30. ALL OF IT HAS BEEN FOR NOTHING
All of it has been for nothing
‘How did you know to come here?’ Isobelle asked, as Olivia stoked the fire higher. Isobelle sat with Gwen, who had lapsed back into unconsciousness – but a more natural one, her breathing steady and her white face relaxed.
‘I got your letter,’ Olivia replied shortly.
She’d ordered a pile of stones to be brought and arranged by the fire, and as they grew hot, she carried them over to stash inside the blankets around Gwen, slowly but surely driving the frigid temperature of the sea from the knight’s body. ‘You mentioned Galanty-Uponne-the-Sea.’
‘And why should that bring you running?’ Isobelle asked carefully, her narrowed eyes fixed on her maid. For Olivia to have got here so fast after receiving her letter, she must’ve been travelling day and night with little or no rest.
Olivia didn’t so much as pause. ‘I remembered a story from when I was young that this place was cursed.’ She tucked Gwen’s blankets back around her and turned again to the fire, where she’d set a pot of water to warm. ‘We should make her a mustard seed poultice for the cold. Where’s the herb kit?’
‘We don’t have one,’ Isobelle said, briefly apologetic. ‘I left out quite a few things when I was packing. It’s harder than it looks.’
Olivia eyed her sidelong. ‘And you asked why I came? I thought you might need me. Looks like I was right to travel here when I remembered that story.’
‘What absolute bullshit.’ The voice was barely a rasp of syllables, but Isobelle still recognised it as Gwen’s.
She gasped, looking down, to find Gwen’s white face tight with suspicion, her eyes open a slit and fixed on the busy form of Olivia. She did not look at Isobelle, and after a moment, she pulled her hand away.
Isobelle’s heart lurched painfully. She wanted to send Olivia out of the room so she could throw herself down at Gwen’s side and tell her how wrong she was to have let her face the sea monster alone. Before she could formulate the right approach, though, Olivia had seized on this new distraction.
She bustled to the bedside and efficiently pushed Isobelle out of the way so she could feel Gwen’s heartbeat with her fingertips and press a palm to her forehead. ‘You’re awake – how are you feeling?’
‘Cold,’ replied Gwen shortly, her voice a little slurred and slow. ‘And don’t think you can distract us. I call bullshit, Olivia – I’ve stopped being surprised when you show up in the nick of time to effect some miraculous escape, but there’s no way you came here because of a fairytale.’
Isobelle pushed Olivia away, politely but firmly, so she could resume her place at Gwen’s side.
Even if all was not well between them they were still united in this.
And she needed Gwen by her side, to help dull the ache of facing down Olivia, of all people.
‘She’s right. There’s a tower belonging to an Order of witch hunters here, and it is covered in your symbol. That owl.’
Olivia glanced between them and shrugged, turning back to the fire. ‘Owls are beautiful birds,’ she replied lightly. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if they were commonly found on all sorts of—’
‘Stop it!’ Isobelle’s voice burst out. She could feel tears of frustration pricking at her eyes.
‘Olivia, I’ve never made you explain everything that you know how to do – I accepted that you wanted your past to stay past. But it’s different now.
Your Order of the Evening Star, these witch hunters, whoever you are, is at the heart of what’s happened here in this town.
You owe us – you owe me – an explanation. ’
Olivia had gone still, staring into the fire. Her hand was clenched around the iron poker so tightly that her knuckles shone white. Carefully, she leaned to the side and set the poker aside.
‘We don’t hunt witches,’ she said quietly.
Isobelle heard Gwen’s intake of breath and glanced at her; the other girl’s green eyes looked a little more alert now, and there was colour coming back into her cheeks. Her gaze was fixed on Olivia.
‘Magic … is dangerous,’ Olivia went on, her sigh bowing her shoulders.
‘We stand against those few magic users who would abuse their power. It’s not fireballs and sparks flying through the air like in the old tales – it’s quiet, an undercurrent you can’t feel until it has you so firmly in its grasp you can’t move.
And even then, you wonder if it was ever magic at all. ’
Isobelle could not help but look at Gwen again – she was looking at her an awful lot just now, to soothe that lingering hurt from the realisation she might never look at her again.
Hex bag or not, she would never be entirely certain whether Gwen was ensnared by a spell designed to drag her down into fear, or if she was simply, as Gwen had declared, afraid.
Lord knew there was plenty for her to fear.
Olivia was still talking, and Isobelle forced herself to focus on her maid’s words.
‘Most people have no way to protect themselves against it. Some don’t believe in it at all, but that’s no defence – it believes in them.’
‘So you claim to be defenders of the innocent?’ Gwen replied, one eyebrow rising a little.
‘We are defenders of the innocent,’ Olivia shot back, her eyes narrowing.
‘What of all the witches they rounded up here?’ Isobelle pressed, her head still swimming, trying to assimilate this new view of the woman who’d essentially been her only family for years, ever since her parents had left her in Darkhaven.
‘There was only one doing wrong, and yet every witch for miles was rounded up and never heard from again.’
Olivia still wouldn’t look at Isobelle. ‘I don’t know what happened here. That’s the honest truth. All I know is that it’s marked in the archives of the Order as a bad place – a place none of us is to venture. Which is why I knew you would be in danger here.’
‘It was probably forbidden so no one could learn what they did to all those witches,’ muttered Gwen. She still wasn’t looking at Isobelle, either. ‘Cult leaders don’t like their followers to know too much.’
Isobelle was getting very, very sick of everyone avoiding her eye like she’d mixed clashing fabrics or committed some other unforgivable sin. In Olivia’s case, at least, Isobelle knew she was on the higher ground.
‘How on earth did you come to be my maid, if you’re a member of some secret cult?’ she asked, pitching her voice to that particular tenor that defied the listener to ignore her.
‘The Order saves lives,’ Olivia replied, exasperated. ‘They saved my life. They’re not a cult. We have operatives everywhere – I was simply the one assigned to Darkhaven. Being a lady’s maid is a perfect cover. No one is dismissed and ignored as readily as a lady’s maid.’
‘Except maybe the ladies themselves,’ Isobelle muttered. Olivia glanced at her at last, a wry smile supplanting her grimness. Isobelle’s heart quailed. How would she ever be able to trust her old friend again?
Olivia cleared her throat, grave once more. ‘We could spend all night like this. But whether you believe me or not, I need to know what’s been happening here if I’m going to help.’
And so they told her – Gwen still hoarse and tripping over her tongue – about everything that had taken place in Galanty-Uponne-the-Sea. It was a relief to spill it all out.
They told her about Lord Bingleton, and his dreams of tour-ism.
Tabitha, and the tale of her mother, the evil sorceress, whose lover now plotted his revenge on the town.
The sea monster. Its many resurrections, and the slow creep of fear through the town.
Tabitha’s kidnapping, and the discovery that Lord Bingleton himself was the necromancer, preparing to sacrifice Tabitha to bring back her mother.
Grimshaw, and the flight of their companions.
As they talked, Olivia changed out the stones under Gwen’s blanket for freshly heated ones, made a pot of tea, and began tidying the room as though nothing had changed, and she was still just Isobelle’s clever, efficient maid.
She listened throughout without comment until both Isobelle and Gwen had sputtered to a halt.
‘Well,’ she said, bundling laundry into a canvas sack. ‘You’ve been busy.’
Isobelle gave a sound somewhere between a laugh, a hiccup and a sob.
‘Haven’t we?’ she agreed. ‘But despite everything we’ve done, midwinter is nearly here, the necromancer still has Tabitha, and no matter how many times Gwen kills that beast, it never seems to get any weaker, which surely means we’re not weakening him, either.’
Olivia looked up from the sack, into which she’d stuffed one of Gwen’s tunics. ‘Gwen’s not killing anything.’
‘Excuse you,’ rasped Gwen. ‘I’ve killed it a dozen times at least. And every damn time, he brings it back.’
‘That’s not possible.’ Olivia turned to face them. ‘There’s no such thing as necromancy. Death is a veil from beyond which there is no return. At least, not unless you do something about it quickly,’ she added, nodding at Gwen.
Isobelle shook her head. ‘Olivia, we’ve seen it. Look at the clothes you’re holding – they’re soaked in the creature’s blood. There was so much of it. There’s been so much, every time. There’s no way the creature could have survived.’
Now it was Olivia’s turn to shake her head. ‘This isn’t blood. It’s ink. Come on, girl, anyone who’s ever done a load of laundry at that time of the month would know this isn’t blood.’
‘How am I supposed to know what sea monster blood looks like?’ protested Gwen, eyes flashing.
Before Olivia could rise to that challenge, Isobelle cut in, her mind reeling. ‘Ink?’
‘Ink,’ Olivia repeated calmly. ‘Certain sea creatures eject a sort of ink into the water when frightened that deters predators.’
There was a long silence, broken only by the crackling of the fire.
‘What?’ said Gwen.
‘It’s only been retreating, probably on your sorcerer’s command,’ Olivia repeated. ‘Did you ever see its dead body float to the surface?’
‘No,’ Isobelle managed. ‘It sinks.’