The master of potions led Briar to her shop down the street. Pinching a measured portion of ghost orchid pollen into Briar’s cupped hands, she instructed him to take it straight to any stagnant water. Despite his anger and earlier outburst, he felt selfish. The tiny teaspoon of powder cost a great deal. If he’d been at the Rede on time, there’d be no need. It grated against his independence, but he had little alternative.
He thanked her and carefully carried the pinch of pollen back to his smelly flat.
He sat on a stool in his bathroom, filling the sink and washing every grain from the creases in his palms. It turned the water a metallic blue,rippling as if struck by sound waves. His reflection stared back from it. Still dripping wet, his hair a tangled mess. He’d looked better.
Vatii shuffled along the rim of the sink. “Call her.”
Briar pictured Niamh’s face. She’d visited apprentices to check on their progress plenty of times and had encouraged him to build upon his aura-reading ability. He didn’t often tell people about it, but she’d known.
“A rare gift,” she’d said. “Fortune smiles on you.”
“If it were a gift that could make me a fortune, I’d have more to smile about,” he’d said.
Niamh’s aura smelled like tobacco smoke in an old pub but pricked like the torn edge on an aluminum tin. She had dropped the facade of a wise seer and spoke plainly with him, which had been a blessing and a curse. At least twice, she’d called him an idiot.
Briar waited with his feet pulled up on the stool, cheek resting against his knees, looking out the door at his flat. It was so small that the kitchen, living room, and bedroom were all one and the same. He’d covered a crack in the wall with his vision board, filled with garment sketches and magazine clippings of Linden’s face. Despite the disappointing day, his heart managed an excited plonk at the sight of his postcards depicting Pentawynn’s glass spires. Though he’d never been there himself, his friends had brought him souvenirs.
This wasn’t as exciting as sharing the Witch’s Rede with his peers, but he’d still discover whether he’d be traveling to the city of his dreams. He could plan his future.
Vatii sensed his excitement. “I know you’ve got your hopes set on Pentawynn, but if you get a different placement, you’ll still be a great witch.”
“It’s Pentawynn or death for me, Vatii.”
A flash of refracted light off the mirror drew his attention back to the sink. The water’s ripples moved faster, until droplets vibrated on its surface. Niamh’s scratchy voice came through in fits and starts.
“Who’s—connection’s dog shite. Hello?”
Her image shone through as the ripples vanished, leaving the water’s surface glassy and smooth. Niamh’s countenance peered at him. She wore black and the same expression most professors did when dealing with Briar—a pinched look of long-suffering patience, frayed to the point of breaking.
“Briar, the state of you. Why weren’t you at the Rede?”
He leaned forward, nearly tipping his stool over. He spoke fast, thewords all blurring together, recounting in unnecessary detail the catastrophe of his day.
Until Niamh appeared to look away from him at something or someone in her environment. “Hmm? No, no bother. One of my apprentices missed the Rede. He’s called me through my pint.”
Briar ignored the implication that he was talking to Niamh from the surface of her beer. “Are you even listening?”
A woman with gray-streaked hair appeared next to Niamh and spoke with the same musical accent. “Who’s that?”
“Wind your neck in, Maebh.”
Maebh rolled her eyes and vanished out of view.
Niamh said, “I suppose you’ll be wanting to know where you’re being sent, then?”
“Yes!”
“An unusual circumstance, yours. A vision came to me. It gave the impression a specific placement is of supreme importance.”
“Where?” he prompted.
Niamh paused to answer. The prospect of finally knowing clattered around in his chest like a spool on a sewing machine. He’d awaited this day for years. He hadn’t expected to find out while crouched, gargoyle-like, over his bathroom sink, but that no longer mattered.
His desire for Pentawynn was tied deeply to the curse eroding his health. If his mother’s decline was a measure of the norm, he had six to eight years to live.
It wasn’t long. He wanted, more than anything, to leave a mark upon the world with whatever time he had. To leave it better than he’d found it. To be beloved and remembered. He wanted to tell the world who he was, and that he owed it all to the brilliant woman who raised him. Perhaps it wasn’t the immortality imagined by alchemists, but it was the only hope Briar had that he and his mother’s time on earth, however brief, had not been meaningless.
Witches with dreams like that, they all found their fame in Pentawynn.
