The Witch Hunter (The Witch Hunter #1)(36)

We continue walking, the five of us falling silent. The only sound is that of leaves and twigs crackling beneath our feet. It’s just as well. I don’t feel like talking anyway. I’m nervous about meeting this seer. Worried about what she might see. Afraid of what she might say.

It’s almost a certainty she’ll name me as a witch hunter. To be found out that way, in a roomful of vengeful Reformists… what would happen then? I’ve got a few ideas, none of them good. And I have nothing to defend myself with. No knife, no ax, not even that tiny three-pronged fork. George took them all.

Still, I’ve been in worse situations and come out ahead. There’s no reason to think this will be any different. So I try to relax. Tilt my head back, watch the sky. It’s clear tonight, full of a thousand stars. I watch them as I walk, searching for constellations I know. It takes a minute, but eventually I’m able to make out a few.

First, I see Cygnus. He’s a swan but is actually shaped like a giant cross. Easy to recognize. Left of that is Pegasus, the winged horse. He looks like a giant crab. Above him is Andromeda. She’s the girl who was chained to a rock, a sacrifice for her mother’s arrogance. Above Andromeda is her mother, Cassiopeia. Her constellation is simply five stars in the shape of a W. Caleb told me it’s meant to depict her punishment. Because of what she did to Andromeda, the gods tied Cassiopeia to a chair and banished her to the heavens. She’s stuck in the sky, forever.

I feel a hand on my arm, pulling me firmly but gently to one side.

“Careful,” John says. “You almost walked into a tree.”

“Oh,” I say, feeling foolish. “Thank you.”

“Stargazing?” He falls into step beside me.

“A little.”

He nods. “I guess you didn’t do much of that at court, did you?”

“Not really,” I say. It isn’t true, but I know what he means. In Malcolm’s court, it was never a good idea to show an interest in stars. Because knowing astronomy might mean you have an interest in astrology. Charting stars, knowing the positions of planets, understanding the zodiac… that’s too closely related to divination. Even if you can’t replicate a full-scale model of the universe on your ceiling the way Nicholas can, it’s still forbidden.

Oddly enough, though, Blackwell encouraged it. Part of our training as witch hunters included education. Of course, most of it involved mastering subterfuge, armament, and the subtle art of poisoning, but there was a softer side, too. Blackwell was nobly born, highly educated. He had the best tutors in the kingdom at his disposal, and he brought them in to teach us art, literature, arithmetic, languages, geography, and, yes, even astronomy.

When I first went to live with him, this surprised me. I thought his desire to educate us meant he was interested in us. That he cared. Eventually I realized that wasn’t the case. He may have clothed us, fed us, housed us, and educated us, but we were not his children. We were his soldiers: indispensable, yet replaceable. He needed us smart because he needed us alive. But if he lost one of us in training, he never said a word about it. There’d just be one less place at the dinner table, and we’d never hear that person’s name again.

But Caleb said it didn’t matter. He jumped at the chance to learn. If it weren’t for Blackwell, he never would have gotten an education. He studied everything he could, insisted I did, too. I resented it at first, but now I’m glad. I’m as educated as any man in the kingdom now. I can’t help feeling proud of that.

John is still walking beside me, and I realize I haven’t said anything in a while.

“I’m sorry,” I say, finally. “For not talking, I mean. I guess I’m just worried.”

“Not at all,” he says. “But you have nothing to be worried about. Veda is very sweet.”

Sweet? He must be joking. Trying to lighten the mood. Because I’ve come across my fair share of seers before, and they were all cantankerous, grouchy, sour old cats.

I start to reply, but Nicholas’s quiet voice cuts me off.

“We’re here.”

We’ve reached the edge of the forest, the trees ending in a clearing. I can just make out a small village in the distance.

“Somewhere in there, then?” I whisper, pointing at it.

“A little closer than that.” John directs my hand toward an old stone well about twenty feet away. It’s about three feet high on one side, but the other side has collapsed and lies in a broken heap of stones.

“What, we have to go through it?” My chest tightens at the thought of crawling into such a small, dark space.

“Not quite.” Nicholas steps up beside me, reaching into his cloak and pulling out a small object wrapped in cloth. He unwraps it, peeling away layer after layer until I can see what’s inside. It’s a stone, one from the well by the looks of it. He places his hand on top of it.

“Reveal.”

In an instant, the broken-down well is gone, replaced by a small house. It’s made from the same rough stone as the well and like the stone in Nicholas’s hand. The house is tiny and ramshackle, but it’s got a small garden out back, along with a pen filled with chickens and a single tiny pig. It’s so quiet I can hear him snorting as he roots around in the mud.

“Fantastic,” George murmurs. “I tell you, I never get tired of watching him do that.”