Nasty Little Witchling

My earliest possible convenience for Jeremy’s meeting was right after dinner. Janette had wanted me to stay for dessert despite my asking not to be served. The rice pudding was her favourite, and I conceded it was good after she fed me a spoonful.

The duke’s reasoning had bothered me the rest of the meal even though we’d moved on to other topics like me, Sam, and Sam and I. It bothered me because I couldn’t find any fault in his argument. I didn’t know much about illegal fighting pits, healing, and taxes.

But his points made sense. And I still found myself disagreeing.

The lavish hallways of the palace had given way to stone blocks that made up a square turret. It was the original outpost the castle had been built around and was only attached from the third floor, where a knight was stationed.

He waved me through once I gave my name and reason for entry. As I passed through the doorway with the gold inlay, the wall of mana sent a shiver down my spine. The enchantment was asleep for the moment but promised loud and painful retribution for any who tried to get through when it was active.

Past him were steps only leading upwards, with sealed doors at each landing in the corners. I exited the stairwell in the middle of a small room with four doors and a coned roof above us, where the gold dish of the transmitter and receiver sat. Each room was sectioned off with iron since I couldn’t tell what was behind the doors.

My eye twitched as another ripple of mana washed over me from above. Someone was sending out whole batches of messages at once: well wishes, shopping orders, health inquiries, and a recipe for grilled crustaceans.

There was another involving secretive dealings in a port city that had something to do with information gathering and preventing it. From the way whoever sent the transmission thought of the duke when the city was mentioned, it might have been Riker’s Bay.

Another knight stood guard outside a door with bright yellow lettering, making it clear that it was off-limits to unauthorised visitors. She watched me twirl around in confusion as I tried to understand why I needed to go to the third door on the left if it was also the first door on the right.

A woman in a white uniform with matching gloves walked out, cradling a crystal from the marked room. A brief glimpse inside showed metallic boxes, gold inlays, and people in similar uniforms watching over them.

She entered a different room with more people surrounded by blinking lights and piles of paper. The knight was watching me a little too severely, so I decided it was time to stop staring and move on.

I walked up to the unassuming wooden door and knocked.

“Come in.” The voice was muffled, but I sighed in relief that it was Jeremy.

His door had a handle instead of a knob, a much better design. His office smelled of smoke and leather, which was a drastic change from the mustiness of the stone tower. It was bare compared to Morris’s office, with the stone of the walls showing.

A rug patterned with a few intersecting triangles led to two leather chairs. They faced the grey wooden desk, Jeremy lounging in his own leather chair behind it. He had his feet up and a bowl of rice pudding in his lap.

“Evening, Valeria,” he said and checked his watch. “I guess I should have expected this when I said ‘earliest.’”

I suspected he had used one of those phrases with a separate meaning from the words themselves. “Should I come back tomorrow?”

“No, no. I’ll be working late tonight with what’s going on. I don’t mind taking a moment away before the next set of reports. This shouldn’t take long.”

I sat in one of the leather chairs while he sat up straight and placed the bowl on the desk. “From Riker’s Bay?”

“That,” he said with narrowed eyes, pointing a finger at me. “That is why we are having this meeting.”

I tried to stop my lips from curving upwards. Knowing things I wasn’t supposed to was fun, so I couldn’t help but grin. “What do you mean?”

Jeremy chuckled. “Oh, no, no. Don’t play coy with me, girl. We already know you can perceive emotions from the crystals. It’s not a stretch to think you can also get information from them. Are you somehow taking the crystals from a secure room sealed in iron and guarded all day, or can you feel the ripples of the transmission?”

I nodded, not too concerned with revealing the information. “I can if I’m close.”

He steepled his hands together and leaned back in his chair, grinning. “And getting information from crystals?.”

“It’s more what people think and feel when they infuse them.”

His grin widened. “That’s perfect,”

He opened a drawer to his side, and different concentrations of mana appeared in my senses. Crystals were pulled out and placed on the desk in front of me, four total.

“These are test samples done by different people on different topics. I don’t need you to know how to tell what’s in each, so if you can’t tell, I’d prefer you’d say that.”

I nodded and waited for him to gesture to the first one before picking it up. There was nothing to parse through except whoever infused this one was very anxious and kept thinking in dots and dashes.

“Anything?” Jeremy asked.

“They were scared while doing this. Someone was breathing down their neck during the infusion. Nothing much else.”

He frowned. “I was very nice to her, so I don’t know why they’d be scared. But that was infused by someone without knowledge of our ripple codes. So, makes sense why you didn’t get the information out of it.”

I set it down and picked up the second. There were a few brief images of faces, but nothing solid. “Names?”

“Yes, made up names, so the infuser didn’t know who they were.” He scribbled down something into a book with other writing that looked worse than witches’ scrawl down the pages.

The third was about the movement of a military group from a large settlement to a smaller one. Jeremy was the most interested in that and pressed me for more information on differentiating the settlements and type of military unit, but I didn’t know.

There was hardly any information in the crystals. It was akin to glancing at a sentence and knowing its meaning without reading each word. So, I went on to the fourth without a break.

It was all numbers and a long enough string of them to give me a slight headache. Much to Jeremy’s delight, I could recite every one of them since the person infusing the crystal had focused entirely on the numbers.

“About in line with what Morris and I expected, you can catch the overall meaning of messages based only on the operator's understanding—no specific names or details and not good with cracking cyphers. Knowing the actual numbers is a weird one.”

“You think so?”

“Well, knowing anything you do is weird. From what I’ve been told, mages don’t feel anything when they interact with a crystal. Usually, we have to place them into a translator that uses light to show off different combinations of frequency and length of the ripples to spell out words.”

He started reading through his notes and was absorbed in his writings, tapping the pencil against his temple. I snaffled away a little potted plant sitting on the edge of his desk. It was slightly awkward to fit in my dress pocket. He looked back up before I could decide to take the little wooden bird figurine instead.

“Would you be willing to help me out on a little project?”

“Yeah…”

He stood up and started to pace, and I folded my legs to better block the plant. “Every duchy and foreign country has their own encryption. Meaning operators have both the lock and key for the information they’re transferring. For ours, at the start of every week, we send out a message signalling the page number of a certain cypher we will be using for the week.”

“Like the one you gave me?”

“Yes, but it's much more complicated. So, when we intercept messages not using our own cypher, it can take us weeks, if at all, to understand the true message. By the time we do, they’ve switched their lock and key for the next. We can still find some information but it's old by the time we do and the real good stuff is better protected. All this isn’t our design, and we’re actually far behind in the information game.”

I nodded along, stopping myself from asking where I could help.

“But,” he had a maniacal grin spread across his face. “If we have someone get an original receiver crystal and let us know the meaning behind the message, we could break the cypher that very day. Meaning we have the rest of the messages as well.

“So, in a few days, a crystal is coming down from our listening post in Riker’s Bay. We intercept one of the Oclaran relays there and the city-states that are closer to the Narrow Sea. Will you be willing to work with us and help break the cyphers?”

There was a pit in my stomach from just thinking of asking the question, but I convinced myself to say the words anyway. “Will you pay me?”

He chuckled. “Yes, we can pay you. We would also like this, and the information you gain, kept secret. And will compensate you for that as well.”

I was already considering returning to the library to get more books and needed a way to sustain myself besides spending all of my reward. So, I was proud of myself for asking despite my apprehension.

A knock at the door sounded, and one of the uniformed staffers came in with a folded paper pinched between her fingers. She glanced at me, and I put on a smile full of innocence as she walked around to Jeremy, hopefully without seeing the lump in my pocket.

He read it and looked up at me. “Thank you for coming to find me, Valeria. I’ll let you know when the crystal arrives and draw up a document for your payment.”

“Good night,” I said, taking that as a dismissal. I stuck my hands in my pockets as I stood up and swished my dress while leaving.

The small plant looked nice on my nightstand after I returned all the dirt to it that had spilt into my pockets. Its many long leaves flopped outwards and drooped down onto the wood, and I gave it some water before heading to bed.

…

I needed to get myself a watch and learn how to use it since I had no idea how long I had left till I needed to be up and at the training grounds. First light was the only measurement I knew, and that was only used in consideration for those coming from outside the palace at a time before the bells started.

Giving up on the idea of sleeping more, I changed into my exercise clothes. I opened the balcony doors to get out quicker and shivered as cold air rushed in. Each morning was getting colder, and I appreciated having an intact wall to protect me from it and the eventual snowfall.

It was a smoother descent with the vines this time since I could get three of them to work with me, which was enough to support my weight—something Janette was happy I was gaining. The only things stopping me from jumping out and trying to catch myself with air were cowardice and a healthy respect for heights.

I pooled water into my cupped hands to splash against my face to help wake me up. My hair was pulled back as usual, but it felt a bit lopsided this morning as it swayed behind me on the way down the path.

The knight stationed at the closed inner gate had their head bent against their chest. He perked up when I got close enough to sense.

“Morning, do you have the time till sunrise?” I asked.

He pushed back a sleeve and looked to his wrist. “Should be less than an hour, ma’am.”

I thanked him and walked under the half-open portcullis he had opened for me, trusting the iron spikes would not crush me.

All the concentrations of mana in the bastion were still, even the one behind it. I walked back to find Instructor Daniels in an impeccably straight uniform, baret perched on his bald head, and moustache combed. He starred out at the training grounds bathed in harsh white light with his hands clasped behind his back.

He should have noticed me coming since the gate, but he didn’t budge even as I got closer.

“Do you know where all the aspirants and knights I’ve trained have gone, Twig?”

I stopped next to him and looked out over the training rounds, trying to find what had his attention. “No, sir?”

“They’ve dropped out, gone to the watch, or military. Become instructors at schools elsewhere, even Equitier. They’ve made it to captain, and others left to start families. A few even retired, but don’t try guess my age from that.

“Now, they may not make it there. The continent has healed from the unrest of the past, and that generation is no longer around to tell their horror stories. The rems rely on us to guard our borders from their brazen attempts at forcing their way further into the capital. I worry, whether to ghouls or foreigners, I might lose my first trainee.”

“Are ghouls that bad, sir?” Fighting against other mages could easily go wrong, but usually the only thing people commented on regarding ghouls was their horrid appearance, not danger.

“Oh a farmer’s kid could take one on with a rake if they had their wits about them. A village in the daylight could beat back a few dozen. I’m talking about a flood of them getting out and not having enough bodies, arrows, or mana to stop them.”

“Isn’t there a wall? Why would they get let out?”

“Pretend you’re a greedy bastard for a moment, and there’s this great big prize in front of you. Do you clamber over the obstacles and face your battles head-on, or divert them for someone else to deal with? The consequences be damned.”

“Someone else?”

“Well aren’t you a smart one,” he said and placed a hand on my head. “Hopefully smart enough to take my words as a warning and not become a knight. Or do, I won't say no to another body."

He led me over to the empty weapon racks, and a spike of fear filled my heart. I’d forgotten to call him ‘sir.’ His face was impassive, so I hope he hadn’t realised it in the gloomy conversation.

I could understand why he’d be worried about his trainees and knights since I was starting to worry for Annalise and Sam after what he’d said, maybe even Alisa.

I flinched as a piece of leather came flying at me and managed to latch into it before it smacked into me. I turned it over in the light and looked to Instructor Daniels when I couldn’t figure out what it was.

“Put it on,” he said and pulled his own glove on.

It was half a glove, covering only the thumb, my pointer, and half my middle finger. I’d seen knights doing archery wear gloves with the middle three fingers covered, so silly gloves must have been mandatory.

The unstrung bows lying on the ground were different from the long, curved pieces of wood of the longbows. These were shorter, with an inward dent made of metal where the hand went and a wooden flick at the ends where the string tied.

“These are recurve bows, better for your use. We import them from the West, where mounted archery is more popular since not many people in Werl can make them well enough to last. I got ahead of myself suggesting mounted archery yesterday, so I wanted to temper your expectations about doing that anytime this year or next.”

I nodded, not having any expectations for talent in this area. “Yes, sir.”

“We don’t have many of these, so first, you’ll learn how to string it, unstring it, and care for it.”

He gave me a leather strap with a fibre thread between it and another thread with loops at the end. Instructor Daniels’ bow was the same as mine but larger and full of mana. He strung it without the assistance I was going to need.

“Place the string loops around each end. No, further in. Then, the leather strap around one end and onto the other side. Now, stand on the leather ones' string to pull the bow taut and slide the bowstring loops into the groove.”

I was glad mine was smaller and looked easier to pull back since I struggled with lifting using one hand while the other slid the string into place.

He made me undo it and then string it by myself without instruction and showed me how to polish the aluminium and oil the wood.

I placed one hand on the cold metal, used the other to grip the taut string with my leather-covered thumb, and wrapped my pointer around it. I wanted to pull at the fibres in the string and the wood of the bow to draw it, but it felt like trying to lift myself up by my feet.

I was drawing an empty bowstring back and slowly releasing it till the mage lights went off and people were starting to walk into the training grounds for the usual drills. My arms were sore from the effort, and I hadn’t even gotten to shoot off one of the blunted wooden arrows.

My near annoyance turned to embarrassment when he handed me one of the arrows, and I dropped it while trying to knock it. The body of the arrow was supposed to lean against the back of the knuckle of my thumb, but it spent more time on the ground.

I had a whole quiver of arrows at my waist to try with, but I was doing too many new things at once. He wanted me to concentrate on my stance, hand positions, breathing, and drawing the arrow from the quiver simultaneously.

Getting the arrow to sit still felt like trying to convince a snake to straighten out while you held its tail. I didn’t think I was supposed to use mana, but I did and finally got the notch to sit inside the string and arrow to sit still against my knuckle. The instructor nodded, and I drew back the string with glove-covered fingers just enough to send the arrow into the target a few paces away from us.

I almost dropped the bow when the fletching scraped against my hand and decided I wanted another leather glove for it next time. He had me loosely draw the bow and send arrows into the fabric-covered hay over and over, adjusting where my elbow sat, the positioning of my feet, where I pulled the string to, and all manner of little movements.

People were starting to stretch as morning light overtook the sky. He had me unstring both bows and collect all the arrows we had shot. A lot were sitting on the ground or hanging limply from the target.

I floated the ones on the ground up to me while I pulled the others out.

“Neat trick, Twig.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Think you could do that consistently while shooting at a target?”

“Maybe with practice? Sir.”

“Good answer, go join the others.”

Most everyone was there, and I smiled at Sam as I went to stand by him and our group. Clair and Isaac were helping each other stretch, so I got to avoid any detriments to my good mood.

“Okay, only running and weapons training today. Take two laps, except for Twig, who's going to take three for improper address.”

“Yes, sir,” I mumbled with the rest as they chuckled at my expense.

"That's three for all of you now."

"Yes, sir."