Page 9 of Song of the Hell Witch

Five

Squished between a cobbler and Sybil’s not-so-secret brothel, Puck’s Curiosity Shop sat in the middle of the Groundrow Bridge, straddling the border between the Sweetbreads District and the Podge.

With its modest green door, its tarnished brass handle, and its somewhat stooped appearance, it was easy to miss, which was, admittedly, part of the point.

Still, despite its rather obvious flaws, the Curiosity Shop was the only place in the city where Silk and Groundling alike could buy quality fabrics, ornate jewelry, and fine foreign wines at half their usual price.

Even the Watch turned a blind eye to the shop’s less-than-reputable business practices.

Better to let the thieves work together to barter and trade than leave them to fight amongst themselves.

A smudge on the Watch’s reputation was better than a district overrun by rival gangs and brutal murders.

As he pushed his way inside, he heard Helena, the woman watching Bea for the night, yawn from the back room.

Exhausted as he was, the night’s events were spider legs tickling his spine, and he knew he wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon, so he lit the lamps behind the store counter.

The walls glowed butter gold as shadows rippled across the tapestries and the leather spines of the books sitting on the shelves.

He glanced at the titles as he made his way toward the back: A History of Leora in the Age of Kings , A Foreman’s Manifesto , and Vagabond: My Account of Life Among the Druidic Travelers .

He’d read most of them, a skill he frustratingly owed to Prudence.

Jocelyn had been able to read, and maybe she would have taught him how in the ten years they’d had together, but if he’d started that late, it always would have felt like a chore instead of a secret joy.

Outside of Bea, books kept him going on the nights when Jocelyn’s ghost refused to leave him be.

Helena lounged on his wife’s old blue fainting couch, smiling at him as he strolled into the back parlor. Her son’s little blond head lolled on her chest, his mouth open, pink lips wet with drool.

“Hi,” she whispered. “Did you square everything with the duke?”

“Almost. Then I pissed him off and got thrown out by a few of his Watch buddies. Plus there was this whole kerfuffle about that Hale bloke started by the duke’s brother , of all people, so …

I think our issues probably got lost in the grand scheme of things.

” His eyes wandered over to the bookcase, the one that doubled as a secret passage up to his apartment. “How was Bea tonight?”

Helena’s son, Gareth, stirred as she sat up. “Her fever spiked a little after dinner, but I got it under control with a cool rag and some water. She fell asleep reading. I was up in the flat but then Gareth started to cry, so I brought him down here. I wanted to let her sleep.”

“Thank you. Sleeping’s been … a bit tough.”

Helena was slow to stand. Gareth moaned but didn’t wake, and she guided his head onto her shoulder. “If you’re still looking for a doctor … not that Scruggs isn’t a doctor, but, you know, a more serious doctor who treats the mind and the body, you might try going north.”

“North?”

“When I couldn’t get Gareth’s fits to stop, a woman I met outside the factory, she told me to take him to the Wild Fangs.” She moved a little closer, like she was afraid the walls might be listening. “There are vagabond healers up there, supposedly with connections to a coven.”

Puck’s eyes narrowed. “A coven of Hell Witches?”

“Listen, their understanding of medicine goes beyond what Scruggs and other doctors learn in Apostle-funded universities. It was the vagabonds that diagnosed Gareth with the seizure disorder. They gave me herbs that finally got the fits under control, and they said those herbs came from this group of women they called the Ladies of Leora.” Gareth began to moan, signaling she didn’t have much longer to talk.

“These women don’t just chalk up whatever they don’t understand to the Lightbringer’s will, Puck; they know what they’re doing.

So if it gets desperate, know there’s more out there, that’s all.

You can usually find the vagabonds outside of Welling.

Colorful caravans. Used to be you couldn’t miss them, but with all this madness going on about General Hale and this new Order of the Zeraphel or whatever it is—”

Gareth unleashed a small wail, and as Helena bounced him on her hip, Puck reminisced about what it was like having a child that small.

Bea had never cried, not really. She was too curious about everything around her, grabbing on to things to see what they felt like, staring at everything like the world was stitched out of magic.

“You said something about meeting a woman outside your factory,” Puck said. “Did you get a name?”

Helena shook her head, then looked to Gareth. “He’s about to start his nightly ritual of screaming his head off, so I’m going to go.” She closed the space between them, resting her free hand on Puck’s shoulder. “You’re doing beautifully with her, Puck.”

He scoffed. “You’re lying. But thanks. There’s some lyran on the shop counter for you.”

“I don’t—”

“It’s not mine. Some bloke up at the duke’s who didn’t think to watch his pockets.

” He winked at her. Truth be told, he didn’t need the money.

He’d done it for the thrill, for the thought of what the man’s face would look like when he found his coin purse missing.

Like so many of the single women in the Podge, Helena was a war widow.

She might be too proud to admit it, but she needed all the help she could get.

“You’re sure it’s fine?” she asked.

“Positive.”

With a wave, she was gone, the coins jingling as she slid them off the counter and into her palm.

He stood for a while, peering through the back room’s window, which pointed the same direction the Whip flowed, northward.

Somewhere vaguely in that direction was the Wild Fangs, mist-veiled mountains that had become the stuff of legend.

He’d heard rumors about the vagabond tribes that lived there, the remnants of the old Druidic culture.

They’d been hunted into near oblivion, scattered to the winds, but those who remained were supposed to be world-class healers.

Rumor had it they still used traditions passed down from their foremothers, the Druids themselves; that the vagabonds still believed in the power of the Dark Mother and magic that lived deep within the earth.

The mountains were easily a five-day ride on horseback, even longer on foot. He wasn’t sure Bea was strong enough to make it.

But if the choice was between possibly saving her or watching her die …

The knot rose in his throat and his pulse quickened. He pinched the bridge of his nose, willing the tears back. How am I s’posed to do this on my own?

He wanted to go upstairs, to brush his little girl’s hair back, kiss her in the place where her red curls parted. But he was afraid that if he looked at her right this second, he’d fall apart—and that if she woke to find him standing over her, it might send her into terrified convulsions.

Why’d you have to ask me, Jocelyn? Why’d you have to beg?

Cracking his knuckles to give the pain somewhere else to go, he strolled out of the back room and ducked behind the shop counter, where he kept a bottle of Wild Fang whiskey and a set of glass tumblers for late nights.

The abbey bells rang out as he poured his first glass, louder and faster than on Apostletide mornings—as if to alert all of Talonsbury they were under siege.

“The hell?” He knocked back the whiskey and ran to the door, opening it just enough to peek out into the street.

The Watchmen on patrol in the Podge marched across the bridge in their red leather armor and their strange, squid-head helmets, keeping a military formation as they headed toward the Horn of Justice a few streets east of Sweetbreads.

Only two things would pull them back to city headquarters this late at night: a Hornsgate breach or a manhunt.

Either situation would be enough to get the Watch all riled up. A sense of unease curled through Puck. Whenever the Watch went rabid, they started bringing in every criminal they knew, thinking that might help them find the one they were looking for.

“Not tonight, cockpusses.” Puck shut the door and locked it, then grabbed the crowbar he kept behind the shop counter and wedged it under the doorknob as an extra precaution. Satisfied, he wandered back to his glass and poured another finger of whiskey.

The sound was subtle, almost soft enough to miss: a latch, coming loose.

The creaking of iron hinges. Glass smacking against drywall.

Someone had come through that back window, which was only a few inches away from the bookcase that led up into his apartment—to Bea.

His heart seized, his fingers and toes going numb.

Most of the blokes locked up in Hornsgate were relatively harmless, but if it was some dangerous fugitive …

Quickly, quietly, he slid open the drawer beneath the register and pulled out the pistol he’d bought when he first learned Jocelyn was pregnant.

He’d never fired a gun at an actual person before, but Standish had taught him how to aim, how to shoot.

Cocking the hammer back, he crept forward, keeping his back pressed against the far wall.

“Don’t you even think—”

He stopped talking the second he stepped into the room. The gun fell useless at his side.

At first, he told himself he was imagining things.

There was no way Prudence Merriweather was sitting in his shop, looking like this .

Her hair was wet and windswept, her nightgown stained with blood.

Crimson caked her hands, crawling all the way up her elbows, as if she’d been digging around inside a fresh corpse.

But the closer he got, the more real she became, stinking of earth and iron and sweat. Her shoulders trembled, and her mouth stuttered open and closed, like a mechanical toy with rusted cogs.

When she spoke, it wasn’t even loud enough to count as a whisper. Without thinking, he charged forward, kneeling down in front of her. The impulse to take her hand made his own hands tremble, an echo of something he’d killed long ago, but he clenched his fists, holding himself back.

Her kohl-black eyes cracked something inside him as she picked her head up.

“I didn’t know where else to go.”