Witch's Pyre, Page 2

  Grace gestured for Lily to walk beside her, but Lily deferred and urged Juliet to take the lead. Lily wanted to observe without having to think of something to say.

  “Are these your mechanics?” Juliet asked politely, tipping her chin in the direction of Grace’s silent attendants.

  Grace frowned. “We don’t have mechanics here,” she said, her tone chilly.

  “Pardon me,” Juliet apologized, taken aback. “Have I offended you in some way?”

  Grace’s smile was brittle. “I know that you are from the east and that you do things differently there, but we don’t claim people in Bower City.” Grace cast her eyes back at Lily’s mechanics, looking as if she pitied them. “And it might be better not to talk too much about your . . . situation . . . with others while you are here.”

  Lily and Una exchanged a look.

  “We’ll be discreet, if that’s your wish,” Juliet said. “But may I ask why it’s such an issue?”

  “I guess there’s no way to be delicate about this,” Grace said plainly. “We consider claiming mechanics a form of slavery, and owning another person is a crime here.”

  Lily opened her mouth to argue, but Juliet waved her protestations away. This was not the time to get into an argument about whether or not claiming someone was the same as ownership.

  “But how do witches perform magic without mechanics?” Caleb asked.

  Grace stopped and turned to face him. “Witches, crucibles—and yes, even mechanics—can heal, create energy to power a city, and make products that the people need without anyone having to claim anyone else. There’s only one form of magic a witch truly needs a vessel for. Warrior magic. And we don’t think people should die because witches can’t control their lust for battle.”

  “That’s very noble,” Tristan said with a raised eyebrow, “but how to do you defend yourselves without warriors?”

  “We don’t,” Grace said simply. “Something else does that for us.”

  They had come close enough to the city to see through the main gate. Grace turned to it now, directing their attention to the city beyond. Before Lily could get a clear look, Tristan’s arm shot out, barring Lily from going any farther. As he pulled her up into his arms and turned to bolt, she could feel fear and confusion ringing through Una, Caleb, and Breakfast, their mindspeak coming at her in a jumble.

  Run!

  It doesn’t make any sense . . .

  Get her out of here, Tristan!

  Over Tristan’s shoulder, Lily was just able to make out Warrior Sisters hovering around the entrance, their whips hanging ready by their sides.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Her view of sky and flowers jostled chaotically as Tristan thundered toward what looked like a stand of trees rimming the horizon, but no matter how hard Tristan ran, the trees didn’t seem to come any closer.

  “It’s too far!” she yelled. Tristan only dropped his head and ran harder.

  Lily looked over his shoulder and saw one of the emissaries catching up to Tristan. He was waving his arms over his head and shouting, “Wait!”

  Tristan wasn’t waiting. But there was something about the emissary that made Lily beat against Tristan’s chest, some combination of surprise and openness that made her believe that there was more to this situation than peril.

  “Tristan, stop,” she yelled. “Let’s talk to them, at least.”

  Tristan finally slowed to a stop. Lily slid out of his arms, avoiding his eyes. She watched the emissary instead.

  He was about Tristan’s height, but his build was less bulky and his bone structure much lighter. He had black hair and eyes, and Asian features, although Lily couldn’t quite place his heritage. She guessed he was only a few years older than they were. The emissary wisely came to a halt several paces away from Tristan.

  “I know it’s a shock, but please come back and let us explain about the Hive,” he said in a thoroughly rational tone. “I promise no harm will come to you.”

  Tristan hesitated, but Lily stepped forward, avoiding contact with him. “Let’s at least hear them out,” she said, still not looking at him. “Not like we’ve got any other choice.”

  They followed the emissary back to the group and Grace explained the strange arrangement between the people of Bower City and the Hive. For over a hundred years the Hive had been “choosing” people, flying them to the coast as they had with Lily and her mechanics, and leaving them there. The Hive had allowed those chosen humans to build a city and go about their lives as long as they did so in a diligent and orderly fashion. “That’s all they want?” Caleb asked, sneering his disbelief. “Order?”

  “I swear it,” Grace replied. She gestured down to the bright blossoms at her feet. “They don’t even demand that we maintain these fields of flowers to provide them with food. We do it voluntarily. It’s our gift to them for giving us so much.”

  Lily looked around at her coven, silently asking them what they thought.

  “They’re right there,” Una said, gesturing toward the Warrior Sisters hovering around the gate. “They could have killed us at any time.”

  “She’s right,” Breakfast said, backing her up.

  Tristan nodded reluctantly, but Caleb was the hardest to convince. Lily could feel his hatred for the Hive, and for all Woven, like a hard lump inside of him—an infection that had calcified. She couldn’t blame him. The Woven had killed most of the people he’d ever known.

  Where else are we going to go? Lily asked him in mindspeak.

  I don’t like it. There’s something off about all of this, Caleb replied.

  I don’t like it either, Lily replied. Then she shrugged a defeated shoulder and followed Grace, who was leading the rest of her coven toward the walled city.

  Skittish as a herd of spooked horses, Lily and her coven had to pass under an arch of hovering Warrior Sisters in order to enter Bower City. The hum of their wings puckered her skin and sent bolts of static down her legs. Lily looked up. The Sisters’ black-faceted eyes glinted with oil-slick rainbows and their bulbous heads twitched lightning fast atop their long stalk necks. They looked back down at her, and Lily couldn’t tell what they thought or felt—or if they thought or felt anything at all.

  “It’s okay. Really,” Grace soothed. “The Hive craves order above all things and, if you behave peacefully, they won’t bother you. All we need to live in harmony with them is to live in harmony with one another.”

  Caleb didn’t argue entering the city, but as they walked through the gates, he couldn’t help but comment. “Harmony,” he whispered as he ducked under the dangling tips of a Warrior Sister’s cat-o’-nine-tails whip. “You sure they’re not tone-deaf?”

  Lily curled up a cheek in a wry half smile, thinking that Caleb had struck on what was bothering her about them. The Sisters may have some of the physical attributes of people, but there was something distinctly alien about them. Lily couldn’t read emotion in them, nor could she imagine them understanding and enjoying something as fundamentally human as music.

  When Lily got her first good look at the inside of Bower City, she had the nagging feeling she’d been there before. The brightly painted buildings were topped with terra-cotta roofs, and every windowsill and trellis spilled over with flowers. Blossoms dripped from every gable, and the pristine streets were edged not with grass, but with carpets of wildflowers. Even the trees that lined the street—each housed in its own enormous pot—were of the flowering kind, and the air tasted bittersweet with pollen.

  “Do you like our city?” Grace asked after an appropriately long pause.

  “It’s so”—Una looked around, her face puckered with confusion—“clean,” she finished.

  Grace laughed—a throaty, warm sound—and flashed her straight white teeth. “I told you. Order. Symmetry. Peace. The Hive is diligent about keeping things neat, to the benefit of all who live under them.”

  Looking down at cobbled streets that were so spotless she reckoned she could eat off of them, L
ily couldn’t find one thing that was out of place. Not a hinge on the cheerful shutters leaked a red stain of rust. No flaking paint or loose tiles on any of the vaguely Italian-villa-style houses. Everything was picture perfect.

  “Like Disneyland,” Breakfast muttered.

  “Exactly,” Lily agreed, nodding. That explained her déjà vu. She stifled a memory of singing animatronic dolls before she got that saccharine tune stuck in her head. She hated Disneyland.

  “Except with a vaguely Mediterranean flair instead of storybook-Swiss-chalet,” Breakfast added.

  “I wonder where we are, exactly.”

  Breakfast shrugged. “Somewhere between San Francisco and LA, I’m guessing. Where all the farms and vineyards are.”

  Tristan gave Lily and Breakfast a puzzled look, and Lily averted her eyes and shook her head as if to say that it didn’t matter. He seemed entranced with Bower City, and Lily had to agree it was a beautiful place. Even the sunshine seemed, well, shinier than it did back east.

  As they threaded their way through the grid system of the streets, Lily saw open-air trolleys gliding soundlessly up and down the center of the road. People wearing brightly dyed tunics and kimonos hopped on and off the rail system with ease, the men’s voluminous capes and women’s silk ribbons trailing behind them. If the beautifully attired and heavily perfumed citizens thought anything was odd about the bedraggled appearance of Lily’s coven, they hid it well.

  Questioning glances were quickly followed by averted eyes as the busy people went about their day. Occasionally, Lily would catch a glimpse of a Warrior Sister perched high on top of a building, but they seemed to stay away from street level. They were there, though. Lily could feel their presence echoing down the scrubbed streets, like the mounting pressure of a storm that had yet to break.

  Lily wondered how large the city was. She glanced up the street, but couldn’t see an edge to it. She noticed that the grid system curved ever so gently in a pleasing fashion, rather than adhering to boxy ninety-degree angles. It struck Lily as being a more organic, although still highly structured, way of building a city. Rather like a honeycomb.

  “Is anyone tired? Do you need to rest?” Grace asked.

  Lily shook her head. She just wanted them to get wherever it was they were going so she could be alone for a few moments. Her frustration passed to Juliet.

  I think she’s taking us the scenic route, Juliet said in mindspeak.

  I have a feeling this whole city is the scenic route, Lily replied.

  After a few more minutes of striding by manicured buildings and down immaculate streets, they came to a large plaza with a huge fountain in the center. Skirting around the plaza were a number of gracefully columned buildings, the largest of which had a sprawling staircase. Many groups of people stood on the steps, talking in clusters.

  “This is our Forum,” Grace told them. “Where we make government policy. Or try to, at any rate. Mostly we just argue.”

  All eyes seemed to turn toward them and conversations stopped as they entered the plaza. Grace led the newcomers up the grand staircase, and as they passed, the chatter struck up again in urgent undertones. Lily nodded to herself, finally understanding why Grace had chosen to walk a bunch of battle-weary, shocked, and grieving people through the city. She and her coven were on parade. This wasn’t about them. It was for the people of Bower City.

  Lily glanced up and tried to make eye contact with the members of the closest cluster, but they all looked away nervously. They were playacting. Pretending that this was just another day, but their forced nonchalance carried more tension than if they had gathered around, pointing and staring.

  Grace and her attendants brought the coven through a forest of marble columns, and into a huge domed room. It was a colossal building, something that belonged on top of a hill in Italy or Greece.

  Lily craned her neck to look up at the oculus in the center of the dome, which flooded the room with air and sunlight. Something large flew past, sending a swift shadow across the gleaming marble floor. The faintest hum followed, tickling the back of Lily’s neck.

  They’re watching us, Una said in mindspeak.

  Lily nodded, and glanced at Caleb, who was eyeing the oculus warily.

  “This is the Governor’s Hearing Hall,” Grace told them.

  “Nice office, Gracie,” Breakfast muttered under his breath. The acoustics of the room amplified his voice, and his mutter came out loud and clear to everyone in the room. Breakfast cringed.

  “And we call it the Hearing Hall because you can hear even the slightest whisper,” she continued, smiling at him. “So even the smallest voice matters.”

  They crossed the circular expanse of the Hearing Hall and went through one of three doors that were evenly spaced along the curved back wall. They walked down a long hallway, through another door, and into a private home.

  Finally, Juliet said. The rest of the coven echoed her relief.

  “You’re welcome to stay with me for as long as you like,” Grace said as she led them into a palatial living space. “I’ll give you a chance to clean up and rest, and we’ll speak later.”

  “Thank you,” Lily replied, finally stepping forward to stand next to her sister.

  “My pleasure,” Grace said, and left them with one of her emissaries.

  It was the same young man who had chased after her and Tristan. He stepped forward and smiled at her. Now that they were no longer running for their lives, Lily couldn’t help but notice that he was extremely attractive.

  “We have two rooms ready for you upstairs, if you’ll follow me,” he said in a pleasing voice.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” Lily said, looking at his willstone. It was a deep rose color—almost burgundy. He’s a healer, she thought. A powerful one.

  “My name is Toshi Konishi,” he replied. “And I’m up here,” he said, pointing to his face. Lily tore her gaze off his willstone and met his amused eyes, her face flushing.

  “Sorry,” she stammered, “I’m just surprised by the color of your willstone. Is it common here for a rose stone to be so pigmented?”

  “No,” Toshi replied. A slow smile crept up his face as he held Lily’s eyes. “Bedrooms,” he said, turning suddenly, “are this way. We’ve readied one apartment for the men and one for the women, but you’re welcome to make your own adjustments to the sleeping arrangement as you like.”

  Toshi pushed the doors open to the first suite of rooms and revealed a common area with deep-seated leather club chairs and furniture made of dark, glossy wood.

  Lily and her coven looked at the wealth and comfort around them blankly.

  “The two sitting rooms are connected,” Toshi said, leading the girls through the man cave and opening up a set of double doors.

  The girls’ sitting room had a large white couch and a velvet settee, and it was made bright and airy by a large balcony and many fresh flower arrangements.

  “Your rooms are on the other side,” Toshi told them. A worried frown creased his forehead as he registered the listless expressions around him. “Is this arrangement not to your liking? If you don’t find the rooms suitable, just let me know what you require.”

  “They’re lovely. We’ve been traveling for a long time,” Lily said in explanation. “And we’ve lost . . . a lot.”

  “I’m sorry,” Toshi replied, his concern deepening. “I’m sure you need your rest. What you’ve done—just getting here—it’s amazing.”

  Lily’s head filled with the mountains they’d climbed, the rivers they’d crossed, and the lives that she had lost along the way. She smiled at Toshi uncomfortably and went out onto the balcony as her coven broke away from one another silently and went off to be by themselves. Lily took a deep breath. A wisteria vine framed the wrought-iron casement and spilled over the railing like lavender locks of hair tumbling down a woman’s shoulder.

  She felt Toshi join her on the veranda. “I mean it,” he said softly. “What you’ve accomplished is nothing shor
t of a miracle. Those you’ve lost would be proud to see that at least you made it.”

  Lily didn’t turn to look at him. She thought of Tristan’s body lying somewhere in a burnt-out field, probably already rotting in the sun, and wanted to say that pride had nothing to do with it. I did that, she thought.

  Lily trained her dry, staring eyes on the city that rolled out in front of her. Like a patchwork quilt, interlocking blocks of color were saved from looking too busy by the orderliness of the pattern, and beyond the bright blanket that was Bower City, Lily saw a ribbon of sparkling blue.

  “The ocean,” she whispered.

  “I can take you there if you’d like,” he offered carefully.

  Lily kept her attention on the view, neither accepting nor declining his offer. “Are those ships?” she asked, squinting into the distance.

  “Yes.”

  Lily turned to face him. “From where?”

  “All over,” he said, shrugging. He suddenly understood. “The east is cut off from the rest of the world because of the Woven plague. No other countries will risk contamination through contact with you, but there’s no chance of that with Bower City.” His brow creased with a thought. “There are restrictions, of course, and immigration is carefully watched, but we trade with the rest of the world.”

  “Carefully watched by who?” Lily could feel heat rising to her cheeks. She gritted her teeth, resisting the urge to scream.

  “The Hive,” he said. “The Hive watches over everything in Bower City.” Toshi’s worried frown was back. “I should warn you to watch you temper. They react strongly to anger.”

  Lily looked down at the purple blossoms surrounding her. The bees buzzing in and out of them began turning their attention from the flowers to Lily. More came. Toshi didn’t notice, but one had landed on his sleeve. Lily pointed at it.

  “Careful,” she warned.

  Toshi didn’t even look. “You don’t have to fear being stung accidentally. As long as you don’t attack them, they’ll leave you alone. But you must try and maintain a calm demeanor here in Bower City.”