Crown of Midnight
Page 68

So she didn’t give the witch a chance, not even a heartbeat, to realize she was conscious. With no warning, she surged her shoulders up, throwing back her head as hard as she could.
Bone cracked, and Yellowlegs howled, but Celaena had already twisted, getting her legs beneath her. Yellowlegs scrambled for the other end of the chain, fast as a viper. Celaena stomped on the length of chain between them, her other foot lashing out to meet Yellowlegs’s face.
The woman went flying, as though she were made of nothing but dust and wind, tumbling into the shadows between mirrors.
Swearing under her breath, Celaena’s wrists ached against the cold iron. But she’d been taught to free herself from worse. Arobynn had bound her up from head to toe and made her learn how to get loose, even if it meant spending two days prostrate on the ground in her own filth, or dislocating her shoulder to get out. So, not all that surprisingly, she had the chains off in a matter of seconds.
She yanked a handkerchief from her pocket and used it to snatch up a long mirror shard. Angling the glass, Celaena peered into the shadows where Yellowlegs had gone flying. Nothing. Just a smear of dark blood.
“Do you know how many young women I’ve trapped in this wagon in the past five hundred years?” Yellowlegs’s voice was everywhere and nowhere. “How many Crochan witches I destroyed? They were warriors, too—such talented, beautiful warriors. They tasted like summer grass and cool water.”
Confirming that Yellowlegs was a blue-blooded Ironteeth witch changed nothing, Celaena told herself. Nothing, except that she’d have to find a bigger weapon.
Celaena scanned the wagon—for the witch, for her lost daggers, for anything to use against the crone. Her gaze lifted to the shelves on the nearby wall. Books, crystal balls, paper, dead things in jars …
Celaena would have missed it if she’d blinked. It was coated in dirt, but still gleamed faintly in the light of the distant oven. Mounted on the wall above a woodpile was a long, single-bladed ax.
She smiled faintly as she yanked it off the wall. All around, Yellowlegs’s image danced in the mirrors, a thousand possibilities for where she could be standing, watching, waiting.
Celaena swung the ax at the nearest one. Then the next. And the next.
The only way to kill a witch is to cut off her head. A friend had told her that once.
Celaena wove between the mirrors, smashing them as she went, the reflections of the crone vanishing until the real witch stood along the narrow pathway between Celaena and the hearth, the chain back in her hands.
Celaena hefted the ax over a shoulder. “One more chance,” she breathed. “You agree to never say one word about me and Dorian, and I’ll walk out of here.”
“I can taste your lies,” Yellowlegs said. Faster than should be possible, she came for Celaena, scuttling like a spider, the chain swinging from her fingers.
Celaena dodged the first whip of the chain. She heard the second before she saw it, and though it missed her, it struck a mirror and glass exploded everywhere. Celaena had no choice but to shield her eyes, to look away for one heartbeat.
It was enough.
The chain wrapped around her ankle, stinging and bruising, and then yanked.
The world tilted as Yellowlegs pulled her feet out from under her, and Celaena went crashing to the floor. Yellowlegs rushed for her, but Celaena rolled across the shards, chain tangling around her, clinging to the ax with one hand, until her face brushed against the coarse fibers of the ancient rug before the oven.
There was a firm yank on the chain, and then another whipping sound. Metal slammed into Celaena’s forearm, so hard that she lost her grip on the ax. She flipped onto her back, still tangled in the infernal chain, only to find the iron teeth of Baba Yellowlegs looming above her. In a flash, the witch slammed Celaena back down into the carpet.
The iron nails dug into her skin, drawing blood as the witch pinned her by the shoulder. “Hold still, you foolish girl,” Yellowlegs hissed, grabbing for the length of the chain lying nearly.
The rug scratched against Celaena’s fingers as she stretched for the fallen ax, just inches out of reach. Her arm throbbed mercilessly, her ankle, too. If she could just get the ax … Yellowlegs lunged for Celaena’s neck, her teeth snapping.
Celaena threw herself to the side, narrowly dodging those iron teeth, and grabbed the ax at last. She hauled it up so hard that its blunt end slammed into the side of the old woman’s face.
Yellowlegs was knocked away, collapsing in a heap of billowing brown robes. Celaena scrambled back and raised the weapon between them.
Pushing to her hands and knees, Yellowlegs spat dark blood—blue blood—onto the aged rug, her eyes blazing. “I am going to make you wish you’d never been born. Both you and your prince.” And then Yellowlegs shot forward so fast Celaena could have sworn she was flying.
But she only got as far as Celaena’s feet.
Celaena brought the ax down, throwing every bit of strength into her arms. Blue blood sprayed everywhere.
There was a smile on Baba Yellowlegs’s decapitated head as it thudded to a stop.
Quiet fell. Even the fire, still burning so hot that she was sweating again, seemed to have gone silent. Celaena swallowed. Once. Twice.
Dorian couldn’t know. Even though she wanted to scold him to high hell for asking questions that Yellowlegs had deemed valuable enough to sell to others, he couldn’t know what had happened here. No one could.
When she at last found the strength to disentangle herself, her pants and boots were stained blue-black. Another outfit to be burned. She studied the body and the stained, soaking carpet. It hadn’t been quick, but it could still be clean. A missing person was better than a decapitated corpse.
Celaena raised her eyes to the large oven grate.
 
 
Chapter 42

Mort chuckled when she staggered through the tomb door. “Witch Slayer, are you? Another lovely title to add to your repertoire.” “How do you know about that?” she asked, setting down her candle. She’d already burned her bloodied clothes. They had reeked as they burned—reeked like rotting flesh, just as Yellowlegs had. Fleetfoot had growled at the fireplace and tried to herd Celaena away by pressing her body against her legs.
“Oh, I can smell her on you,” Mort said. “Smell her fury and wickedness.”
Celaena peeled back the collar of her tunic to show the little cuts where Yellowlegs’s nails had pierced the skin right above her collarbone. She’d cleaned them out, but had a feeling they would leave marks, a necklace of scars. “What do you make of those?”
Mort winced. “Those make me grateful I’m made of bronze.”
“Will they harm me?”
“You killed a witch—and you’re now marked by a witch. It will not be the usual sort of wound.” Mort’s eyes narrowed. “You understand that you may have just landed yourself in a heap of trouble.”
Celaena groaned.
“Baba Yellowlegs was a leader—a queen to her clan,” Mort went on. “When they destroyed the Crochan family, they joined with the Blackbeaks and the Bluebloods in the Ironteeth Alliance. They still honor those oaths.”
“But I thought all the witches were gone—scattered to the winds.”
“Gone? The Crochans and those who followed them have been in hiding for generations. But the clans in the Ironteeth Alliance still travel about, as Baba did. Though many more of them live in the ruined and dark places of the world, content in their wickedness. But I suspect that when the Yellowlegs learn of their matron’s death, they will muster the Blackbeaks and the Bluebloods and demand answers from the king. And you will be fortunate if they do not come on their brooms and drag you into it.”