Will Shetterly - Witch Blood (11 page)

“You don’t look any older than I.”

“Appearances are deceiving.”

She laughed. “You’re talking to a witch.” She placed a hand on my chest. “This isn’t an old man’s body.”

“Maybe I’m a shape-shifter.”

“Maybe,” she said. “I see one shape that’s beginning to shift.”

We kissed then. I can’t say who began it. We explored with touch and scent and taste where sight had already been. Sometime later Naiji moved up by me so her face was inches from mine. “I like you,” she said thoughtfully, perhaps a little amused. “You are... appreciative.”

“Very,” I agreed. I turned and lifted her from the water to the floor. “And I have a strong sense of fairness.”

I slid down, kissing her stomach, then licking her navel, which made her laugh. “Stop that!”

“If you wish.” I sat up and reached for my new clothes.

She squinted at me, pursed her lips, and said, “I’d be more convinced if I thought you’d be able to button your pants.”

I dropped the clothes there and rolled onto her. “Comfortable?” I asked.

“Anyone ever say you talk too much?”

The floor of a bath is no place for lengthy couplings. Perhaps uncomfortable sites for passion are all the more exciting because they seem so inappropriate. My release came moments before hers. I continued the dance of hips, trusting the little man to stand a short while longer, and that short while was enough for Naiji.

We lay still in shared silence. I wondered what I should say to her and whether I should say anything at all. She seemed to sleep. When her eyes flicked open, she grinned. “A bed next time.”

“Now?”

She laughed. “Old man. Right. You look as if you haven’t seen twenty-five winters, and you act as though the count is more like fifteen.”

I should have had a retort ready for that, but I didn’t. I said, “About this matter of who I am—”

She hugged me. “You’re Rifkin. That’s enough.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Isn’t it?”

Part of my soul craved the safety of secrecy. Another part said
Speak. What does it matter? The past is a far land, where none return
. Yet I only said “Yes. I suppose so.”

8

“
THE WITCHES ARE
our enemies,” Tchanin Priest would say whenever a new student joined us. A few of those later students came from Loh, but most were sent from neighboring communities to live with relatives in our village or to stay in the students’ hut that we built during Tchanin’s fourth year in Loh. Kiyan of Istviar was the seventeenth student to join us, and she stood at the far end of the students’ line. I watched her from my place as Second Student.

I had thought the accents of those from Istviar were amusing, until I heard Kiyan speaking. I had thought the shorter sleeves and pants of the Istviarfolk were the sort of things that fools would wear, until I saw them on Kiyan. I had thought that women should be short and pale and long-haired and small breasted and perhaps ten thousand other things, until Kiyan came to our class.

Kiyan said, “There are many families of witches in Istviar, and—”

“That,” said Tchanin, “is the shame of Istviar.”

“They’ve never harmed anyone.”

“They’ve never had the opportunity. You all wear steel or iron jewelry, don’t you?”

“Yes, master, but—”

“But you forget why you wear it.” He sighed. “It is the way of people. It’s why your mother has sent you to study with me, Kiyan. She has not forgotten.”

“My mother lives in the past.”

Tchanin nodded. “Because she is wise. Listen, Kiyan. You’ve heard the old songs, yet you haven’t learned from them. Why did the Warrior-Saint discover the Art? Because she and her people were slaves to the witches. They were forbidden to have weapons, so they had to learn to make anything a weapon, to make themselves into weapons.”

“They forged iron weapons in secret, Master Tchanin.”

“Of course. But only later, when the secret of iron had been learned. That was long after the Art had been perfected.”

“And they nearly exterminated the witches.”

I heard a hint of accusation in Kiyan’s voice, but if Priest Tchanin heard it, he ignored it. He said, “It was their only failure, Kiyan. They were tired of killing. And so we exist, to ensure that the witches never rule us again.”

“How can they?” She touched her metal necklace.

“They can wait for us to think they are defenseless. So we must be vigilant.”

Tchanin had never been so patient with the rest of us, and so we knew that Kiyan’s mother was important. But a part of me wondered if it was his way of saying that Kiyan was not wise enough to learn.

“Why don’t you murder them all?”

“Because they are not a threat now. We watch them, Kiyan. We will watch them until they threaten humanity. And then, if we act, it will be in humanity’s defense. We are not murderers. We are followers of the Warrior-Saint.”

His voice said he was done, and Kiyan heard that, for she bowed to him. Svanik, standing beside me in the Third’s place, gave the grimace that meant he was amused: silly foreigner needed to hear what everyone knew. Vayil, in the First’s place, continued to watch Priest Tchanin without letting any of us know what she thought.

After a session of free sparring, Tchanin had us form two lines. We would practice combinations of moves with a partner, so I watched the lines. When I saw where Kiyan would be, I let a younger student stand on my left rather than my right, so I would be Kiyan’s partner.

She had studied somewhere, and she would not stay in the least place in our class for long. Between moves I whispered, “Who taught you? Your mother?”

“No. I stayed a year on the White Mountain.”

“Oh,” I whispered, as though I did not care, but I was impressed. Tchanin had told us that we would not go to the White Mountain until we were ready to take the Master’s Test. I had not known anyone else could go.

“They thought I was weak.”

“Your form’s good.”

“About witches.”

“Ah.” I looked for Tchanin and saw that he was still far from us. “There aren’t any around here. My mother pities them. She thinks they took advantage of power because they had the opportunity to do so. She thinks anyone would, and we should forgive them. It’s been centuries, after all.”

“Your mother sounds wiser than these fools.”

I nodded and didn’t tell her that Svanik and I had been telling witch jokes just that morning.

I tested to become a Priest in my seventeenth year, and that meant nine months of training in the Wooden Temple atop White Mountain. Most of us were sad to leave our families in Loh. Vayil almost stayed behind, for her family said she was an adult and must forget the Priesthood to learn the trade of the Searich clan. She came anyway. I said farewell to Bellis, who had become head of our family after Mima drowned, and to the rest of my family in Loh, and the parting was tearless. I saved my tears for my parting with Kiyan.

We met in a bamboo grove near Tchanin’s home. The day was very warm. Kiyan waited for me, wearing only the loose, ankle-length pants that should have made her seem one of us. They were made of a very fine cotton and let all of us know that her family must be important. When I saw her, I said, “H’lo, rich girl.”

“You’re such a dope, Rifkin.” I thought I’d angered her, but she threw her arms around me. Our embrace might have become something else if she hadn’t stepped back. “You’re going?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not.”

“Why?”

“Stupid Priests.”

“Yeah.” I shrugged in sympathy. When I was with her, I understood her fear and mistrust of the Priests, or thought I did. I also suspected there was a reason she had not told me.

“My mother wants me to come back.”

“You and Vayil. Everyone’s expected to learn the family business.” I laughed. “Envy me, rich girl?”

“Course not. You’re a dope. You think I should feel sorry for you because you’re a poor dope.”

“I’m not poor,” I said, repeating Tchanin’s thoughts. “I’m free.”

“You’re a free dope,” she said, but she smiled, and I might have challenged the Black Shark then, if it had appeared before us.

“Yeah,” I said. “Marry me.”

“I can’t.”

“Your mother’s a dope. Everyone’s a dope.”

“I do love you, Rifkin.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“It’s just—”

“Yeah.”

She glared and said, “Would you come to Istviar if I asked? Would you give up the White Mountain and the name of Rifkin Priest?”

“Would you ask me to?”

“Maybe. That’s what you’re asking me. To give up Istviar and live with a bunch of Priests. I couldn’t live on poor people’s handouts, Rifkin.”

“We could have a garden. We could fish. We could—”

“Yeah. Sure.”

I put my hands on her bare shoulders. “The Priests aren’t bad, Kiyan.”

“They’re capricious. They talk of mastering ways of fighting in order to be confident enough to never have to fight. It’s insane, Rifkin. I watch Tchanin, sometimes. He’s proud, you know. Proud of what he can do. And he likes to watch us fight.”

“You can’t judge the philosophy by its followers, Kiyan. Tchanin said that. He knows he’s not perfect.”