She laughed. "Virtue? Hearth and threshold lie cracked in two pieces, love, and the untrained child who broke them stepped through your spells and never felt the warding. You owe me for that failure, and you're a fool and worse to come asking for your pay."
"We had a bargain. 'Tis nae my fault you weren't strong enough to hold what others crafted."
She'd started to turn away from him, bored with the doomed gnome and this game of words. Then a thought crossed her mind and connected with memories and she turned back, measuring his face and build with her eyes. The match would do. Yes, she could make it do. "Strong enough? Bargain? In this land, you hold what you are strong enough to keep. I'm still alive. You're a failure, and your life belongs to me. Think hard on how much living's worth to you."
Leaves rustled and parted, and her other enemy surfaced through the high walls of the hedge. Fiona hung the woman upside down, elven face beside dwarf face, and studied olive skin drawn over high cheekbones, dark eyes, straight black hair tangled with leaves and matted by sweat. The body, too, slim and boyish, bound by vines and thorny briar. Yes, indeed, the match would do. Sometimes a limited gene-pool could be useful.
"Ah, the lovely Cáit has come to join our party. And what is it that you'd be wanting of me, love? I don't recall asking you to tea."
Cáitlin hung there on the hedge, head down and feet to the sky, dark face quiet but her eyes narrowed in hatred. Breezes touched the highest branches and then swirled down in a whirlwind as she summoned her own peculiar Powers. The thorn and bramble simply bent and spilled the attack in a wave of hissing leaves.
She frowned and shook her head in wry acceptance, upside down. "You betrayed me. I should have known better than to trust you to hold an oath sworn by the Tree and by the Well."
Fiona stared at the woman for a moment, mind spinning down the branches of choice. Then she let a smile twitch the corners of her mouth. She'd play Cáitlin's game for long enough to learn its nature. "Remember the exact words, love. I said I'd help to bind sweet Kevin, and that I did. I never said I'd help you keep him. He made me a better offer."
Fiona stepped back from her enemies, and the hedge rustled as it created space for her. Thin tendrils wrapped around Cáitlin's neck and pressed tightly on the arteries, then matched that touch on Fergus, cutting off blood flow to each brain. Fiona held the plants' hunger in check; she didn't want her captives dead. Not yet.
She told the plants to relax a fraction, waited until thought returned to the glazed eyes, and smiled. "So you heard that I'd lost a battle, and came to pick the bones. Vultures circling over dead meat, you thought, the two of you. What should I be doing with you? Should I hang your rotting heads from my gateposts like Dougal would, a warning to all that come?"
Her eyes lost focus as she considered. It was strange, how well human science explained their race. Hybrids that lived were rare between the species, and fertile ones still rarer. Ten thousand years of mixing human and Old Blood brought forth those breeds that looked so much alike, the gnomes of earth and fair folk and dark elves. Those were the genes that lived. So Fergus looked much like Dougal, and Cáitlin looked much like Fiona or her dead twin. So Maureen looked like a twin to her older sister or to the young face her mother had long forgotten. Fiona shook her head, then nodded.
"So, loves, think deep. Do you live or do you die? Dying's such a simple thing. Living may cost more. Give me your blood in binding, your will to mine, your lives to mine, and you'll go on breathing the sweet air. Refuse and you'll feed the hunger of my maze. Think deep."
Fergus made a wry face, hanging there on her hedge like some shrike's prey impaled on a thorn. "Small choice you give us. 'Tis much like death, living as your slave. I've seen what it means. Yet I'll trade death later for death now. Maybe you'll lose."
Cáitlin nodded. "I'll cast my bet with his, hoping that this war of yours will end with your black heart silent and all your slaves set free. Think on that before you sleep and when you wake. She broke your hold once, half dead as she was. I'd not lay good money against her blood now that she's healthy."
Fiona wondered if Cáitlin was acting, or voicing her true thoughts for a change. Aer witches were notorious liars . . . .
A quiet smile tugged at Fiona's lips. She couldn't resist taunting them, adding more acid to despair. "Ah, but you don't know all the changes to the balance. I have a large and scaly friend who also hungers for that blood. And then there's the tale told by my belly. I'm pregnant, love, with all that means for the Powers of our kind."
Both Cáitlin and Fergus blenched. Then the woman took a deep breath and swallowed. Her chin stiffened, and a grim defiance settled into her eyes. "Make good use of it while you have it, love. Soon enough that babe will be draining your Power rather than adding to it. Once it starts to breathe air and suck, you’ll weaken to less than you ever were before. That’s the price you pay for giving birth."
Fiona’s smile broadened. "Maybe, love, maybe. Or maybe I’ll swap the wee bairn into some human’s cradle like a cuckoo and let her pay the price of motherhood. Then I’ll go back and fetch my changeling when she’s old enough to be worth
