Page 3 of The Witch who Trades with Death

Chapter Three

The days passed on. Yamueto ordered Khana to his bed almost every night, trying to get a child in her, the iron doors closing behind her with a final boom . It was a frequency she hadn’t seen since she was first taken to the palace. She hadn’t been allowed outside the imperial grounds since, and tried to let her mind drift to wondering what the world was like now as Yamueto forced his way into her. Even when chasing his pleasure, he still looked half-bored, and did little more than grunt when he climaxed.

She drank a lot of tea and played a lot of songs.

While her nights were torture, Khana tried to fill her days with better things. While confined to the walls, it was still a palace . There were dozens of gardens to walk through, things to sew, people to mingle with.

The library was one of Khana’s favorite places. Sometimes – not often, but sometimes – she’d run into one of the other concubines or their children or even grandchildren, and they’d talk about books, or music, or history, or just gossip. Khana mostly did her best to be a ghost in the palace, but sometimes it was nice to talk to another specter.

When she found Princess Sivusita wandering the shelves of books and scrolls, she almost sprinted to her. The oldest living daughter of Yamueto had been appointed librarian, keeping this part of the palace in order, reading while her hair went gray, and wrinkles carved themselves into her face. She shuffled between the shelves in her slippered feet and indigo robe, never caring for the time of day or night. She and Khana would spend entire afternoons together without saying a word, just reading and sipping tea.

Not today, though. Khana caught up with Sita and presented her with a scroll, bowing over it. “Here, Your Highness. I promised I’d get this back to you.” She’d borrowed it a week ago. The last time she’d failed to return something within a month, the librarian had threatened to kick her out.

Sita took the scroll with a smile. “Ah, a history of the Early Kingdoms. Any good?”

“Interesting,” Khana admitted. “I was mostly intrigued by the stories of other kings being immortal.” Before her reading, she only had half-remembered legends of the first witches trying to trick or cheat death. Even the ones who got away with it had to pay a hefty price.

“Oh, history is littered with people like my father. They get immortality somehow, and then wind up killed in battle, or by envious family, or assassins,” Sita said breezily. “I believe the record is eight hundred years, but of course Urdo the Ancient spent almost all of his days hiding in his fortress until someone poisoned him.”

“Your brother Antallo seems to think that he’ll be the next immortal,” Khana mused.

The librarian laughed. “He’s an idiot. Urdo’s reign was so horrifying and bloody that his killers purged every bit of magical knowledge they could find, hoping that no one would ever become immortal again. It worked for centuries, too. Used to be that witches of a certain rank or skill were taught immortality if they proved themselves worthy through various deeds and whatnot. There was a time when we had hundreds of immortals.”

“Were they all… like the emperor?” Sadistic and cruel and uncaring about anything but conquest.

“Some,” Sita said. “Urdo was the worst of them, until my father re-discovered the secret.”

Khana hummed. She couldn’t imagine living in a world with hundreds of Yamuetos. But perhaps the presence of others meant that none could get nearly as powerful.

“What are you doing?” she asked, motioning to the shelves that Sita had emptied, placing the scrolls and books on a rickety cart.

“Antallo is an ass who thinks he’s the world’s greatest military commander, but he managed to conquer a Tlapharian city – you didn’t hear?” Sita asked. “He’s sending some of their library to us.”

Khana stared at her in surprise. She’d half-expected the prince to get shot full of arrows.

“What comes after Tlaphar?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Logic would say ‘the next kingdom,’ but that’s Divaajin, and they’re behind a mountain range.”

“Has the emperor never gone over mountains?”

“No northern army has ever gotten through those mountains. Not ever. Especially not since they posted the Ghura there. They’re impassable.”

At Khana’s tipped head, Sita explained, “Nomadic barbarians. Used to wander around as mercenaries before the kingdom of Divaajin got them under control, some six hundred years ago. Now they guard the mountains in a line of towns and outposts from coast to coast. Pahuuda is the biggest. Those brutes don’t even use paper, and send weaklings into the snow to die. No culture whatsoever.”

Khana gave a noncommittal hum. Barbarians or not, she hoped they prevailed if – when – Yamueto decided his empire needed even more expansion and tried to push through the mountains.

Sita glanced at the lute on Khana’s back, kept in place by a strap. “Would you mind playing for me while I work, dear?”

“Of course, ma’am.”

They didn’t say another word to each other for hours, Khana playing until her fingers felt fuzzy. She kept the tune quiet – as well as her voice, when she decided to sing along with it – and the songs light and classical as the librarian worked. They went up and down the shelves, organizing the books and scrolls, gently taking down the old ones to be copied onto fresh paper, taking note of anything that was missing or needed more of.

They reached the farthest back corner of the library. “That’ll do, dear,” Sita said, pulling a medicinal vial from her sleeve. “Thank you.”

Khana beamed and took the vial. Like her, Sita and many of her friends had been “barren” for a very long time.

Despite books and gardens and endless wells of gossip, Khana found the best way to pass the time was music. The one true bright spot of the Reguallian Empire was all the different instruments, dances, and types of song that had been collected and created over the last three centuries. Khana spent hours each day perfecting the lute, playing happy tunes to distract herself from her daily horrors, or sad, vengeful ones to safely express the inner torment that threatened to consume her.

The Reguallian court was not a cheerful, festive place, but it still observed the gods and holidays. The Festival of Muobra was fast approaching, a celebration of the god of death. At least, one of them. All gods were welcome in the Reguallian Empire, old and new, homegrown and foreign. But Muobra was one of the oldest and most popular – or so Khana heard. Yamueto claimed his immortality was descended from Muobra himself, which could be true for all Khana knew.

Whatever the case, this festival was particularly important for the court to observe. Everyone had to prepare, including the concubines. Minstrels were summoned around the clock to help the women learn the year’s new dances and songs. Hardly a day passed without dozens of women dancing together in one of the mess halls, slippered feet gliding over thick, colorful rugs. Khana herself volunteered to join the musicians, and the lessons took up so much of her time that she hardly saw Sita during daylight hours. Soon enough, they were rehearsing with the dancers in the ballroom.

Muobra and Vigerion were the only gods Khana had ever seen Yamueto actively pray to. While Muobra was the more popular, raven-headed god that led lost souls to their suitable afterlives, Vigerion was one of the oldest deities, ancient even before Yamueto’s reign. The old man with the lantern. He had a small temple in the south wing of the palace that demanded absolute silence from the few allowed to enter. People who broke that rule lost their tongues.

In fact, no one was allowed to pray to Muobra and Vigerion, except the emperor. “The gods of death listen not to the trifling concerns of common people,” Yamueto had said. “Only the highest rank of witches is permitted to approach them. Anyone else caught doing so will be endangering the empire, and thus sentenced to death.”

Khana shook her head to banish such thoughts and focused on a particularly difficult set of notes. The songs praising the death gods were a little bizarre with an air of optimistic melancholy. A celebration of that person’s life while still mourning its end.

She hit the last note with the rest of the musicians around her just as the dancers finished their set. All the ladies cheered – it had been the first time they’d rehearsed the full set at once.

“You’re quite good at this,” a sister-wife said during a break. Khana didn’t know her name – was she new? Was she a witch or just descended from one? It was so hard to keep track, especially since Khana preferred to keep to herself. She played the pipes, though, and quite well. “I hope you don’t mind me spying on you when I forget the next set of notes.”

Khana giggled, feeling her cheeks heat with the compliment. “Thank you. Although your pipe-playing is spectacular. I can never do a song like this on a wind instrument; I’d be gasping for breath after the first set.”

“It’s all about control.”

A young boy in dark gray silk – a courier – scurried into the room, his little body almost swallowed by the great hall. He scanned the crowd until his eyes met Khana’s, and he wove his way through the gossiping, drinking women until he was close enough to whisper, “Mistress Kokaatl demands you see her in the dungeons.”

Ice poured down Khana’s spine. The pipe-player quickly turned away, as if the summons was contagious. Khana carefully wiped the sweat from her brow to buy herself time and adjusted the lute strap on her shoulder, comforted by the instrument’s weight on her back. She followed the boy out of the room to a staircase at the end of the hall.

She can’t hurt me, she reminded herself. If the emperor had given her permission, there would be guards to keep me from escaping.

Still, her stomach clenched, and her hands trembled as they went down, down, down into the dungeons. The city’s worst criminals were kept down here, some of them slated for night creatures, others given to Kokaatl for her to “play” with.

“Do you know what this is about?” she asked.

The boy shook his head. “No, Mistress Khana. She just told me to get you.”

Khana wrapped her arms around herself, shivering as polished wooden walls turned to cold stone as they went deeper into the belly of the palace. They left the sun behind, the only light coming from torches on the walls spaced so far apart they created pools of darkness between them.

Finally, they reached the correct floor. Kokaatl waited for them in the hall, standing in a gold and black silk dress with sleeves so long they brushed against the floor. She fiddled with something in her hands.

When she looked up and grinned, shark-like, Khana stuttered to a halt. Specks of red blood dotted Kokaatl’s otherwise perfectly made-up face.

“Oh, don’t be shy. Yamueto still won’t let me play with you,” Kokaatl said with a little pout. “Boy, you can go. Khana, I want to show you something.”

The courier hastily bowed and ran off. Khana forced her numb legs to move and stepped closer. “What do you wish to show me, ma’am?”

Kokaatl opened the door behind her. “My new toy, of course.”

The stench of blood almost had Khana running back to the stairs. The coppery tang choked her as it pooled on the floor, reflecting the torchlight from the walls. Kokaatl didn’t move, waiting for her to go first with a little smile on her face. Pushed on by her fear of the other woman, Khana breathed through her mouth and went in.

There were two tables. One was covered in tools, red and grimy with fresh use. Knives, hammers, nails – everything a person could possibly need for building a house or tearing someone apart.

It took Khana a moment to recognize what lay on the other table: a corpse, tied by the wrists and ankles. The skin was flayed off, revealing muscle and organs beneath. The fingers and toes were especially bloody, some of them torn to shreds. The only part that wasn’t completely destroyed or flayed was the head.

Sita’s eyes and mouth were open; she’d died mid-scream.

Khana’s whole world collapsed.

“Most people last through the whole flaying,” Kokaatl said conversationally. “But this one’s heart gave out too soon.”

Fear gave way to cold anger. “Why?” she asked in a dead voice.

Kokaatl held up a familiar black vial. “Birth control is illegal in the empire. Especially for the emperor’s concubines. You know that, silly kitty.”

The cleaners must have found the stash hidden in Khana’s room, or maybe Yamueto had suspected something and ordered it searched, or perhaps someone heard of Sita’s dealings in the city. Whatever the case…

My fault, Khana realized. This is my fault.

“Yamueto decided to give her to me to play with this morning,” Kokaatl continued, as if she wasn’t ripping Khana’s soul to shreds with every word. “He told me to show you after I was done, and to tell you to report to his chambers after. Honestly, I’m not a messenger girl. You should be grateful that I’m even doing this much.”

Before Khana knew what she was doing, her hand shot out and grabbed Kokaatl’s throat. She breathed in.

Kokaatl, feeling her life force drain away, pushed at Khana’s skinny arm. But Khana grabbed her gold-and-black dress with her other hand and slammed her into the wall, breathing in more and more of her aji. She watched, with numbness and rage, as Kokaatl weakly struggled, then tried to scream. Finally, the life completely drained out of her wide, panicked eyes.

Khana let the body drop to the floor. She knew she should feel something about having murdered someone, but felt curiously removed. Yes, there was guilt. But not for this.

She hurried to Sita’s body and put her hands on either side of her face. There must be a way to bring you back, she thought, trying to probe the body for any clues. Witches can bring people back without turning them into night creatures. Yamueto’s done it. Other witches in history have done it. There must be a way.

Though the emperor had never shared his secret of immortality, he had, occasionally, brought back to life favored wives or commanders, and they had been themselves. Before the anti-witch purge that followed Urdu the Ancient’s reign, plenty of high-ranked witches had done the same. So it was possible. But Khana had never been taught how. Nobody had.

There must be a trick to it, she thought. Her skin glowed with Kokaatl’s aji; it was more than she had ever taken at one time, a second skin of yellow, white, purple, pale green, and red. Khana pushed it into Sita’s body, aiming specifically for the heart. It must be the heart. Without a heart, there is no humanity.

Sita’s body twitched. Her heart beat. She took a breath, lungs filling with air. Then she opened her eyes.

All of Khana’s hopes crashed. They were completely white, like all night creatures.

Sita’s exposed flesh brushed against the shackles, and she screamed. No human could’ve made that sound; it was entirely bestial, pained, and angry.

Sobbing, Khana pulled the life force back, watching Sita’s movements slow, then cease entirely. “I’m sorry,” she cried, hugging her friend’s weathered face. “I’m so, so sorry.”

She couldn’t bring Sita back. Even if she did, she didn’t have enough aji to heal her injuries. Any existence she could give her would be nothing but suffering.

How long Khana stayed there, hugging the corpse, she didn’t know. But eventually, it dawned on her that she had to move. Yamueto had specifically ordered Kokaatl to torture her friend, to show Khana, and send her to his chambers. He knew exactly where she was; as soon as Kokaatl’s body was discovered, that would be the end. Khana would be turned into a night creature, or worse.

She had to leave. And she had to leave now .

Khana stepped away from the table and wiped her tears. Concubines who had tried escaping before had failed for a variety of reasons: trying to bribe guards who instead turned them in, being spotted while climbing the wall, trusting the wrong people. Those who had managed to escape had been recognized from posters Yamueto ordered hung up all over the empire describing their faces and features, or they were captured after trying to sell distinctive jewelry and clothing, or used their necrotic abilities.

Khana needed to be clever and get as much of a head start as possible. But it took money to travel. It was a shame none of the nobles ever carried rolls of coins or other forms of money – they had no use for it in the palace.

She studied Kokaatl’s body. She was covered in silks and jewels, but they would be instantly recognized. She’d have to alter them somehow. She pocketed all the gold rings, earrings, and bracelets, even those she knew she couldn’t use. The guards would note that they were missing and specifically search for them, distracting them from her real trail.

She also took her birth control bottle back. No one would be allowed to take that from her ever again.

As she lined her pockets, it occurred to her that Yamueto probably valued Kokaatl enough to want her back. He cared for the woman, as much as he could care about anything. He might go through the effort to revive her.

Well, that wasn’t going to happen.

The torturer had stripped Sita of her clothes before working on her, piling them in the corner. Khana threw on the dead princess’s oversized dark blue dress to act as a smock and selected the biggest knife the torture table had to offer.

Minutes of sweaty, bloody work later, Kokaatl’s head was relieved of its body. Khana removed Sita’s dress, wiped her face and arms with the clean spots, and used it as a bag for the head. She would dispose of that on her escape route, and Yamueto wouldn’t be able to resurrect his most terrifying wife.

She approached the body a final time and kissed Sita’s forehead. “Thank you, dear friend. Please find peace, wherever you are.”

Khana dried her eyes and left the torture chamber.