18: What Did They Do To You

I curse, pulling myself back into the window. Gaxna unfreezes a moment later and collapses on the floor.

“Gaxna! Are you okay?”

She doesn’t answer, just lies there in the dark shaking. I start forward, then realize that she’s crying, that the shakes are giant sobs. I don’t know what else to do, so I crawl behind and wrap my arms around her, spoon my body around hers.

“It’s okay,” I say, trying to sound reassuring, like my dad would when my mom was sick. “We’re safe now, it’s okay.”

“S’not,” my friend sobs, voice nasal, tears still pouring out her. “S’not okay.”

I squeeze her tighter. “It is, it is. We have time. Estrija left, and she dropped control of you. We’re safe now. For now.” The words don’t come out right, but they’re the best I have.

At the mention of the witch, Gaxna just cries harder. I hug her close. Her muscles are hard under my touch, her hip round, her body warm where it pushes into me, and I get flushed, suddenly. I ignore that, or try to, and focus on my friend, on calming her down.

“Shhh,” I say, pulling a blanket over us. “Shhh.”

We lie that way for a long time, her sobs dying down into little quakes, until everything is quiet except our breathing and the howl of cats in the street. The moon drops low out the window.

“I’m sorry,” she says at last.

“For what?”

“For—for everything. For being an idiot like this. For bringing her here. For putting you in danger.”

I shake my head. “I’m the one who should apologize. I knew they could track you. I just—I didn’t think they wanted me. I was stupid.”

“No, you weren’t. But you have to go now. Run. They want you. And when they want someone, they won’t stop until they have them.”

I shrug. “Then I’ll go to them. Not like they have my blood or anything. I could have knocked that woman out at any time.”

“And the pack of bloodborn that chased you that first day?” Just a hint of the usual Gaxna sass enters her voice. “Can you knock all them out too?”

I grimace. “Well, maybe not them. But—”

“You can’t go. The things they do—” She shudders, then composes herself. “It’s suicide. We have to run.”

This is a conversation we’ve had before; it’s her fear talking. She is still shaking in my arms, and my watersight senses a hurricane of thoughts inside. I shake my head against her back and hug her closer. “What did they do to you?”

She doesn’t say anything, and I think maybe even now, maybe even after all we’ve been through, asking it is going too far, like that first night in her tower. That this is something she’ll never talk about.

She takes a breath. “I started training with them when I was twelve. That’s the standard age. You can’t work blood until you’ve had your blood, that’s what they say. Mom and I were poor as dogs, living on the back end of Blackwater, and the witches offered a good life. Better than I could make selling flowers, anyway.”

I nod, not wanting to break her moment, knowing how hard it is for her to talk about it.

“And it was, at first. I did good at the program. I learned all the letters and numbers they wanted, and scored pretty high in the competitions. They gave us enough spending money that I could bring some home to Mom, though she found a man after a while. We’re your new family, the witches said. Your oldest family. Sisterhood.”

She snorts against me, as much sob as disgust, and goes on. “That’s where I met Estrija. The witch who came. She was different then. Younger, like me. Our age, if you can believe it.”

I goggle in the dark. Estrija looked ten years older than us, at least.

“She always did one better than me at the tests, but we didn’t fight. We—well, we were best friends, even though she was from Old Serei and I’m from the gutters. And then it was more than that, not just lovers but I don’t know, just different. Special somehow. The witches started taking us out, just us two. Giving us private lessons. At the end of the year, we were the only ones they elevated to the second circle. The rest stayed just therals, or washed out to work for the Guild. But we were different. We were better. They started teaching us bloodsight, practicing on each other. That’s how she got my blood.”

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“And you—did you learn it too? Could you do it back to her?”

Gaxna sighs, ribs pressing tight against me. “I can read her blood. I am always reading her blood. Any time, any place, if I concentrate I can tell where she is, how far she is, how she’s feeling, if she’s hurt, all of that. Like a flooding parasite in my brain. And she can sense me. But no, I can’t control her. Bloodpushing, it’s called. I didn’t stay long enough to learn that.”

“Why not?”

She sighs again. “There was a night. They’d started sending us out on errands, the older sisters bloodpushing us, making us into bloodborn, to get us used to it. To focus your trust, they’d say. It was little stuff, usually. Running a message. Buying a twist of herbs. Following someone to see what they were up to. It was kind of fun, though I hated not having control of my body.”

“And then?”

“And then one night they sent me out late. After midnight. I never knew where I was going, what I was doing. That was part of the ‘trust.’ And I found a monk in the street. A theocrat, I think, though I didn’t really know what they were then. And I—they made me talk to him. Not with words—they can’t make you talk—but they got my point across. I was fifteen. He followed me into an alley, and there was a shout, and—”

She breaks off, and I just hold her close, knowing the rest will come. She takes a deep breath. “And screams. They were trying to kill him, to shoot him in the alley, but they missed. Or he figured it out. There was fighting all around me, and then running, and the whole time they just had me curled up in a little ball.

“I thought it was done when everybody left. Hoped to Uje and Jeia it was done. There were three dead people in the alley, not monks, but like assassins or something. They made me follow the monk. He was bleeding bad, so it was easy. We found him lying half in a fountain down the street. Dying. But that wasn’t good enough for them. Wasn’t complete.”

There’s anger in her voice now, old anger, the same anger I hear whenever she says the word witches. “So they made me kill him. I didn’t have any knives or anything, so I had to—to hold him under, while he fought. He wasn’t strong—he’d already lost so much blood—but it took a long time, him just kicking and splashing, then his body started twitching all over, and they made me keep holding him there still—”

She breaks off. I don’t say anything, stomach twisting at the idea. I’ve never killed anyone—unless I killed that overseer by accident—but Urte says it’s terrible. How much worse if you were being forced to do it, if you had to sit there and watch and feel everything, but had no choice in it? I hug her closer.

“They brought me back, after that. Washed me off. Told me they were sorry, but I’d been a good girl, a good theracant, and they would raise me to the third circle the next morning.” She snorts, and I finally hear the Gaxna I know in it. “I didn’t go. For a week I stayed in my room. I knew they wouldn’t bloodpush me to the ceremony. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want any of it. But they knew I had no choice. You can’t run from it once you’re in.”

“Why not?”

She shrugs. “They have your blood. They can do whatever they want.”

I shake my head. “So what did you do?”

“Tried to run anyway. I wasn’t going to let them do that to me again, or make me do it to someone else. Nothing was worth that. So I waited until the middle of the night, until most of the witches who had my blood would be sleeping, and I slipped out. Or I tried to—the guard stopped me at the door. Told me to go back or I’d be forced in.”

“So how did you get out?”

I feel her belly tighten in a mirthless laugh. “Estrija’s the one who told me how, actually. She said she heard if you hurt yourself bad enough, if there’s enough pain coming through the bond, they can’t hold it, and you’re free. But you have to do it before they take hold, or you never will.”

Uje. “So you stabbed your own eye.”

She nods. “With one of the guards’ knives. Just shoved my face into it. Anything to get out.”

I cringe despite myself. “I—had no idea.”

She laughs, a little more humor in it now. “I think half the Guild woke up screaming. The guards dropped too, and I ran out. They let me go. Probably thought I would have to come back for my eye. It’s the only way to get healed in the city, right? Well, I didn’t. I would’ve rather died. I just let it fester, walked the coast past the bay to swim in the ocean, keeping the wound in saltwater like my mom told me. She came out and helped me. I got better.”

“And they haven’t bothered you since?”

“Oh, they still sent summons. Every week at first. Didn’t matter where I went, they knew, they’d send ‘em to me. Even when I ran up peninsula, spent some time training under the seamstress, they’d find me. Send me another summons. So I’d move on, even though I knew it didn’t matter. Finally came back, figured I might as well be here, if they could track me anywhere. Help the other ones like me.” She sighs. “And that’s my whole long sob story.”

“Floods, Gaxna, I never knew. I’m so sorry.”

“For what? It happened. It’s done now. You move on.”

“Except you can’t, because the witches are following me.”

She sighs, heavy and deep in her chest. “Yes. Because they are following you.” She rolls over then, tangling the blanket and bringing us face to face. “We can’t stay here, Theia. I’m sorry, but we can’t. All they need is to get one drop of your blood, and you’ll never get out.”

“I’ll put out my eye,” I say, though I’m not sure if I could.

“They’ll still get you, take you back. Make you theirs. I couldn’t—I can’t let that happen.” There’s a fire in her eyes, something more than the anger and pain from before.

“Gaxna?”

“Aletheia,” she says. “Theia.” I’m suddenly aware of her body again, pressing against me, our legs tangled beneath the covers. She takes my face and pulls me in, and I’m only startled for a moment. Then I kiss her back just as hard.