WITCHGRAVE

  WITCHGRAVE

  an original short story by Rachel Caine

  .

  * * *

  "Welcome to you, friend!" the innkeep cried, and banged the door shut behind the newcomer with a grunting effort to shut out the howling wind and rain. "The devil's own storm, sir, eh? Black as a witch's heart, and not fit for man nor beast!"

  The newcomer shrugged off his oiled cloak, and the innkeep took the cold leather and hung it on a peg over a trough of dirty water. "You shan't be sorry you chose us, sir, the Brass Bell may not have the lordliest rooms in the town, but we have the finest food. Roast lamb, sir, tender and fresh. And savory stew. Smooth, creamy ale if you -- "

  He stopped, open-mouthed as he caught full sight of his new custom. Well-bred ladies always dressed in full skirts, with layers of kirtles and petticoats to disguise any hint of their shape from lustful eyes. This -- creature -- wore leather trews, a thick cotton shirt of a mannish cut. It clung to the swell of her bosom, slid in to define a waist no decent woman would dare show, flared over hips and stopped indecently short to flaunt the shape of her leather-clad lower limbs.

  The female was armed with two matched daggers, a boot knife, and an ivory-handled sword of Caldish workmanship. She had no outriders, and no attendants for virtue's sake. She was, in short, the most immodest hoyden he had ever seen, and for a fateful second his outraged sensibilities insisted that he send her on her way, storm or no.

  "Lady -- " he began, a thing which he could plainly see she was not. "The Women's Lodging House is at the end of the way, to the north. Perhaps you could--"

  "No," she said flatly. "Perhaps I couldn't." She was a mannish thing, from her hair cropped and dripping at her shoulders to the bold look in her dark eyes. More muscled than any woman he'd ever seen. "How much for a bed?"

  A bed? As if he'd accept such as her in his honest rooms. "None available," he said shortly.

  She had the temerity to smile, as if he had amused her. "I saw the size of your inn, friend, and the number of horses stabled. You have more than one bed going vacant this evening, save for the lice and fleas, which I think you will agree do not pay good coin for the privilege."

  He swept her with another disbelieving look. "And you can."

  Insolent, that smile. Dangerously so. "Perhaps," she said. "And perhaps you might find it wise before the evening ends to make a friend of me."

  He gave her a disgusted look and went to the door as it flew open yet again, admitting the roar of thunder and a silver curtain of rain. The woman moved to the huge roaring hearth, where the spit-dog slowly turned a roasting chunk of meat that sizzled deliciously. She wrapped her shoulder-length black hair into a knot and twisted out a drizzle to the rush-strewn floor, then shook the damp waving strands back in place around her face.

  Across the room, two men watched her every move. She had marked them upon entering, as she'd marked everyone in the small, overheated room, as well as the exits from it. Those two were of interest to her, as they did not seem to fit the mold of broken farmers into which the others had been poured. Too young, too fine, too neatly dressed. They sat close together, and as she watched them, the taller one with longish white-blond hair nodded deliberately in acknowledgment. He was pale, almost albino, and when he raised a hand to summon the serving girl his hands were long and graceful. He mimed another round, and pointed across the room to include the swordswoman in his order as well.

  She set a hand on the hilt of her sword and joined them, settling lightly on the rough wooden bench opposite the two young men. Seen close, the blond was a startlingly lovely creature, with blue eyes like jewels and an angel's face.

  The other man was dark-haired, the devil to his companion's angelic countenance, but comely in his own right. He smiled at her, too.

  "Would you have the name of Tatya, then?" he asked. He had a low, pleasant voice, with the burred, lilting accent of the far north.

  "Would there be two swordswomen traveling to this godforsaken place tonight?" she asked, and sat back as the serving wench slapped down a mug of spiced wine before her. "You'd be the ones looking to hire me."

  "Aye," the dark one said. The light one continued to smile silently. "My name is Silk. My companion here is called Silence."

  She laughed -- not a lady's polite titter, but a man's full-bellied explosion of amusement. "Silk and Silence? Are you whores?"

  They continued to smile. "No," said Silk. "Our names are a part of the tale we have to tell, my lady. If you will ...?"

  Tatya shrugged, mail jingling, and took a long pull of hot wine. "The coin you already spent guarantees you at least my ear, if not necessarily my sword," she said. "Tell away."

  The blond one -- Silence -- signaled for the wench again, and mimed eating. She nodded, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, and hurried away to cut them pieces of the roasting lamb. Tatya's stomach rumbled at the thought of fresh, hot meat, rich with spices. She'd had nothing but old bread and thin soup for the better part of a week.

  "They call you Witchkiller," Silk said. "Is there truth to it?"

  Tatya Witchkiller sipped her wine and cocked a single eyebrow. "Have I killed a witch? Aye. More than one. You need not worry -- unless, of course, you be witches."

  Those same, unsettling smiles. "Mistress," Silk said politely, "that, too, is part of the tale."

  She nodded without speaking. Silk opened his mouth to begin, but was halted by his blond friend, who seized his arm and shook it gently. Tatya watched in fascination as Silence's long, pale fingers danced in complicated, mesmerizing patterns. Almost she could understand... almost ...

  Tatya blinked and stood, tipping the bench over with a loud thump while her hand found the hilt of her sword. "What spell is this?" she barked, and showed three cold inches of steel in outright threat. "Speak!"

  Silk flung out a hand, alarmed, and said, "He cannot! He speaks with his hands. It is no spell, only a language learned by those who have no voice. A language! It was taught to us at the great university in Padua."

  Tatya frowned. The serving wench, undeterred, delivered a platter of thick-sliced roast lamb, redolent with rosemary, in the center of the trestle table. "Not magic," she said. "You're certain of this."

  Silence spread his eloquent hands, still smiling.

  After a black second, Tatya righted the bench she'd overturned and grudgingly took her seat again. "Continue," she ordered, and speared a slab of meat upon which to gnaw.

  "In the mountains above this town lives a witch," Silk said. "No ordinary spell-caster, Lady Witchkiller; no simple mumbler of spells such as you might have faced before. He is rich in the currency of death."

  "I have no use for poetry," she mumbled around the first delicious mouthful, grease running down her chin. "I deal in odds and swords."

  "Then I will make myself plain." Silk's dark eyes took on an unholy glow -- passion and hatred, she recognized the look well. "Know you of the tale of a succubus, who draws forth a man's seed by night in dreams?" She nodded for him to continue, still chewing. "A succubus can then turn incubus, take male form and deliver the stolen seed into another, unwilling vessel."

  "A succubus is a demon, not a witch."

  "Witches use demons for their own purposes," he said. "And witches can neither quicken a woman, if male, nor bear their own children, if female."

  Old news, tales long since spread. She nodded for him to continue.

  "The child of an incubus grows quickly within the vessel the witch chooses for it. There are certain rituals the witch completes, but before the child can be born, he performs his cruelest ritual of all: he buries the mother alive, still swollen with child."

  Tatya stopped eating, frowned again, and washed down a mouthful of meat with muddy wine. "Why should he go to such trouble to simply
do murder?"

  "Not murder," Silk said. "Sacrifice. For every fifty women who go into cold graves, one child is born living, though the mother perishes. Such children are valuable to witches, as they contain the power of death passed to them from their unfortunate birth."

  She said nothing. Her lips were compressed, her eyes bright and fierce. Silk avoided the look and raised his mug to sip wine. He wore gloves even in the heat of the tavern, she saw. All of his skin, save his face, was covered. He continued, "This particular witch has through the years created two such children in this manner. His ... pets, you might say. But those dogs have slipped his leash."

  "Have they." She surveyed them through half-closed eyes, leaning forward with elbows on the table. "Yet perhaps they have come sniffing at the gates, whining for their lost master."

  Silence's fingers, which had been relaxed and elegant, tightened on the edge of the table until they looked bone-white. All of Silk's charm and good humor drained away. Ahhh, there, she marked them now for honest men. Honest in their hatred, at least.

  "Say that again," Silk whispered, "and there will be blood."

  "It strikes me that there will be blood whatever I say," Tatya shrugged. "Do you not hear the voices outside?"

  He did not understand for a moment, and then his gaze slid away from her, fast, and she heard the creak of the outer door and another harsh howl of wind, with harsher mens’ voices shouting above it. More travelers, but no honest ones. She had a sense for such things. Silk's expression didn't alter, but she became aware of the small things in him – the muscles of his arms tensing, the seemingly casual way he moved his hand to be close to his sword, which was lying in a pile with a thick leather belt on the bench beside him.

  "Perhaps we should settle our matters some other time," he said. "It appears there will be trouble."

  Tatya turned her head when she heard a loud crash, and a frightened yelp. Four drowned rats in the doorway, as miserable as might be expected, of much poorer status than either of the two boys across her table, or even Tatya herself – ragged clothes, patched leather, no mail. Only one of them had a sword, and it was of Caldish workmanship far too fine for the scarecrow carrying it.

  One of them asserted his rights by kicking over a bench and an inoffensive old man sitting on it, spitting insults. The others laughed.

  The innkeep hopped to his duties with the fervor of fear. He hustled a sturdy, dark-haired girl out of the corner and loaded her with wine and stew and sent her in the direction of Tatya's table. Trying, Tatya thought, to get the wench out of reach and put her between three armed guests, as if said armed guests had any obligation to protect her.

  Any road, the girl never arrived. One of the four newcomers – the one with the sword – lunged and caught her arm and swung her around. Wine and stew splattered the floor and a couple of unlucky bystanders, who quickly wiped themselves off without objection and took themselves to a safer spot.

  "Aye," Tatya shrugged. "Trouble for someone. Not for me."

  "Do you know them?" Silk asked.

  "Such men are of a type, as a single louse is of lice. I don't need to know them."

  Silence bent forward, catching her eye, and then Silk's in turn. His fingers moved. She needed no help to understand his meaning. "No," she said. "It's not my business. Let the man fight his own battles, if he can. She's his daughter, not mine."

  "I see," Silk said. "I wonder just how much it takes to move you."

  The girl was screaming. Her father stood, whey-faced and shaking, and around the tavern no one else had moved. All this, Tatya noted with no more than a tactical interest. "Move me? Gold, friend. Little else."

  Silence rapped his knuckles sharply on the table, frowned, and stood in a swirl of thick gray robes. Silk grabbed his arm and tugged, sharply. "No," he said. "This is not the place for either of us to be foolish, and you know why." Silence shook him off, face hard and jaw set, but hesitated. He reached into a fold of his robes, withdrew a leather purse, and flung it to the table in front of Tatya.

  It landed with a heavy metal thump. She eyed it curiously, but did not move to take it. Silence reached over, opened the bag, and spilled gold out in a thick river before her.

  Across the room, the girl's shrieking rose to a frantic pitch. So did the rough sawing laughter.

  "It's your coin," Tatya said, and stood up. She drew her sword in the same motion, and the musical chime of metal sliding free sounded loud even over the scuffle.

  "Then give us our money's worth," Silk shrugged.

  She bared her teeth and went to work.

  Two of them were sharing the girl, one groping her exposed breasts, the other with hands up her skirts. The others were waiting their turn, laughing and spitting on the helpless innkeep. They continued to laugh as Tatya walked toward them. All ugly, all made faceless by the eroding forces of poverty, malnutrition and malice. She cared nothing for the girl, nothing at all; women made their own way in the world, or the world had its way with them. She had long ceased to feel any pity, and as for justice, it was a word to fools.

  But revenge, ah, revenge was breath and life and blood, wasn't it?

  She needed a starting point. Her gaze fixed on one of the laughing men, a scrawny, ill-kept specimen with stringy, filthy hair and a hillman's beard. He swiped hair back from his eyes to give her a lewd assessment.

  His eyes were gray, a light and piercing gray, and the instant she saw them her world turned red. No words, no warnings, no quarter. She attacked without delay, but not that man, no, the one beside him, the stupid-looking brown-haired slug. Her first victim was taken by shock. She simply took a final step and plunged her sword straight through his guts, yanked it free in a dark spray, then drove an elbow into the next man's throat that crunched bones with a dry crackle. He went down gagging, eyes bulging, and she gave him one fast brutal kick to the chin, then ripped him open from neck to waist in one slash. His guts boiled out, slick and red and foul, and he began screaming in a high, breathless whisper.

  That left two. She killed the first with a slice across the throat and a lunge to the heart, then whirled and took the gray-eyed man's first cut on the turned blade of her sword. The steel sang and trembled in desire for the fight, and she saw the stupid malice in the man turn to fear.

  His responding slash was a clumsy cut at her right side, nearly laughable, had she not been consumed by a red, flickering fury that allowed for no such possibility. She parried with a sharp move of her forearm, tossed his blade far out of line, and slammed her steel home in his chest with such violence it went in to the hilt, shattering bone as it sliced through his body and emerged bloody-streaked and dripping from his back. He sagged, mouth open, eyes wide. She grabbed his filthy jerkin as his knees folded and he fell dying, and followed him down, straddling him. She crouched atop him, staring intently, waiting.

  Pale, wide gray eyes. Tatya watched them flicker with terror, saw herself reflected in them. Watched them go blank and the dark pupils expand to consume the gray. She came back to herself with a shock when it was done. Not him. Not the right eyes pair of gray eyes at all. She had wasted her fury, and not for the first time.

  She stood up and wiped her steel on a marginally cleaner corner of his filthy clothing. She was breathing hard, bathed in a light, sweet sweat, and there was a kind of wild euphoria in her that she knew would take time to pass.

  The inn was completely silent. She looked up and saw that Silk and Silence were still sitting where she'd left them. The girl had taken shelter in her father's shadow, but peered around him to stare at Tatya with huge blue eyes. Terror burned in them. Terror, and wonder.

  Tatya met the innkeep's eyes. "I'll take them out."

  He nodded convulsively. She grabbed the gray-eyed one by his booted feet, and dragged him out the door through mud and rain, all the way to what smelled like a midden heap. She went back for the other three, one by one. Their miserable possessions and clothing were of no use to her, but someone in this wretched village w
ould gladly rob them in the night. When she was finished she was soaking wet again, boots clotted with mud, and the fight's magical elixirs chased out of her skin by the chill. She went back into the stifling warmth of the inn and sank back on her bench with a guarded sigh of relief. The innkeep's wench was already scrubbing at the bloody streaks near the door. The life of a woman, Tatya thought in weary disgust. Serve men. Endure them when necessary. Clean up their mess when they're gone. It was a matter of contempt to her that so many chose to accept it.

  The proprietor brought them more wine, stew, and an entire loaf of fresh-baked bread, probably meant for his own table. He did not look at Tatya at all. When he was gone, she took a deep drink of wine that she no longer craved, and found Silk was studying her.

  "You have something to say?" she demanded. He drank a thick mouthful of stew, chewed tough mutton, swallowed.

  "Subtly done," he said. "Now they're more afraid of you than they are of anyone else."

  Silence smiled at her and made an open-handed gesture.

  "He says thank you," Silk shrugged. "No need to offer thanks, brother, you already paid her for her troubles."

  Like a whore. Tatya felt the returning hot tingle of fury, and let it slip into her answering fierce smile. Silk found it prudent to focus on his mug of ale.

  "Continue your story," she said, and stuffed her mouth with the soft, gritty bread.

  Silk finished his stew in four huge mouthfuls and attacked the thick bread crust that served as bowl. "Story's finished."

  She pointed her dagger at him, its tip still slimed with grease. "Not quite. If you want to employ me, you'll tell me why you can't climb the mountain and deal with this witchmaster yourselves."

  This time, Silk did not so much smile at her as bare his teeth in a snarl. "Perhaps we don't wish to risk our own lives. Isn't that why you put yourself out for hire?"

  It was deliberate provocation, again, and she ignored it. "Why do you wear the gloves, Silk?"

  "I'm prone to chills."

  "You tell me a tale of two children born in the witchgrave, each with power over death. Tell me, Silk, what is your power? What taint do you bear?"