Chapter Thirteen Simran
Chapter Thirteen
Simran
You may chastise me all you like, you may speak of duty until the sky falls, but it changes nothing. I don’t want to kill her. What do you say to that? I. Do. Not. Want. To. Kill. Her.
God help me, but if I can stay my hand, I shall.
Source: Letter from Tristram Thorne to the Spymaster
Archivist’s Ruling: Preserve. Tristram Thorne (deceased) was a known incarnate (The Knight and the Witch). No further action required.
I have to go to the Copper Mountains. The witch’s tor.
I have to learn the stranger’s name.
I have to tell him why he can’t die. All by the solstice.
She held her mission, all three parts of it, steady in her mind. Three golden coins that had to be paid, the promise of them weighing heavy on her tongue.
She needed to find answers. She needed to find the words.
Once she’d paid the price, she could take the pale assassin’s life.
She kept trudging forward, as the undergrowth grew thicker and thicker, bluebells circling her up to the knees. She was shivering, hot with anger but also… not with anger, which made the anger sharper.
It was awful of the knight, to want Simran just because Simran wanted her. How embarrassing, how uncomfortable—how thoroughly fucked-up of both of them.
It was easier to hate the knight than it was to face the enormous absurdity of all the things she’d seen over—hell, was it less than a week?—and Simran knew she wasn’t being entirely reasonable. But fuck being reasonable.
She stopped among the trees. Leaned back against one.
A wind blew through the trees. Her chest ached. It had to be her tale, she told herself. Growing stronger, tugging her toward her purpose.
I’m not going to love or die until I save Hari, she thought angrily, in its general direction. You and the knight can wait.
“Your tale won’t wait for you patiently,” a voice called out. A woman’s voice, rounded at the vowels—ghostly as the wind. “It’s a clever, cunning thing. It will find you, darling. Don’t doubt it.”
Simran angled her body toward the darkness between the trees. There, half shadow, stood her past self.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you,” said Simran.
“Did you miss me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I knew you missed me,” Isadora said smugly. She moved through the trees, fading and returning. “You’ve found your knight—or your knight found you. Don’t you have questions, Simran? Ooh, do you want me to share the juicy parts of your tale ahead of you?”
“Unless you can tell me how not to die, no,” said Simran.
“Oh, I’m afraid not!” Isadora tutted. “You’re so focused on death, aren’t you? You never ask me how to avoid falling in love.”
Images flashed through Simran’s mind. Vina kneeling before her, tracing tenderness through the air, a promise. Her soft mouth, an offer. I want to make you happy. Simran’s stomach swooped.
“That’s not going to be a problem,” she said.
Isadora sighed. Her breath was a song, rustling through the leaves. Simran knew she’d disappointed her.
“I could tell you how your tale begins,” Isadora wheedled. “That isn’t in the version the archivists like to dole out in pretty story books.”
“But you won’t,” Simran said. “You’ve always liked to mock me.”
“Ah, pot and kettle, darling.”
“I don’t like mocking people.”
“Don’t you?” Her mouth curled. “What a curious thing for you to believe. What did you do to that poor chivalrous knight, then? You fair broke her heart.”
“Shut up,” Simran said flatly.
A tinkling laugh, both pretty and cruel, came from Isadora.
“Fine, you’ve amused me, so I’ll tell you.”
Isadora drew nearer. Her chest was bloodied, her skin corpse-pale.
“I met Sir Tristram in the woods adjoining his family property to my aunt’s,” said Isadora.
“He was on a hunt. He was an old-fashioned man, I’ll say—nothing so modern as a rifle for him.
He had a bow and he was hunting deer and hares.
He turned his bow upon me—the handsome fool thought I was a deer!
I was wroth with him. I told him he was lucky I hadn’t hexed him.
If he kneeled and apologized I would allow him to go free.
A witch—and a debutante, mind—must have her pride. ”
She tossed her blond curls, a coquettish gesture that made Simran visibly roll her eyes.
“Oh, you don’t like that?” Isadora said. A ladylike huff. “Well, I know your taste doesn’t run to femmes.”
“Finish your story, if you must,” Simran said impatiently. The sooner Isadora stopped, the sooner she’d vanish.
“Oh, no one likes backstory,” said Isadora.
“But you asked. I thought you should know. I kissed him there, the first time. We always meet the knight over a hunt, a bow, a kiss. Isn’t that terrible?
The knight knows us, wants us—even before they agree to find us and kill us.
” She tutted. “My Tristram was just like your Lavinia: charming as glitter, and so nakedly hungry to beat the world into a better shape. I was the one thing he couldn’t fix—and because he couldn’t fix me, he couldn’t fix himself.
The best thing we could do for the world was die for it. Or so he believed.”
Simran stared at her. “Did you believe it?”
Isadora opened her mouth.
There was a crunch in the undergrowth. Simran turned her gaze toward the sound. She didn’t need to look back to know that Isadora had vanished.
It was probably Vina. She almost called out to her—then paused. Those footsteps were light, whispering—marked by the rustle of long skirts.
That was not her knight.
There was no time to run. She plucked a strand of her own hair and tangled it over her fingers. Whispered a curse into it, a brief, soft thing.
The figure that emerged from the trees wore a long, serviceable gown in plain blue, laced at the bodice. Their cloak was black, and long enough to trail through the dirt. Their hood was thrown back, revealing a white face, blue-black eyes—and a suspicious curl to the mouth.
Ah. Simran knew a fellow witch when she saw one.
She did not often meet with fellow witches. She knew that their tales often set them together—in vast covens or in threes—but there were also those known for keeping their distance from one another, and those were Simran’s true ilk.
This one did not have the scent of an incarnate. Still, it paid to be cautious.
“I was not expecting to see a sister,” said Simran. “If I’ve walked where I’m not welcome, I’ll be on my way.”
“No need to make your apologies,” said the other witch. “How did you make your way here?”
There was a light in her eyes, a cautious and searching thing. There was a right answer to this question, and it was surely not I’m chasing an assassin of incarnates. If she gave the wrong answer, this could end very badly.
Simran thought carefully, feeling the latent magic of the ancient, primeval forest around her, trembling in the golden fallen leaves, in the trees, and the curling mist seeping along the soil.
She thought of the will-o’-the-wisps, who were spirits under the hand of the fae, used for trickery.
She thought of the golden deer, and the wodwos who’d been waiting to welcome it.
“There are many spirits moving here,” she replied confidently. “Spirits all over the forest. I may be a witch of smog and city folk, but I couldn’t resist that call.”
The blue-eyed witch smiled, and Simran knew she’d given the right answer.
“Then it is your good fortune that we’ve met,” proclaimed the witch. “Come with me. There are many of us here already, and a feast awaits us.”
There was no sense in trying to run or fight, now that Simran had at least temporarily ensured her own safety.
So she smiled tightly back and followed the other witch through the trees, on a winding route that finally opened to a clearing beneath a rock face.
There, surrounding a blue-flamed fire, were more than twenty figures.
They turned to look curiously as Simran and her new companion approached.
Simran took in a breath through her nose, her mouth, tasting the air.
There was only the smell and scent of forests the Isle over: petrichor, green, rot.
They weren’t incarnates, but they were witches.
“Sister,” said another witch. “You’re welcome among us.”
“I usually prefer solitary work,” said Simran, looking at each person carefully in turn. “But it seems like something is afoot.”
“A special convergence of spirits and magic,” said the blue-eyed witch, excitement threaded through her voice. “A chance for us all to strengthen our craft and bind more spirits to our service. There will be plenty for all of us. You’ll see soon enough!”
Hands touched Simran’s arms and her back, urging her forward.
They let her into their grotto, a concealed mound in the rise of a cliff, with a low, broad entrance curtained by shadows.
The shadows in the grotto were deep, and Simran had a moment to think of the compass tucked away into her pocket, before a few women urged her to sit by the fire, which had a pot atop it.
Simran sat. A red-haired witch was stirring the pot, her face glowing from the heat.
Simran shivered, despite the heat of the flames. The grotto was full of spirits: ghosts of the dead, and the elemental sprites of the seasons. Spirits of vengeance and old, amorphous sentiences were parading through the air and clinging to women’s skirts.
“It isn’t the solstice, and All Hallows’ Eve neither,” Simran observed. “Why are the spirits moving?”
“They’ve been summoned here by a great power,” the red-haired witch said, pouring another bowlful of herbs into the stew pot.
It was only food, Simran was fairly sure, not something more occult.
It did look appetizing. “The first witches who arrived called them, and when other spirits felt them converge, they came too. Like calls to like, and strong magic is like flies to honey.”
“No witch has the magic to call so many spirits herself.”