Chapter Text
He stood dripping on the stone floor of the tower's entrance hall, his robes plastered to his skin, his hair hanging in wet ropes around his face. Beside him, Olruggio was in similar condition—soaked through, breathing hard, one hand pressed to his ribs where the guardian's tendril had caught him. The fight to get past it had been harder than expected. Qifrey's hands were still shaking from the excitement of it.
"We made it," Qifrey said, his voice echoing in the vast stone chamber. The ceiling disappeared into shadow overhead, and the walls were lined floor to ceiling with shelves that spiraled up and up into the dark.Thousands of books, tens of thousands. Every forbidden text, every dangerous theory, every spell.
Somewhere in this tower was the answer. It had to be here.
"We made it," Olruggio agreed flatly. "We nearly drowned in a stairwell that tried to fill itself with seawater, and you dislocated your shoulder ramming that door. But yes, we made it. Congratulations."
"Mhm." Qifrey rotated said shoulder and winced. Olruggio had popped it back in while they were still on the stairs, apologizing the whole time. "You didn't have to come."
"Like hell I didn't. You think I was going to let you go here alone? You'd have gotten yourself killed or worse, and I'd have had to explain to the Knights Moralis why I didn't stop you."
"I would have been fine."
"You would have been reckless. You're always reckless when it comes to this."
His hand came up unconsciously to touch the scar, then stopped halfway. He'd learned not to touch it. Touching it made the ache worse, made him feel the absence more keenly. Made him aware of the hole in his face that matched the hole in his mind.
"Where do we start?" Olruggio asked, pulling him from his thoughts.
Qifrey curled his hands into fists to make them stop shaking. "Records. There has to be a records section. The Knights catalogue everything."
The Tower of Tomes was not forbidden, exactly. Witches were allowed to access it, to study its archives, to seek knowledge. But what Qifrey was looking for was not the kind of knowledge the pointed-hat witches wanted anyone to find. Olruggio knew what he was searching for, Qifrey had made it a point to explain it all in meticulous detail before he'd even agreed to come. He had told him of the risks, of every last taboo he was ready to break to get the answers he so desperately needed.
He had come anyway, because Qifrey had asked him to. Because someone needed to keep watch. Because someone needed to make sure Qifrey didn't do something stupid or desperate or irreversible in his search for answers.
Though honestly, he wasn't sure what counted as irreversible anymore. His memories were already gone. His eye was already gone. The name his parents gave him was already scattered to whatever the brimhats had called up to tear it from his mind.
What was left to lose?
They split up; Olruggio took the eastern section, where records of historical Brimhat activities were kept, while Qifrey took the western stacks, where theoretical magic and forbidden techniques were archived.
Hours passed, hours in which his robes dried stiff with salt and his shoulder continued throbbing painfully. The ache in his empty socket spread to his temple, then down his neck, the way it always did when he was tired or stressed or thinking too hard about what had been taken from him.
He had fragments. Dreams, maybe. Flashes of cold and dark and pain. A voice calling him a name that wasn't Qifrey, that started with an S. The smell of salt water. Small hands reaching for him in the dark. A sister? He thought he'd had a sister, but he couldn't remember her face nor her name.
"Qifrey." Olruggio's voice drifted up from below. "Come see this."
He found Olruggio in a corner alcove surrounded by books, their pages marked with slips of paper.
"What is it?"
"Brimhat ritualistic experimentation." Olruggio held up a tome bound in black leather. "It's all here, their research notes, their theories…" He stopped, jaw tight. "Qifrey, you need to read this."
He took the book from Olruggio's hands. The handwriting within was neat, chronicling the most abhorrent experiments one could perform with forbidden magic.
Subject is a male child, approximately ten years of age. Pale hair, blue eyes. Preliminary compulsion sigil applied successfully. Subject shows high resilience—promising for experimentation.
Qifrey's hands began to shake.
Silverwood grafting complete; roots have taken to the spine and major organs without rejection. Subject experiences significant pain during sprouting episodes, but this is expected. The parasitic response to emotional safety is functioning as designed—
"Qifrey?" Olruggio's voice seemed to come from very far away. "Are you all right?"
The description matched, the dates matched. Everything Beldaruit had told him about when he might have been taken, about when the Brimhats had—
He turned the page with trembling fingers.
Subject continues to adapt. Compulsion control remains strong though I have noted increased resistance in recent weeks. His magical education progresses well. Death sigils executed remarkably well for his age.
His vision blurred. He took a step back from Olruggio, needing space, needing air, needing to know.
Note: Subject's original name was—
The name was there. Right there on the page in that careful, beautiful handwriting.
"Qifrey!" Olruggio's were hands on his shoulders, but Qifrey couldn't feel them because he was somewhere else, where a boy named Serafin stood in a square and watched a witch in a beaded mask reach out one pale hand and say—
Come with me.
✣✣✣
The wind off the sea cut through the gaps in the walls, burying themselves in his skin like small knives. Serafin pressed closer to his sister on the pallet they shared, feeling Maret's heat through the threadbare blanket. She'd been burning since yesterday morning, when she'd woken crying that her head hurt and her throat felt like she'd swallowed broken pottery.
He was cold everywhere except where her fever touched him. His toes had gone numb an hour ago and his fingers ached from being curled into fists under his chin, trying to keep some warmth in them. The blanket was wool but it was thin as paper in places, worn through from too many winters and too many bodies.
Jorian stirred on the other side of Maret, mumbling something in his sleep. He was six, small for his age, with their father's pale hair and their mother's narrow face. There was also their other brother Pip, who had gone down to the village to get more willow bark to brew tea with. Pip was the eldest after Serafin—seven to his ten years—and Mother had recently started bestowing him with tasks that all would've gone to Serafin instead. He was glad for it, the burden of being the oldest had sometimes threatened to split him in two, sharing it amongst brothers felt right.
His little sister coughed and Serafin found himself thinking of two winters past, when the plague came through the village and took eleven people, Father among them. Serafin remembered how the coughing had sounded, how it had rattled in Father's chest like stones in a bucket. How Mother had wept and begged the witch who'd come through to help, but the witch had looked at Father and shaken his head and said some things were beyond even magic, and then he'd left. Father died three days later.
Mother was at the hearth, trying to coax life from embers that should have died days ago. The wood pile outside was down to splinters and bark, and there wouldn't be more until Serafin could earn enough to buy it or find deadfall in the scrub beyond the village. But the ground was frozen solid and the merchants wanted coin they didn't have.
He extracted himself from the pallet carefully, trying not to wake the little ones. Maret whimpered when his warmth left her side and he tucked the blanket tighter around her thin shoulders. Her face was flushed, two spots of red high on her cheeks, and her lips were cracked and dry. She was four and she liked to sing. Yesterday she'd been singing while she helped Mother card the wool, her voice already thin but still sweet, and now she couldn't even speak without coughing.
"Mama," he said quietly.
Mother looked up from the hearth. Her face was gray in the early light, the skin under her eyes bruised. She'd been up all night with Maret, pressing cold rags to her forehead, trying to get her to drink. "Serafin, you should sleep more."
"I can't." He crouched beside her at the hearth. The embers gave off a little warmth if you got close enough, though not much. "Is she worse?"
Mother's hands stilled on the poker. She didn't answer right away, which was answer enough. Then she said, "We'll manage."
Father hadn't managed. Old Kerrim down the lane hadn't managed when the flux took him last spring. The neighbor's baby hadn't managed after a bad birth. Serafin knew what not managing looked like, it lived in every house in the village, it had taken up most of the space in their hut.
"I could ask at the docks," he said. "Maybe someone needs—"
"No one needs anything in winter, lamb." She reached out and cupped his cheek with one rough palm, and her hand was cold, everything was cold. "We'll get through."
The door banged open and Pip stumbled in, bringing a gust of wind that made the embers gutter and nearly die. His face was red from running and his eyes were wide. "There's a witch!" he gasped. "In the square! I saw him!"
Serafin's heart kicked hard against his ribs.
"A witch?" Mother stood, and her voice had gone low. "Are you certain?"
"I saw the hat! The big hat, all black, and he's got a mask with beads on it, and—and he's drawing things, and people are watching, and—" Pip sucked in air, "maybe he can help Maret!"
"Pip, no." Mother's hands had clenched into fists at her sides. "Witches don't help people like us, you know that."
"But—"
"Witches didn't help your father and they won't help your sister."
Serafin was already moving. His mind had split into two paths the moment Pip said witch, and one path was Mother's voice and Maret's labored breathing, and the second path was louder and brighter. He grabbed his coat from the peg—more holes than coat, but it was something—and shoved his feet into his boots.
"Serafin, don't you dare—"
"We have to try." He was at the door. His hand found the leather pouch, the one Father had given him. Inside was everything he had: three small coins, a silver button from Father's good shirt, and the brass ring Father had worn. Serafin had been saving it, for what, he didn't know. Spring. Food. Something.
Now he knew.
"Serafin!" Mother called, but he was already out the door with Pip on his heels.
The wind was furious outside, coming off the gray water in gusts that stole his breath. The sky was the color of old iron and the ground was frozen mud and ice, rutted from cart wheels and hard as stone. His boots slipped and he caught himself against the wall of the house, scraping his palm against the rough wood.
"Which way?" he shouted over the wind.
"The square!" Pip was running ahead, his too-long coat flapping behind him.
Serafin ran after him. His lungs burned with cold and his legs ached but he didn't slow down. The village was small—twenty houses, maybe thirty, all pressed close to the water where the fishing was. Or where the fishing had been. There weren't as many fish anymore, and the boats that came back came back with less, and the merchants paid less but took more.
The square opened up ahead of him, a wide space of cobblestone where the market set up twice a month. Today it was empty except for a handful of villagers standing in a throng near the village well. And in the center of them, taller than anyone in the village, was the witch.
He had seen exactly three witches before, but never had one looked like this.
The witch wore a hat with a brim so wide it cast his whole upper body in shadow. The hat was deep purple and it rose to a peak that ended in a fat ruby. His robes were dark too, stitched with patterns that made Serafin's head spin. And over his face, where his eyes should be, he wore a mask.
It was made of pale wood, smooth, with no holes for the eyes nor a visible slit for the mouth. Covering the surface were hundreds of beads, maybe thousands, strung up in the strangest of ways. They clicked together when the witch moved his head, the sound reminded him of distant rain.
The witch was speaking to an old man who went by Gregor, the one who used to crew on Father's boat. Gregor was nodding, his cap in his hands. He kept his head bowed in the way people bowed when they spoke to someone important.
"Your back, you said?" The witch's hands moved as he spoke to Gregor, drawing shapes in the air that left trails of silver light hanging like frost. "Yes, yes, I can see it. The way you stand, all twisted up like driftwood. How dreadful for you."
Gregor nodded, still not meeting the witch's masked face. "Twenty years now, master witch. Can barely haul the nets anymore. The pain—"
"Oh, I know all about pain." The witch's laugh was bright. "I'm quite the expert on it, actually. Now hold still."
The witch moved like water; one moment he stood before the old man and in the other he was behind him. His hand shot out and pressed against Gregor's lower back, the silver light that had been hanging in the air rushed inward, sinking into Gregor's body like water into sand.
"There!" The witch stepped back, clapping his hands together. The beads on his mask clicked and shifted. "All better. The scar tissue I dissolved, the vertebrae I realigned, the nerves I untangled. You'll be hauling nets like a young man again. Isn't that marvelous?"
Gregor touched his back, unbelieving. "I—it's gone. The pain's gone." He reached into his pocket. "How much do I—"
"Oh, nothing, nothing!" The witch waved a hand. "I don't want your coin, good man. I'm not here for money." He spun in a circle and addressed the crowd. "I'm here because magic should help people! Because the gift we've been given should be used! Not locked away behind seals and rules and the cowardice of pointed hats!"
Serafin's hand tightened on the pouch at his belt. He could feel the coins inside, the button, the ring. Everything he had.
He stepped forward before he could stop himself. "My sister," he called through the square. "She's sick with a fever. She can't breathe right."
The mask swung in Serafin's direction. The place where eyes should be were occupied by dark beads and for a moment Serafin felt pinned by their emptiness, the way a moth was pinned by firelight. His throat closed up. His feet felt rooted to the frozen mud.
The beads clicked as the witch made his way over to him. Click-click-click, like insect legs on glass.
The witch stopped right in front of him. Up close he was even taller than Serafin had thought, the brim of his hat so great that it blocked out the sky. "A sick sister," the witch repeated. "And what should I do about that, boy with the pale hair and the ocean eyes?"
"I am asking you to save her, master witch." Serafin's mouth felt dry, but Maret was dying. Maret was burning.
The witch laughed, beads rattling. It wasn't a cruel laugh, but rather bright and high, like bells shaken too hard. The witch spun on his heel and when he stopped, Serafin somehow knew he was grinning beneath the beaded mask. "Oh, how delicious! A boy with spunk! With fire in his belly and love in his heart! Tell me, tell me, boy with the fierce voice, what is your name?"
"Serafin, master witch."
"Serafin." The witch tested the name, rolling it around like a sweet on his tongue. "Beautiful name. Old name. Do you know what it means?"
Serafin shook his head.
"'Burning one.' 'Fiery one.' From the old language, when people named their children after the things they hoped they'd become." The witch crouched down, bringing the mask level with Serafin's face. "Your mother says witches don't help people like you, didn't she? She remembers the last witch who came through here. The one who refused to save—who was it? Your father?"
How did he know that? Serafin hadn't said anything about Father.
"Yes," Serafin whispered.
"That witch was a coward." The witch's voice dropped lower, like he was sharing a secret. "A pointed-hat coward who probably could have saved your father but chose not to because helping would have required magic that the cowards in their towers have locked away because they're frightened of what it can do."
The witch's head tilted the other way. Click-click-click. "But I'm not frightened. I'm not a coward, I can help your sister, Serafin. I can reach into her lungs and draw the sickness out like poison from a wound. I can make her well again. Would you like that?"
"Yes, please, master witch, please—"
"Such love, such devotion," the witch said. One pale hand reached out and touched Serafin's cheek, and the skin was so warm. Serafin hadn't felt real warmth in days, and his body leaned into it without asking permission from his mind. "I can help you, fierce one. Of course I can help you. I'm a witch, aren't I? And witches can do anything." His palm left his cheek, moving higher to tap one pale finger on Serafin's forehead, right between the eyes. "Take me to her."
The warmth that had been spreading through Serafin's cheek suddenly blazed hotter, sinking deeper, wrapping around his ribs and his heart and his lungs like invisible hands. It felt good. It felt like standing too close to a fire on a winter night, the kind of heat that was almost pain but not quite. His feet moved on their own and behind him he heard Pip's footsteps, hurrying to catch up. The witch's boots made no sound at all on the frozen ground.
The walk back to the house felt both too long and too short. Serafin's boots crunched on the frozen ground and his breath made clouds in the air and the warmth in his chest pulled him forward. He should have felt afraid, some part of him knew he should feel afraid. But the warmth wouldn't let him. It filled up all the spaces where fear should live and left only this: he will help Maret, he will save her, everything will be all right.
"Is he going to help Maret?" Pip whispered, tugging at Serafin's sleeve.
"Yes." Of course the witch would help, why else would he come with them?
Mother was at the door when they arrived. Her eyes went wide when she saw the witch, and then her face went hard. "You're not bringing a witch here. Serafin, I told you—"
"Good day, madam!" the witch sang out, sweeping past her and into the home in a rustle of dark robes. "What a charming hovel. So rustic and authentically squalid. And you must be the mother of this delightful boy. He tells me you have a sick daughter, simply tragic."
"Get out of my house, we don't want your magic here."
"Oh, but you don't mean that. You do want my magic, you want it desperately. You want your daughter to live, don't you? What kind of mother would you be if you didn't?" The witch laughed that bell-bright laugh again and spread his hands wide. "My dear woman, your fierce son invited me. Such a polite young man, with such excellent manners." He turned, and the motion sent his robes swirling, and where they passed, light followed. Little sparks of gold danced in the air gathering into shapes; a bird, a fish, a flower that bloomed and withered in the space of a breath.
Jorian gasped and Pip's eyes went wide. Even Mother's anger faltered, and her hands dropped to her sides.
"Pretty things," the witch crooned, and his fingers moved in the air, drawing more light, more shapes. "Pretty things for pretty children. Would you like to see more?"
"Yes!" Jorian squealed.
"No!" Mother lunged forward, reaching for her children, but the witch's hand moved and something flickered in the air between them and Mother stopped, her face going slack.
"Much better. Hospitality is so important, don't you think?" the witch said gently. "Why don't you step outside for a moment, good woman? The air here is so stifling, a bit of fresh wind will do you good."
Mother did as she was bit, stepping out of the door without her shawl.
"Tedious," the witch said, and his voice had lost all its music. It was flat and bored now. "Mothers always are. They worry so much, don't they?" He turned to Jorian and Pip, and the light-shapes were still dancing around his fingers. "And you two—sweet little things, but you're tedious as well, all this noise and breath and chatter. Why don't you go play outside? Build a snowman. Freeze your little fingers. I don't care."
Jorian's face went blank. Pip's did too, that same empty look Mother had worn. They walked to the door like sleepwalkers and went out into the winter without a word.
The door closed.
The room was very quiet now. Just Serafin and Maret on the pallet and the witch standing in the center of the floor. The warmth in Serafin's chest had turned to ice.
"What did you do?" His voice came out small.
"Hm?" He turned, and Serafin felt those unseen eyes pinning him in place. "I helped, boy. That's what you wanted, wasn't it? Help?" He moved past Serafin toward the pallet where Maret lay and he knelt beside her. "And here she is. Little Maret. Little burning bird."
One pale hand reached out and touched Maret's forehead, and she whimpered in her sleep. "Poor little thing. Yes, very sick. The fever's in her lungs. Another day, maybe two, and she'll drown in her own fluid. You've seen that happen, haven't you? Watched it?"
Serafin had watched Father drown in this very room. "Yes."
"But it doesn't have to happen to her." The witch's fingers traced a pattern on Maret's forehead, and where he touched, her skin seemed to cool. The flush faded from her cheeks and her breathing eased just a little. "I can draw the sickness out of her like poison from a wound. It is simple magic, child's play, really."
"Please. Please, I'll—I have coin, I have—" He fumbled for the pouch at his belt, but the witch's hand shot out and caught his wrist.
"Hush," the witch said, and the word sank into Serafin's chest with that same warmth. It spread through his lungs, thick and heavy and sweet, and his mouth closed without him meaning to close it. "Hush now. I don't want your coins. I don't want your dead father's ring."
Serafin tried to speak but the warmth in his lungs wouldn't let him. He could only stand there while the witch held his wrist.
"Here's what I want." His mask filled Serafin's vision, beads clicking softly with each breath. "I will save little Maret. I will draw the fever out of her. I will make sure she lives to see spring, to sing her little songs, to grow up and marry some fisherman and have tedious children of her own. But you, boy with spunk and fire, you will come with me as payment for her life."
"...come with you?"
"Yes." The witch's hand found Serafin's shoulder, and the touch burned through his thin coat, through his shirt, into his skin. "You will come with me, and you will learn. I will teach you things your little village mind cannot even imagine. I will show you the true art, the real magic, the old ways that the cowards have forgotten." The fingers tightened. "Your sister will live. Your family will have one less mouth to feed through this bitter winter and you will see wonders."
Serafin looked at Maret. At her flushed face and blue-tinged lips and the shallow rise and fall of her chest that might stop at any moment. He thought of her singing while she carded wool. He thought of how she always shared her food with him when he said he wasn't hungry. He thought of the sound she would make before she stopped breathing.
"If I don't?" he whispered.
The witch shrugged. "Then I walk away. Your sister dies before morning. Your mother weeps. Your siblings forget her voice. And you live with the knowledge that you could have saved her, and chose not to." He tilted his head. "That's a heavy thing for such small shoulders, boy."
"I—" The warmth surged again, choking off the words. Serafin's thoughts scattered like startled birds. He couldn't think past the feeling in his chest, the heat, the compulsion, the rightness of it. "My family—"
"Will have your sister," the witch finished for him. "Alive, healthy and singing. Isn't that what you wanted?" The fingers on Serafin's shoulder dug in, and the beaded mask tilted closer. "You came to me, remember? You asked for my help. You ran through the cold and the wind because you love her and want to save her. You're a protector and protectors sacrifice themselves."
It was true. The warmth sang with the truth of it. Serafin was the oldest. He'd always been the one to go without so the others could eat. The one to work when his hands were too cold to feel the nets. The one to stand between his siblings and the wind.
This was just another kind of standing between.
"Say yes," the witch breathed. "Say yes and save her. Say yes and be the hero. Say yes and give them the gift of her life."
Serafin looked at Maret one more time. He thought of spring coming, of her singing in the sun, of her growing up and laughing and living.
He thought of her dying because he was too afraid.
"Yes," Serafin whispered, and the word tasted like copper and ash and surrender.
The witch's grip on his shoulder released. "Wonderful," he purred. "This is going to be so much fun."
He straightened and turned back to Maret. His hands moved in the air above her and Serafin watched as the fever-flush drained from her face, as her breathing deepened and steadied, as color returned to her lips. In moments, the girl that was half dead looked merely asleep.
"There," the witch said, brushing his hands together as if cleaning off dust. "All better. She'll wake in an hour, hungry and asking for breakfast. Your mother will think it a miracle. Your brothers will forget she was ever sick." The witch strode to the door and opened it. The winter wind rushed in, and with it came Mother's vacant face, Pip's empty eyes, Jorian's blank stare. They filed back inside like puppets on strings.
"Come along now." The witch's hand found Serafin's shoulder again, steering him toward the threshold. "No long farewells," he said cheerfully, "they won't remember you left anyway, I'll make sure of that. Tidier that way."
He guided Serafin out into the cold, and the door swung shut behind them. Serafin thought it sounded like a coffin lid closing.
The witch laughed and his beads clicked softly. Click-click-click.
