The Year of the Witching(68)
“Is she in danger?” Immanuelle asked, thinking back on that wretched night when Martha announced that the child had no name. She was as good as cursed. “Will they hurt her?”
Ezra took his time with an answer. When he spoke, his voice was so low she could barely hear him above the roar of the flames. “No. I won’t let them. She’s safe.”
“Good.”
“You should come to the Haven to visit her. In a few days, once the mourning crowds have left. Leah would have wanted that.”
Immanuelle shook her head. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it.”
He stopped short. “Why?”
“Because I’m leaving, Ezra . . . and I need your help to do it.”
“I don’t understand.”
Immanuelle raked a hand through her curls and stared through the flames to the Prophet and his apostles. If the truth got out—if they knew what she was—they’d send her to a pyre like the one burning in front of her. And yet, despite that, she found herself wanting to confess, almost desperate to. Her secrets seemed to eat at her, and in that moment, more than anything else, she wanted to be free of them—if only so she felt a little less alone.
When she finally spoke, it was in a small, tear-choked whisper so strangled and foreign that at first, she mistook her voice for someone else’s. “I caused the curses. The plagues are my fault.”
“What are you talking about?” Ezra asked sharply.
“I’m not sure you want to know, and even if you do, I’m not sure I can make you understand.”
“Try.”
She found her voice at last. “Weeks ago, I told you that I’d awakened the curses. At the time I thought that was true, but I was mistaken. I didn’t awaken the curses. I am the curse.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My mother did something unspeakable in the Darkwood, years ago. She made a deal with the witches, bound me to their magic. She made me a vessel of the plagues. That’s why I have to go.”
“You’re . . . leaving Bethel?” he demanded, and Immanuelle found it almost endearing that he seemed more shaken by the news of her departure than he did by her confession about the plagues.
She nodded. “The woman from my census file—Vera Ward, the one with the witch mark—she lives in a village called Ishmel north of the gate. I think it was she who harbored my mother during the months she spent in the wilderness.”
“How do you know that?”
“Days ago I went to the Outskirts. While I was there, I uncovered a path on the edge of her property, just a few yards from her house. It led me to a cabin in the woods, the same one my mother spoke of in her journal.”
Ezra mulled this for a moment, staring at his shoes. “And you’re certain this woman, your grandmother, has a connection to the plagues?”
Immanuelle nodded. “You saw the mark by her name in the census. And I know that she practiced the dark craft. The people in the Outskirts say she was a proper witch, but she fled Bethel before your father had the chance to burn her. I think it was she who taught my mother the ways of the witches. So if I can find her—”
“You can find a way to stop the plagues your mother cast. The plagues she bound to you.”
“Precisely.”
Ezra was quiet for a moment, turning these ideas over in his head. “Warrants go through the gate’s guardsmen. I’d have to approach them with the proposition, days in advance. If I get the warrant into the right hands, there’s a chance I could keep it from my father.”
“And when the warrant is in their hands, what then?”
“Then the guardsmen have a legal obligation to open the gate for you. The only way that could be thwarted is if my father signed a warrant to annul mine. But he can’t do that if he doesn’t know the warrant exists.”
“So you’re saying you can do it? You can get me through the gate?”
“I’m saying I can get you out of Bethel. But coming back . . .”
“I know,” said Immanuelle, nodding. Bethel’s laws were unrelenting. Those who defied Holy Protocol by leaving illegally were deemed hostile foreigners. If Ezra’s warrant was revoked, or worse yet annulled, after her departure, she would never be allowed to return again. “I understand the repercussions of my choice to go. Once I leave Bethel, what becomes of me isn’t your responsibility. All I ask is that you get me through the Hallowed Gate.”
“Why should you have to go? You didn’t ask for any of this.”
“The plagues were birthed through me and because of that they’re my burden to bear, no one else’s. You didn’t choose to be Prophet, but you have the Sight just the same.”
“That’s different.”
“No, it’s not. The plagues are in me like the Sight is in you. It’s my sin to atone for. I’m the one responsible for fixing this.”
“Then stay. We can fix things together. Between the two of us we’ll find a way.”
Immanuelle shook her head, watching the flames wash over Leah’s bones. “The best thing I can do for Bethel is leave it.”
“And what if it’s all futile?” Ezra asked, putting words to the question she’d been too scared to ask. “What if you can’t find your kin? Or what if you do and she has no way to stop the plagues? What then? You’ll be alone out there.”