“I’m looking for a churail,” I said finally, with a resigned breath.
His eyebrows shot to his hairline. “Looking to curse someone? Not sure that will work on Reza, given his method of protection.” He tapped his chest in reference to the crown the Viceroy possessed, the one the Viceroy had melted into his damned skin so it couldn’t be removed. I clenched my fists tighter. The River knew I wished the Viceroy didn’t have such control over us.
“And,” he continued, “there aren’t many witches left in River.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “When we fought in the pit together,” I said, referencing the fighting rings we’d grown up in, where we’d first tasted Salt soldier blood, and where we’d first planned to overthrow the authoritarian regime imposed by the Court of Salt, “there was a churail that Zafar would visit to prepare healing potions for him.”
“Taking lessons from Zafar now? Didn’t he get his insides sucked out by a Salt soldier in the pit? The potions he got from the churail can’t have helped very much.”
I rolled my eyes and kicked a stone at him.
“Regardless, I went with Zafar a few times to visit her. I’d hoped to see her at the bazaar today. She had strange eyes—black but like hot, glowing coals. And hair that reminded me of snakes.” I shuddered, remembering the wiry strings of her ever-moving mane coiling around her neck.
Talal smiled bright and wide, as if remembering a childhood dessert. “You mean Baghisha.”
* * *
Talal accompanied me to the edge of the city, away from the River, as we headed toward Baghisha’s hut on the other side of the woods.
It was a small house, with a smoking chimney, clay-packed walls, and a wild garden that grew in front of it, nearly obscuring the entrance of her house entirely. I stroked the stalk of a bitter apple plant, calling forth my magic and using it to give encouragement to the roots. It shot from the ground, growing riotously as it curled over the path and around the gate.
“Show-off,” muttered Talal, whose own magic was more concentrated with the thread of life in the earth itself, moving dirt and rocks and riverbeds.
I smirked at him as we went around the corner and up toward the door, knocking rapidly on the rotted wood.
There was no response, but the door opened a fraction as if it had been left ajar.
Talal and I cast a wary glance at one another before unsheathing our swords and slipping inside the witch’s cottage.
It was dark, with a smell that reminded me of wild garlic plants and an earthy bed of straw mushrooms.
“Baghisha?” I called out, uncertain if there was even anyone living here. The house felt cold, dark, and dead.
“So, the Prince who would return has decided to pay me a visit,” a rough voice came from the gloom.
I jerked backward, stepping on Tal’s foot as I did so. He bit off a curse and bashed into the door behind us.
“I thought you two were meant to be warriors? You haven’t changed from the long-limbed, filthy boys that used to come here.”
Baghisha stepped into the light of the doorway, her long snake-hair coiling around her head and moving like an ever-present nest of serpents. Her face was still youthful, looking no older than Tal or me, even though she’d been alive for much, much longer.
But her voice held that gravelly husk that spoke of age and wisdom and the regret of lost years.
“Baghisha,” Tal said smoothly, recovering from our inept entrance quicker than I. “We missed you.”
She harrumphed, but I was struck but how much she had changed from what I remembered. She still looked young, but lines around her eyes had begun to appear, and her skin was sallow. Her once-black hair was shot with gray, her blazing eyes dimmer.
She was ancient—I had no idea how old she was, but I knew the churails in River had been here for centuries though most of them left during the takeover.
We stepped farther into her hut and lamps along the walls illuminated the dark room.
Where it had once felt abandoned, the atmosphere switched like night into day. A fire blazed at the hearth, and several gharial jaws hung from the mantel, picked clean of their meat, the long, spiny teeth of the river crocodiles blackened with the smoke from the flames.
Jars filled with pixie heads and river slime sat on various shelves, and a very broken-in maroon-colored divan sat in the main room, covered in strands of Baghisha’s black-gray hair that still moved on their own like worms.
“Just as I remembered,” Tal said brightly before striding over to the divan and making himself comfortable, not looking twice at the writhing hairs on the cushions. “I feel right at home.”
I ignored Tal and turned towards Baghisha, not wanting to waste any time on pleasantries.
