Hansel Müller's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Hansel Müller had hunted witches for twenty years, and he still could not name the one who mattered. He sat in a countryside alehouse with a mug in his fist, telling the story he always told. The candy house. The oven. His sister shoving the witch inside. Three commoners leaned over their ale and listened, grinning at the parts where he grinned. They did not see what he wanted from them. He wanted the coven that trained her. That coven was the whole reason he still carried knives. Kill one witch, and you only cut a branch. He wanted the root. But the witch burned eighteen years ago, and dead women teach nothing. He had no name, no mark, no trail. He drank instead. Gretel came in without knocking the mud off her boots. She was younger than him and twice as hard to read. She said nothing to the commoners. She set a charred wooden box on the table beside his mug. "Drink later," she said. The three commoners went quiet. One stood and left his ale half full. Hansel knew that quiet. People felt the cold come off his sister the way they felt it off a well. "What is it," he said. "The candy house. I went back." She opened the box. Inside lay a scrap of cloth, scorched brown at one edge. A mark was stitched into it. Three crossed thorns inside a ring. Hansel put down the mug. "You went to the candy house. Alone." "It was faster." She tapped the cloth. "This was under the hearthstone. She hid it. Hunters burned the body and never dug." He picked up the scrap. The thorns meant nothing to him. But they meant something to someone. Twenty years, and here was the first thread that led past the oven. "A coven mark," he said. "Yes." Gretel sat. "She was trained. This is who trained her." Hansel turned the cloth in the firelight. His hands were steady now. The ale forgotten. "You know whose mark this is." "No." She held his eyes. "But the Order might. Kwame keeps the old records." That soured him. Going to Kwame meant going to the castle. It meant the court, the Queen, the whole clean world that kept witch hunters at arm's length until a witch got close to the throne. Hansel liked the alehouse better. He liked the parts of his life that asked nothing of him. But the thorns were in his hand. He had wanted a lead for twenty years. Now he had one, and it pointed straight at a door he did not want to open. He folded the cloth and stood. "Then we ride to Kwame," he said. "Tonight." Gretel was already at the door. The commoners watched them go and said nothing. The mug sat full on the table behind them.