Chapter Four
The courtyard might not be on fire, but it was no safer than the burning barn.
The rain turned silver as lightning flashed: puddles, broken stones, the fitful light from the narrow arrow-slit windows, the sputtering torches. Sorcha tipped the hedgehog free of her cloak, glancing wildly around for an escape.
She had to get out of here. Now.
Elderberry circled high, higher still. A crow cawed at him from the darkness. Sorcha paused, even as the panic racing through her urged her to keep running, run, run, run. Even as the crows chanted in her head: fly, fly, fly.
Too late.
Sorcha ran.
Into two very large, very angry warlocks.
They may have been witches once, but they had definitely turned warlock some time ago. The use of baneful magic clung to them, the sweet, lulling scent of lemon balm. They wore vicious expressions when they realized the stables were burning and all that was left was a single woman.
In a red cloak.
One of them had her by the arm and was hauling her toward the tower before she could make a move of any kind. No spell, no elbow to the nose. She tried to fight him off, of course she did. But when his companion cursed, she knew it was too late for that. “That bitch emptied the stable.”
“We’re going to pay for that.” The warlock shook her hard. She tried to bite him, with little success. Her teeth snapped together. “So now you’re going to pay for that.”
She was still struggling when they dragged her into the tower. Two men rushed past her, armed, shouting instructions about wolves and fire.
Even knowing it was created for the worst kind of people, the fighting pit was an assault.
It was a cacophony of shouting, cursing, laughing.
The howls and growls of animals chained in the corner.
The stink of sweat and blood and beer and the scorched fennel of magic.
The way witch familiars shivered through the air: cats, birds, beetles.
Screeching, her crow dove into her chest and disappeared where it was safer.
Trapping a witch’s familiar drove them insane—it was a very rare talent, but still not one she was willing to risk in a place such as this one.
All of it thrummed in Sorcha’s ears, rattled her ribcage. Fear and fury choked her as much as the smoke had. She tried to think, tried to plan.
The fighting ring was in the center of the keep’s tower, cordoned off with iron chains, no doubt soaked in salt water and rowanberries and the Moon knew what else.
Something as simple as rose petals in the hands of a talented warlock might as well be hemlock poison.
Someone or something lay in a heap just inside.
She didn’t know if they were still breathing.
It wasn’t just the chains that kept them inside the ring—it was also fire.
Acid-green magical flames reinforced the boundary, a wide circle and a slash across the middle to keep the fighters apart until it was time for the next bout.
Spectators crowded close, but not too close.
Magical fire would burn, but it might also steal your voice, your memories, your ability to do something you loved.
And it hurt like a son of a bitch, the blisters taking twice as long to heal as regular burns.
Some of the audience waited with brutal hunger; others were simply seeking a night of forbidden entertainment in their best beaver-crowned hats and pearl ear bobs. In the far corner, Sorcha could see a panther shifter, a ghoul, and a Dullahan wrapped in thin gold chains. They could not abide gold.
“Got time for one more fight,” her captor shouted. “You like fire so much, girl?” He yanked her off her feet and threw her right over the flames. She landed hard on the cold stones. The fire flared, green as the poison from a hag’s bog. “Found ourselves the Red Cloak!”
The crowd roared when she pushed to her feet, a woman with an unexpected bearing that spoke of finishing schools.
There was a pause of surprise, a hesitation.
And then another roar of excitement. Sorcha saw three people she recognized from Haven, two from Hallow.
She was going to punch them right in the throat when she saw them next.
They did not recognize her. Not yet. She had no doubt the guards would come for her cloak soon enough.
If she survived, of course.
Bollocks to that.
She was going to survive, and then she was going to burn the rest of this place down.
Somehow. Because while she might be able to communicate with birds or the occasional winged magical creature, it would not help her now.
There was no reasoning with an ogre. Even a relatively small one.
He was at least eight feet tall and over three feet wide at the shoulders.
He had no weapons. He didn’t need them. His fists dripped with blood.
He was riddled with scars, and she was fairly certain that was a human ear on a pretty green ribbon he was wearing around his neck.
“This girl thought she could interfere with the Cauldron,” the ringmaster shouted.
“Girl?” Sorcha muttered. “I’m thirty-one years old.”
“But now look at her! At the mercy of the Collector.”
The Collector ran the fighting pits. No one knew who he was or even what he looked like, only that he had rules and enforced them with a great deal of violence. That he captured animals and witches and magical creatures and pitted them against each other.
“Odds thirteen to one on the ogre to win.”
That was a bit insulting.
Factual, but insulting.
Sorcha could climb trees and garden walls. She was well accustomed to thorns and teeth. Wounded animals tended to bite, even when she had just climbed through blackberry brambles to free them. She had a pet Black Shuck who roamed the moors and terrified the villagers, for pity’s sake.
But she did not know how to fight. Not really. Not beyond planting a reasonably solid facer or tripping drunken lords in an assembly room dance. She was passably good with a fencing foil. And kissing curators in the dark.
Not a lot of those about at the minute.
Still. She tossed her hair and shouted her own wager. “A hundred pounds on me.”
She did not have a hundred pounds. She had a run-down castle, three ovens, a dead grandmother, and a menagerie of creatures to feed.
Also, that overdeveloped sense of vengeance.
But as she honestly did not know how she could survive the next quarter of an hour, a possible new debt was not high on her list of things to worry about. She was not here of her own accord, so the least they could do was pay her.
The ogre advanced, grunting. Ogres barely spoke, at least to witches. They communicated with each other through a series of grunts. Blows to the head. Eating the bones of humans.
They liked fighting more than any other living creature on the island.
He spat on the ground, showing a cracked tooth the size of her fist. The crowd cheered so loud it made her a little dizzy. Of course, that might just be the fear and the lingering smoke. There weren’t enough wasps to call into the tower.
“We don’t have to do this, you know,” she said, backing up a step. The green fire licked at her back, singeing the ends of her hair. “You could smash your way right out of here right now. Stomp about the moors. I’m sure it would be quite lovely.”
But ogres loved a good fight and they loved beer and mud and blood. And considering their cannibalistic tendencies, this was like a bakery for them. All sorts of treats for the taking. She was just a brioche. A raspberry tart.
“I’m sure I’ve very bitter. I eat mostly garden greens and far too many lemons.
” She was surrounded with the delicious scents of baking bread and sugar frosting every day, and she often needed sharp tastes to cut through the sweetness.
“In fact, I had rampion and pickled beets for supper. You’d hate it. ”
She knew trying to reason with the ogre was a lost cause.
And worse, it was boring the audience.
One of the guards prodded him with a sharp spear that arced with blue sparks. More magic. Ogre skin was too thick for even a spear to do much more than annoy him. He grunted again, louder, angrier. Hungrier.
Splendid. Not just an ogre, but an annoyed ogre.
And then the green fire between them disappeared, shooting out to reinforce the circle still burning around them.
When he lumbered toward her, the thump of his footsteps rumbled through the cracked stones under Sorcha’s feet.
Her crow shot out from her ribcage, squawking as it dive-bombed the ogre.
He waved a huge hand, swatting at it. Sorcha kept backing away, as close to the flames as she dared.
Her gaze bounced from the chains to the green flames, the shouting spectators.
There was nothing else in the ring, nothing conveniently left behind beyond streaks of blood and axe marks in the rock, and a scattering of teeth.
It was just her and an ogre.
He swung a giant, meaty fist down toward her skull. She ducked to the side, popping up out of reach. Barely.
Still, he did not like that.
So she did it again.
It was a bit like moving through the steps of a country dance. Who could have guessed that dancing lessons with famous instructors from France and Italy would be so useful outside a duke’s ballroom?
She had always liked dancing.
She liked surviving even more.
She ducked again, twirled once, hopped over a giant fist.
But she already knew that she was only delaying the inevitable. She would get tired, she would trip or fall, and then he would smash his fist through her bones. Already her breath burned in her lungs. Her knee still ached from jumping off the wall.
Surely all of these people wouldn’t just stand there watching gleefully as a woman was crushed to a pulp by an ogre. Would he suck the marrow from her bones? Right here? With the mayor’s spoiled son watching?