Chapter 58: Escape

The stake was behind her.

Nightingale knew this before she was fully conscious — she could feel the wood against her back, and the rope at her wrists, and the rope at her waist, and the rope at her ankles, and the particular quality of air that meant she was in the same cave she had left, or tried to leave, some amount of time ago. She did not know how much time. The cave looked the same. The fire looked the same.

She tried to reach for her ability and found nothing. Not blocked, not resisted — simply absent, the way a limb feels when it has been bound too long. She looked down.

A crystal pendant hung from her neck on a length of cord. Prismatic, transparent, the length of two fingers. She had never seen one outside of Church hands.

God’s Locket of Retribution. The suppression device. The Church’s tool for taking witches alive rather than dead, when they wanted information or a confession or a public spectacle.

Their own mentor had one.

“You’re awake.” Cara came to stand in front of her, unhurried. She looked neither angry nor satisfied — she had the expression of someone doing a task they had already worked through the ethics of. “The petrifying venom. Useful, isn’t it? I hadn’t needed it in some time.”

Nightingale looked at the women behind her. Some of them were watching with the expression she had been afraid of — the nothing expression, the expression of people who have decided that what they are watching is appropriate, or at least acceptable, or at the very least not their responsibility.

“You have a God’s Locket,” Nightingale said. “Cara. You have one of their tools.”

“It’s a tool,” Cara said. “I use what works.” She didn’t sound defensive. She was past defense. “You disappointed me, Nightingale. I had hopes for you — considerable hopes. But what you’re doing tonight isn’t just foolishness. It’s treason. Against your own kind.”

“I’m trying to—”

“You’re trying to take our sisters to a nobleman who wants something from them. You are trying to convince them that their pain is unnecessary, that their losses meant nothing, that they should put their lives into the hands of a stranger who has been kind to two witches for a season and thinks this constitutes a record.” The hoarseness in her voice sharpened. “I know what you came from. Born noble, fell to this, still looking for a hand to hold. Still looking for a master. Did he feel like a better master than the last one? Or were you planning to sell your sisters to him for a comfortable position in his house?”

Nightingale said nothing.

“Confess it,” Cara said. “In front of everyone. Say that you were deceived, that you were led astray by an ambitious noble, that you understand now what you did. Accept the punishment — the whipping, not more than that, I am being generous — and return to your sisters.” She waited. “This is my last offer.”

She turned to the brazier and took out an iron skewer. The end that had been in the coals was bright as a new star, fading through orange to red as the air cooled it, but slowly, slowly.

She held it where Nightingale could see it clearly.

The heat reached Nightingale’s face from two feet away. She felt it the way she felt cold — not yet, but present, the way a thing announces itself before it arrives.

If I was still the girl from before.

She closed her eyes.

She thought, without wanting to, of the moment on the wall when Roland had said if you do not step out, you will never know the answer. She hadn’t expected it. She had expected something diplomatic or evasive or reassuring, the kind of answer a lord gives a witch to keep her cooperative. What she’d gotten instead was something that hadn’t been directed at her situation at all — it had been directed at the question underneath the situation, the actual question, which was: is it ever possible for things to be different than they are?

She didn’t know the answer. He hadn’t known the answer. But the not-knowing had sounded, in his voice, like something worth stepping into.

She kept her eyes closed.

“Stop.”

Wendy’s voice. Clear and level.

Nightingale opened her eyes.

Wendy had stepped out of the crowd, which by itself was remarkable — Wendy operated by consensus, by persuasion, by the slow gravity of a person who was kind and patient and waited for others to come to her. She did not put herself between a mentor’s skewer and a stake. She was doing it now.

“The white bands on our arms,” Wendy said. She wasn’t raising her voice. She didn’t need to. “We’ve lost enough. Do you want another?”

“She betrayed us,” Cara said. “She—”

“I don’t know if she’s right.” Wendy looked at Nightingale, and there was something honest in the look — the particular honesty of someone who is giving you what they have rather than what you want. “I don’t know if the prince is what she says he is. I’m not going with her to find out.” She turned back to Cara. “But she didn’t hurt anyone here. She told us about something she found. We didn’t have to agree with her.” A pause. “Who among us wants to go with her?”

Silence.

“Then she leaves alone,” Wendy said. “And we let her go.”

Whispers moved through the crowd. Nightingale heard them in pieces — she’s right, she didn’t do anything, the white bands, please mentor, let her leave — voices adding themselves to each other the way drops of water add to a stream, and Cara’s face tightened as she heard them.

“If I let her leave,” Cara said, “I teach everyone that this is acceptable. And when she sells our location to the Church—”

Wendy raised one hand and turned it palm-up, and the air in the cave moved. Not violently — she was not a violent woman — but with precision. The coin she’d held between two fingers left her hand on a current of air that carried it exactly where it needed to go, and the God’s Locket struck a high, crystalline note and came apart in fragments that scattered against the stake and the floor and Nightingale’s boots.

Cara looked at the broken stone. Then at Wendy.

“Traitor,” she said, very quietly.

The shadow snake she summoned was fast — Nightingale saw it leave Cara’s chest and she was already moving, but not fast enough for Wendy, who took the bite at the back of her hand and made a small controlled sound and did not fall.

Nightingale was no longer at the stake. The ropes still held their shape — a ghost of her, a gap in the air where she had been. She was behind Cara. She reached for the iron skewer, not from the hand that held it but from its working end, taking the heat through her palm in a pain that registered and was set aside, and drove it forward.

One step. One motion. Cara’s chest.

The cave went very loud very briefly, and then she was outside in the cold, moving through fog — her fog, the world of grey that had her and Wendy in it and had nothing else — with Wendy over her shoulder and the sound of shouts diminishing behind her.

Wendy was conscious. Barely.

“I have you,” Nightingale said.

“I know.” Her voice was wrong. Too thin. “I know you do.”

They moved.

Chapter 58 Escape

Nightingale didn’t know how long it lasted, but when she woke up she discovered that her hands were tied to a stake. The same could be said about her waist and feet, they were also tied to the stake. She tried to free herself by struggling, but her body was tied to the pole so strongly, that she was totally immobile.

The next step was to try using her magic ability, but she couldn’t feel the familiar feeling when reaching for her power – she seemed to be also cut off from her magic powers, so she was completely tied up. When Nightingale looked down along her body, she saw that a transparent prismatic stone was hanging down from her neck.

“You’re finally awake.” Cara walked in front of her and begun to talk to Nightingale, “What do you think about my petrifying venom? Honestly, I had high hopes for you, Nightingale. However, sadly you couldn’t live up to my expectations.”

” … ” Nightingale didn’t know how to answer first but then she took a deep breath and spoke reproachfully, “You were actually hiding a God’s Locket of Retribution. Cara, do you still know what you are doing?” This stone was originally shackles used by the Church to suppress witches, but now even their own mentor used it to deal with her, just like the Church! Though what made her even more angry was the callous look on the faces of the surrounding crowd, it seemed that there was nothing wrong with what they were seeing. Damn it, cried Nightingale at the bottom of her heart, don’t you think that you turned into the kind of person who us witches hate the most?!

“This is only a tool, which will be occasionally used to punish bad girls who won’t listen.” Explained Cara indifferently, “And you, Nightingale, are such a person who need to be punished, or… should I call you Veronica? Born

within a noble family, got reduced to a witch, but still thinking about how to climb the social hierarchy.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You let me down. When Wendy saved you from the clutches of the aristocracy, I thought you would stand firmly on the side of us, the Witch Cooperation Association. But, look at what you’re doing right now, when we will soon discover the Holy Mountain, you want to stop us from achieving our goal!” Cara shook her head and laughed loudly, but then continued, “Trying to take us sisters with you to the Prince? Were you kept captive for too long and now servility has deeply rooted itself into your being, so that you can only live on when you find for yourself a master; or else … do you just want to sell them to the nobles, in exchange for receiving a good position for yourself!”

“Everything I do is for my sisters.” Nightingale had to swallow down her anger, after all shouting would be meaningless, so she said calmly “I hope that no one will have to die during their day of awakening, hoping that they can live without worrying where they get clothes and food for their daily life. I never intended to stop your plan, but us sisters should have the right to freely choose our own way of life. At the moment Border Town is undergoing tremendous changes, I brought even the construction plan for the steam engine. It can operate on its own, with a nearly infinite force. With this kind of machine, the water within the mines can be directly pumped out, so that people don’t need to do it every day any longer.”

Cara sneered once more and asked pejoratively, “Are you talking about this?” She turned around and pulled a roll out of the stack of parchments and rolled it out, so that everyone could see it, “Although I don’t understand everything painted on this parchment, but who would believe that a bunch of dead, cold iron can be pieced together so that it can work independently like a living creature? Do you think we are all three years old children!”

She walked to the front of the brazier and threw the roll into the charcoal.

“No!” Cried Nightingale in vain, only able to stare blankly while the blueprint turned into ashes within the brazier.

“My patience has been exhausted, I will only give you one last chance.” while she threatened Nightingale, Cara took an iron skewer out of the brazier, whose end had already turned bright red from the heat. “If you plead guilty in front of all your sisters of the Witch Cooperation Association, admitting that you have been bewitched by the aristocracy, I can spare your life, but the whipping is unavoidable! After all this will be your lesson for cooperating with the enemy. But if you will still be stubborn, I will have to use this iron skewer to pierce your heart, nailing your body at the stake, so that everyone can learn from your wrongdoings.” After waiting for a second she said, “Do not miss my last offer of mercy, tell me now how have you decided?”

Holding the iron closer to Nightingale, so that she could have a better look, holding it so close that she could even feel the scorching heat coming from its tip. If she was still her cowardly self from before, she would have bowed and admitted defeat. But she had already bid farewell to her past self, no longer being that timid girl. Now she was Nightingale, a powerful witch, even in front of death she wouldn’t yield!

So she only closed her eyes, awaiting the arrival of her last moment. She didn’t know why, but an image of Roland appeared in front of her eyes.

“Stop!” Shouted someone suddenly, for a moment Nightingale hesitated, but then she opened her eyes. Nightingale could see that Wendy walked out of the crowd and said to Cara, “Mentor, look at the white cloth wrapped around your arm. We already have experienced so many deaths, do you really want to add another one?”

“What, even you are being deceived by her? Wake up, Wendy! What she said are all lies!”

“I do not know.” Wendy shook her head and continued, “I do not intend to go with her to Border Town, but I think that one of the things she said was right. We sisters should have the right to freely choose our own way of life.”

She turned around and loudly asked the crowd, “Which of you want to leave with her?”

No one within the crowd answered her, the scene fell into silence.

“So there is no problem when she is leaving alone.” said Wendy. “She didn’t harm the Witch Cooperation Association, so I really cannot watch you kill her.”

Nightingale had fully understood the meaning of Wendy’s words. She couldn’t help but get a sad feeling within her heart. Even Wendy didn’t completely believe what she had said. So because of this she kept silent when she needed her help when trying to convince everyone. But she was still the good-hearted and caring witch, even if she didn’t agree with her point of view, she would still lend a helping hand.

After Wendy’s remark, some whispering voices could be heard from within the crowd, and then a few people spoke up for her.

“Yes, since she is willing to return to the secular world, just let her go.”

“The Church and the pain have already taken so many sisters away from us. Respected mentor, please think about her punishment once more.”

“Everyone shut up!” Cara raged and shouted, “If I let her leave, what will we do when a second or a third Nightingale appear? Also if she sells the position of our camp to the Church, then we will have nowhere to escape!” the voices didn’t quiet down, so she lifted her arm to hit Nightingale with the iron skewer. But Wendy was a step faster, producing a strong breeze of wind, throwing Cara onto the ground and stopping her striking attempt.

Then she threw a coin into the air, raised and waved her hand, leading the rapid airflow to wrap around the coin and shooting it in the direction of Nightingale. When the airstream came near Nightingale it instantly disappeared. Yet the coin still maintained its speed, accurately hitting the God’s Locket of Retribution around Nightingale’s neck.

The transparent and prismatic stone released a hitting sound and instantly broke.

“Traitor!” Cara screamed furiously while standing up from the ground, Wendy and Ann belonged to her inner circle and were her right hands, but now one of them had betrayed her! Out of anger she threw out a shadow

snake which flew with it’s mouth open in the direction of Wendy, biting her ferociously at the back of her hand.

At this moment the ropes fell to the ground, still maintaining their wrap up formation around the stake, only Nightingale wasn’t any longer at her place, bonded to the stake.

When thinking about Nightingale’s ability, Cara felt cold sweat running down her back. She instantly mobilized all of her magic, creating magical snakes, gleaming with all possible color variations, which then poured out of her chest. Ordering them to form a wall, she herself rushed backwards – but Nightingale was still faster than her.

Only one step … just after one step, she already appeared behind Cara. Thrusting her hands forward, the iron hammer, which actually should have pierced her own heart, went straight through Cara’s body.