Page 29 of Song of the Hell Witch

Fifteen

Puck had done everything in his power over the last five days to escape his own head.

If he spent too long in there, he started to realize exactly how much his life had been upended.

Even if his daughter survived this Subversal thing and became a Hell Witch, she’d spend the rest of her life as a target for vitriol and malice, and if she died …

He couldn’t let himself imagine that possibility.

But as they approached Welling’s riverside docks, Puck’s thoughts screamed for his attention.

Somewhere in this city was a person who could help them.

Little spasms lit through his muscles as his body and his mind reconnected.

His knees bounced, and he was so wrapped up in the anticipation he didn’t notice how difficult he was making it to tie the boat to the dock or pay the dockmaster.

“Puck.” Prudence had deepened her voice to match the disguise, and the sound of his name almost startled him as she placed a settling hand on his shoulder. He saw the dockmaster’s angry face, the untethered rope in her hands.

“Sorry.” He forced himself into stillness.

Even at twilight, the city of Welling bustled with activity.

Fishermen returning home after a day on the water, lovers and laborers strolling along the walk, Watchmen determined to sniff out pickpockets.

They all crowded the bank, and Puck almost found the sounds and stink of a city comforting after days flitting between fishing villages.

But Prudence looked horror-struck as she stared out at the people shuffling past, like she was convinced they could all smell Frederick’s blood on her skin.

“Even if they know, they won’t recognize you,” he whispered in her ear, his pulse quickening as he realized how close he was, a hairsbreadth away from her. “You’re probably the scrawniest man they’ve ever seen, but you look every bit the part.”

A twinge of guilt over the way he’d talked to her on the river pulsed beneath his ribs.

She’d told him about the necklace in an obvious attempt to soften the harm she’d done, and he’d thrown it back in her face.

Now here she was, hair shorn close to her ears, anxiety no doubt eating its way through her, and all he wanted was to take it back.

Tell her he was glad the necklace still meant something to her.

But then he looked at Bea sitting in the boat, and the guilt dissipated. There was no time to worry about Prudence Merriweather, not when his daughter was dying.

He bent his knees and lifted her out of the hull.

It was colder here, the air bitter as a Talonsbury winter, and the scar tissue in his shoulder didn’t appreciate the change in weather.

Tiny gnashing mouths gnawed a path through his collarbone down into his elbow.

Bea wasn’t helping; she kicked and squirmed in his arms, and he put her down because apparently that was what she wanted.

The gray was starting to creep back into her veins, and her pupils crowded out her irises, making her eyes look like marbles.

He massaged his shoulder and turned to Mari and Pru. “Shall we?”

The steeple of the abbey and the city’s rooftops carved a sharp silhouette against the starpeach sky.

Welling’s air smelled of pine and smoke, and the cold kept the stink from settling like it did in Talonsbury.

Bea strolled a few paces ahead of him as they started down what he figured was a main road, nearly as wide as the river itself.

Most of the storefronts, brick and stone facades with giant glass windows, were already dark, but a few threw slashes of amber light onto the street.

But while the shops were deserted, plenty of people were out and about, heading to the pubs and taverns or hurrying home after a long day.

He didn’t see as many Silks gallivanting about in fancy carriages.

Everyone, for the most part, dressed and walked like Groundlings, with a weariness in each step.

Farther up the street, shouts broke out, and then Puck spotted them, a wave of suffragettes cutting down the main road like a ship through a harbor, all of them shouting, “You will not ignore us! You will not ignore us!” before bursting into songs about boys and girls at war in different places, about watery graves and factory accidents.

“I’m gonna ask someone where to go,” Marigold said. Puck was about to stop her, all too aware of Northerners’ prickly dispositions, but she was already gone, rapping her knuckles on a plum-colored door ten paces ahead of them.

The shopkeeper poked his head out. He wore a powdered wig, and his tailored coat was the same color as the shop door. His pointed upper lip hung over his bottom one, and he’d tied a lavender cravat around his obviously wrinkled neck. Altogether, he looked like a purple tortoise.

“None of your suffragette nonsense tonight; we’re closed,” the shopkeeper growled.

“Yes, sir, sorry, we’re just looking for the Great Borealis. Do you know where—”

“Fuck. Off.” He slammed the door in Mari’s face.

Marigold gave Puck one of her shock-struck stares. “Lovely.”

“Told you. People up here are a different breed. Meaner.”

“You didn’t say meaner , you said colorful .” Marigold stepped down into the street again. “I was expecting the bright coat and the lipstick, but …”

“Red-hot tempers, the lot of ’em. We’re not gonna get any answers from the shopkeeps, but …”

He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t thought of it before. He was the Thief Lord of Talonsbury, for fuck’s sake, the man who’d saved more than two dozen River Rats from the draft. He knew better than anyone—if they wanted information in a city like this, they needed to ask the people who knew best.

He studied the crowd beyond Marigold’s shoulder. About sixty paces away, a homeless beggar huddled on top of a stoop, rubbing his filthy hands together against the chill. He didn’t look like he was in the right state of mind to answer questions.

Two kids, obvious thieving partners, weaved between their marks’ legs. Judging by the size of the evening rush, they’d probably made a good amount of coin, enough to buy a decent supper. But approaching either of them might give their game away, get them reported to Welling’s City Watch.

Then there was the girl on the unicycle.

She was a bit farther up the street, riding in circles at the edge of the square with her arms outstretched for balance.

Talking to her wouldn’t do any harm. If anything, it might draw some more people around her, give her a nice audience willing to toss a few lyran at her feet.

“Stay here,” he told Bea, and while Prudence shouted a question at him, he ran forward, making for the girl. “Oi!”

Startled, she jolted up on her unicycle and nearly toppled over, righting herself just before she fell.

She was a wee thing, maybe Bea’s age, but with help from the cycle’s giant wheel, her head nearly reached his chin.

Her tweed coat was covered in pink and green patches, and gold ringlets stuck out from the bottom of her ruby-red flat cap.

“Oi yourself! You just go round scaring little girls for fun?” She had a thick Northern accent. The consonants were harder, each word lifting up at the end like a question. “You’re not sick, are ya?”

“Sick? No, I—”

“’Cause you look sick, and I don’t wanna get something and then drop dead, know what I mean?”

“I’m not sick. Just had a long trip.” Every second he wasn’t at the Great Borealis was another second off Bea’s life, as far as he was concerned. He didn’t have time for a cute back-and-forth. “Do you know where I can find the Great Borealis?”

“Arcadie’s hotel? Big black-and-white one, all scary looking?” She cycled forward, then backward, the wheel moving like a pendulum beneath her. “What you want with it?”

“I’m uh, … I’m looking for …” He wasn’t sure if he should trust her, but based on what he knew of thieves and their disdain for the Faith, he decided to take the chance. “I’m looking for a Hell Witch.”

“Why? You one of those nuts trying to kill ’em?”

He tried not to look too excited, to keep his feet firmly on the bricks to make sure he stayed in place long enough to get the directions. “Not a bit. I need their help.”

“Hmm. Well, if you wanna find one, the hotel’s where you wanna go. It’s Madame Florence’s turn in Welling this month.”

“Turn?”

The girl nodded. “They’s got ’em on a rotation every new moon. She’ll be in the lounge. But don’t tell anyone; only a few people in the city know. Girls, mostly.”

“And where’s the hotel?”

She pointed straight down the street. “You gonna go this way, yeah? Then, when you get to the shop with the scissors over it, the tailor shop? That’s when you’re gonna turn left, and it’ll be right there.

Takes up the whole west side of the center square, plus Arcadie don’t mind the protesters posting up outside, so there will be a bunch of ’em gathered round the steps. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.” He reached into his corner pocket and drew out three lyran, part of the bounty he’d swiped from the gossip vipers in Colony. “There’s dinner and breakfast for you.”

Her entire face brightened as she looked at the coins in her hand. “Thanks, Mister! Oh, ’fore you go …”

He was gone before she could finish, his entire world shrinking in around his daughter. He sprinted toward her, lifting her into his arms, forgetting the pain in his shoulder as he swung her around.

“Good news, then?” Prudence asked, reminding him there were other people to consider, people who needed this Madame Florence almost as much as he did.

Almost.

“Straight down the street, take a left, we won’t miss it.” He looked at Bea, who’d gone quiet in his arms. She was paler than before, but she smiled at him, and for the first time in weeks, his heart began to hope. “Come on, Bea, let’s go get you healed.”

“Puck, wait!”

He couldn’t.