Chapter Fifteen Simran
Chapter Fifteen
Simran
The Merciless Maiden has been told in many forms, from poetry to song, but it is this author’s humble opinion that art is the form that does it the most justice.
Inquire cordially with the conservator at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and he will show you a painting wrought with exquisite care.
The knight weeps and weeps eternally, forever discarded, and forever in love.
The Merciless Maiden, flushed with power, smiles at his suffering.
There are claims, titillating but likely spurious, that the artist was the past incarnation of the knight himself, Daniel Hawker. As Sir Daniel has been dead some two decades, we shall never know.
Source: Art of the Isle by James Belafonte
Archivist’s Ruling: Preserve. Publication permitted. No further action required.
Golden hair stained in blood. That was all Simran saw at first, until her muddy vision sharpened.
Then she saw more than she would have liked to: Isadora crawling on the ground, alive despite the wound in her heart, the sword through her chest. Her hair was golden, but her skin was pale and bloodless, marked lividly with her own spilled blood.
In front of Simran’s eyes, her blood turned to ink.
“Can’t you feel it?” said Isadora, laughing, laughing, even as she wept. “Something is trying to break our tale. Something is very wrong—”
Simran woke.
Why had Isadora come to her? Simran didn’t need a warning. Of course something was wrong. Vina was imprisoned by a damn fae.
It wasn’t light yet, and Simran was surrounded on all sides by sleeping witches, curled up together under blankets to ward off the cold. Her own head ached. Her eyes were gritty with exhaustion.
Simran had waited all night for the witches to sleep, or for their focus on her to waver, so that she could seek out that fae maiden and her “foxes.” But the witches had reveled all night long, feasting and drinking.
None of them had left, and the fae maiden never returned.
So Simran had been forced to exercise patience. It wasn’t her strong suit.
She sat up, cracking her shoulders. It was cold, and her joints felt stiff. There was a twinge in her ankle. She turned her ankle back and forth—then remembered that the pain was from the charm still tucked in her boot.
She looked around. There was no sign of Cora. Everyone else was slumbering. She had to take advantage while she could.
One witch, brown-haired, woke up when Simran walked past him, and hastily shoved on his spectacles. He squinted up at Simran.
“Where are you going?”
“For a piss,” said Simran. “Why? Are you worried I’ll run off and find a gaggle of witch hunters to kill us all?”
The man quailed, letting Simran stalk off.
She didn’t have to go far to find the place where she and Vina had camped last night. Their fire had burned out, guttered to nothing but sad ashes. Their pack had been gnawed at by something—probably by animals trying to get at the food inside. But they hadn’t managed it.
Simran opened her pack and took out exactly what she needed, sighing with relief when she realized her scribing tools and ink were unharmed. Food, she could afford to lose. These, she’d happily give up a limb for.
She returned to the witching grotto. There were more witches awake now, but no one seemed to have noticed Simran’s absence. Sarah was holding court, sitting cross-legged on a tree stump. She was combing out her hair, her blue eyes bright, her voice gleeful.
“Tonight is the night, sisters,” she was saying.
“Can you feel it? The air is sweet and heady with magic. We could be walking in the fae court itself, that’s how sweet it is, to be sure.
Tonight our foxes will run through the woods, and we will hunt them for the lady.
Our hunt will feed her, and it will feed us.
The tale will empower us.” She spread her arms wide.
“No more fearing witch hunters. We’ll be strong enough to hold our own demesnes in the great forest, where they cannot touch us! ”
Simran had mulled it over in the night, before uneasy sleep and bad dreams had knocked their way through her skull.
Not all tales were incarnates’ tales, enacted by mortal players who returned, lifetime after lifetime, to play their roles.
Some could be ritual—performed with purpose.
The pouring of cider over apple tree roots, to summon a good harvest, or wassailing—songs sung in the orchards to bless trees with good health.
Beating the bounds, when a town could be protected and magicked to full strength by branches beaten against its borders.
That was what Sarah spoke of; that was the game the fae maiden was playing. She wanted to feed on the power of the ritual tale of the wild hunt.
A foolish game. Tales were liable to consume masters who weren’t fit to hold them.
But the witches were clearly desperate, which was understandable.
They were hunted, drowned, burned. If Simran had been a witch by choice instead of by her incarnate nature, and had not had Bess’s mentorship, and Hari’s unwavering support, and even Lydia’s kind guidance, she could have gone the same way.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Cora dragging a fly-clouded, foul-smelling bucket out from the grotto.
“What is Cora doing?” Simran asked the witch next to her.
“Her? The ginger?” The other witch’s nose wrinkled. “She’s slopping out the foxes. They smell, and they shit in buckets in their cell—it’s vile. Someone has to look after them, and it’s Cora who does it.”
Simran cursed inwardly. Somehow she’d missed the moment when the prisoners were brought back.
“What did she do to deserve getting stuck with that job?” Simran asked.
“She volunteered. Same as with the cooking. Some people just like mothering, the good and the bad of it.” She shrugged, and ambled off.
Simran had a half plan, a little snare of wild ideas and hopes. She strode over to Cora, wrinkling her nose a little at the smell. Cora glared back.
“Let me help,” said Simran.
“I don’t need any help.”
“A job shared is always faster,” said Simran, trying to sound diplomatic. When Cora only glared at her again, Simran internally gave up, leaned forward, and hissed, “I need your help. If emptying shit buckets is going to help me get it, then I’m happy to do it.”
Cora also lowered her voice, jaw bullish.
“I think I’ve helped you enough.”
“You care about one of the prisoners,” said Simran. She saw Cora stiffen, and knew she was correct. “I need to get into their cell. If I can, I can help them.”
Cora frowned.
“No matter what story you’re part of, I doubt you’ve got the kind of magic it takes to save them,” she said. “Everyone here is drenched in magic—the lady’s been generous to the witches. There’s nothing you can do—”
“Hell, I’m not just an incarnate. I’ve got other skills.” Simran fumbled open her bag, revealing the edge of the tools inside—the needles, shining. She covered them swiftly.
Cora’s eyes were wide. She clearly knew a scribe’s tools when she saw them.
“The prisoners may not want—”
“—the power to escape? I think it’s unlikely.” They were starting to attract attention, so Simran said, even lower, “I can tell you care about them. Give them a chance.”
Cora’s mouth thinned. She took keys from her waist, and shoved them into Simran’s own.
“Let’s stop talking over a shit bucket,” Cora said. “Go and talk to them. I’ll say one of them had an accident and I’ve set you on cleaning it up. Try and look unhappy about it.”
Looking unhappy was Simran’s forte, so she scowled and stomped into the grotto.
The pot over the fireplace was empty, and the fire was dying.
She pushed back the curtain, and went up to the bars.
The smell, without fire and smoke to conceal it, was overpoweringly of sweat and piss and fear.
Eyes, white and wide, stared at her again from the dark.
You could hardly blame people for shitting in their cell if you locked them in there and gave them no alternative. Simran thought it was bloody obvious. She wasn’t going to make the prisoners feel bad about it. She kept her face neutral as she kneeled down, eye level with the man nearest the bars.
Someone hiccuped with terror. She touched a fingertip to her lips, urging them to be quiet.
“I’m here to help,” she said quietly. “First, tell me. The knight who was brought in with you all. The woman with the short hair. Where is she?”
“The lady took special interest in her,” the nearest man said. “I’m sorry, young miss. I’m not sure there’s going to be much of her to save. No good comes of a fae lady’s attention.”
“There’s always a way to overcome a fae.” True love, usually, or some rot like that. But Simran didn’t need true love. She had an incarnate tale to protect her and Vina both.
The people here didn’t have that.
“I’m a scribe,” said Simran. “I’m going to come in and those of you who’re old enough and unmarked—if you’re willing, I’ll give you ink that makes you strong enough to break spell-marked bars.
It’ll make you fleet-footed and built for stealth.
It may not save you from the witches and the fae lady, but it might. You understand the price of ink?”
Most of them stared at her uncomprehending, but the man, grizzled and bearded and broad, said, “I do. But you don’t understand, lady witch. We supped on fairy food. We’re enthralled.”
“I expected you would be. But there’s still a chance you’ll be able to flee the forest before the fae comes to claim you.
” She moved to unlock the bars. She could feel the magic—blood and spit and secrets—worked into the steel.
It gave way at the key in the lock, and the iron of her witching will, urging it open.
“Fae magic’s an old tale, and strong for it.
But there are older and stronger. Scribing isn’t one of them—but a plucky mortal tricking the tricksters is. ”