Nasty Little Witchling

Vince Riker

There were far too many people in my bedroom these days.

I appreciated at least one of them with Janette sitting at the foot of our bed and offering me support. She could have run the whole duchy in my place but preferred to debate and leave the stress-inducing decisions to me.

My sleepwear was rumpled and my skin felt clammy from the nightmares of pain or the real thing. My lovely partner looked beautiful and put together despite waking up with me an hour ago. Her brown hair and blue eyes shone with a vibrance my tangled mess and dark circles couldn’t hope to replicate.

The young healer holding onto my wrist, while I sat up against the headboard, was also appreciated and possibly even the palace’s head healer sleeping in the chair next to her. My constant ‘ailments’ were ‘good practice’ for his apprentices.

At the moment the curse was dormant and I only felt like someone had stabbed me in the guts and twisted the knife. The sudden attacks that came with it were excruciating. We were nearing the end of the third week of me being ill and only the constant presence of the healers ready to pounce on the slightest appearance of pain made it bearable.

Nothing the curse did was life-threatening, or it was but vanished before it came to that. The blood clots that got stuck dissolved, my lungs would start to work as soon as I was about to pass out or the migraine that made me want to jump out the window would fade away.

We hadn’t known what was going on in the first week since the pain in my gut was dull and the symptoms would vanish before healers got to me to diagnose the issue. Janette was a talented healer but tended to resolve issues with more spells rather than diagnoses and precision.

It started acting up more in the second week and allowed the head healer to catch what was going on. He knew what was wrong and rattled off different names of deadly illnesses but was flummoxed on what was causing them to appear and disappear.

Plans of tearing through the castle and its staff were being discussed when news of the dead witch made things clear for me. After over fifteen years of waiting for the deal to bite me in the ass and nothing happening, I had put it behind me. While the baron was technically under my influence I thought the curse was being unfair for punishing me.

I’d shared my suspicions with a few people and my daughter had taken it upon herself to investigate.

Knight Commander Faraya, Chief of Information Gathering and Secrecy, Jeremy and General Kylepo were lounging in my sitting area and probably whispering about anything but their respective jobs judging by the smiles.

Despite my confinement to my quarters, we were getting more work done than ever. Instead of Chiefs sending in representatives to discuss topics, they had to come in person, since the three loungers were adamant on limiting the people who knew I was even ailed. No more middle management.

It did, however, end up with three Chiefs arguing in my bedroom. Trade, agriculture and transport for today.

A knock stopped them all from talking about whichever issues they had circled back to for the fifth time. One of the Knights guarding the door poked his head in. “Sir, Captain Leonarda and Captain Riker have returned.”

“Thank you, Jackson. Please send someone to bring them up,” I said. I would have been wondering why they’d arrived at the same time if Jeremy hadn’t told me this morning that my daughter was in Kiteer, with a young girl whose identity even he couldn’t figure out.

The Chief of Trade took the opportunity to speak to me directly. “Sir, the deal I struck with my counterpart was made with data provided by the agriculture wing. We can make fifty cases of Harow wine a week, and we sell maybe twenty-five of those. I don't see why my deal to sell twenty of the remaining is being argued here.”

“That doesn’t take into account those we set aside to age and the ones we send here.”

“And we can’t shrink wine so that’s an entire train carriage that needs to be carefully packed so the glass doesn’t break. Do you know how unprofitable that is to send across the country?”

“Just make more wine and this isn’t about profit, it’s about the other concessions we are getting from Vitosa’s Duke for providing the wine.”

“Quiet,” I said, looking to get this over with so I could get them out of my room and down whatever cure was being brought.

“Sir?”

“Get some mages to the vineyards and speed up grape production. My understanding is that the wineries are idle most of the time, waiting for harvest. So solving the bottleneck should fix this.”

The Chief of Agriculture looked aghast at my very reasonable suggestion. “Duke Riker, any person with a discerning palate would be able to tell if the grapes were grown with spells by force. The loss of the flavour depth would ruin the good name our wine has cultivated. We simply cannot.”

I highly doubted that. “Create more vineyards then.”

“Sir, that’s a long-term solution. The trade agreement goes into effect next month.”

I started writing my decision down despite the argument continuing without me. We’d use some of the stock kept by the palace to meet the demand—I didn’t like wine much anyway and Janette could make do with less. And also a message to be sent over telegram for settlements to draw up plans for a vineyard to try win funding from us.

I signed the bottom, tore off the page and waved over my Chief of Staff who was reliving her days as a messenger girl for my Mum. She looked over my scribbles and gave me a look I knew to mean my handwriting was barely legible.

“I’ll see them out and go send off the transmission. Maybe a meeting in the afternoon after I see our wine cellar and available funding.”

“Thank you, Yanla.”

The open door she was shepherding the three through broke the layer of iron surrounding us and let me sense the two approaching mages escorted by a staff member, I was disappointed neither was my Anna.

Ian and Captain Leonarda walked in through the door Yanla and the Chiefs left through.

“Morning, Duke Riker.” “Morning, sir.”

I was not so patiently waiting for the greetings to the rest of the room to be given so I could ask my question.

“Where’s Anna?” Janette asked before I could.

“She had to handle something downstairs,” Ian said. “She’ll be up in a moment.”

“Let’s have a look at them then,” Head Healer Morris said, waking up from what he would argue was ‘resting his eyes.’

Leonarda pulled out a small box that contained a potion vile and a piece of folded paper. Ian brought out a piece that was half crumpled. My hopes of a cure felt like they were about to be thrown from the battlements.

“Firstly, we're quite confident neither of these will work,” Ian said. And down they went.

“Do you have forty years of experience as a healer?” Morris asked.

“No, but—”

“Give the one who does a moment then,” Morris said and started reading Leonarda’s paper. “This is good work but having not given the healers over in Kiteer all the information they made a pretty standard potion. It would help lessen the symptoms during the attacks but not much else.”

“And this…I don’t even want to read past the first line. Blood of the witch? Is this what they teach nowadays?”

“We found someone who is familiar with curses and that was the cure they proposed,” Ian said. “I tried to work around that since we had a small amount of blood.”

“What backcountry lunatic spouted this nonsense,” Morris scoffed. “A curse is simply a phenomenon we do not yet understand. Besides, you’re trying to do too many things at once, most of these would not respond in the body the way you’re hoping.”

“If you came here this relaxed while knowing that these won’t work, you must have another plan?” Janette asked while squeezing my leg through the covers.

“Annalise can explain that better, she just told us we had a cure and needed to show that the other methods weren't going to work,” Ian said.

“What does the girl have to do with all this?” Jeremy asked. It was always amusing to watch the faces of people get given information they thought wasn’t known.

“Ah, Valeria? Annalise also wants to explain that part,” Ian said.

Janette and I shared a look. It seemed our daughter had a lot of explaining to do.

The Knight Captain looked like he was trying to hide a smile. “Commander, just to let you know, we’re officially looking to recruit this girl to be a part of the Knights.”

I looked at Faraya who was already scowling with her arms folded, leaning back into my plush sofa. “We pay a lot of people a lot of roe to recruit for us and you’re not one of them. Don’t go doing jobs for free just to annoy me, Aaron.”

The man couldn’t help himself, it seemed, as he smiled widely. “Commander, think of the stealthiest, most annoying thing to try and sense. Think of the predators of the Red Forest that we tell stories about to terrify the new recruits so they learn not to rely on only their mana perception.”

My mind went to the Elven Amari, their version of cavalry. They took the elves' talent for mana to an obsessive level of perfection. By copying the suppression and circulation of mana their mounts used the pair became almost invisible to the senses of someone who wasn’t looking for them.

It didn’t have much use outside the forest and assassinating novice mages but the giant forked tongue flicking into my face, before I even noticed them approaching, was a memory that would stick with me.

Aaron was nodding his head with the smile still stretched across his face. “She’s worse.”

He turned to the still open door and sensed Anna coming up the steps. “Please don’t mention any of this to Captain Riker, she’ll gut me.”

A recruitment of someone useful she picked up didn't sound like something my daughter would threaten him over. If anything she should be happy the girl had job opportunities.

Anna walked in and nodded to the two by the door before hugging her mother. I was happy she was back but the tired look in her eyes as she kissed my cheek muted that. “Hey, Papa. How are you feeling?”

I lifted up the wrist that the apprentice healer was still holding. “Chained to my bed listening to these people talk all day is exhausting. How was the trip?”

She looked worried as she checked who else was in the room while saying hello and spoke to the healer. “Do you mind waiting outside?”

The girl glanced at me and then at Morris before getting up and closing the door behind her. I felt like an addict who just had his vice taken from him. Morris was still no more than a yard away but the thought of experiencing the sudden pain for more than a moment had my heart pounding in my ears.

“We're eager to hear about this terrifying predator you’ve been travelling with,” Jeremy said with a smirk.

“And this business with witch's blood,” Morris added. I agreed on both accounts.

Anna scowled at the two men before reaching into a pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper. Another theoretical cure for Morris to criticise? She handed it to me instead.

Request provided, Recipe and healing tincture for mana poisoning. Payment, A seed, journals on witchcraft, various ingredients, cloaking enchantment. Contingency, Vow of secrecy, Willing acceptance of Curse of retaliation spanning anyone under his influence.”

A seed. I would have laughed at the error if it wasn’t such a mortifying memory.

The ‘various ingredients’ part was written there like they didn’t all cost tens of thousands of roe. And ‘willing acceptance’ was a very, very loose term to use.

“We found the home of the witch responsible, right where you said it was,” she said to me. “Do you want to explain that? Does Mum know? Does anyone?”

I was glad she didn’t seem disappointed in my deal but she probably understood what that cure had done for her mother. And, like me, would have given more for it.

“I got it,” I said and took a deep breath. “Ian, please leave.”

“Please bring Valeria up in ten minutes,” Anna added before the door shut.

Everyone left was someone I’d known for decades or trusted with my life, even the younger captain. “As some of you know, eighteen years ago Janette was diagnosed with early onset mana poisoning. Morris was the one who made the diagnosis and told us it would have only gotten worse as she got older. We didn’t have much funding for the rare disease and the Duke at the time wasn’t going to allocate more than a pittance. There was no possibility of a cure in sight so I went to go get it somewhere else.”

Those here already knew where I went since I’d told them the location but I felt context was important so I wasn’t judged. “I got the cure, paid for it and accepted a curse that stipulated I couldn’t speak on it, until she died apparently, or harm her. The Baron seems to have taken it under his own initiative to have her executed which triggered the curse.”

“Thirteen years you’ve kept this from me,” Janette said and squeezed my leg with what I thought was a mixture of annoyance and gratitude.

“It was for you and did you miss the part about a curse?” I asked and got swatted for my stupid question.

It was actually fifteen years ago that I had seen the witch and I could still remember her piercing green eyes and haughty arrogance. We used her formula to try to recreate our own version, where we knew all of the effects of the ingredients we used, but it hadn’t worked. And Janette’s condition was progressing and turning painful so we went with the original and disseminated the recipe later on.

I didn’t sleep well that year, waiting for the news of a new outbreak of ghouls from what I’d done.

I heard Morris click his tongue. He probably still wanted the staff interrogated for potential poisoners rather than stories of curses. He was one of very few who still thought there was a cure for the ghouls down in the capital.

“We need to have a meeting on Kiteer’s Baron some other time,” Anna added. “But I went out to the witch’s previous home and found a girl there, Valeria. There were a few incidents but we got her to translate this and other books for us since they were written in witch’s scrawl.

The curse wasn’t acting up but I still felt like I was having a heart attack. I hadn’t put together that that was where they had found the girl. I had assumed she was a runaway from some town wanting to go to the city. “How old’s the girl?”

“Just or almost fifteen, she’s not sure exactly. Did you notice her when you went, thirteen years ago Valeria would have been two?” Anna said. “Her mana and casting make me think there's some elven in her ancestry.”

I shook my head, feeling pale and clammy. I held out my arm to Morris to make sure it wasn’t the curse and he shook his head after casting a spell.

“We think she was kidnapped too young to remember her family so it must have been soon after. She had been training as a witch until her mana came in and since then has been acting as some sort of servant to the now deceased witch.”

Maybe if she knew the exact time I’d been there and had a proper translation she would have thought differently. I was trying to remember the season I’d gone and counting months between then and the girl's birthday. Maybe five at most. It wasn’t long enough but it didn’t reassure me.

“I later asked her about a cure and she told me about digesting the blood of the witch that cursed you and since the curse was taken on willingly the blood had to be given willingly.”

I held up my arm to prevent Morris from trying to debate that. He still spoke.

“Blood is one thing but this girl is leading you by the nose, willingness as a stipulation in a physical cure is preposterous.”

“I’m not sure if it’s true but because of the incidents she might have lied to us then. We had collected some blood splatter and traces on the execution weapon but were worried it wasn’t enough. Last night when we were discussing the cure she told me she had a different one that would work.”

“Which is?” Janette asked.

“I…was annoyed at her for lying and walked away without asking,” Anna said. “But I assume it’s a ritual of some kind since she didn’t need ingredients.”

I had an idea of what it could be but didn’t want it to be true.

“We’re just going to trust her?” the general spoke up for the first time.

“I’ve been with her for these last few days and she's an incredibly sweet girl. You should see her with Missy.”

“You said it yourself Annalise, she has reason to lie to you,” Jeremy said. “A few days isn’t enough time to start trusting someone who grew up with a witch. She just randomly changes her mind after lying to you? Doesn’t need any ingredients and needs to be close to the duke?”

“I agree with these two,” Faraya said. “We can’t let her in here to do whatever it is she wants. Even if our esteemed healer thinks there is a logical explanation for everything that involves curses, we can’t risk her doing something to worsen the Duke’s.”

The door cracked open and I was about to tell Ian to not listen to Anna and keep the girl downstairs. A small part of me hoped she’d run away and I wouldn’t have to see her.

Contrary to what my senses told me, someone walked in before Ian closed the door again.

Faraya, Kylepo and Morris were all out of their seats, advancing on the girl. Anna and Leonarda stepped up to block the general and commander while the black-haired, amber-eyed girl backed into my desk.

Black hair that matched my own but I tried to reason that amber was completely separate from my brown eyes. Morris managed to get behind the arguing pair of captains and my very disciplined military commanders.

His proximity to the girl stopped the arguing over what was going on with her mana and who got to recruit her. “May I?” he asked with that disarming old man demeanour.

It didn’t work on anyone who knew him but she placed her hand in his outstretched palm after looking to Anna for reassurance.

“That’s annoying,” he mumbled after three separate and different tangles of mana. The girl shivered after a fourth attempt and withdrew her hand.

Morris stood for a while before walking back to his chair near me with a distant look in his eyes. The others went back to arguing after Morris wouldn’t respond to them. Valeria sat down in the large chair at my desk, the tips of her toes barely reaching the wood floor.

Jeremy probably caught onto the significance of what was going on since he was starting his own argument. He was the only one in the room without mana, no matter how much he liked to pretend he did.

I looked back to Valeria who was in the middle of putting a fountain pen in her pocket but stopped when we locked eyes. No matter how expensive the sleek green and black item with ‘Riker’ on it looked, it couldn't have seemed better to steal than my jewellery sitting right next to it. There was also a knife next to an apple that was only half sliced so I didn’t think she wanted to stab me with it either.

She didn’t bat an eye as I wondered why she would want it, I smirked at the gall and nodded my head. The pen disappeared into one of her overall's pockets.

I glanced over at Janette to try to assess her thoughts but my vision blurred.

The pain in my gut twisted and knotted. My lungs felt like someone poured molten iron into them. Then it was over and I felt Morris gripping my wrist.

“Are you okay, dear?” I heard Janette ask after my ears stopped ringing. Everyone was quiet and looking at me.

“Yes, yes. Just fine. Morris got to me before the worst of it.”

“You’re a good liar,” an accented voice said. It was familiar but I couldn’t begin to guess the region it was from. We all turned to look at the girl kneeling on the chair and leaning her chin across her hands on the back of it.

“Watch your mouth, girl,” Kylepo said, forgetting the recruitment pitch. “I have half a mind to call in the guards and have you dragged to the dungeons. We have ways to make you talk and explain why the Duke suffered an attack for the first time today when you just happen to be here.”

I expected a wide eyed and fearful response as the large man threatened someone half their size but instead, she was looking at my daughter with sadness written across her face.

“She didn’t do anything,” Morris said. “There wasn’t the faintest disturbance of mana in the room. I also don’t think she has much reason to be loyal to that witch.”

“No one’s doing anything and that wasn’t even the first attack today,” I said. “Now, why did you call me a liar?”