Witchsign

CHAPTER TWO

Kjellrunn

The compact made between the Solmindre Empire and the Scorched Republics allows a member of the Synod to enter all dwellings across Vinterkveld in order to carry out an Invigilation. Taking children from their parents is no small matter but the children are dangerous. The threat of open rebellion weighs heavily during times such as these and a Vigilant should take as many soldiers as they can gather. You must meet resistance with intimidation, and match violence with brutality.

– From the field notes of Hierarch Khigir, Vigilant of the Imperial Synod.

Kjellrunn hated the kitchen. The ceiling was too low, the chimney never seemed to spirit away the smoke as best it could, and the table at the centre was too large. She had spent a lifetime shuffling and side-stepping around the vast slab of timber. Such a large table and rarely anything good to eat, a bitter irony. She belonged in the forest and lived only for the summer months when she could wander through the trees for hours, alone and at peace.

Steiner served a dollop of porridge into a bowl from a wooden spoon. He hummed quietly as he circled the table, serving more porridge into his bowl, then sat down and began to eat, barely noticing her. Marek was already in the smithy, tinkering with some half-finished project.

‘Why are you smiling?’ said Kjellrunn, her porridge untouched. ‘You never smile.’

Steiner looked up, spoon halfway to his mouth, eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘What?’

‘And you’re humming. You hate music.’

‘I don’t hate music, I just can’t sing. You have the greater share of that talent, always singing folk songs and laments and Frøya knows what else.’

‘You hate music,’ said Kjellrunn once more, hearing how petty she sounded. Steiner shrugged and continued his repast.

They sat in silence for a moment and Kjellrunn began to eat.

’No singing today, Kjell,’ said Steiner. ‘There’s Imperial soldiers in town, perhaps a Vigilant too. You know how they feel about the old gods—’

‘Goddesses.’

‘Fine, goddesses.’ Steiner rolled his eyes. ‘Just keep your songs for the forest, eh? And pull a comb through that briar patch you call hair. You look like a vagrant.’

Kjellrunn showed him the back of her hand, raising four fingers to him, one each for water, fire, earth and wind. In older times it had meant good luck, but these days it insinuated something else entirely.

‘And don’t let anyone catch you flipping the four powers in the street. The soldiers will hack your fingers off to teach you a lesson.’

Kjellrunn stood up, feeling as restless as the ocean, her pique like jagged snarls of lightning.

‘Why are you so happy today, with all these soldiers here and a Vigilant too? What cause have you to be happy when you’ve a witch for a sister?’

Steiner dropped his spoon and his eyes went very wide. The fragile autumn light leeched the colour from his face.

‘Kjell …’

‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice was so low she could barely hear herself over the crackling fire in the hearth. ‘I didn’t mean it. Of course I’m not a witch.’

Steiner rubbed his forehead a moment, picked up his spoon and then put it down again, his appetite fled.

‘I was in a good mood because Kristofine and I started talking last night and, well, it was nice. I don’t know if she likes me or what I’m supposed to do, but it was …’ He floundered for the word, then shrugged. ‘Well, it was nice. And there’s precious little of that in Cinderfell.’

‘Oh,’ was all Kjellrunn could manage in the cavernous silence that followed. The kitchen suddenly felt very large.

‘Father needs me,’ said Steiner, not meeting her eyes as he stood. A moment later he was gone.

The dishes didn’t take long but sweeping the kitchen was always a chore on account of the huge table. Kjellrunn put off leaving the cottage for as long as she could but the shops would only stay open for so long. She entered the smithy with downcast eyes. She disliked the smithy more than the kitchen, all darkness and fire; the smell of ashes and sweat.

‘I need money for food,’ was all she said as Marek looked up from his work. Steiner was filing off a sickle blade, pausing only to spare her a brief glance. She imagined she saw annoyance in the set of his brow. He turned away and continued his work.

‘Business has been slow and I’ve not got the coin for meat,’ said Marek. ‘Unless it’s cheap.’

Kjellrunn nodded and noted just how few coins he’d given her.

‘Sorry,’ he said, and Kjellrunn felt his shame in the single word. Not enough money to feed his children right, that was hard to take for a man like Marek.

‘I’d best go with her,’ said Steiner quietly. ‘What with the Empire and all.’

Marek opened his mouth to object but said nothing and nodded before turning back to his work.

They had no sooner slipped through a gap in the double doors to the smithy when Kjellrunn spoke first.

‘I’m sorry about this morning. You do smile, of course you do. I’m just not myself today is all.’

Steiner put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her close, pressing his face into her tangled hair to kiss her on the crown.

‘Of course you’re yourself today. Who else would you be?’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘You’re difficult and sullen and uncombed and lovely and my sister. That’s the only Kjell I’m ever going to know, I reckon.’

Kjellrunn smiled before she could stop herself. ‘You say I’m “difficult and sullen” when I apologize to you?’

‘What would you prefer?’ said Steiner, his arm now performing more of a headlock than a hug.

‘I’d prefer you to get off me, you great oaf. I may need to comb my hair but you need to wash.’

Brother and sister picked their way along the cobbled streets, past the winding rows of squat cottages and the few townsfolk brave enough to set foot outside.

‘Quiet today,’ said Steiner. ‘People are staying out of sight what with the soldiers here.’

‘Maybe you should go into town alone,’ replied Kjellrunn, mouth dry and a terrible feeling like seasickness rising in her gut.

‘We can’t let them push us around, Kjell. This is Nordvlast, the power of the north! Not very powerful if we can’t even buy food in our own town.’

‘It’s not the soldiers I’m scared of, it’s the Vigilants.’

‘If you’ve not got the witchsign you’ve nothing to fear,’ replied Steiner, but Kjellrunn had heard it a hundred times before. It was one of those mindless platitudes so popular with the dull and uninteresting people of Cinderfell.

Steiner slowed down and Kjellrunn felt his gaze on her, a glance from the side of his eye.

‘What you said this morning—’

‘I was angry. Of course I’m not a witch. I’m not scared of the Vigilants because I’m a witch, I’m scared of them because they’re decrepit old men. Men like that usually only have a couple of uses for a girl my age.’

Steiner winced. She knew only too well he thought of her much as he’d done when she was ten or eleven. Her body hadn’t begun to make the changes most sixteen-year-old girls took for granted; she felt frozen somehow, trapped in her girlhood.

‘Why don’t you go on in to Håkon’s and see if you can buy us some lamb neck or beef shin?’ Steiner shrugged. ‘I don’t know, something cheap.’ He pushed a few coins into her hand and pressed a finger to his lips so she wouldn’t tell Marek.

The shop was a single room, lined on three sides with dark wooden tables. Small panes of cloudy, uneven glass sat in a wooden lattice at the front, allowing dreary light to wash over the meat. Two lanterns at the rear of the store held back the gloom.

Kjellrunn told the butcher what she was after and endured the sour look she received. Håkon was a slab of a man, bald and compensating with a beard long enough to house hibernating animals. His eyes were small, overshadowed by a heavy brow that gave him a permanent frown.

Håkon named his price and Kjellrunn stopped a moment and regarded the selection of coins in her hand. The words were out of her mouth before she’d even thought to answer.

‘I’ve bought beef shin from you before and it never cost so much.’

Håkon shrugged and wiped a greasy hand down the front of his apron, then folded his arms.

‘Could you not the lower the price just a small amount?’

‘Yours isn’t the only family that needs to eat,’ said the butcher.

‘What’s keeping you so long, Kjell?’ Steiner had slipped into the butcher’s; despite his size he was quiet on his feet and often caught Kjellrunn unawares.

‘I …’ Kjellrunn glanced from Steiner to the butcher and down to the coins in her hand.

‘Some issue with the price, is there?’ said Steiner, a note of warning in his voice.

‘This your wife, is it?’ said Håkon.

‘She, not it,’ said Steiner, ‘and she is my sister.’

Håkon pulled on a grin as greasy as the apron he wore and held up his hands. ‘Why didn’t you say, little one?’

Kjellrunn looked at Steiner and sighed. ‘You know exactly who I am,’ she said. ‘And you always find a way to make things difficult.’

‘Is that so?’ said Steiner, his eyes fixed on the butcher, sharp and hard as flints.

‘I’m just gaming with the girl is all,’ said Håkon. ‘You know these young ones, they can’t take a joke.’

‘Maybe we’ll have some jokes next time you come to the smithy to buy new knives,’ said Kjellrunn. She took the bundle from the counter and slammed down a few coins, before taking her leave of the dingy shop.

‘I meant no harm,’ said Håkon.

‘I’m sure,’ replied Steiner in a tone that said anything but.

The butcher’s expression hardened and his eyes settled on Kjellrunn, now waiting in the street outside.

‘You watch yourself, Steiner.’ Håkon leaned across the counter, his voice rough and low. ‘She’s not right, always sneaking off to the woods and gathering herbs and mushrooms and crow feathers. Sister or no, she’s not right.’

Kjellrunn heard all of this and stood in street, rigid with fear. Her eyes darted to the townsfolk nearby to see if they’d heard the outburst, but none met her eye, scurrying away, keen to avoid any trouble. Steiner emerged a few seconds later, red-faced, jaw clenched in fury and hands closed into fists.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Kjellrunn in small voice.

‘You did nothing wrong, Kjell,’ replied Steiner, though she had the awful feeling he didn’t really mean it.

‘He’s always the same, always making things awkward.’

Steiner gave a curt nod but didn’t speak. They marched down the street and Kjellrunn struggled to keep up, almost slipping in the grey slush that coated the cobbles.

‘There’s Kristofine,’ she said, pointing ahead to where the tavern-keeper’s daughter stood outside the baker’s, chatting with another woman.

Steiner looked up and his eyes widened. ‘Who is that?’

The woman Kristofine was talking to was unlike anyone Kjellrunn had seen before, and the wry smile she wore was evidence she knew it. All of Cinderfell were acquainted with the occasional sailor from Shanisrond, but there was something truly different about the stranger, not simply the tone of her skin. She was lighter than the dark-skinned sailors of Dos Fesh, and the cast of her eyes marked her as a descendant of Dos Kara; the hair that hung to her waist was raven black. Kjellrunn found it impossible to guess her age. She wore a deerskin jerkin with matching knee-length boots and her shirt sleeves were rolled back to the elbow, revealing wrists encircled by copper hoops, bright with verdigris, bangles of shining jet and polished ivory. A sabre hung from one hip and the scars on her forearms proved it wasn’t for show.

‘Hoy there,’ said Steiner, a touch of uncertainty in his tone.

Kristofine grinned and the woman beside her rolled her eyes.

‘I don’t bite. I was just asking your friend here if there’s a room I can take for the night.’

‘Ignore my brother,’ said Kjellrunn. ‘Unusual women make him nervous.’ Kristofine and the stranger burst out laughing and Kjellrunn found herself laughing along with them. Steiner scratched the back of his head.

‘I was just surprised to see Kristofine is all,’ he replied and looked away.

‘How are you, Kjell?’ asked Kristofine. ‘Been to Håkon’s? Make sure you wash that meat. You never know where his hands have been.’

Steiner pulled a face. ‘I think I’ve just lost my appetite. Possibly for the whole week.’

‘The man is a pig,’ said Kjellrunn, ‘A dirty great pig. Imagine a pig running a butcher’s, how absurd.’

Steiner and Kristofine frowned at her observation, but the stranger smiled and held out her hand.

‘I’m Romola. I like the way your mind works. Like a poet or a madman.’

‘Uh, thanks,’ replied Kjellrunn. ‘I’m not sure I’m so keen on being mad.’

Romola pouted. ‘In a world this strange, madness seems like a good option, right?’

Kjellrunn wasn’t sure what the woman meant, but drank in every detail of her. ‘Are you a pirate?’ she asked.

‘Kjell!’ Steiner stared at his sister and glanced at Romola. ‘Forgive my sister, she, uh, well …’

‘Some days,’ replied Romola.

‘Some days what?’ said Steiner.

‘Some days I’m a pirate.’ Romola turned a smile on Kristofine. ‘But not today and not recently.’

I was right, mouthed Kjellrunn to Steiner, and smiled.

Steiner began to laugh and stifled it with a cough behind his hand.

‘Why don’t you two come to the tavern,’ said Kristofine. ‘I was going to show Romola around and we could have something to eat.’

Kjellrunn caught the way Kristofine looked her brother and felt some unknown feeling course through her, swirling dangerously.

‘I should get back,’ said Kjellrunn. ‘Father will be waiting.’ These last words were pointed at Steiner, but he was too busy smiling at Kristofine to notice.

‘It was nice to meet you,’ said Romola. ‘You take care of yourself now.’

Kjellrunn nodded and stalked away, angry with Kristofine but unsure why.

‘Tell Father I’ll be home in a while,’ Steiner called after her, but Kjellrunn pretended not to hear and bowed her head.

‘Not sure I care for a half-wit brother who abandons me halfway through a trip to town,’ she muttered to herself. ‘And I’m not sure I care for being called mad by an ex-pirate.’ A passerby on the street glanced at her and crossed to the other side. ‘And I certainly don’t care for the way Kristofine stares at my brother. What is going on between those two?’

Steiner didn’t reappear for the rest of the afternoon and if Marek minded he didn’t show it. Kjellrunn stayed up after dinner and fussed with this and that in the kitchen. Finally the latch rattled on the kitchen door and Steiner shouldered his way into the room, a little unsteady on his feet.

‘Did you see a ghost on the walk home?’ Kjellrunn was sitting at the table in her nightshirt, hands clasped around a mug of hot milk.

‘Not a ghost, but it turns out Romola is a storyweaver as a well as a pirate. She told a story that was unsettling.’

‘Which story?’

‘Bittervinge and the Mama Qara.’

‘That’s not a scary story. Not really.’

‘It depends who’s telling it, I suppose,’ said Steiner quietly.

‘What else did she say?’ Kjellrunn’s eyes were bright with curiosity.

‘No stories, only that Imperial soldiers are in town, and there’ll be an Invigilation tomorrow.’

Kjellrunn sat up straighter in her chair, then set her eyes on her mug.

‘I hate it,’ was all she said.

‘So did I,’ replied Steiner.

She remembered being inspected by the Synod, how her palms had sweated and her stomach knotted like old rope, wondering if she would be taken away for bearing the taint of dragons.

‘But this is the last time you have to do it,’ said Steiner. ‘You’ll be fine, Kjell.’

She struggled not to tremble and said nothing.

‘There’s been no witchsign in Cinderfell for twenty years,’ said Steiner. ‘And you’ve always passed without a problem before. This year won’t be any different.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ she said, her mouth a bitter curve of worry.

‘Kjell, is there anything, any reason … Do you doubt you’ll pass this year? If there’s anything you wanted to tell me …’

‘Of course not!’ She stood up and marched past him, climbing the stairs without a backward glance.

‘Good night then,’ he called after her, but there was little good about it.

CHAPTER THREE

Steiner

Though many Imperial scholars argue there is no proof linking the emergence of the arcane with our former draconic masters, the Holy Synod takes it as a matter of faith. Ours is a double poisoning; ash and smoke have tainted the sky just as young children manifest unearthly powers. How else to explain the unexplainable?

– From the field notes of Hierarch Khigir, Vigilant of the Imperial Synod.

Steiner looked up into the skies from the porch and watched the grey snow drifting down, obscuring roof and road. It lay along lintels and windowsills, a hushed drabness for the gloomy town. The chill wind, so often a feature in Cinderfell, was absent that day.

‘The snow will cover everything if it keeps up like this,’ whispered Kjellrunn, joining him in the porch, a shawl wrapped about her shoulders. Her breath misted on the air and for a moment Steiner’s mind wandered to Romola’s tale of dragons from the previous night. ‘Perhaps the Vigilants will forget we’re here,’ added Kjellrunn.

‘Small chance of that.’ Steiner forced a smile at his sister. ‘Still, they might catch a cold and go home.’ He knew exactly how she felt; he had stood for six Invigilations and was glad he’d not have to do so again. Each time he’d wondered if some glimmer of the arcane would see him taken by the Synod.

‘Last night, you said you hoped you’d pass the Invigilation. You haven’t …’ Steiner struggled for the words.

‘Started casting spells that summon the winds and make people burst into flames?’ said Kjellrunn.

‘I think I would have noticed that,’ replied Steiner with a smile, but Kjellrunn didn’t return it, looking away to the falling snow. ‘You and Father are all I have. I don’t know what I’d do if they took you, Kjell. I don’t know what Father would do.’

‘No one is going take me,’ replied Kjell, but Steiner couldn’t miss the way she looked off to the horizon as she said it, not meeting his eyes.

‘You’ll walk your sister to school today?’ said Marek from the kitchen, as if Steiner would refuse.

‘Of course.’

‘And wait until she can come home.’ Steiner couldn’t miss the guarded tone in his father’s voice. There would be no lessons today. There would be no teachers. It was impossible to spare a thought for anything else at times like these.

‘We’d best get to it,’ said Steiner, slipping an arm around Kjellrunn’s shoulders.

‘Wait now.’ Their father’s voice was soft, softer than the snow falling outside. Marek pulled a brooch from a pocket. He took a step towards Kjellrunn with a sad smile on his lips. ‘This was your mother’s. You should have it.’

Kjellrunn blinked, then her expression fell as she saw the brooch, styled in the shape of a sledgehammer. It had been cast in black iron; hardly the jewellery a young woman yearned for.

‘Wear it today.’ Marek pulled open her shawl and reached for the tunic beneath, pinning the brooch in place. ‘If you get scared at the Invigilation, remember your mother.’

‘But … but I don’t remember my mother,’ said Kjellrunn in a whisper. ‘I don’t remember her at all.’ The pain of that absence was written across her slender face in that moment, as tears blossomed at the corners of her eyes. Steiner did not share her pain, only nursed a resentment that the woman who’d birthed him had fled to gods knew where.

‘She loved you,’ said their father. ‘Be brave.’ Marek waved them off and closed the door, leaving Kjellrunn and Steiner with the long walk ahead, surrounded by drifting grey motes of snow.

‘Do you have one?’ asked Kjellrunn, when they were a few streets away. Steiner was glad of the question, for the distraction. Anything was preferable to the endless din of anxiety in his mind, like a smithy consumed with work.

‘No,’ he replied, glancing at the hammer brooch. ‘But I’d rather have the real thing anyway. I couldn’t do much in the smithy with a hammer that small.’ He nudged her with an elbow and was rewarded with a smile which faded as they drew closer to the bay. The menace of the red ship was not lessened by the cheerless weather. Three soldiers idled on the pier, waiting for a smaller boat that ferried indistinct figures across the water.

‘That’s the ship.’ Kjellrunn’s voice was a whisper. ‘That’s the ship that will take all those poor children away for cleansing.’

Every year the Synod arrived in Cinderfell with around two score of children, gathered up from across Vinterkveld. Every year those children were piled on a ship and never seen again. Cinderfell was the last stop on their unholy tour of the continent.

‘Perhaps they take them to Khlystburg?’ said Kjellrunn. It was an age-old pastime, wondering where the ships took children tainted with witchsign.

‘Khlystburg.’ Capital of the Solmindre Empire and final destination of dissenters and traitors. ‘No, they’re not taken to Khlystburg,’ said Steiner.

‘Then where?’ She eyed him and frowned. ‘Do you know?’

Steiner’s eyes strayed to the sea even as his thoughts turned to Vladibogdan, the mysterious island Verner had mentioned. The waters were a flat green expanse that swallowed each snowflake and Steiner reached for Kjellrunn’s hand and held it tight. Together they watched parents walking their children to the Invigilation with heavy hearts. The chill in their bones had nothing to do with the weather.

‘I wish Mother was here,’ said Kjellrunn, her grip tightening on his hand as the words slipped free. ‘I’d like to see her just once in my life.’

‘Your life isn’t over, Kjell. They’ll not take you today. Look them in the eye when they come close, don’t let them see you’re afraid.’

‘That’s easier said than done,’ grumbled Kjell.

‘Don’t look down at your boots, it makes them think you have something to hide. And don’t sing, even to comfort yourself. Don’t breathe a word about the old gods either.’

‘Goddesses. And I’m not a fool. You really think I’d bring up Frøya and Frejna on a day like this?’

Steiner didn’t answer, but watched Kjellrunn’s expression darken.

‘Of course not,’ he replied after they’d trudged on a dozen feet. ‘I’m just worried is all. There’s been no witchsign in Cinderfell for decades and I don’t want that to change today.’

‘Nor will it,’ said Kjellrunn, her hand straying to the hammer brooch Marek had given her.

Steiner considered another truth, one the fishermen spoke of when they were in dark moods and well into their cups. Was it possible that the Vigilants had darker motives for taking the children away? Kjellrunn marched beside him, all tangled hair, built like a sparrow with a watchful cast to her eye. She was more urchin than woman, and Steiner hoped it would provide some measure of protection.