Joseph Lewis - Wren the Fox Witch

She swallowed, and then started walking, slowly at first and then more quickly, heading toward Omar and the woman he had called Nadira. And as she walked toward them, she saw a pair of hands appear on the railing behind Omar and Ortiz. And then two more. And then five young men, little more than boys and dressed only in gray tunics and belts, with bare feet and only a single knife clenched in their teeth, came swarming over the side of the ship.

Five, then ten more, then twenty, all in the same drab state of undress. But after the ones with knives came the ones with guns and they poured across the deck, tackling the Espani to the ground as they opened fire on the Turks. Wren dropped to the deck, her hands wrapped around her head, her eyes squeezed shut as the huge pistols thundered again and again.

The lead balls screamed through the air and the men screamed as they fell to the deck or overboard into the sea. Wren heard wet slapping sounds and thumping sounds all around her, and she tightened her body up into the smallest ball she could imagine.

Lord Woden, I’m sorry I said anything about your fog. It’s a wonderful fog, and you’re a wonderful god, and please don’t let me die here like this!

A moment later the pounding of the guns subsided, and the screams of the men retreated into a few half-hearted moans. As the ringing in her ears faded away, Wren began to hear someone calling her name. Slowly, with her hands still clenched on her hood and her belly still a bundled of knots, she half-rolled onto her side and peeked up at the voice.

Omar.

He was squatting right beside her, leaning toward her, but not touching her, and as her eyes readjusted to the light after the darkness inside of her arms and hair, she saw why he had not come any closer. All around her, in every direction she looked, there was a wall of aether. It swirled and drifted and bubbled in a perfect dome over her, like a watery current moving around and around a vortex but never being drawn down into oblivion. As she relaxed her hands and exhaled, the protective bubble of aether broke up and drifted away, vanishing into the fog, and Omar shuffled forward and helped her sit up.

“Are you hurt?” He moved his hands over her arms and back quickly and roughly.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Did you see what I did? That shield-”

“Yes, yes, very impressive. But there is something else-”

“Where did your friend go?” Wren squinted at the railing where the armored woman had been standing, but both she and her gunboat were gone.

“Wren, listen to me.” Omar gripped her shoulders. “We’ve been boarded by the Hellans and-”

The Aegyptian was wrenched away, lifted and pulled back, and Wren felt hands hauling her up to her feet as well. She looked around at the young men in gray, at their dark staring eyes and dark curling hair and the corded muscles of their bare arms glistening with sweat and sea water. She licked her lips and said, in Rus, “Hello?”

One of them reached out and yanked off her scarf. The cold morning air ran over her tall fox ears, setting the tiny hairs on them to tingling and tickling. A shiver ran back over her scalp and down her neck, and she shuddered as she stared at the young men staring back at her.

“Omar? Omar? What do I do?”

Her mentor cleared his throat loudly and began speaking in what she guessed to be Hellan. In their months together, he had quickly taught her to speak Rus, which was very similar to her native Yslander, and she had learned a bit of Eranian, which she would need in the empire. But all other southern languages were mysteries to her.

The Hellan youths barked a few questions at Omar, and he answered them with a polite smile, but the two men pinning his arms behind his back did not relent, and Wren felt the hands on her arms tighten their grip.

“I don’t think that’s helping,” she said.

“It would help more if those ears of yours would stop twitching like that,” he answered.

“I can’t help it.” Between the breeze tickling her ear-fur and her instinctive need to focus on the sounds around her, both of her ears were dancing left and right as quickly as they could to follow the sounds of the men all over the deck.

Omar let loose another torrent of Hellan, and the young men babbled back. Wren glanced left and right, seeing the fascination and revulsion and amusement all mingling in the eyes of the Hellans.

Then they threw a sack over her head and start shoving her forward with her hands twisted around behind her back.

“Omar! Omar!” she shouted. “Help me!”

She tried to summon up the aether shield again, a wall to hold them back, a fist to push them away, but she couldn’t move her right hand and she couldn’t focus on the muffled noises and the jostling bodies.

They’re going to kill me. They burn witches in the south. Omar said that once. They burn witches here! They’re going to burn me!

She stumbled and the Hellans lifted her up to carry her.

With tears brimming in her eyes, Wren tired to tilt her head back to look skyward, though all she could see was burlap.

Woden, I know you’re a wise god and a kingly god, but you can be a goddamn monster too. So please, don’t be a monster now. Live or die, just don’t let them burn me!

Tycho heard Salvator coming, but he did not turn to look. He kept his eyes on the northern horizon, on the grim gray sky and the snowy fields and the trees sparkling with ice. The road drew a dirty brown line across the land, snaking away over the hills. There were a few people out there, leading mules and driving wagons, but there were no fleet-footed messengers or mounted soldiers racing back to the city.

Not yet.

“You’re never going to believe this,” the Italian announced. “Just wait until you see them!”

“Not now.” Tycho glanced up at the bright glare of the sun hidden beyond the clouds. “It’s nearly noon. They’ll be coming soon. News from Saray.”

Salvator Fabris, the Supreme Knight of the Order of Seven Hearts, agent and weapon of the king of Italia, leaned against the wall and spat over the edge. He peered down. “This is a very tall wall. I thought you didn’t like high places.”

“You know I don’t. But I want to see them the moment they come back. I need to know about this deathless army. Lady Nerissa needs to know.” Tycho kept his eyes on the horizon. It was easier to ignore the height if he kept looking out there.

“What I know is that waiting here will not bring your messenger any faster, and waiting here will not make his news any happier.”

“Stop trying to annoy me.”

“I’m trying to teach you sense, little man. Either the messenger will come or he won’t, and either it will be good news or bad. You can’t do anything about it, so there is no point in freezing your nose off out here,” Salvator said.

Tycho sighed. “So what should I be doing?”

The Italian’s eyes lit up. “You should come back to the Sunken Palace with me, right now. We have two new prisoners.”

Tycho rubbed his eyes. “More frightened Turks?”

“Better! Much better!” Salvator herded the Hellan dwarf off the battlement and down the stone stairs to the frozen road below where a small carriage waited. It took half an hour to cross back through the long bustling streets of Constantia, across the Galata Bridge to the Golden Horn peninsula. Since the beginning of the siege, the masons and the smiths had been working round the clock on the defenses, repairing walls and weapons, and their apprentices and porters and messengers clogged the streets with bundles of supplies and urgent letters and mule-drawn carts loaded with clay, or iron, or coal. The children were out in force, as always, though they tended to avoid the main thoroughfares to congregate on street corners and in alleys, playing dice and watching rats fight. Tycho caught a glimpse of two young boys boxing in a circle of their peers, and he grimaced.