Chapter Twenty-Nine The Witch
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Witch
I feel sorry for the girl, really. In her tale she’s a hero, a protector of the poor, but all anyone can talk about is the whole business of riding naked on a horse clothed in nothing but her own loose hair.
I suppose it’s better than being an evil witch, but not by much.
Source: Letter from Lady Sandra Perinault-Stafford to Miss Anna Carshalton
The Witch had always worn the same kind of dress to the Queen’s balls: a gown as black and austere as any archivist’s robe, only changed out for a new one when she outgrew the last. So she wasn’t sure what to make of it when Aunt Meera stormed in and threw a new gown on her bed.
“The Queen’s women insisted,” Meera said, displeased.
“The ladies-in-waiting spoke?” the Witch asked, thinking of those silent women in their vizards. “I didn’t think they could.”
“No, they didn’t speak. They brought the dress directly to the Tower and handed it to me.” She glared down at the offending garment. “If it doesn’t fit, we’re going to have to pin you in.”
An apprentice archivist, with her blond hair in a coif, glided in with pins. Apparently it was already time to start getting dressed. The Witch, without any particular self-consciousness, started shrugging off her dress.
The kind of gowns worn at these balls required assistance to be worn, thanks to the placement of the minuscule, finicky, pearly buttons at the collars and spine.
This dress was even more elaborate—a waterfall of midnight blue, with a girdle of spun gold over silk.
The sleeves were twofold: long, billowing outer sleeves, over gloves that met in a diamond at a single fingertip on each hand.
It was a witch’s gown, an enchantress’s gown.
The neck was high, dark cloth meeting a fine spiderweb lace as delicate as frost, beaded with tiny facets of silver.
The buttons at the sleeves and spine were tiny arrows of silver with matching loops to hold them in place.
The apprentice archivist assisted her as Meera paced the room. The dress was too loose, and did indeed need some careful pinning and sewing to keep it in place. The Witch wondered if she’d be able to get out of it when the evening ended, stitched as she was.
The apprentice stopped with a sigh when she reached the fragile collar of the dress.
“I don’t quite know how to fix this,” the apprentice said, with a curl to her lip, as if she wanted everyone to know that she knew this work was beneath her.
Meera huffed out a breath.
“Go, then,” she said. With a bow that was on the edge of insult, the apprentice left the room.
Aunt Meera’s mouth tightened. The Witch pretended not to notice, as she always did when those little insults stung Meera like barbs. Meera picked up needle and thread and grasped the back of the gossamer, high collar of the Witch’s dress, which was currently rumpled around her throat.
“Sit,” she said.
The Witch sat down at one of her mirrors, on a stool, so that Aunt Meera could lean forward and make sense of the collar’s shape. The Witch forced herself to remain still, despite the cold of the needle, the weight of Meera’s hands.
“Why does the Queen want me dressed up?” the Witch asked. “Why is this ball important?”
“Why do you have so many questions? All I want you to do today is behave.”
The Witch met her own eyes in the glass—dark in the blurred surface.
“I always behave,” the Witch lied.
“You don’t have a good history with banquets and balls,” Meera muttered under her breath, looking through the array of pins on the table so she could bind the loose collar gems in place.
“I don’t?”
Meera paused. In the glass, her forehead was furrowed, jaw a little tight. She’d said something she hadn’t intended to.
“Never mind that,” Meera said after a beat.
“The Queen demands you go, so you’ll go.
” She dragged the Witch’s hair, scraping it back into a painful knot.
A truly archivist hairstyle. In her mirror, the Witch’s face looked unpleasantly sharp with all the hair pulled back, baring her bones.
But there was no point arguing with Meera, so the Witch simply bit down on her tongue and endured.
“Take this,” said Meera. She shoved an item into the Witch’s hands.
The Witch raised it up. It was a mask—carefully crafted to cover half a face, with ribbons to tie it back around a skull, leaving the lower half of the face bare.
The mask was covered in facets of bronze, each polished to an intense shine, apart from the point that would lie between her eyes.
That was a diamond of silver: a true mirror, reflective and sparkling.
The Witch raised it up.
“It’s a masked ball?”
“A masquerade, Witch,” Meera said dryly. “Try to use the correct terminology.” She examined the Witch critically. “There. You’re done.”
The Witch stared at her own reflection. She held the mask to her face. She felt like a stranger. I am going to be put on display, she realized. That’s all I am: an item to be laid before the Court.
“Thank you,” she said.
Tales were full of ritual. The archivists had taught her that.
And there was indeed a ponderous weight of ritual to the Queen’s balls.
Feasting and revelry were tangled in tales, stitched into stories of midwinter and the sweltering height of spring.
So the Witch knew that every ball the Queen held had a purpose.
Today, the purpose was displaying incarnates.
The ballroom was a large circular hall, with a marble floor checkered with squares of rose quartz between ivory.
High crystal chandeliers glimmered brightly, strung with dozens of small candles that filled the air with the sweet smell of beeswax.
Musicians, set in the outer curve of the room, were playing cellos and violins.
The courtiers were dressed in long gowns with billowing skirts, coiffed hair, and long jackets and trousers, all of them in half masks of various designs: serpents, or birds; flourishes of gemstones, or velvet masks studded with gold.
Dressed like a witch from the mists of ancient mountains, the Witch stood out like a sore thumb.
Once she’d been presented before the Queen—and bowed low, and been urged to stand—she made her way to the edge of the hall.
The other incarnates were just as visible as her, dressed in incongruous garb, not the tale of the ball itself, but for their tales.
Owain, in a sleeveless tunic, and a green mask; Mrs. Bell, in her wimple, a faux blindfold over her soothsayer eyes.
Emmeline, with her long braid of golden hair and her fine dress, looked better than all of them, but she was still being laughed at from behind courtiers’ hands.
It was a shame she blushed easily. The tale of Lady Godiva was a hard one to carry for a girl like her.
The Witch saw the girl who was a wyrm, a dragon-scaled mask over her eyes.
Her gown was dark brown, but not dull—a lustrous, coppery velvet with long sleeves and a ruffled collar.
She looked ill at ease, alone at the edge of circling dancers, who whirled and laughed in the center of the hall.
Her eyes met the Witch’s, and the Witch jerked her head. Join me.
The girl made her hesitant way toward the Witch, then moved to stand beside her. “I saw you at the Queen’s court,” she said. She said it like she wasn’t entirely sure, so the Witch nodded.
“You handled it well,” said the Witch. “The first time I met the Queen I almost cried.”
“I wanted to,” the girl said. She shifted foot to foot, as if she couldn’t remain still. “They dragged me here. They took me from my home. How do you stand it?”
“It’s just how my life’s always been.” She turned to look at the girl through her mask. “I’m the Witch. What’s your name?”
The girl stared at her.
“That’s your name?”
The Witch shrugged.
“I suppose so,” said the Witch. “I was never given a different one. The archivists raised me, and that’s what they call me.
But that won’t happen to you,” she said, aiming for reassuring—and probably missing the mark by a good mile.
“They won’t touch your name. And once your tale begins, the archivists and Queen alike will leave you be. ”
Every word the Witch spoke made the girl look more hunted. But she swallowed, and after a moment said, “I’m—I’m Margaret.”
“Nice to meet you, Margaret,” the Witch said.
Margaret hesitated.
“I think,” she said tentatively. “That I knew you once.”
The Witch stared back at her. She could feel that voice clamoring at the back of her skull. You do, you do, you know her—
“You didn’t,” she said flatly.
Maybe she was colder than she’d intended to be, because Margaret flinched. Then her mouth firmed, and she walked away with a muttered apology, her shoulders bowed.
The Witch forced back her squirming guilt. Her brain felt like it was full of fire. She fixed her eyes on the dancers instead, their bodies hazy under the smoky lights.
She was rarely, if ever, asked to dance. There was an incarnate boy who’d danced with her stiffly at balls when they were eight, nine, ten—and then she’d never seen him again. He’d gone to serve his tale, she was told. She assumed he was dead now.
So she paid little attention when a figure moved toward her. When they bowed she finally looked at them—their lowered head, their outstretched hand, long-fingered and brown-skinned, adorned with rings.
“Lady Witch,” a voice said. Low, smooth. It reminded her of good wine—rubylike, rich. “Will you dance with me?”
“I’d rather not,” she said stonily.
“Please,” the voice said.
So the Witch finally met the stranger’s eyes.
The face before her, partially hidden by a black mask, was beautiful: an angular jaw, and a mouth easily given to smiles—curly dark brown hair, tied back, to reveal ears pierced with gold hoops.
She sucked in a breath, and took in an unmistakable scent of apples, golden wheat, incarnate.
“Knight,” she whispered.