15
M ARISOL SPENT THE WEEK LEADING UP TO THE H OUSE Vida hunt pretending that she was looking for Rodrigo for purely altruistic reasons.
She had confessed to Teo that the Criterion had stolen a family heirloom, but she hadn’t told him exactly what.
That had been enough for him to happily escort her around the city center, searching the ground for discarded flyers and asking vague but pointed questions that got them waved away by annoyed vendors who realized they hadn’t come to buy anything.
She was no closer to finding the Criterion than when she’d started, so her plan to throttle Rodrigo until he got her pendant back for her had to wait.
The Criterion, however, waited for no one.
The morning of the hunt dawned with a newspaper article that had everyone talking by the time she arrived.
Marisol had read it in the carriage, sitting across from a dozing Teo and brooding Bas.
Its front page was emblazoned with the words CRITERION ATTACK SINKS SHIPPING VESSEL .
Beneath the headline had been a sketch of a boat sinking into Soltura Harbor, while four masked people sprinted down the road with crates in their arms. One of the figures was smaller than the rest. She wondered if that had been Rodrigo.
Of course he would be at the harbor while she had been searching the city center. He’d always been contrary.
“They’re getting bolder,” said a black-haired witch dressed in pale pink, walking arm in arm with another witch in deep bronze.
The path they were on cut through the thick forest that had surrounded House Vida in Gaspar’s pictures of the building.
Above, the interwoven tree crowns formed a canopy that let the sun pierce through in intermittent shafts of light.
“The Trident needs to deal with them once and for all.”
“If we start attacking the welks, we’ll only feed the Criterion more members,” her companion tittered. “Ignoring them is the smart move. They’re no threat.”
Marisol’s fingers twitched where they rested on Teo’s arm.
These witches didn’t see any welks as a threat, even when three walked among them.
Gaspar’s potion still threaded magic through her veins, but Marisol was a welk through and through.
When the Coronet ended, and the tourists returned to their country, these witches would treat her as if she were invisible.
At times like this, she could understand why Gaspar and Teo wanted magic eliminated so badly.
“I wonder,” Teo murmured, so low she had to strain to hear him, despite their proximity, “if we could use this rebel group as a cover for our own activities.”
Her eyebrow lifted. “The fewer people involved in this, the better. We barely trust each other. There’s no guarantee of trust between us and the Criterion.”
“I trust you,” said Teo, earnestly. “I have to for this to work, don’t I?”
“Tell that to Bas.”
They had been walking for long enough that the cool air provided by the shade was starting to feel ineffectual, but at least the hunt permitted everyone to dress with less formality.
Her loose, moss-green tunic was unlaced at the collar, baring the line of her neck, and was tucked into the waist of her mud-brown breeches.
Her sturdy boots were a shade or two darker than her pants, and her hair was braided into canerows that ended in a puffy bun at the base of her skull.
A jeweled circlet was the fanciest of her accessories, and even that was in a dark bronze color that did little to catch the light.
Still, she tugged at the fabric clinging to her skin, peering ahead at the clearing where the hunt would begin.
“Are you all right?”
This, to her surprise, came from Bas rather than Teo. He’d been trailing them with his usual duppy-like silence, and it wasn’t that Marisol had ever—or could ever—forget that he was there. She just hadn’t expected him to remind her.
“Yes?” she said as he came up on her other side. Like her, he was dressed in shades of green and brown, but his breeches were black. “Why?”
“You’re fidgeting. You’ve been fidgeting the whole time.”
Marisol realized her fingers were still moving absently against the crook of Teo’s arm and forced them to still.
Her other hand fell from her collar to her side.
Bas continued to study her, though, and she knew her silence wouldn’t be a defense.
With the clearing spreading open before them, already packed with House witches who wore colored sashes at the waist, Marisol admitted: “I’m not much for hunting. ”
“Then why did you come?” asked Bas with a frown.
“If it were that easy to get rid of me, this wouldn’t work.”
Thankfully, the crush of the crowd forced an end to the conversation.
House Vida’s witches were crafters, capable of creating new things out of nothing.
Their coven mark was a small leaf, and their House motto was “Look not for what is but what can be.” She could see their Magister, Luiza Ozalla, standing among a small group of witches in crafter green.
The last time that Marisol had seen Magister Ozalla had been that night, drawing weapons out of thin air for the witches to wield during their coup.
She’d stayed apart from the fighting, so the sight of her didn’t fill Marisol with the same immediate dread as the sight of Magister Baylin.
Still, she had no desire to get closer to this murderer.
Luckily, everyone had given the crafters a wide berth, largely because of the animals that paced nearby. Red and fallow deer. Wild boars and mouflons. Lynxes and brown bears. Lining the clearing edges were podenco hounds, their tall ears and rich coats the color of copper.
Every single one of them was glassy-eyed and unnaturally still. Creatures crafted, not born.
Marisol shuddered.
“I hate it, too,” Teo murmured to her. “Hunts, I mean. I’ve never done one like this, but it feels worse, somehow.”
Marisol bit the inside of her cheek. She wanted to run. She had to stay. “I just don’t see how this is fun. I’m glad we won’t be hunting real animals in their own home, but creating them for slaughter… animating them just long enough to be afraid and then die…”
Her stomach roiled with nausea, and she couldn’t turn away from the antlered buck that watched her from just behind Magister Ozalla. After today’s event, there would be a reception in House Vida. If she could make it through, Teo could distract the witches while she looked for the orange blossoms.
Just make it through the hunt.
“Thank you all for coming,” said the Magister.
Her voice carried commandingly through the clearing, silencing every conversation until all eyes were on her.
She was wearing a heavily embroidered, light olive tunic, the gold laces done all the way up to her chin—a far cry from the nondescript dark blue clothing she’d worn the night they had broken into Seaward Palace.
“House Vida is about empathy and experience. To create, you must understand the world around you. You must feel the snow on your face, taste the chocolate on your tongue, smell the flowers in your garden—or else your reproduction won’t ring true. ”
She gestured toward the brown bear, and it came forward, rising above her like a furred mountain. She scratched its chin, and the bear closed its dull eyes as if it were a domesticated cat.
“We have chosen to host a hunt this year as a reminder of the preciousness of life—the one thing that is impossible to create, no matter how powerful one’s magic.
” The bear shuffled around to rejoin the other animals as Magister Ozalla’s hands fell to her sides.
“But we also host this hunt to prove to you, Your Majesty, that even this limitation can be useful when wielded correctly. I hope you enjoy your time in the Hinterlands.”
Applause rang out. Marisol kept her hands clasped in front of her to keep from toying with the folds of her tunic.
“We can skip this event, if you’d like,” Teo offered from beside her. “Or you can wait in the carriage until it’s over.”
Marisol looked at him sharply, but that wasn’t pity she saw in his eyes.
It was understanding. Teo had confessed that he’d been raised to smile through anything, but he allowed her to see his thoughts as plainly as if they were her own.
He didn’t have to speak for her to read him: If the witches were powerful enough to form creatures with empty eyes, then they might be able to raise an army.
He would stay as long as it took to determine the extent of this magic, but if he could have left, he would have.
That, more than anything else, made her decision. “I’ll stay with you.”
“All right.”
His easy trust was annoyingly kind.
Marisol looked away from him as the hunt began with a whistle and a cacophony of barking.