The Witch Hunter (The Witch Hunter #1)(45)

“Okay.” I take a breath. “Which part?”

“About Caleb and the others showing up.”

“How they found us, you mean?”

He nods. “How they found us, how they knew we were there. That was not guesswork, nor was it an accident. They knew the location down to the village, the time down to the hour. How do you suppose they knew that?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But Blackwell always seems to know everything. As for how, it could have been as simple as using a spy, or as complicated as using magic.”

“As complicated as using magic,” Nicholas repeats. “Has it ever occurred to you how odd it is that the Inquisitor—former Inquisitor, rather—a man who spends his life rooting out magic and punishing those who practice it, uses magic himself?”

“Blackwell doesn’t use magic himself,” I say. “He… employs the use of magic, if and when it suits his needs.”

“I fail to see the difference.”

“There’s a big difference. Blackwell had to use magic to educate us. To train us. We had to have magic in order to know how to fight it. He couldn’t very well train us without it. It would be like trying to train an army without giving them weapons.”

I repeat the answers Caleb gave me to the very questions I had asked, time and time again. But Nicholas just shakes his head.

“The things you describe, your experience, those were not simple spells or mere enchantments. The power it would take would rival my own. However, the lack of conscience… those creatures…”

“Blackwell called them hybrids; Caleb called them halflings. I jokingly called them cockatrices, after the dish I used to make in the kitchen.”

He nods. “But creating living creatures like that is no joke. It is complex magic—highly difficult, attained through many years of practice and trial and error. It could not have been done by just anyone. How did he come by such magic?”

I have to admit I never questioned exactly how Blackwell made those things happen. Not that he would have told me even if I did. He did everything in secrecy, behind closed doors and blindfolds. I never even saw who marked me with my stigma. At the time, I didn’t really care.

“Caleb said he used some of the wizards we captured to do things for him,” I say. “There were plenty of wizards we arrested that I never saw burn.”

Nicholas goes still.

“Why is he after you?” he says after a moment.

“What do you mean?” I say. “You know why.”

He waves it away. “What is it about you that makes him so determined to find you? I’m a far bigger prize than a sixteen-year-old girl. Why did he go through the effort of trumping up charges for you? Do you really believe he thinks you’re a witch? A spy? A traitor?”

“He told me I was a liability.”

“He may have been telling the truth about that. At least, the truth the way he sees it. Rather, the way it has been foreseen.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m talking about the tablet.”

I frown. “Are you saying Blackwell had me arrested because he knew I could find your tablet?”

“Yes.”

I shake my head. “I don’t see how he could possibly know that.”

“No? You said yourself Blackwell used magic if and when it suited his needs. Wouldn’t it be possible, then, that he used a seer?”

I shake my head again, but he presses on.

“It would explain how he found us at Veda’s, how he knew you were here. Perhaps you saw one in his room, someone you mistook for a servant. Perhaps even a child?”

I think back to the night Richard took me to Blackwell, the boy I saw scurrying down the hall. He was about five years old, the same age as Veda. I look up to see Nicholas watching me. He just nods.

“So he has a seer,” I say. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

Nicholas takes a breath, as though his words were a weight he was about to lift.

“Elizabeth, I’ve been watching Blackwell for a long time. I watched him go from duke and brother of the king to Lord Protector, as good as a king. Indeed, if Malcolm had died from plague, too, Blackwell would be king. I don’t doubt a day goes by that he doesn’t regret that.”

I can’t disagree. Malcolm knew Blackwell hated him; he never knew why. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was because his uncle wished he were dead.

“With Blackwell, change tends to precede greater change. A king dies, a duke becomes Protector. A prince becomes king, the Protector becomes Inquisitor. Now he’s handed that title over to your friend Caleb. Do you think Blackwell will be content to go back to being a duke?”

I suck in a sudden, sharp breath. “Do you think he means to be king?”

“I think he’s after the greater victory,” Nicholas replies. “Whether that is king or something worse than king.”

Something worse than king. The words send a chill down my spine.

“Whatever his plan, he needs me out of the way to achieve it,” Nicholas continues. “He knew you would threaten that, so he was forced to take action. I believe it’s why he’s after you now. I believe it’s why he cursed me.”

“Why he had you cursed, you mean.”