And now she knew: the whispers her mother and grandmother had carried down from their own ancestors, magicians and charlatans both, were all true. They were words she had never heard again, not all the times she had questioned those men, and she had begun to suspect that they were ideas open only to the women of the land. It was a female concept, after all. No man had an inkling of what the birth of a miracle could mean.

He’s heard the language of the land. He hears the whispers, he feels the movement of rivers through the soles of his feet, the breath of the world brushing against his skin. Don’t tease yourself, Hope! It isn’t so hard to believe.

She stood and turned away from Rafe, hearing him mumble again in his sleep. This time she could not make out the words.

Facing the walls of her little room, she took in everything that made her what she was today: a pretender; a charlatan; a profaner of magic. She had no magic yet she called herself “witch,” and some foolish people even went in fear of her. Old fears must run as deep as blood, she thought, and deeper than history. Here were a hundred spices and herbs and drugs known to anyone, and a few others unknown. Tumblespit, hedgehock, rutard, Duke’s Folly, stale fledge from several distinct regions, grass dew, hedge dew, rock dew, Willmott’s Nemesis, GG’s honey. A small earthpoison tree grew in the corner of her room, fed with the blood of rats. A selection of jars contained bodies and body parts from many creatures of Noreela, most known, some very rare, one or two little more than myth. There were lotions and potions whose uses even Hope had little concept of, handed down as they were from her mother, unopened all these years. Some of these jars had become opaque with time, and Hope had no idea what grew within.

And yet . . . no magic. Only tricks and turns, deceptions and delight in ruse. She could mix and match well after all these years, curing with products of the land and, if required, creating ills as well. She did a fair trade in her medicines, and earned even more from the occasional, more unpleasant commission. The sex, though, the whoring, that was where her true pay originated. The gathering of knowledge, the search for a hint that magic had returned and things were about to change.

And now here was a boy asleep in her room, a boy who had apparently escaped the endless wrath of a Red Monk. A boy who heard unknown voices, felt unknowable sensations deep in his naïve farmer’s mind. He could explain none of it, yet his exposed stomach explained it all.