her in the market. I’m not sure I’ll stay, but it’s somewhere, for now. Alejandra promised I would be well treated.”

Kadee nodded. “You’ll have to walk. You don’t want Jeshickah accusing you of stealing her horse.”

“I could fly part of the way.”

“I’ve seen you fly,” Malachi said. “You’re slower in the air than you are on the ground. We can walk together until we reach the Obsidian camp—if you trust me.”

“You’re not worried about my knowing where it is?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“You already know enough to have us all given to Midnight,” Kadee answered. “The way I see it, we either have to kill you or trust you. You have the same choice to make about us.
Do
you trust us?”

Did I?

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I don’t seem to be a good
judge of who to trust, but I wouldn’t kill someone just because she might hurt me.”

“That’s fair,” she answered.

We started on our way, stepping off the road whenever we heard anyone approach. None of us wanted to be seen, stopped, or spoken to by outsiders.

Malachi froze before I even realized we had reached the Obsidian camp. His gaze was locked with his sister’s. I remembered what Torquil had said about Misha sending Malachi away.

He drew back and said to me, “I’ll walk you to the market.”

“You need to face her eventually,” Kadee said, dogging our heels.

“I know. But not yet.”

If Misha hadn’t driven her brother away, I wondered, would I still be in the greenhouse? Malachi wouldn’t have come to the greenhouse that day to escape from the storm. Would Calysta still have killed herself if Malachi hadn’t reminded her of who she had once been? Maybe. Probably, eventually. Surely I would have frozen to death in the woods if I had never found him.

Or he might have killed me
, I thought,
if he hadn’t already been so alone, and felt so guilty
.

I didn’t want to think about that.

We reached the market. As soon as we saw the Shantel
stall, we understood the purpose of one of the carts that had passed us during our walk.

The wooden structure was piled with bodies in varying stages of decay. Each wore a black collar and the simple clothes of Midnight’s slaves. Beneath, their skin was either black or a putrid gray-green, swollen and split to leak the same foul bile I had seen in the blood of the slave Malachi had killed in front of me. Rotten fluids had leaked across the Shantel trade goods.

Words were scrawled in dark ink at the top of the stall.

“It says, ‘These are not our dead,’ ” one of the nearby Shantel merchants provided. “Midnight gave the pochteca permission to dispose of the corpses, and they chose to leave them here.”

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“The Azteka wanted to make it clear who was to blame,” the merchant said. “Now I need to take the message back to our king, so he can decide whether to pay for this crime with his blood, or to risk Midnight’s consequences for defiance.”

“What will he do?” I asked.

“He will probably consult the
sakkri
,” he answered. “She provides our spiritual guidance. They will decide together what is best.”

“They will decide,” Kadee said. “The king and the princes and the
sakkri
will decide. Why don’t they ask the hunters, or the merchants, or the mothers and fathers and children whether or not they want to fight?”

“That’s why we have leaders,” the Shantel merchant replied. “Someone needs to make decisions.”

These are not our dead
, the Azteka had written. No one would claim them. They were simply casualties of a conflict no one wanted responsibility for. I searched the swollen faces, and recognized too many. Elisabeth’s was half visible in the middle of the mass.

“Some of the humans recently rebelled against their king,” Kadee remarked, almost idly. “They didn’t like the decisions he was making for them, so they got rid of him.”

We all stared at the pile of bodies. “Do the Azteka have kings?” I wondered aloud.

“Yes,” the merchant answered. “Well, priest-kings, I believe. Bloodwitches from the ruling caste, instead of the pochteca.”

“But with all their power, they don’t fight either?”

“Come away, Vance,” Kadee said, grabbing my arm to pull me back from the merchant.

“No, I want to know.” I yanked away from her. “If Midnight does nothing good for any of you, then why do you bow to it? Why do you bow to your kings if they do not fight when you want to fight? Why did the only one of you brave enough to fight need to do so in secret?”

“Look where it got him,” the merchant replied. “Look where it got all of us.”

Do you know where it
almost
got you?
I wondered. I couldn’t ask that, though, because no one could know that
we had nearly assassinated Jeshickah … unless, I supposed, we managed to try again. Until that opportunity arose, though, it would be better if we kept the information to ourselves, just as the Shantel deathwitch had done.

How many years had he lived in exile on the faith that an opportunity would come? How many jeers and how much disdain had he suffered, only to fail at the end because the Azteka were too afraid to be blamed for the trainers’ deaths?

“What about you?” I asked Kadee and Malachi.

“What about us?” Malachi replied.

“You said the Obsidian guild refused to follow any king. So you end up fighting everyone, dealing with Midnight to protect your own people, scrounging for food and basic necessities.”

“Yeah?” Kadee challenged.

“It’s just that … well, I grew up with every luxury Midnight has to offer.” I remembered Malachi’s tirade about the serpents’ dance, though the words struck me very differently now than they once had. “I don’t know how to hunt. I don’t know how to survive in the forest. I’ve almost never gone hungry and I’ve usually had a soft bed to sleep on.”

“I’m aware of that,” Malachi replied. He turned his back on me and wondered aloud, “Should we do something about this pile of bodies? It
stinks
.”

“Burn it,” Kadee replied.

Perhaps they both knew I needed a few moments to complete my thoughts and prepare myself to take this next step. They consulted briefly with the Shantel merchant, then sought kindling, flint, and steel. Midnight’s dead—
our
dead—would soon be gone to smoke and ash. Just like the life I had once had.

“I have nothing but the clothes I’m wearing,” I said as we all watched the pyre begin, “and I know almost nothing of use, but I learn fast. Will you have me?”

“If we haven’t made it clear already,” Kadee said, “the Obsidian guild is officially fugitive. We can walk through this market freely because it is considered Midnight’s land, but a lot of the shapeshifter nations have decrees to arrest or kill us on sight if we cross into their territory … which we do, when we need to. Right now you have an invitation to return to the Azteka. A bloodwitch is barely a step below royalty. Your lifestyle would be more like the one to which you are accustomed.”

“Yes, it would be,” I replied, thinking of Calysta, and Felix and Elisabeth and Joseph, the children in the east wing, and all the slaves who had cooked for me and cleaned up after me most of my life. I thought about Celeste, who had to be protected and taken care of but would never be considered worthy even of a golden cage. Then I thought about Misha, who had gone into a trainer’s cell, and how
for
folk like us it’s better not to give too much thought
to what happened to her there.

I had been taught that kneeling to Jeshickah was polite, and right, because she was better than I was. Maybe this was the potential Jaguar had seen in me: I didn’t want to be polite. I didn’t want to be led. I didn’t want to be comfortable if that meant I needed to accept that my comfort came by the grace of those who were more important than I could ever be, and on the backs of others who were less than dirt beneath my feet.

“I think it would be
just
like that,” I said.

Kadee smiled and shook her head.

“You’re in for a rude awakening, little bird.”

“At least I’ll
be
awake,” I countered.

I jumped back as a spark from the Shantel merchants’ stall, now turned into a pyre, fell on my arm. As I brushed ash from my skin, Kadee said, “It’s nice to meet you, Vance Obsidian.” She flung an arm across my shoulders and turned me away from the burning bodies.

“You’re mad, Vance,” Malachi said. “But welcome to the family.”

I turned to see him staring at the fire, a pale shadow in front of the flickering flames. I wondered if he, too, was thinking about his prophecy, in which Misha would take the serpiente throne and Midnight would fall to flames just like these.

As I understood it, the empire had stood in some form
for four hundred years. What was the likelihood that our generation would see its end?

And when it fell, would I rejoice, or would I cry?

Only time would tell.

All I knew was, whether the walls were rough stone or golden bars, a quetzal couldn’t live in a cage.

AMELIA ATWATER-RHODES
wrote her first novel,
In the Forests of the Night
, when she was thirteen. Her most recent novels are
Poison Tree
and
Promises to Keep
. Visit her online at
AmeliaAtwaterRhodes.com
.