The Witch Watch (26 page)

“You have only spoken about the place in hints so far, but the little that I’ve heard has been disturbing enough.”

Simon continued, “There were two groups of boys - the scholars, and the laborers. The strong ones are laborers. They do manual labor and help take care of the other boys. The smart ones become scholars and sit all day and copy books like the one in your hands. The really smart ones - or at least the ones with a good memory - are taught Black Latin and sorcery. I was one of the latter sort. Often we weren’t allowed to eat until we got the spell to work.”

“Sounds like a dreadful place,” Alice said. “Did you have friends?”

“Once. There usually wasn’t room for friendship. Every boy had to look out for himself just to fill his belly. I was a scholar and was given extra food when I did well, but the food was given to me when other boys were around. They usually ganged up on me to take it for themselves. I suppose they were friends with each other. Or at least, they liked one another better than they liked me.

“When I was perhaps fourteen, I met a laborer named Dillon. He was strong. Husky. He was also quiet, and not very bright. But we worked together. He protected me from the other boys, and I shared my extra food with him. We never made an agreement. Not verbally. It just happened. I don’t even remember which one of us acted first, but it seemed very natural. He defended me from bullying and pranks, and I helped keep his belly full. He protected me even when I didn’t have food to share, and I shared even when his duties prevented him from protecting me.

“We rarely spoke. There was nothing to talk about. His work was too dull to discuss, and my work too terrifying. He couldn’t read and didn’t care about magic. Neither of us had any memories of our parents. We sat and ate in silence, day after day.

“Then one day he was chosen by Headmaster Graves for leech duty.”

“Leech duty?” Gilbert asked.

“Headmaster Graves is a wizard, and wizards need someone to leech. There was a stone room in the basement with a metal cage. There was a feeding circle etched into the bottom of the cage, so you couldn’t erase it. A boy would go into the cage and then the headmaster could cast magic spells.”

“A wizard doesn’t need to feed off of another person,” Alice corrected him. “They’re simply limited to a few spells before they become too weak to cast them.”

“Well, the headmaster never did magic under his own power. He always used a leech.”

“If the headmaster is drawing energy from the boy, wouldn’t that make him the leech, and not the boy?” asked Gilbert.

“Properly, I suppose,” Simon admitted. “But the boys didn’t know anything about leeches. They figured, if you’re on ‘leech duty’, then you must be the leech. Sometimes we were picked at random. Sometimes it was a punishment. He’d usually gather up a few boys and drag them to the basement for leech duty. He would practice his magic until the boys were spent.” Simon took a deep sigh and seemed to be looking far away. “Being in the cage - in the feeding circle - is the worst feeling in the world. Worse than hunger, cold, beatings, or loneliness, because it sort of feels like all of them at once. It’s not pain. Not like the other kinds of pain, anyway. It feels empty. Like an ache that begins in your heart and expands out to your fingertips. Like being poured out over cold stones. Like breathing ice into your lungs. I would always press against the bars, as far from the center of the circle. It never helped, but I always clung there until I collapsed.”

Alice took him by the shoulders and lifted him up, “Well, I promise you there will be no starvation during the course of this magic. And we won’t be using the book right now, just a few notes of my own. If you like, we can probably still get you some food before we start.”

Simon declined, and insisted they get started right away.

She handed Simon a bit of chalk. Then she walked into the middle of the room and threw aside the rug that lay between the couch and the bed. She showed him a bit of paper that she’d tucked into the book, “Can you do this circle for me?”

Simon looked at the sorcery depicted. “I’ve never seen this spell before. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. I can’t see what it does.”

“Nothing,” Alice said. “It’s a spell that does nothing. It activates and draws power like a normal spell, but it doesn’t make anything happen. I found it in my father’s notes, and I use it for testing.”

Simon handed her back the page. She looked down at it with disappointment, “You won’t do it?”

“Of course I will,” he said, and went to work. He crouched down and began drawing a broad circle around himself.

“But don’t you need to look at the page to...” she began but her words faltered and she stood in wonder and watched him work. He’d drawn a perfect circle without using any sort of guide. After that he drew the inner circle, and the connecting arcs. The arcs were all the same size, evenly spaced. Then he began writing the characters. He turned the chalk in his fingers as he went, so that he wouldn’t flatten out one side and end up with lines of differing thickness. Alice looked down and saw his work matched the page in her hand perfectly, except that perhaps his was more accurately proportioned.

“Amazing,” she whispered.

“I learned early on to remember what I saw and reproduce it accurately,” he said without looking up. “I had a better chance of eating that way. Although, some days even that wasn’t enough. Since they were copied by other boys, the books themselves sometimes contained errors.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “That circle would have taken me a quarter hour.”

“Spending a quarter hour on a drawing that size would have earned me a thrashing,” Simon said glumly. He stepped away from the completed circle, brushing the chalk off of himself.

Alice suddenly looked down in shame. “Simon, I’m so sorry that I asked you to do this. It was thoughtless of me to ask you to do something that brings back such painful memories.”

“Seems a bit late to arrive at that conclusion,” Gilbert said. He was sitting in a corner of the room, looking bored.

“You’re right,” she said. “I just... this was how my father and I worked on things. He would hand me a bit of chalk, we’d draw a circle, and discuss it.”

“I’m not bothered by this,” Simon said defensively. “I always liked sorcery. Well, not the magic parts. That was usually frustrating. Or disquieting. Or terrifying. But I enjoy the circles. Making them as large as I can. Making the curves. Drawing the letters just so.”

“You must have been two of the creepiest children who ever lived,” Gilbert said. “The idea of doing sorcery with youths is perverse.”

“And what did your father teach you?” Alice asked.

“Swordfighting,” Gilbert nodded with satisfaction. “We’d go out and find a couple of sticks, and he’d teach me fencing. We also practiced the bayonet. And archery. I wanted to learn boxing, but Father said it was barbaric.”

“And you think these are more wholesome things to teach children than sorcery?” Alice asked.

Suddenly there was a heavy knock at the door, and the three of them froze. There was an open book of sorcery on the bed, Gilbert was sitting by the door with his face exposed, and there was a large and unmistakable sorcery circle in the middle of the room. They stood looking dumbly at one another for a few moments, and the knock came again.

They all lunged into motion at once. “Who’s there?” asked Alice as she stuffed the book under the bed covers.

“Purser, ma’am,” came a man’s voice.

Gilbert dove into bed. Simon threw the rug over the circle on the floor. It was too small to conceal the sorcery, so he yanked the blankets off of the bed to cover up the rest. This exposed both Gilbert and the book, and began an argument of frantic whispers. Alice tried to explain that they should put the blanket over the sorcery and the sheets over Gilbert. Their own arguments and the pounding on the door drowned her out, but they came to the same conclusion and after a bit of tugging and dashing about they had the room situated.

Alice pulled open the door to find an old man with a furrowed brow and a bushy beard of grey hair. He was dressed in a suit like a footman. He had just turned to leave when she opened the door, and now came back and removed his hat.

The man was cordial, “I beg your pardon for the late visit, ma’am, but I saw you strolling on the promenade not long ago, and the light was still on, so I thought...”

“Of course. What can I do for you?” Alice replied quickly, glancing over her shoulder to make sure nothing was missed.

“Well, I wanted to warn you. A couple of fellows from steerage came ‘round this evening. Acted as if they knew you. Made some rather scandalous accusations.”

“Oh?” Alice said uneasily.

“Nonsense, all of it,” the man said. “Not worth repeating. But they seemed to have it in for your... grandfather, is it? The fellow in the cloak?”

“Yes. He’s quite cold, all the time. And deaf as a post,” Alice smiled bravely.

“Ah, I see,” the purser said gently. He seemed to be just as uncomfortable with this exchange as Alice was. “And I understand that earlier today a man from steerage came into the saloon and made trouble for you. Maybe the same one, nobody can recall.”

“That’s true,” she said guardedly. She had only opened the door part ways, and was trying to cover the aperture with her slender frame. “I don’t... Some of the crew took him away. They were very kind. There was no harm done. Was the man punished somehow?”

“Not that I heard. And I’m glad you’re none the worse for it. Don’t know how he slipped in,” the purser rattled on. He seemed to have been working himself up say something, and came to it at last, “Are you in some kind of trouble, miss? Something you need help with?”

“No,” Alice said quickly. “Thank you, but no.”

“I see,” he said with some disappointment. “Well, if you feel unsafe or need us to do something to help you or your grandfather to feel safe, please let us know.”

The conversation dragged on like this for another minute, with the purser standing at the door and rattling on. He told her who she might speak to if she was in need of help, when she might speak to them, who she should seek out if those people were not available, and how much all of them were concerned for her well-being. No matter how many times Alice thanked the man for his trouble, he didn’t seem to be inclined to stop offering them his help.

Suddenly Alice felt coins being pressed into her hand from behind the door. She thrust the coins to the purser, “Thank you. Here is something for your thoughtfulness.”

Things suddenly fell into place. He expressed his gratitude, gave her one final assurance that the crew was ready and eager to help her in a very non-specific way with problems she may have or may encounter in the future, and then he departed.

“I suppose he means well,” Alice said once he’d gone. “But did you really have me give him half a crown? I’m not against kindness or even charity, but there was no reason to pay him. He hasn’t done anything for us.”

“He did. He provided us with information,” Gilbert said. “We know that one of the men we’re chasing tried to rouse their suspicions against us, and that his efforts failed.”

“For half a crown, that gossip was greatly overpriced.”

“You did not give him half a crown for the gossip. You gave him half a crown to create gossip. He is now telling his fellow ship-mates about the lovely woman who recklessly hands out coin for news about herself or the three ruffians in steerage. If new information surfaces, however trivial, we can count on them bringing it to our door. We have recruited the sailors as our spies. The money will also make it difficult to believe that we’re involved in evil business. Think of it as an investment.”

“Hm,” Alice said doubtfully.

Simon uncovered the sorcery circle and touched up the parts that had been smudged, “So what do we do now?”

“Now we take another walk,” Alice replied.

Gilbert sat in the room and tried to ignore the sorcery circle while Alice and Simon took a stroll around the promenade. She stopped often and stared at the device for nearly a minute before moving on.

“It works,” she said once they had returned and warmed themselves a bit. “But not particularly well. The device only responded to our sorcery circle on about a third of the ship.”

“Meaning you’d have to be close to the sorcery before your contraption would tell you about it,” Gilbert said.

“Yes. Although, this is not very strong magic. More potent magic would show up more readily. I imagine their spell to commune with the dead is stronger than our circle.”

Simon got down on the floor and wiped the circle clean with his sleeve, “Why don’t we try again with the proper spell?”

“I don’t know it, and it’s not in your book.”

“I drew it once. The book called it ‘the Dead Call’. I’m sure I can draw it again.”

“You drew the circle to commune with the dead? When?”

Simon thought for a moment. “Four years ago? Maybe three and a half. It was just a little after my master was killed. My former master, I mean.”

“And you think you could recreate a circle from four years ago, that you only drew once?” Alice asked incredulously.

Simon had already begun the work. “Yes. I remember it. Although, I’ll need to replace the name. The one I drew called Lord Mordaunt. I don’t imagine we want to talk to him.”