threat to me, at least. Surely he’s not a soldier or even a brawler. But still she thought of the five daggers hidden in her boots and coat, and which one she would draw first if he so much as reached inside his own coat for a weapon. “What do you mean, it isn’t safe?”
“Please, just go.” He reached out and gently touched her elbow to steer her back toward the woods. At the moment she felt his hand on her arm, the five ravens screamed and dove at them. Qhora threw up one hand to shield her face and the man did the same with his hat, and Wayra hissed and thrashed her beak through the air.
A heavy battering of wings and talons collided with her upraised arm and Qhora closed her eyes as she stumbled back toward the trees, letting go Wayra’s reins and fumbling for the Italian stiletto inside her coat. She shoved the bird away as hard as she could and sliced her long thin dagger through the empty air.
The raven was gone. All of the ravens were gone, but on the edge of the pond stood a woman with flaming red hair, icy blue eyes, and milk-white skin. Her boots were polished black leather, her skirts shimmering silver blue, and her coat was a shining black ermine fringed not with fur but with black feathers. Qhora thought of her own feathered cloak that she had brought back from the Empire, and which now lived in a trunk in the attic to preserve it from the elements. She missed that cloak.
“Renata!” the man cried.
But the woman in black only had eyes for Qhora. “Is this the bitch you told? Did you bring her here to mock me, Aaron? Did you think I would allow that, you pig?”
Qhora drew her curved Eranian dirk and held both blades at the ready. “Who are you?”
The woman looked sharply at the man. “She doesn’t know? How many people did you tell about me, Aaron? How many? HOW MANY!?” A blast of water full of ice shards burst from the pond and slammed the poor farmer to the ground, where he lay soaked and shivering.
“Renata, please! Let me explain. You don’t understand. I don’t know this woman. She just came here a moment ago. I told her to leave, but she didn’t. Please, listen to me!”
“Yes, listen to him,” Qhora said as she edged sideways toward Wayra, who was standing quite still at the edge of the wood and peering strangely at the woman called Renata.
The woman in black strode swiftly over to Aaron and grabbed him by the throat. “It was a simple promise, wasn’t it? Don’t tell anyone. That was all I asked.”
“I didn’t mean to,” the man sobbed. He grasped her wrist with one hand and covered his eyes with the other. “But you don’t understand what it’s been like.”
“What it’s been like?” She pushed him down and stood up straight. Behind her, the shattered surface of the pond began to steam, the remaining ice breaking up and floating across the surface, then melting and vanishing all together. “I chose you, Aaron. Of all the men who have come to this pool, I chose you. You were honest. You were faithful. You were deserving of love, of my love. I gave you a son. I made you happy. Why was that so terrible?”
Qhora lowered her knives.
“It wasn’t terrible at all. It was wonderful.” Aaron rose to his knees and wiped the water from his face. “But it was hard, too. What was I supposed to tell people? Where did this son come from? Why did my wife never come to mass? Why was my wife never at home when the neighbors came to call?”
“Small questions from small people.”
“They’re good people. My friends,” Aaron said, rising to his feet. “All I ever wanted was what everyone else had. And you, you were so much more than I had ever hoped to have. But I suppose that’s not what I needed. It’s not what our son needs. He needs his mother during the day as well as the night. And I need you too. Maybe it would have been all right, but the questions turned to rumors. They were saying awful things. They said I was liar. They said I stole the boy and killed his mother. They even said it might be some missing girl from Sauca. They were going to arrest me. They were going to take our son away. I had to say something to someone. So I told my brother Phillip, not that he believed me.”
“Oath breaker!” the woman screamed, and a column of boiling water whirled up from the pond, arched through the air, and crashed down on the farmer. The man screamed and scrambled back from the pond to plunge his face and hands into the snow at the edge of the trees.
“Stop!” Qhora dashed forward, slashing with both daggers at the woman’s chest.
But Renata seemed to fade back from each attack without moving her feet. She was always just a hair’s breadth out of reach and Qhora stumbled to a halt at the edge of the pond. The woman in black stood a few paces away on the surface of the rippling pool.
Wayra leaned her long neck over the water, blue and green plumes bristling around her head, and hissed at the woman.
“What are you?” asked Qhora. This is no ghost. A ghost is just an image in a cloud of aether, but this creature is real. She can touch him and she can control the water. I know I’ve heard of this before, but where?
“One of the aloja. She’s a water-woman,” said Aaron from behind her. “And my wife. And the mother of my son. And my love. But it’s too hard. It’s too hard, Renata! I can’t live like this. No one can. Don’t you understand?”
“I have lived in this pool for four hundred years, Aaron.” Renata turned to pace across the surface of the boiling water. “I understand men all too well.”
A marriage to a spirit? A bargain? Rules? Yes, it’s like those folk tales that Alonso sings about. And I know how those tales all end. Badly. “You asked too much,” Qhora said. “You gave him an impossible ultimatum. If he had kept your secret, he would have lost his son and his life. He may lose them still! If you ever loved him, how could you blame him for trying to save his family? Your own child?”
“He knew the terms of our marriage,” Renata said. “And he knew the price of breaking faith with me.”
Another column of hot water spun into the air, but Qhora kept her eyes on it as she raced back to grab the farmer and pull him out of the way just as the boiling torrent crashed down on the earth. The snow and ice on the ground vanished in a cloud of steam and a sharp hiss of scalded soil.
As they stood gasping by the trees, Qhora grabbed the farmer’s coat and forced him to look at her. “Aaron, you have to leave! Get away from here, away from this farm, away from this town, right now. Take your son and leave.”
“But…” The man turned a mask of sorrow toward the pool and the woman in black. “But if she would only come home with me, we could be a family, and it would be all right again. Everything would be all right.”
“No, it won’t,” Qhora said. “It will never be all right. She’s not a woman. She’s a creature, a ghost, a demon. Whatever she is, she doesn’t love you or your son. Only herself. Look at her. Look at her, Aaron.”
The man blinked and looked again. Renata had stopped pacing and was staring down at the last remaining pane of ice on her pool, staring down at her reflection as she stroked her bright red hair.
“But she’s my wife. She loves me.”
“She only loves herself!”
The farmer quailed in her arms for a moment, his miserable eyes downcast. Then he whispered, “I’ll go, I’ll go.” And he scrambled up and dashed away into the woods.
“Aaron!” Renata stormed across the pond. “Come back here, you worm, if you ever want to hold me in your arms again. Come back here this instant!”
Qhora stood up and presented her mismatched knives in a boxer’s stance, something she learned from a young Hellan in Gadir. “Spirit, go back to your pool. Your husband and son are gone. They’re free of you now.”
“They are mine,” the water-woman said. “And you do not command me.” She raised her hands and the boiling pond erupted into a shining wall of water. For a moment, the water hung in the air, a shimmering curtain of silver like flowing glass, and then it shattered into a screaming hail storm of frozen daggers flying toward Qhora.
She dove behind the nearest tree and listened to the heavy thumping and airy tinkling as the icicles crashed into the trees and shattered all around her. In an instant it was all over and Qhora leapt to her feet to face the creature again, but she stayed in the shadows of the trees. “I’m not afraid of a little rain, spirit. And I’d be happy to leave you to your puddle but for the next poor soul who finds you here, and the next child you leave motherless for your vanity.”
Renata smiled. “Come out of the trees, little girl.”
“No, I think I like it just fine in here. Why don’t you join me?”
