For a while, they talked around her, and she learned that Pieter and Joachim had brought the wagon and the supplies Mother had been forced to leave behind. She learned she had been asleep around the clock. And that there was a reason why Mother had kept her all alone here.
An Air Master—and it had been plain to Mother that Giselle was going to grow into Mastery—was at her most dangerous and unpredictable in the years of adolescence. Strong emotions, which could call up powerful magic, were not matched by equally strong control, as evidenced by the terrible storm she had summoned while Johann was assaulting her, a storm so powerful that lightning and wind had felled nearly a hundred trees in the forest around the tower, and that storm had barely been at half its full strength when it died. So Mother had kept her isolated and happy, while she learned control.
“I should have also taught you how to defend yourself,” Mother said mournfully, speaking to her directly at last. “But I was so sure this place was so far away from everywhere, and had such an evil reputation for haunting, that no one would venture near. . . .”
Pieter reached out to pat her hand. “Never mind, Annaliese. We can’t change the past. We can fix things now.” Now he turned to Giselle. “That is why Joachim and I are here now. We are going to teach you these things. Not only how to use your powers to defend yourself, but also weapons, or anything that can be used as a weapon.” His expression turned fierce. “No man will dare try to touch you, for you will have his guts on the floor before he can take a step.”
“Pieter—” Mother said, looking at him with wide eyes.
“Well? It’s how we taught you, Annaliese,” Pieter said, unrepentant. “And it’s easier to explain to the constable how a blackguard ended up with a cracked skull from a broom handle or a knife in his liver than it is to explain how he was lightning-struck inside a building! The first is understandable. The second is witchcraft.”
Slowly, as they talked, and told her what they were going to teach her, the terrible, fear-filled tightness inside her ebbed. There were no remonstrations, no accusations that she had brought the attack on herself. Or rather, the only remonstrations were from Mother, who accused herself of failing to prepare Giselle adequately for the dangers of the world.
They talked for hours and hours . . . through two meals that Giselle had been sure she would never be able to eat, yet managed to devour once she got the first bite past the lump in her throat. She told them everything that had happened. They assured her again and again that nothing was her fault, until at last, she finally believed it. They talked until she was yawning and couldn’t keep her eyes open.
She took her leave of them then, and slowly climbed the stairs to her bedroom. But as she reached the second floor, she heard something that made her heart nearly stop.
“Do we tell her the bastard disappeared?” Pieter asked.
“What would be the point?” Mother replied, and said a bad word that Giselle had never heard her say before. “He won’t be back. My Elementals will see to that. Why make her live in fear?”
“Good point,” said Joachim. “I just—wish we knew where he’d gone.”
2
THE small church was simple, very dark, and very quiet. The altar had been decorated for St. Walburga’s Day, but of course it was the far less Christian celebration of Maifest had the attention of the citizens of Mittelsdorf and the surroundings, and who could blame them? Food, drink, dancing and music and contests were far more attractive than a Mass.
She put a pfennig in the charity box, took a candle, and lit it for Mother. Not that Mother had been in any sense religious—in fact, Giselle didn’t know if Mother had even been Christian, let alone Catholic—but Pieter and Joachim, and many of the Bruderschaft were, and some of that had rubbed off on their student.
Besides, she doubted that Mother would have objected to having candles lit for her.
She knelt for a moment in a prayer, although she was altogether certain that, whatever her beliefs had been, Mother was certainly in some sort of Heaven. The loss of her still ached, even though she had been stricken with pneumonia and carried off within days a