“They’re from Murkwick. Have you heard of the place?”
“But, Mistress Tea, these runeberries are of a lesser quality than even asha apprentices are given to eat.”
“That’s true. But they remind me of my years spent as a novice in my asha-ka. I hated the acrid taste and yearned for the day I was old enough to take them in wine, as every proper asha did. But when I turned sixteen, I found the wine bland and disappointing. As terrible as the fruit was, I had grown used to the taste.”
She selected a large slice, lifted it to her lips, and bit down. She chewed briefly and closed her eyes.
“Sometimes it is good to remind ourselves how bitterness tastes.”
3
We arrived at the village of Murkwick four hours later, to purchase supplies for our journey to Kion and also to find horses for Fox and me to ride. Murkwick differed from Knightscross in two ways. While my village dabbled mainly in farming produce, the people here involved themselves in the runeberry trade. And unlike Knightscross, they welcomed bone witches with open arms.
Runeberries are a willful, intractable breed, Lady Mykaela told me. They grow only where their forebears had and wither away when uprooted into unfamiliar pastures, even with soil richer for farming. And so they grow in places like Stranger’s Peak, where the cold bites at the marrow and only strong, foul-tasting kolscheya can chip away at the blood that freezes in your veins each night but where the fruit is the best and most expensive of its kind. Or as far away as the desert bluffs of Drycht, where they prize the stems better than the crop and sell them to the most fashionable ateliers in all eight kingdoms to be woven into cloth. Or in the village of Murkwick, where its species of runeberries, owing to the moderation of the seasons and its contradictory nature, produces a far inferior quality. For all that, it remains highly sought after among those who cannot tell the difference.
The village chief refused to accept payment for the runeberries Mykaela purchased, and the people treated her with gratitude verging on worship. I learned the reason for it much later, when a young girl approached me and shyly asked if I was the asha’s daughter.
“She’s a bone witch,” I said without thinking, “not an asha. And I’m not her daughter.”
The girl’s smile vanished. Before I could react, she delivered a stinging slap against my cheek, and I stumbled back. “You dare insult Lady Mykaela!” she snapped and raised her hand again.
Fox’s fingers closed around her wrist. The girl yanked her hand away and the anger left her face, leaving only fear. She hurried away without another look back.
“Bone witches are asha, Tea,” Fox said to me, “although most would use the former as an insult.”
My cheek burned where the girl had struck it. I had no idea of the offense I’d given. Lady Mykaela was exquisite, and she certainly wore the type of clothes I imagined an asha would, but I couldn’t envision her beloved by the people or entertaining the rich and ennobled the way the asha in my books did.
“She’s loved by the villagers of Murkwick,” Fox pointed out. “The magic she uses might be taboo to some, and Odalia as a whole is suspicious of spellbinders—but there are still parts of the kingdom where that makes little difference.”
I wanted to ask him more questions, but I hesitated. I couldn’t look at my brother and not see a walking, talking corpse, and for all Lady Mykaela’s patient explanations, I was afraid death might have changed him somehow—that something else had returned in his stead and wore his face. He could no longer maintain a heartsglass, the pallor never left him, and sometimes his legs creaked and spasmed when he moved, but Fox made no complaints and bore his death with a restraint I did not have. Unlike us, he did not need sleep or food and spent his time standing guard while Mykaela completed the rest of her purchases.
I noticed something else. Where Fox walked, he cast no shadow. With a quick look behind me, I was relieved to see that I, at least, still had a shade to my name.
If the villagers knew of my brother’s condition, they gave no sign of it. He was quiet and said very little, the way he’d always done in life. But something was missing. He was calm and confident, and his eyes were still kind, but that tiny, indefinable spark that made Fox Pahlavi Fox Pahlavi was gone. This secret guilt I would carry around with me for many long months afterward.
Fox smiled at me. He didn’t talk much for the rest of the day but remained close at hand. I think he knew my fears but could not assure me otherwise.
Lady Mykaela took me to the village runeberry fields to watch the fruit ripen. Planted only the day before, Murkwick’s runeberries sprouted overnight from tiny budding shoots to slender stalks of unopened blossoms heavy with potential. As I watched, delighted, their petals unfolded to reveal bright orbs with shifting diamonds at their centers, dimming slightly when I approached but bursting into color when they thought no one saw. The villagers gathered up the black seeds that fell as the fruit was plucked to sow again once the harvest was done.
“This will tide us over until we get to Kion,” Mykaela said. Rather than press the fruit and serve it as wine, she asked the villagers to carve them into slices, to eat with gooseflower tea. Its bitterness stained my mouth, but Mykaela insisted. “Once every morning for a year, starting today. Twice a month after that, more if you are able.”
“I don’t recall my sisters ever eating these for breakfast.” I hated the way the berries took command of my tongue and forbade all other taste for hours afterward.
“You are not a Forest witch and neither are you a Water witch. Your sisters are medicine women, not spellbinders. They do not weave the kinds of magic we can. Bone witches like us need their strength—and for good reason. Runeberries will put the iron in your blood and the steel in your spine.”
“Why do you call yourself a bone witch and not an asha?”
Lady Mykaela busied herself, storing bundles of runeberries into her horse’s large saddlebags before replying. “I am an asha, Tea. I am also a bone witch. I cannot be one without being the other. And it would do both of us good to remember that there will always be people who ignore the first in order to condemn me for the second. The secret is to find pride in both, Tea—the good as well as the bad. It will help you do what needs to be done, regardless of what they see you as.”
“Mistress Mykaela?” One of the villagers approached us—a young boy with pleading eyes and smatterings of blue across his heartsglass.