The Once and Future Witches - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,76
that I’m sorry, and I will not lie to you again. I remain a faithful Daughter.” Beatrice hears the capital D, the weight of a century of secrets and witching. “But I hope to become a Sister, too. If you’ll have me.”
Beatrice just stands there, looking into Quinn’s yellow eyes (one-one-thousand). She wonders if trust, once lost, can ever truly be found again, and if she’s being a fool (two-one-thousand). She decides she doesn’t care, that maybe trust is neither lost nor found, broken nor mended, but merely given. Decided, despite the risk (three-one-thousand).
“I’m afraid I left my notebook in my office,” Beatrice murmurs in a slightly underwater voice. “But I believe there’s room on the roster.”
Quinn smiles, wide and relieved, witch-light dancing in her eyes. Beatrice clears her throat and adds, “Does this tunnel come out anywhere near the College?”
The mischief returns to Quinn’s smile, curling the corners and adding a devilish pair of dimples. She turns and strides deeper into the dark. “Not directly. Have you heard of the night market of New Cairo, Miss Eastwood?”
The tunnel branches and spreads like the root of a hollow tree. They turn right, then right again; twice Quinn stops to sing them past locked doors or other, less visible barriers, and once she pricks Beatrice’s finger and daubs her blood on a pale stone before they walk on. The walls turn slick and wet for a while, cold as a river-bottom, and then they climb upward again. They pass steps leading up to every possible entryway: sewer grates, narrow closets, trapdoors, granite slabs that would take witchcraft to move aside. The doors are marked with strange signs, arrangements of stars and lines rather than words.
Beatrice is aware that she ought to be investigating and questioning, possibly taking notes, but she feels dull and heavy, as if the line leading to Juniper is an anchor pulling her under.
Quinn rises in front of her and Beatrice follows her up a narrow staircase. The steps are stone, softened and scooped with years of use, leading to an ordinary-looking door.
Quinn hesitates before it, glancing back at Beatrice with a calculating expression. She unfastens her cloak and tosses it over Beatrice’s shoulders instead. Bella tries very hard not to notice the heat of her fingertips as she pulls the hood high and tucks stray hairs beneath it.
“Tuck your hands in your sleeves, please. No need to start talk.”
The door opens into an alley, velvet-blue and fresh-smelling after an hour spent deep beneath the city. It’s not yet dawn, the moon still a silver dollar above them, but the alley is crammed full of people. Women with white wraps over their hair and gold-flashing bangles on their wrists, men wearing linen cloaks and swinging canes, the white flash of teeth and the blue shine of skin. Stalls line both walls, overflowing with wares, clinking with coins: a marketplace, held by moonlight.
Beatrice is too busy staring and blinking to hear what Quinn is saying. She gives her hood a sharp tug. “The Daughters ought to know what happened at the cemetery tonight. May I make another report?”
Beatrice nods and Quinn catches the eye of a woman standing just outside the door, arms crossed. “Is she in?”
The woman gives a half-bow that must mean yes. Quinn turns left and Beatrice trails behind her, head bent to hide the freckled milk of her face. During her daylight visits to New Cairo she’s felt noticed, perhaps a little out of place, but she’s never felt so thoroughly foreign. She wonders if this is how Quinn feels on the north end, as if her skin has transformed into an unreliable map, bound to lead people to all sorts of wrong conclusions.
The stalls they pass seem to contain both ordinary contraband—home-brewed liquor and home-cooked remedies in brown glass jars, crates of cigars that look like they’ve never met a customs agent—and much less ordinary goods: curled leaves and pale roots; furs and feathers; the black glisten of beetles’ wings and the ivory gleam of bone. Witch-ways, sold by wizened grandmothers and laughing girls, women with neat aprons or sweeping skirts or babies wrapped and bound to their chests, sleeping through the moonlit market.
Quinn moves easily down the alley, receiving nods and waves and tips of more than one hat. She seems subtly different, taller and grander. Nothing about her has ever struck Beatrice as fearful, but there’s always been something armored about the way she moves on the north end. Here she is