Page 12 of The Witch who Trades with Death

Chapter Twelve

The town hall was a large stone building with guardian gargoyles. Khana counted foxes, bears, wolves, leopards, and several others as the soldier escorted her, Xopil, and the attackers into the building.

A handful of other soldiers had been assembled to assist, and they all gave Khana wary, disgusted looks. She kept her eyes on her boots as they led her down halls and around corners.

They left her in a small room with a yak-skin door; a couple of guards stood watch, separating her from Xopil and the others. She sat on a square cushion and studied a tapestry hanging opposite her. The creator must have spent a fortune on dyes: whites, silvers, and blues colored the robes of a winter god who created blizzards with the moon by his head; a goddess of the sun and summer was sewn from reds, oranges, and gold, a pair of antlers springing from her temples. The two held each other in an embrace, and from their union Khana counted a war god, a love god, and a goddess of some sort of art or music. Separate from the family was an elderly woman whose dress made up the mountains and beneath everything and everyone was a black ocean – or maybe it was the night sky? – with a corpse-pale goddess sitting on a throne, overseeing a parade of ghosts. It was one of the forms Death had taken when they’d spoken. She’d rather hoped not to see them again for a while, but now…

What will it be? she wondered. Enslavement? Exile? Back to Regualli? She’d kill herself before she let that happen.

They kept her waiting for what felt like hours, long enough for her to memorize every detail of that tapestry while the two soldiers stared at her, not moving a muscle, not saying a word.

Finally, someone came to fetch her. The guards led her through a stone hall decorated with even more tapestries. She saw ancient Pahuudan soldiers battling kingdom after kingdom for money, then the chief from the statue in the town square – with staff and sword – negotiating with a king, then people building towns. She tried to slow her steps to get a closer look, but the guards pushed her forward.

Legal matters of Pahuuda were dealt with in some form of throne/courtroom. It was big enough to hold half the town, with torches and two fireplaces on opposite walls warming the room. The space was decorated with relics of war: shields, armor, weapons, pieces of art and jewels taken from a dozen kingdoms throughout history. Seven stone chairs sat on a dais in a half-circle facing the room with the central chair being the biggest and most ornate. They each held a person, most of them elderly. Each person was adorned with some part of an animal: one wore a headdress made of eagle feathers, another curled bharal horns, fox fur, bear skin, and several teeth and claws. All of them were Ghura. One very old, very frail man with dark eyes and a sharp nose wore a cloak adorned in porcupine quills, reminding Khana of Bhayana. The woman in the center throne had a necklace of wolf’s teeth and claws. Sava’s mother , Khana realized. She recognized the square jawline and archer’s braid, though the chief’s was going gray. She held a staff, the same one depicted in the town square statue. It was a surprisingly simple thing for a scepter, though carved from ivory or bone. Short cords hung from the top, dangling animal teeth and bones that gave an old woman’s cackle every time they moved. The bottom had been coated in iron, perfect for acting as a gavel on the stone floor.

Standing before the members of the Seven Families was Sava, who had completely lost his friendly, safe aura. He looked at Khana with the same stern, authoritarian look his mother gave her. Like she was a stranger. A threat. It hurt. She turned away to the rest of the room.

The soldier who caught her also stood before the thrones, still in her leopard cloak. It was then Khana realized she must belong to an Old Family, despite her obvious Reguallian blood. She even looked a little like the man with leopard teeth pierced through his ears.

The rest of the room was filled with people, held back by a stone, waist-high railing. They watched her get marched through the room in silence. She spotted Haz and Heimili on the edges of the crowd and couldn’t meet their faces.

The guards positioned Khana in the center of the room, between the thrones and the mob. She bowed to the chief.

The chief said something. Khana swallowed, not understanding.

“Neta, please speak for her,” Sava ordered.

“Chief Phramanka is asking for your name,” said the woman with the leopard cloak. She was all height and muscle, holding a spear in one hand and a knife and axe at her hip like she’d been born with them.

“Khana,” she said.

“And you’re a witch,” Neta translated for the chief.

She swallowed. Whispered, “Yes.”

“You should stand up straight. We don’t bow here.” A direct request from Neta herself.

Khana stood but kept her eyes down.

“We have two issues to muddle through today,” Neta continued for the chief. “First, you will tell us what happened between these three soldiers before I found you.”

Khana glanced at the furious soldiers and Xopil. Easy enough. She told the truth.

Sava, oddly, turned to the woman with the bharal horn headdress and made a series of motions with his hands as Neta spoke for Khana. Chief Phramanka’s face, and several others’, hardened when she got to the end.

When she was done, one of the attackers shouted something. Neta, thankfully, approached Khana’s side and whispered a translation: “You’re trusting the word of a cowardly soul-stealer?”

“Midya Grahanu has received several reports against Damani and Rathara,” Sava reported to his mother, as if they weren’t there. Neta kept Khana informed, though she didn’t explain what a “midya” was, whether that was part of the name or a title. “Almost all from Reguallians and Tlapharians accusing them of harassment, ill treatment, and physical attacks.”

“And they were allowed to stay?” the chief asked.

“Apparently, they’ve never taken it this far. Usually they pick on Neta, but she always wins.”

Chief Phramanka huffed. “We’ll work on prevention later. For now…”

She pointed to Xopil’s attackers, Damani and Rathara. “These two are discharged from the militia, stripped of all rank, titles, and pay. They are banned from re-enlistment for seven years unless otherwise decreed.”

The two men shouted obscenities. The chief’s glare silenced them.

“What about the farmer who lost his goat?” the head of the bear family asked, a massive man with a thick fur around his shoulders.

Chief Phramanka thought for a moment, then decided, “You two and the witch will all each pay him its worth for his trouble.”

“How much is that, Mistress Neta?” Khana whispered.

“About fifty coppers,” she answered. “And I’m just a soldier, not a mistress.”

That was going to blow up Khana’s savings. She wondered if Heimili would even keep her around to earn it back.

“If you can’t pay it, the usual solution is military service,” Neta added, perhaps seeing the dismay on her face. “That’s the traditional way debts are paid if money isn’t an option.”

Chief Phramanka waved the two ex-soldiers off, and they were escorted out of the room. Xopil was also dismissed, but he was allowed to merge with the crowd, hugged by a plump Reguallian woman. Probably his wife.

“Now, on to the witch herself,” Phramanka said.

“We should banish her,” said the woman in the eagle headdress. “Witches are bad luck.”

“She could be a spy for the empire,” agreed the fox.

Khana stiffened with every word Neta translated. Phramanka silenced them all, and asked, “Tell us why you are here, girl.”

This was tricky. These people wouldn’t take kindly to hearing that Khana had warmed the emperor’s bed, even against her will, or worse, that she was related to him. And if they knew that she’d found the secret to reviving the dead, they’d tear her apart for it.

She licked her dry lips and said, “I’m a refugee. I was hoping to put as much land between myself and the empire as possible, but I ran out of coin and cannot cross the tundra on my own. Once I reach the coast, I’ll get on a ship and go further, if I can.”

“Why leave?” croaked Bhayana’s elderly relative, the porcupine quills on his shoulders twitching with every breath. “I hear witches are revered in the empire.”

Khana chuckled. “Revered? You’re sure that’s the correct translation, Neta?”

“Quite,” she said dryly.

“We are not revered, sir. Respected, yes. And perhaps some cults believe we’re descended from or chosen by gods. But every witch is ordered to attend the emperor, regardless of our opinions of him. We have to help him create his night creatures or be turned ourselves. We’re kept under constant guard, every movement watched, forced into breeding for more–” She cut herself off, breathing hard, unable to say more.

Neta studied her for a moment before finishing the translation. A couple of the Old Family members began to look sympathetic. Sava winced, still signing to the bharal woman.

Phramanka waited a long moment, long enough for Khana to calm herself, before asking, “And how did you escape?”

“I disguised myself as a servant and jumped off a cliff.”

Neta didn’t immediately translate. “Come again?”

Khana decided on a white lie: “First I killed a woman in self-defense by absorbing her aji – life force, Reguallians call it saviza – and that apparently absorbed the damage? I think? I was never able to finish my necromancy training, but if you hold enough saviza it gives you extra strength and heals your wounds…”

Finally, some people began to look approvingly at her, once Neta passed her words along. But not everyone.

Someone shouted something from the mob behind her, angry. Other voices joined them. Phramanka had to bang her staff on the floor to gain order.

“What are they saying?” Khana whispered.

“Half of them think you’re a spy, the other half think you’ll bring a curse or bad luck,” Neta said. Her tone was blank enough that Khana couldn’t guess what she thought on the matter.

“I agree with the people,” the fox said. “We should return her.”

“Please don’t!” Khana begged.

“It’s the smartest decision.”

Khana stepped forward. The guards pointed their spears, and Neta snatched her shoulder, an iron weight stopping her in her tracks.

Khana knelt, the stone bruising her knees. “Chief Phramanka, if you are seriously considering exiling me back to the empire, I ask that instead you execute me and burn my body.”

The room went quiet after Neta’s startled translation, the only noise the flickering of the torches and fireplaces. Khana didn’t dare look up, her eyes on Phramanka’s boots.

The chief stood from her throne and approached Khana, forcing her chin up with a calloused finger. Khana met the old woman’s shrewd, cold gaze. She spoke accented, but perfect Reguallian: “So if I ordered my son to shoot you through the heart with an arrow, we wouldn’t have to tie you to a post?”

Neta continued her translation duties, her quiet voice in Ghura the only other sound in the room.

Khana swallowed. She thought of Yamueto’s rough hands on her, hands she had seen shape corpses into abominations that lived only to serve his cruel will. A quick, clean death was worlds better than that, but she still trembled. And she knew Phramanka could feel it; she hadn’t let go of her chin.

“Would the first shot be immediately fatal, or would it just wound me?” Khana asked.

“My son is the best archer this side of the mountains. It would only take one arrow.”

“Ma … ” Sava warned. Khana wanted to scream at him to not interrupt his ruler.

“Then no, you would not have to tie me up,” she said. “I would only ask that you first take my cloak and return it to Hasyamin, son of Heimili. He loaned it to me.”

Phramanka let go of her chin. She stood, leaning on her ivory staff, and switched back to Ghura: “Being a witch is not a crime in this town or kingdom. The girl is free to go as she wishes, so long as she limits the use of her powers to extreme circumstances and doesn’t take the rabala of any person or their animals without that person’s explicit permission.”

As soon as Neta finished translating, Khana went weak, almost faint. She dropped her forehead to the cold stone, trying to wrap her mind around the order. She wasn’t going to be executed? Or forced to use her powers?

Half of the mob hissed or booed at Khana’s back. It sent ice down her spine.

“My decision is final,” Phramanka snapped over the noise. “We’re done here.”

Khana watched the Old Families leave, dread settling in her bones. The chief might not want to hurt her, but it was clear that she didn’t speak for the rest of the town.