Treacherous Witch

—her feet eat up the ground, climbing the familiar route past the bubbling stream and towards the convent.

A horse screams.

Valerie darts through the trees, losing track of her mother, her cousins… Shots fire through the dark. Then she sees a sight she’ll never forget—

*

“Hello again,” said the queen.

Shikra perched on the royal bed in her red silks and golden crown like a falcon atop its roost. The evening sun filtered through the gossamer drapes, casting the chamber in a soft amber light. A gentle, lilting melody enriched the air, the harp’s strings plucked by invisible hands.

Valerie breathed in the scent of magic, of home. Her bare feet sank into the thick carpet.

She swallowed. “Your Majesty.”

“You’re in Drakon,” Shikra observed. “The capital?”

“Yes,” she said. “At the… the old Maskamery embassy. They brought a silvertree here. It’s tiny, barely a sapling.”

“They being the Ambassador? Markella?”

“Or Titus, her son. I spoke to him today. Ambassador Markella is dead.”

Valerie trembled as she spoke. Her eyes never left Shikra, trying to discern any emotion in that serene, ageless face.

The queen tilted her head. “You’re hurt.”

And she rose, Valerie shrinking away as the queen approached. Pain blossomed in her back. The lashes, she thought. She’d healed them moments before, but her dream-self hadn’t caught up with reality… or else the queen had sensed her injuries and summoned her into this world a wounded bird.

Silently, Shikra circled her, pausing to examine her back. “What happened?”

She hadn’t expected to hear sympathy in the queen’s voice. Furiously, Valerie willed the scars to disappear.

“Nothing.”

“Did Avon hurt you?”

“No!” She was annoyed at even having to justify herself. “It was the Emperor.”

“Then Avon failed to protect you.”

“Don’t pretend you care.”

“I do care.” Shikra returned to her seat in a rustle of red silk. “My priestesses protect us from such brutality. Those living in the shadow of the Empire are not so fortunate.”

“I don’t need you to teach me that the Empire is bad, Shikra.”

“Are we on first name terms now?” The queen smiled, her cheek dimpling. “Perhaps we should be. I’m sure you have much to share.”

“I…” She shifted on her feet. “I’m starting to remember.”

“Remember what?”

“The things that happened before. The time you rewound. The time we met. Maska’s sword… It’s Avon’s sword, isn’t it?”

Shikra frowned. “That sword is a great treasure that was stolen from us. I’d hoped you might help me to get it back.”

“Is that why you wanted me to go back to Drakon?”

Was the key to stopping the war not a person, but a weapon? She had witnessed the blade’s power firsthand. The sword that had pierced her heart…

“What else do you remember?”

But Valerie didn’t answer. She paced around the chamber, her mind a whirlwind of questions. How could the queen lose a treasure like that? And how did she expect Valerie to take it back? Avon already had the sword on the night of the invasion. It was too late to stop him then.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “You can rewind time. How can you let anything be stolen from you?”

“Sometimes victory comes at a cost.”

Valerie waited, but the queen said no more.

She shook her head in frustration. “If you want my help, you have to give me more than that. I’ve been trying to figure things out here in Drakon, but I don’t even know where to start.”

Shikra regarded her for a moment, and Valerie stared back. Neither had mentioned their last encounter, how she had used the sleeping curse to escape Shikra’s grasp, but the tension hung heavy in the air between them. She had rejected the queen’s command twice now.

But here, at last, she was negotiating with Shikra on her own terms. Giving the slightest suggestion that she had followed the queen’s bidding in Drakon, that she might be willing to help. Would Shikra take the bait?

Instead, the queen said, “What do you know about Titus Steward?”

Valerie blinked. “He’s standing for election as Chancellor of Maskamere. He wants to go home.”

“Not now. Then. His involvement in the war.”

“He was a prisoner of war.”

“I doubt that,” said Shikra. “He betrayed me.”

The light in the chamber dimmed. Her heart raced.

“What?”

“He was a traitor. He passed on information about Maskamere’s defences and other vital information to Drakon to aid their invasion.”

Valerie listened to all of this, the breath constricting in her chest. Titus a traitor? But then… the dinner. Everything he’d promised her.

All lies.

And he was standing over her shoulder at this very moment, demanding the blessing.

She felt sick. “If you already know that Titus is a traitor, why didn’t you stop him?”

“I did.” Shikra glanced at the window, the drapes swaying. “I executed Titus Steward and all of his fellow Messengers who had conspired against me, and still the Empire invaded. Titus is not the cause. Someone else influenced the Emperor. That is what I want you to discover.”

The Patriarch?

She almost said the name out loud, then bit her lip. Shikra wanted this information. She couldn’t give it away for nothing. And she had no real evidence yet; she couldn’t say for sure who or what had instigated the war.

“I see,” she said.

“Have you learned anything of interest?”

Valerie saw it clearly now, the opportunity before her. She grasped it at once.

“I would be delighted to share everything I’ve learned, Your Majesty,” she said, “on one condition.”

The harp played a discordant note. An eddy of cold air whistled about her neck and shoulders, and the moonlight shining through the window threw the chamber into sharp, monotone relief.

The queen stared at her. “And what would that be?”

“I want to return to Maskamere. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned then, but only if you don’t possess me. My body is mine. You have to respect that.”

“I would agree to that,” said Shikra, “if only I could trust you to return me to my body.”

Because she was still trapped, lost between realms. For all that Shikra had conjured this vision of the palace and its splendour, she had no real power here. The advantage lay with Valerie.

She let that thought give her confidence, straighten her back. The queen’s sharp gaze pierced her, but she stepped forward nonetheless. Sat down on the bed. Looked at her as if they were equals.

“You can trust me,” she said. “I haven’t forgotten what happened to Markus. There’s no future for me here without the people I care about. I’m willing to help you, Your Majesty, I just… I don’t want to lose myself in the process.”

She cradled the emotion within her, letting it spill out in her voice, in beseeching eyes. This was not a playact to deceive but something better: real, true, heartfelt pain.

Shikra gazed back at her.

“Very well,” the queen murmured. “Let us swear under the light of the goldentree.”

And the royal bedchamber dissolved away. She and Shikra stood at the peak of a lonely hill, bathed in the light of the goldentree. Its canopy was the sky, its enormous trunk a great, inviting door. Shikra took Valerie’s left hand in her own. Their right hands pressed against the rough bark. Heat and power looped through her, not as potent as the real thing, but potent enough.

“Does this…” It seemed a silly question. “Does this count?”

“We make it count.”

This image of the goldentree was no more real than the image of the queen’s bedchamber, preserved in its original state before the war. So a promise made under its boughs couldn’t be binding… Unless they made it so.

Valerie frowned. Did she understand the queen’s meaning?

“Go on,” Shikra prompted her. “Speak your oath.”

She recalled the traditional words. “I, Valerie Crescent, do swear that the oath I make is binding and true. If I speak falsely, may I surrender my body to Queen Shikra’s possession. I swear this under the light of the goldentree. I will tell Queen Shikra what I’ve learned about the war when I return to Maskamere, and I will step through the silvertree at St. Maia if and only if she doesn’t possess me.”

It’s not real, she thought. It’s not a binding oath. I can break it without consequence.

As long as she believed so, would that make it true?

“Thank you.” Shikra dropped her hands. “I’ll await your return. But don’t take too long. Your tree at Bolebund is already gone.”

For a second, as Valerie turned away from the goldentree and towards the flat, grey landscape below, she glimpsed the charred remains of a silvertree, one of many stumps that had once comprised Maskamere’s great forest.

But before she had a chance to recognise it, the waking world intruded. Valerie opened her eyes, startled, as a man’s shadow loomed behind her.

“Valerie?”