Chapter III.24 #2
With the tip of her knife, Miria swirled the drop of blood in the scrying bowl, watching the red dissolve into the clear water.
“True, although that wasn’t a total waste of a plan.
I don’t scry much, though,” she added sheepishly.
“I should have remembered what Rosmilda said to me earlier, but it was only the strawberry juice that jogged my brain.”
“You don’t scry much?” Adaline smoothed the layer of strawberries out on the pie crust. “Did you never even scry much on me?”
“No. It seemed invasive. I wanted to give you privacy.” In the pause that followed, Miria put aside her knife and realized Adaline was shaking her head. “What?”
“Did you never think that maybe I wanted you to invade my privacy?” Adaline asked, raising an eyebrow.
The question flummoxed Miria. “I … No.”
Adaline groaned good naturedly. “You create men out of clay, weave lace with spiderwebs, and build ladders from morning glories, but sometimes you have no imagination.” She smiled mischievously and leaned across the table.
“You could have watched me while I took a bath. I often thought of you when I did, especially that day we went swimming in the river.”
Miria felt her cheeks warm. “I don’t lack that much imagination. The thought crossed my mind. But that’s why I felt you should have privacy!”
She needed to return to the task at hand, but here was Adaline again, laughing and tempting her to dwell on those more enjoyable pursuits now instead of later. Before she could remind Adaline that thinking of her naked was not (unfortunately) conducive to scrying on her father, Adaline went on.
“More seriously, I always liked to think you were keeping a constant eye on me,” she said. “That every time I felt like I was being watched, it was because of you. Wasn’t it?”
“How often did you feel watched?” Miria asked.
“Constantly, because I was.” The last of the mischief and good humor slipped from Adaline’s face.
“I was at court. Oh, if I could scry, I’d have been watching people all the time there.
Court is run by gossip. I know I’ve said it before, but it’s a good thing I’m not a witch. I wouldn’t have your restraint.”
Miria pushed away her remaining lascivious thoughts and pressed her hands around the scrying bowl. It was too bad she hadn’t known Adaline’s wishes before, but they could discuss that later among the more pleasurable things.
“Nor will Rosmilda,” Miria said, partly to remind herself what she was up against. “It will be a bad thing then, if she ends up at court with you.”
“Right.” Adaline squared her shoulders. “I will stop distracting you so you can spy on her.”
Miria wondered how long that would last, but she followed Adaline’s example.
She straightened her spine, closed eyes for a moment, and called upon her power.
Her blood was both the connection to her father and a potent sacrifice for the magic.
Still, for a moment, she feared it wasn’t enough.
The same blackness that had blocked her previously clouded the water.
But as Miria held her breath, the blackness dissolved like her blood had, and a scene spread out before her.
She closed her eyes again, thrusting her mind into the liminal space between her cottage walls and the room in which she found her father.
He looked much as he had in the portrait on his wall, though his hair was grayer and his face was harder, as if even in the few years since the painting had been made, he’d shed more of whatever little gentleness he’d ever had.
His clothes were fine and rich, his fingernails short and clean, and the years of calluses he’d earned through his labor softened, either by time or intentional grooming.
That detail somehow struck Miria as the most absurd.
He looked every inch the town’s Overseer from his hair down to the soles of his boots, but clothes could be changed.
His hands were how he proved to the world that he deserved to walk among the other men in his company, and Miria’s old fury rose to the surface of her skin, prickling with power.
She alone could see the real dirt on his hands, the filth he couldn’t wash off or scrub away with a bit of pumice.
Hans stood next to him, his arms crossed and fingers tapping nervously against his shirtsleeves.
His expression was less dour than their father’s yet still grim.
Worry lines creased his brow, and Miria wondered if any of that stress were for Adaline’s safety or if it was all for his uncertain future.
The two were joined by four other men whose names Miria didn’t know, though Adaline would surely have recognized them.
Judging from their attire and adornments, one must have been her uncle and the other her father.
Miria thought she could detect some resemblance there—in height and in coloring.
Both of them also appeared worried, but something was off in their eyes, as though some light had been dimmed.
Miria’s first thought was that it was their worries, but she recalled Rosmilda’s words, and that made far more sense.
A father and an uncle determined to retrieve Adaline should not appear dullish.
They should be fired up. But Rosmilda’s magic clouded their minds.
Miria saw no traces of that dullness in the final two men present, but they appeared to be of lower station, dressed in the family liveries. Guard captains, if Miria had to guess. There was no need for Rosmilda to expend energy on them since they would presumably listen to their superiors.
“We could be back out there,” the younger of the two captains was saying.
He paced before a shelf filled with more books than Miria had ever seen in one place. The entire room was filled with polished wood, heavy tapestries, and fine furniture, but it was the books Miria wished she could inspect.
The captain drew his finger around on the table, and Miria finally noticed that a large map had been spread open on it.
It showed all of Gawfrid Province, from the mountains to the north, to the farms east of the Swift River, and the Shadow Wood Forest to the west. A line cut through the woods—the true path, the actual road that would take people west to a town on the other side of the forest that was called Wulfton.
Her path—the witch’s path—could appear anywhere off that road.
“We’ve searched no deeper into the woods than this,” the captain said, circling a spot along the road that did not go very far, but which did go far enough that it covered Miria’s cottage. “We should have expanded the search today.”
“I told you, there is no point,” Miria’s father said. “The witch cannot live so deep in the woods as all that. She comes to town too often for such a long journey.”
Did her father know she was the witch? What, if anything, had Rosmilda told him?
“My lord?” the other captain looked at the shorter of the two nobles, the one who was probably Adaline’s uncle. “They say the witch can fly. I’d reckon she can travel pretty far.”
“We trust Garulf on this,” the Lord of Gawfrid said. “The witch has never dared cross us before, but those in town would know of her and her capabilities.”
Not likely, Miria thought, but for once, men’s arrogance suited her purposes.
The guard captains exchanged weary looks, but their employers did not seem to notice.
“We must be patient, your men rested,” Adaline’s father said. “Trust Garulf. He has a plan.”
“I thought there was a plan today,” the second captain said. “Begging your pardon, but I thought the plan—”
“We suffered a minor setback today,” Miria’s father snapped. “My wife is correcting her error as we speak, and our second attempt will not fail.”
The two captains looked skeptical at the mention of a woman, but Adaline’s family didn’t flinch, which was proof enough that Rosmilda had bespelled them.
Correcting her error—Miria didn’t like the sound of that. She searched her father’s and brother’s faces for more that they weren’t saying, but they gave little away.
“And when will this second attempt be ready?” the younger captain asked.
“Tomorrow, I was told,” Hans said. His knuckles were white as he gripped the table, making his thoughts on the delay as obvious as the guard captains’ were. He did not press their father, though.
Did he know she was the witch? If Rosmilda was using her father’s or brother’s blood to track Miria, then one of them must, if not both. Most likely, it was her father, but she would not make the mistake of believing her brother a better man. Not again.
“You will not find the witch’s home without my wife,” Garulf said. “When she is ready, your men should be, too. We will lead you right to the witch.”
With another abomination. It was the only thing that made sense.
Tomorrow was not a lot of time. It might be enough for Miria to fortify her wards around the cottage so strongly that no animals, never mind humans, would ever find it.
But another construct, like Rosmilda’s horrific golem that was magically guided with a sample of her family’s blood—that was a creature Miria’s wards could not keep out forever.
And this time Rosmilda and Miria’s father would be smarter and not send it alone.
That had been the error her father had spoken of.
Rosmilda had assumed if she attacked Miria with magic, she would not be able to stop the abomination from retrieving Adaline.
Neither of them had counted on Adaline not wanting to be retrieved, nor Miria having a golem of her own to defend her.
“Just so,” Sir Alberik said. “Tomorrow, you will take a large contingent of men to the woods, rescue my daughter, and burn the witch’s home to the ground. Then we will have much to celebrate at the wedding.”