Chapter 64
Sixty-Four
Sorcha
It was early spring, cold sleet lashing against the windows. We’d settled into the cottage in a cozy haze of comparative peace and normalcy.
Irene had outfitted the house with surprising competence and a notable lack of malicious compliance.
The furniture was right—up to and including the wool mattress and silk sheets Neal had listed to be imported from London—and there were even a few sheep and an old, sleepy donkey stabled in the barn down near the coast.
A few weeks after our arrival, the Inner Court had sent Alexi in from Edinburgh as Emissary Liaison.
He appeared occasionally at the house but remained entirely disinterested in his work, choosing to take up lodgings all the way in Glasgow rather than stay on the island and visited only once every two weeks.
We’d had no other word from Iksura since New York, since we’d sent in the final dismissal of her legal claims on the Outer Court title.
I was skeptical she’d actually been put off so easily as with legal investigation, but I counted it as a blessing nonetheless.
I remained in utter awe at how much easier it was to manage the Court here—with all our libraries and resources close by—than it had been for my father in Santa Fe.
Ansel commuted back and forth to Edinburgh a few times a month and I could get a telegram or a runner there and back in not even two days.
I cross-checked old journals and the rate at which we were handling complaints and supernatural threats was better now than it had ever been.
I fought to prevent the newfound knowledge from solidifying into resentment over his choice to stay in New Mexico.
Kadish visited monthly—saying he could only stand the pastoral quiet for three days before he had to go back to the city.
The cold and the still and a warm bed every night had calmed my symptoms to a manageable point, and even Neal was beginning to relax.
I was out talking with my sheep, sitting with my legs tucked beneath me on a bench Cavan had left down in the barn expressly for that purpose.
I told the animals everything—new complaints coming into the Court, my pregnancy symptoms, stories about my parents, gossip from the village.
And then suddenly I saw Glen was sprinting down from the house, coat flapping behind him.
“We’ve a problem, Lady Sorcha,” he panted when he arrived. “A big one.”
Two battered young girls stood in my office, cloaks saturated and dripping onto the wood-plank flooring.
The girls were younger than me, easily by ten years, tall, with pale blond hair, worn clothes, dark smudges under their eyes, and—notably—rounded rather than pointed tips to their ears.
Human. That was unusual enough—it was exceedingly rare for humans to seek out the Outer Court. Most didn’t even know it existed.
“Would you two like to sit?” I asked as Glen ushered me into the office, taking my soaked wool jacket and passing me a mug of something warm and vaguely herbal.
“We’ll get the chairs wet, ma’am,” one replied. She was half a head taller than the other, looked slightly older. Her English was good but heavily accented, something Nordic? Or maybe Russian?
“Fair enough,” I agreed. “How can I help?”
“The Forest Witch is hunting people again, ma’am,” said the same young woman. “Her men torched the cottage, ma’am. We got out. Our parents and the little ones didn’t . . .”
She trailed off, and I felt my chest tighten.
“Why did she come after you?” I asked. I was shuffling through the papers on my desk as the young woman talked, looking over my bookshelves.
I was new at it, so my knowledge was nowhere near as extensive as Ansel’s, but I knew my folklore.
And I’d never heard of a Forest Witch with soldiers who torched cottages.
I’d gotten a few reports in from Edinburgh that Iksura was getting more aggressive but . . .
“Our papa saw a beast in the woods,” the young woman said. “Strange one. Started telling stories. Then these men, men with uniforms, started coming around the house at odd hours. They didn’t say anything. Just watched.”
“And you know they’re related to this Forest Witch, how?” I asked.
“Everyone knows,” the other girl, slightly shorter, slightly younger, piped up.
“She lives in the big castle up on the wooded hill,” the older one said. “The men wore her insignia.”
My stomach dropped. A witch in a castle on the forested hill somewhere to the north and to the east with enough clout and funding to have soldiers wearing her insignia—Iksura cracking down harder than usual on human-supernatural interaction in the lands nearby the Inner Court—no.
She’d started burning children alive now?
“What does she look like?” I asked, then handed over a pad of paper and a pen. “And sketch her insignia for me here.”
“Black hair, grey eyes, pretty in a way that’s frightening, ma’am,” the younger one said as the older drew. “Wears strange clothes. Old-fashioned like in a storybook. But she keeps the bandits away, and the wolves too. So nobody asks questions. She’s been there longer than anybody can remember.”
I fought back the urge to sob. Even after all the atrocities Iksura had committed in her attempt on the Outer Court throne, I convinced myself that her brutality against humans near her Court was somehow an exaggeration.
But if the wet and miserable young women across my desk were anything to go by, the stories may well have been understatements.
“How did you find me here?” I asked, keeping my voice calm, clipped, professional.
“We ran for the next town and there was a big logging crew there,” the older girl said as she passed the notebook back to me.
“Trapper told us to come down to Scotland if we had seen something that didn’t make sense and thought we were in danger.
He was tall and real pretty. Brown eyes. No beard. Little points on his ears.”
I nodded. Likely one of Ansel’s roving field patrols—who should have helped the girls himself. I’d have to make sure word wasn’t being passed around that we were taking in strays here in Islay.
I looked down at the rough-drawn insignia—a circle woven of vines with a crown at the center—Iksura’s.
“Someone will take you two into town,” I said, “and within the week we’ll get you passage somewhere safe. What skills do you have?”
“We speak English,” the older girl said quickly. “And I was training to be a dressmaker back home.”
“We’ll leave you in Bath then,” I said. “There’ll be work. Housemaids. Dressmakers. Something. Would that suit?”
“Anywhere safe,” the younger girl said softly. “Anywhere away.”
I nodded and called for Cavan and Neal. Once we were alone—the girls off to the inn and then to the mainland—I started rattling off orders.
“I need you to get them booked at the inn and then find them passage down to Bath,” I instructed.
“Then I need you to get a telegram to Ansel. Tell him it’s urgent and to come back at once.
Then write to Marta—I need two sets of records.
First—every time a human has come to the Outer Court seeking aid.
Then—every time we’ve confirmed and documented that Iksura killed a local for interference with the supernatural. I don’t want hearsay. Understood?”
Cavan nodded and made for the door.
“What happened, love?” Neal asked when the younger man left.
“Iksura burned a cottage with kids inside,” I said. “Because a man was telling ghost stories.”
Neal sighed as I slipped out from behind my desk and tucked myself into his chest.
“Which means me and baby are more important than ever,” I murmured.
The next morning Neal had a mug of raspberry leaf tea waiting for me the moment I got out of bed.
“If you and baby are more important now than ever,” he explained, “then we do everything right. You take someone with you when you go wander with the sheep. We have Kadish come every other week instead of once a month. And you drink this, because according to eight books I read while we were in Edinburgh it’ll strengthen your womb. ”
“What does that mean exactly?” I asked.
“Just drink it, love.” Neal pressed the mug into my hands.
“Ansel will be here in three days,” Cavan said. “Marta will need a few weeks for research. And the girls are off to Bath.”
“Then the only thing left to do is pray that they aren’t the first of many,” I replied.
No other humans came fleeing the Inner Court that week, but one of Ansel’s intelligence agents did arrive with a series of memos about new portal cults forming—one in Sicily, one near Kyoto, and another in Persia.
The pattern of highly religious areas remaining largely immune seemed to be fracturing.
Ansel moved in full-time again and Kadish promised to visit every other week—just in case.
Then that following Monday another letter came, this one postmarked in Prussia.
A traveling priest told us to write to you for aid.
Five in our village have recently been put to the sword or the flames by a powerful noble who lives in the forest nearby.
For generations she served as a guardian and protector, with few but strict rules.
But lately her rules grow harder to follow, harder to define.
Many are seeking shelter and asylum elsewhere, but few have the funds to flee.
Mrs. MacCairn, if you have any way to send help please do so.
There were fifty-four names signed at the bottom.
So I sat down and started writing to Outer Court contacts in Prussia, Russia, Denmark—anywhere nearby.
We couldn’t fund full-scale relocation. And with how erratically Iksura was behaving even the attempt might cause more harm than good, might encourage her to expand her reach and wreak more havoc.
Besides, I couldn’t focus resources there, not right now.
Because whether or not Iksura was growing frustrated by my pregnancy and beginning a tyrannical rampage—she was no longer directly threatening the Outer Court.
And as such, was no longer the priority.
Because no tyrant—immortal and vicious or not—could compare with the devastation of cults unleashing monsters from hell.