Chapter Three
Secrets
In the sunny upstairs bedroom, Wilhelmina took a moment to stretch away the oddly pleasant ache in her muscles. She'd been helping with yardwork all morning, from weeding to chicken-feeding to (ugh!) cleaning out the goat shed, and while she was new to all of it, she'd done better than she expected. Or so she gathered, from the way Delia's attitude had shifted from resentful tolerance to cautious acceptance over the course of the morning.
Several weeks ago now, when she'd first accidentally found this house, the young witch whose gardening she'd interrupted had hustled her unceremoniously inside and poured out her version of events to Phoebe, the sharp-eyed old woman who met her in the kitchen. After a period of mutual suspicion, the stories were sorted out to everyone's satisfaction - which meant, Wilhelmina suspected, that no one was getting more than half the truth. She certainly hadn't told them everything she was hiding, only that she was trying to stay out of an unpleasant family fight, and they seemed to be holding at least that much back from her. What they had told her was that the old witch was a Black Widow raising her orphaned granddaughter, Delia, and that she'd found herself at the borders of a mountain Territory named Dena Nehele. Phoebe had surrounded their tiny acreage with well- hidden Webs that kept it concealed - at least, had kept it concealed until Wilhelmina blundered across one.
After much careful negotiation, they'd reached a bargain, exchanging food and shelter for extra help with the farm and someone for Delia to practice Craft lessons with. It didn't take long for the lessons to expand, until Phoebe was teaching them both Craft, and Wilhelmina was passing her own knowledge on to Delia - mostly book-learning and the finer points of Protocol. Phoebe had seemed thoroughly satisfied when that topic came up, leaving Wilhelmina confused but willing to assist. She didn't know what Delia would need Protocol for, living in this backwater corner of a remote Territory. The closest thing to civilization was a small village nearly a day's walk away, and that was as close as Wilhelmina wanted to get for a while. From what Phoebe had said, the Territory Queen was no one to cross, or even get near if you could help it; she owed fealty to Hayll, and enjoyed showing off every bit of power she had. It was no wonder Phoebe wanted to stay away from her; Black Widows had a way of making anybody uneasy, and Phoebe's Queen granddaughter had to add to the perceived threat.
At least, until you looked closely. Delia might have been born a Queen, but Wilhelmina could only feel a minimal amount of power from her. Not even enough to be a District Queen - so why did she catch echoes of Phoebe's worry and determination every time the old woman looked at her granddaughter?
I am so _tired_ of secrets, she thought.
But everyone had them, and complaining about it wasn't going to do a thing but sink her in self-pity. And she knew already how dangerous that could be, how it left you blind and mired and unable to save yourself.
She changed out of the dirty dress she'd been wearing to garden and shrugged into one of her old riding habits. She didn't have long before Phoebe would start lessons for the day, and she was feeling oddly cheerful about them. She'd learned more in a month here than she had over all the years of Graff's tutelage, and was slowly coming to look forward to demonstrating her skills. Even with a partner - Delia had a thorough grasp of the fundamentals of Craft, but no finesse, and Wilhelmina had control to cover the surprising gaps in her knowledge. Between them, she thought they added up to one skilled witch. And while Delia had her difficult (well, infuriating) moments, mostly when she felt her territory was being infringed upon, she was slowly becoming a friend.
She trotted down the stairs, stopping halfway down with an inquisitive sniff. Sweet dough, cinnamon, and cloves...her stomach rumbled its opinion of the matter, and she blushed. Graff or even Alexandra would have lectured her sharply for that alone, never mind the calluses, the broken nails, and the tan that was just starting to color her skin.
So maybe living out here in the hinterlands wasn't so bad after all.
She followed her nose to the kitchen, where Phoebe was up to her elbows in something sweet-smelling and doughy, kneading away with surprising strength for her stick-thin figure. Wilhelmina stood there for several seconds, wavering between decorum and the urge to sample whatever Phoebe was working on. Finally, the old Black Widow cast a bright, amused glance back over her shoulder at Wilhelmina. "Delia would have stolen half my pie by now, you know."
"And gotten her knuckles rapped with that rolling pin, too," she retorted. "_I've_ seen how fast you move when you want to."
Phoebe crowed with laughter, more than the simple comment merited. "So you _do_ have a backbone after all, child! I've wondered where you were hiding it."
"Of course I do," she retorted, stung. "But you've - you've taken me in and taught me, and I don't want to be rude. And it's not ladylike anyway-"
Phoebe didn't scoff as she had half-feared, but reached out two floury fingers and tipped Wilhelmina's chin up to meet her gaze. "You're a Jeweled female, and a witch before you're a Lady. You'll do yourself - and us - more good if you learn how to show your teeth and not your belly."
Wilhelmina bristled a little at that; she knew she wasn't brave, but she could still survive in the murky arena of high Blood society, where all the smiles were poisonous and every knife was hidden. For all her power, Phoebe couldn't do that. "I - I can take care of myself. Mostly." Her cheeks reddened as she remembered how helpless she'd felt against Bobby.
Phoebe's bird-bright eyes softened. "Whatever you ran from, there's no shame in it. I'm sure you'd do well as simply a noblewoman, but...child, something's coming. Something so vast I can't even see its shadow when I weave a Web, and I can't tell if it's bringing healing or destruction. I want my granddaughter to survive. I want you to survive. And I don't know how much time I'll have to teach you."
"Teach us what?"
"Anything. Everything. Teach Delia the ways of ruling, teach you the Webs, if you choose-"
"What?"
"The Webs. You have the potential, if you choose it - the Hourglass is in your blood, if not in your soul."
She couldn't quite repress a shiver. Her long-dead mother had been a Black Widow, but the thought was far from comfortable. Still, it was a powerful lure to think of knowing things the Black Widows knew, tings that others could never learn...
"Think about it," Phoebe said with uncharacteristic gentleness. "I'll be here when you make your choice. Meanwhile-" Deftly, she scooped up the mass of dough she'd been working with, filled it with spiced fruit, and slid the results into the oven. "Meanwhile, there's still lessons. Go into the parlor and set up the chess board, if you would. I'll be along in a moment."
*************************
Today's lesson was taking the form of a chess game, somewhat to Wilhelmina's surprise. Anything at all was allowable, so long as it was done with Craft; both girls had learned to watch out for surreptitious attempts to move the opponent's piece for her, and Delia had promptly thrown a physical shield over her pieces to prevent it happening again after Wilhelmina tried it. Wilhelmina eyed the shield thoughtfully; she couldn't tell the strength of the actual shield, but since Delia's Queen was Green and hers was only Purple Dusk, she left it alone and concentrated on the actual strategy of her moves. She moved one of her Healers to the protection of a Warlord, sat back, and waited.
Delia frowned, thinking. And thinking. And thinking some more, while Wilhelmina fought the urge to drum her fingers. The other witch played to win at any cost, but at least half the time she wore herself out on Wilhelmina's defensive formations. And it didn't look like she'd be moving any time soon. Wilhelmina suppressed a smile, closed her eyes, and concentrated until each of Delia's chessmen was thumbing its nose at its neighbor.
Delia wrinkled her nose, sent up a miniaturized burst of fireworks over the "battlefield" just to prove she'd been paying attention, and went right back to studying the board. The chessmen stayed the way they were. Phoebe just smirked.
Eventually, Delia moved her Consort to threaten Wilhelmina's Healer-Warlord formation. Wilhelmina hovered over the pieces long enough to make sure the other witch's attention was focused on them, then moved her Healer backward and focused all her attention on the enemy consort. The chess piece blanched from Delia's black to Wilhelmina's white, as she slowly took her hand off the Healer.
Delia reached for her Consort, took in its altered appearance, and pressed her lips close together. "Excuse me," she said in a tight voice, then stood up and walked from the room. It wasn't anything as undignified as a run, but Wilhelmina knew that pace from experience, and knew the other witch was looking for a place to vent her emotions in private.
She just didn't know _why_.
She looked questioningly at Phoebe, but the Black Widow speared her with a glance that said "you started it, you fix it". She felt a burst of exasperation with every single close-mouthed witch in this house - herself included - and funneled it into a flicker of Craft that left the chess set de-magicked and carefully packed before she marched outside to find Delia.
The young Queen was about where Wilhelmina had guessed, down on her knees and elbow-deep in a patch of herbs that really didn't need the ferocious weeding she was giving them. Wilhelmina plopped down right beside her and dug in as well; you couldn't talk with one person weeding and one standing still, and Delia was much too stubborn to stop working.
"I'm sorry about that. Whatever 'that' was."
"It's...complicated. It's just - I worry, that's all."
Wilhelmina squashed the bitter little voice that asked what a _Queen_ had to worry about, and kept her tone even. "Worry about what?"
"Consorts." Delia's cheeks went pink under their tan. "Males in general, really. Gran and the other witches have tried so hard to keep us all safe, but so many of the males have been - have been brutalized."
"And passed it on to the witches after that," Wilhelmina said sharply.
"I know. Gran guessed that about you the first day you were here." Delia pulled fretfully at a green shoot that might or might not have been a weed. "It scares me, that I might come up against something - somebody - like you did. And someday soon I'm going to need a strong Consort - how do I dare choose, knowing what kind of males are out there?"
Wilhelmina just shook her head; she had no idea either. But the thought of Andrew in the stables gleamed briefly in her mind. There were still some trustworthy Blood left, scattered here and there.
As the sun lowered they worked for a while in companionable silence, moving on to plants that actually did need weeding, until something Delia had said tugged at her mind. "You said you were going to need a strong Consort. Did Phoebe see something?"
"Gran? No. Not about that, anyway. But I'm going to be Territory Queen - if I can stay out of trouble long enough to make the Offering - and there's so much rebuilding that we'll have to do...I'll need every bit of help I can get."
Territory Queen? But Delia's power was so dim and unfocused...Then she knew. She should have seen it earlier, after all those years of watching Jaenelle come and go, hiding her power at every turn. "Phoebe's disguising you, isn't she?"
Delia nodded, embarrassed at the deception but straightforward as ever. "Strong Queens have a way of disappearing in Territories under Hayll's shadow. Gran couldn't hide that I'm a Queen, but she could hide my Jewels; as far as anybody knows, I've only just got the power for the White. She's been doing it all my life."
"And she still has the strength to weave Webs? She must be-"
"She wears the Gray," Delia said quietly. "So will I, when I make the offering. One of our Queens created the spell, a long time ago - nobody knows how to duplicate it, but there's always one witch in the Territory with the Gray or the potential for it. Not always a Queen, but there is always a Gray Lady in Dena Nehele."
Gray. More power even than Dorothea. She could understand Phoebe's protectiveness; a Queen with that strength could restore the territory, restore the Blood around her...as long as no one found her while she was still vulnerable. Keeping quiet hadn't been enough to save Jaenelle, but here in Dena Nehele, the only thing she could do was also the _right_ thing to do. Thank the Darkness..."I'll keep your secret."
"I know," Delia said with perfect trust. "Besides, it wasn't fair - you not knowing our secrets while we knew yours."
"Not all of them," Wilhelmina confessed, and found herself telling the other girl about Bobby. About Graff. About the Sapphire that was and wasn't hers. About Jaenelle and the failure she felt when she thought about her, the way her mind flinched away from that titanic strength, no matter how much she loved her sister. She trembled through some of the disconnected stories, but it felt good to get them out in the open, where they couldn't fester any longer.
And Phoebe watched the two witches from the kitchen half-door, a satisfied smile curving her lips. For years she'd seen the growing distrust in Dena Nehele, between the genders and between one strong witch and the next. Now the strands of trust were beginning to reknit themselves, strength to strength, and watching the web heal was all she could have asked for.
In the sunny upstairs bedroom, Wilhelmina took a moment to stretch away the oddly pleasant ache in her muscles. She'd been helping with yardwork all morning, from weeding to chicken-feeding to (ugh!) cleaning out the goat shed, and while she was new to all of it, she'd done better than she expected. Or so she gathered, from the way Delia's attitude had shifted from resentful tolerance to cautious acceptance over the course of the morning.
Several weeks ago now, when she'd first accidentally found this house, the young witch whose gardening she'd interrupted had hustled her unceremoniously inside and poured out her version of events to Phoebe, the sharp-eyed old woman who met her in the kitchen. After a period of mutual suspicion, the stories were sorted out to everyone's satisfaction - which meant, Wilhelmina suspected, that no one was getting more than half the truth. She certainly hadn't told them everything she was hiding, only that she was trying to stay out of an unpleasant family fight, and they seemed to be holding at least that much back from her. What they had told her was that the old witch was a Black Widow raising her orphaned granddaughter, Delia, and that she'd found herself at the borders of a mountain Territory named Dena Nehele. Phoebe had surrounded their tiny acreage with well- hidden Webs that kept it concealed - at least, had kept it concealed until Wilhelmina blundered across one.
After much careful negotiation, they'd reached a bargain, exchanging food and shelter for extra help with the farm and someone for Delia to practice Craft lessons with. It didn't take long for the lessons to expand, until Phoebe was teaching them both Craft, and Wilhelmina was passing her own knowledge on to Delia - mostly book-learning and the finer points of Protocol. Phoebe had seemed thoroughly satisfied when that topic came up, leaving Wilhelmina confused but willing to assist. She didn't know what Delia would need Protocol for, living in this backwater corner of a remote Territory. The closest thing to civilization was a small village nearly a day's walk away, and that was as close as Wilhelmina wanted to get for a while. From what Phoebe had said, the Territory Queen was no one to cross, or even get near if you could help it; she owed fealty to Hayll, and enjoyed showing off every bit of power she had. It was no wonder Phoebe wanted to stay away from her; Black Widows had a way of making anybody uneasy, and Phoebe's Queen granddaughter had to add to the perceived threat.
At least, until you looked closely. Delia might have been born a Queen, but Wilhelmina could only feel a minimal amount of power from her. Not even enough to be a District Queen - so why did she catch echoes of Phoebe's worry and determination every time the old woman looked at her granddaughter?
I am so _tired_ of secrets, she thought.
But everyone had them, and complaining about it wasn't going to do a thing but sink her in self-pity. And she knew already how dangerous that could be, how it left you blind and mired and unable to save yourself.
She changed out of the dirty dress she'd been wearing to garden and shrugged into one of her old riding habits. She didn't have long before Phoebe would start lessons for the day, and she was feeling oddly cheerful about them. She'd learned more in a month here than she had over all the years of Graff's tutelage, and was slowly coming to look forward to demonstrating her skills. Even with a partner - Delia had a thorough grasp of the fundamentals of Craft, but no finesse, and Wilhelmina had control to cover the surprising gaps in her knowledge. Between them, she thought they added up to one skilled witch. And while Delia had her difficult (well, infuriating) moments, mostly when she felt her territory was being infringed upon, she was slowly becoming a friend.
She trotted down the stairs, stopping halfway down with an inquisitive sniff. Sweet dough, cinnamon, and cloves...her stomach rumbled its opinion of the matter, and she blushed. Graff or even Alexandra would have lectured her sharply for that alone, never mind the calluses, the broken nails, and the tan that was just starting to color her skin.
So maybe living out here in the hinterlands wasn't so bad after all.
She followed her nose to the kitchen, where Phoebe was up to her elbows in something sweet-smelling and doughy, kneading away with surprising strength for her stick-thin figure. Wilhelmina stood there for several seconds, wavering between decorum and the urge to sample whatever Phoebe was working on. Finally, the old Black Widow cast a bright, amused glance back over her shoulder at Wilhelmina. "Delia would have stolen half my pie by now, you know."
"And gotten her knuckles rapped with that rolling pin, too," she retorted. "_I've_ seen how fast you move when you want to."
Phoebe crowed with laughter, more than the simple comment merited. "So you _do_ have a backbone after all, child! I've wondered where you were hiding it."
"Of course I do," she retorted, stung. "But you've - you've taken me in and taught me, and I don't want to be rude. And it's not ladylike anyway-"
Phoebe didn't scoff as she had half-feared, but reached out two floury fingers and tipped Wilhelmina's chin up to meet her gaze. "You're a Jeweled female, and a witch before you're a Lady. You'll do yourself - and us - more good if you learn how to show your teeth and not your belly."
Wilhelmina bristled a little at that; she knew she wasn't brave, but she could still survive in the murky arena of high Blood society, where all the smiles were poisonous and every knife was hidden. For all her power, Phoebe couldn't do that. "I - I can take care of myself. Mostly." Her cheeks reddened as she remembered how helpless she'd felt against Bobby.
Phoebe's bird-bright eyes softened. "Whatever you ran from, there's no shame in it. I'm sure you'd do well as simply a noblewoman, but...child, something's coming. Something so vast I can't even see its shadow when I weave a Web, and I can't tell if it's bringing healing or destruction. I want my granddaughter to survive. I want you to survive. And I don't know how much time I'll have to teach you."
"Teach us what?"
"Anything. Everything. Teach Delia the ways of ruling, teach you the Webs, if you choose-"
"What?"
"The Webs. You have the potential, if you choose it - the Hourglass is in your blood, if not in your soul."
She couldn't quite repress a shiver. Her long-dead mother had been a Black Widow, but the thought was far from comfortable. Still, it was a powerful lure to think of knowing things the Black Widows knew, tings that others could never learn...
"Think about it," Phoebe said with uncharacteristic gentleness. "I'll be here when you make your choice. Meanwhile-" Deftly, she scooped up the mass of dough she'd been working with, filled it with spiced fruit, and slid the results into the oven. "Meanwhile, there's still lessons. Go into the parlor and set up the chess board, if you would. I'll be along in a moment."
*************************
Today's lesson was taking the form of a chess game, somewhat to Wilhelmina's surprise. Anything at all was allowable, so long as it was done with Craft; both girls had learned to watch out for surreptitious attempts to move the opponent's piece for her, and Delia had promptly thrown a physical shield over her pieces to prevent it happening again after Wilhelmina tried it. Wilhelmina eyed the shield thoughtfully; she couldn't tell the strength of the actual shield, but since Delia's Queen was Green and hers was only Purple Dusk, she left it alone and concentrated on the actual strategy of her moves. She moved one of her Healers to the protection of a Warlord, sat back, and waited.
Delia frowned, thinking. And thinking. And thinking some more, while Wilhelmina fought the urge to drum her fingers. The other witch played to win at any cost, but at least half the time she wore herself out on Wilhelmina's defensive formations. And it didn't look like she'd be moving any time soon. Wilhelmina suppressed a smile, closed her eyes, and concentrated until each of Delia's chessmen was thumbing its nose at its neighbor.
Delia wrinkled her nose, sent up a miniaturized burst of fireworks over the "battlefield" just to prove she'd been paying attention, and went right back to studying the board. The chessmen stayed the way they were. Phoebe just smirked.
Eventually, Delia moved her Consort to threaten Wilhelmina's Healer-Warlord formation. Wilhelmina hovered over the pieces long enough to make sure the other witch's attention was focused on them, then moved her Healer backward and focused all her attention on the enemy consort. The chess piece blanched from Delia's black to Wilhelmina's white, as she slowly took her hand off the Healer.
Delia reached for her Consort, took in its altered appearance, and pressed her lips close together. "Excuse me," she said in a tight voice, then stood up and walked from the room. It wasn't anything as undignified as a run, but Wilhelmina knew that pace from experience, and knew the other witch was looking for a place to vent her emotions in private.
She just didn't know _why_.
She looked questioningly at Phoebe, but the Black Widow speared her with a glance that said "you started it, you fix it". She felt a burst of exasperation with every single close-mouthed witch in this house - herself included - and funneled it into a flicker of Craft that left the chess set de-magicked and carefully packed before she marched outside to find Delia.
The young Queen was about where Wilhelmina had guessed, down on her knees and elbow-deep in a patch of herbs that really didn't need the ferocious weeding she was giving them. Wilhelmina plopped down right beside her and dug in as well; you couldn't talk with one person weeding and one standing still, and Delia was much too stubborn to stop working.
"I'm sorry about that. Whatever 'that' was."
"It's...complicated. It's just - I worry, that's all."
Wilhelmina squashed the bitter little voice that asked what a _Queen_ had to worry about, and kept her tone even. "Worry about what?"
"Consorts." Delia's cheeks went pink under their tan. "Males in general, really. Gran and the other witches have tried so hard to keep us all safe, but so many of the males have been - have been brutalized."
"And passed it on to the witches after that," Wilhelmina said sharply.
"I know. Gran guessed that about you the first day you were here." Delia pulled fretfully at a green shoot that might or might not have been a weed. "It scares me, that I might come up against something - somebody - like you did. And someday soon I'm going to need a strong Consort - how do I dare choose, knowing what kind of males are out there?"
Wilhelmina just shook her head; she had no idea either. But the thought of Andrew in the stables gleamed briefly in her mind. There were still some trustworthy Blood left, scattered here and there.
As the sun lowered they worked for a while in companionable silence, moving on to plants that actually did need weeding, until something Delia had said tugged at her mind. "You said you were going to need a strong Consort. Did Phoebe see something?"
"Gran? No. Not about that, anyway. But I'm going to be Territory Queen - if I can stay out of trouble long enough to make the Offering - and there's so much rebuilding that we'll have to do...I'll need every bit of help I can get."
Territory Queen? But Delia's power was so dim and unfocused...Then she knew. She should have seen it earlier, after all those years of watching Jaenelle come and go, hiding her power at every turn. "Phoebe's disguising you, isn't she?"
Delia nodded, embarrassed at the deception but straightforward as ever. "Strong Queens have a way of disappearing in Territories under Hayll's shadow. Gran couldn't hide that I'm a Queen, but she could hide my Jewels; as far as anybody knows, I've only just got the power for the White. She's been doing it all my life."
"And she still has the strength to weave Webs? She must be-"
"She wears the Gray," Delia said quietly. "So will I, when I make the offering. One of our Queens created the spell, a long time ago - nobody knows how to duplicate it, but there's always one witch in the Territory with the Gray or the potential for it. Not always a Queen, but there is always a Gray Lady in Dena Nehele."
Gray. More power even than Dorothea. She could understand Phoebe's protectiveness; a Queen with that strength could restore the territory, restore the Blood around her...as long as no one found her while she was still vulnerable. Keeping quiet hadn't been enough to save Jaenelle, but here in Dena Nehele, the only thing she could do was also the _right_ thing to do. Thank the Darkness..."I'll keep your secret."
"I know," Delia said with perfect trust. "Besides, it wasn't fair - you not knowing our secrets while we knew yours."
"Not all of them," Wilhelmina confessed, and found herself telling the other girl about Bobby. About Graff. About the Sapphire that was and wasn't hers. About Jaenelle and the failure she felt when she thought about her, the way her mind flinched away from that titanic strength, no matter how much she loved her sister. She trembled through some of the disconnected stories, but it felt good to get them out in the open, where they couldn't fester any longer.
And Phoebe watched the two witches from the kitchen half-door, a satisfied smile curving her lips. For years she'd seen the growing distrust in Dena Nehele, between the genders and between one strong witch and the next. Now the strands of trust were beginning to reknit themselves, strength to strength, and watching the web heal was all she could have asked for.