The High Priest's Daughter Read online

  THE NETWORK SERIES

  by Katie Cross

  Mildred’s Resistance

  Miss Mabel’s School for Girls

  The Isadora Interviews

  Antebellum Awakening

  • The High Priest’s Daughter •

  War of the Networks

  or read all six books collected in one edition as

  The Network Series Complete Collection

  Short Stories from Miss Mabel’s

  Short Stories from the Network Series

  The High Priest’s Daughter

  Young Adult Fantasy

  Text copyright © 2015 by Katie Cross

  This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, events, or incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity or resemblance to events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover designed by Jenny Zemanek at Seedlings Design Studio

  Typesetting of print editions by Chris Bell at Atthis Arts LLC

  E-book production by Kella Campbell at E-books Done Right

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the author. For information regarding permission, send a query to the author at [email protected].

  Published by Antebellum Publishing.

  KOBO EDITION • ISBN 978-0-9915319-8-1 • VERSION 3.0

  Also available as a trade paperback ISBN 978-0-9915319-9-8

  Visit the author at www.kcrosswriting.com to learn more about The Network Series.

  •

  To Ta-rah, Beaner, and Scholes-woman.

  Forever.

  •

  The Southern Network

  Going to the Southern Network made me more nervous than opening a bag of hissing cats.

  Southern Network witches were known to be hostile, behave brutishly, and hate women anywhere outside the kitchen. Three things that didn’t particularly endear me, a seventeen-year-old female witch who never left home without my sword, to their way of life.

  “Well, Bianca, are you ready to meet High Priest Mikhail?” Marten asked me with a half-grin. The sun sank in the horizon, as useless as a paperweight, giving light but no warmth. Marten wouldn’t allow me to use magic to transport to our meeting in the Southern Network because I’d never been there before. “Too great a risk,” he’d said with a little tsk of his teeth. “Transporting without ever having been to a place, or at least near it, is just asking for trouble.” So we’d been riding in the cold carriage for over an hour, watching the glacial landscape glide past. Marten didn’t have to ride with me, of course, but he was thoughtful in that regard.

  “I think the more appropriate question is whether Mikhail is ready to meet me,” I said, irritable after jostling over the terrible, icy roads.

  Marten chuckled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Nothing made him truly laugh anymore, not since the love of his life, our previous High Priestess Mildred, died eight months before, in the summer.

  “I won’t be the first Assistant to ever cross borders with an Ambassador,” I said, pushing thoughts of Mildred aside. “But I may be the first female Assistant brave enough to venture into the Southern Network. Don’t you think?”

  “You’re not breaking any laws,” Marten replied as if convincing both of us. “The Mansfeld Pact between the four Networks allows for Assistants to accompany the Ambassador outside their Network on official business, it’s just that not many have. Certainly not to the cold tundras of the Southern Network, anyway.”

  “Now seems as good a time as ever to break tradition. A war is about to start, isn’t it? Let’s add more chaos into the mix. It’s a habit of witches in my family.”

  Marten laughed again—much louder this time—but I’d been serious.

  Through the forest of thick evergreens I caught occasional glimpses of Mikhail’s looming ice castle. The second month of winter gripped the Southern Network with relentless strength, forcing me to use a flame incantation to generate heat so my fingers didn’t freeze. A little ball of flame hovered between my cupped hands, sparking and warm.

  Even the castle seemed to feel the bitter effects of its southern residence. Frost clung to the outer facade of stone, sparkling in crystalline shades of blue and white. Narrow turrets poked the charcoal sky. Unlike Chatham Castle in the Central Network, which was made of warm gray stones, boasted ten turrets, and sprawled out like a tall, lazy mountain, the Southern Network palace was skinny and narrow. What it lacked in girth it made up for in height, breaking apart in only five or six pieces with the shortest turrets towering at least fifteen stories. Snow capped most of the evergreen trees here, which pressed right up to the castle.

  “Prepare yourself,” Marten said under his breath, shooting me a sharp glance. His hazel eyes remained warm despite his severity. “And let me do all the speaking.”

  “I strive only to be an obedient female in the eyes of the South,” I quipped. The carriage moved from a bouncing dirt road onto paved cobblestones. “Isn’t your head cold?”

  He ran a hand over his bare head. “Being cold builds character,” he said. Before Mildred died, he’d looked like a man in the prime of his life. Middle thirties, lithe shoulders, an occasional smile in a serious bearing. But her death had taken its toll on him, and he no longer used magic to transform his looks the way many older witches did. Marten was somewhere in his seventies, perhaps older if the wrinkles around his face and the way his skin sagged off his bones meant anything. I’d worked as his Assistant for the last eight months, and he’d taken me under his wing in a grandfatherly kind of way.

  “If being cold builds character, then I’m the most well-rounded witch in Antebellum,” I muttered, and my breath fogged out in billows. I stared out the window, memorizing the landscape. We didn’t have trees like this in Letum Wood, the forest that spanned most of the Central Network. Ours were massive and thick, hiding dangerous secrets. The forests here seemed distant and sharp, more indifferent than treacherous. I tightened my grip on my sword, Viveet. She glowed a bright blue in her sheath under my touch, comforting me. We’d arrive soon, and I didn’t intend to leave her in the carriage. They’d have to pry her from my frozen hands before I went anywhere unknown and hostile without her. A little burst of magic stirred in my chest at my agitation, the way it always did, but settled with a sigh.

  The carriage halted ten minutes later. A long, slim stairway led to a single wooden door. Southern Guardians lined the walkway, hovering so close I could have touched the shiny gold buttons on their gray wool jackets. Frost covered their swords and turned their cheeks bright pink.

  “Well, the castle is simple,” I said, climbing out of the carriage and studying the straight facade of the building. I could appreciate the intimidation factor of their forbidding, silent welcome.

  “Functional,” Marten said. “Let’s get inside.”

  We moved quickly up the stairs, stopping at the top when a male witch with sweeping light hair and dark eyes moved into our path. He had a small, scrunched face, as if he wrinkled it in surprise all the time. Just like the Southern Guardians, his intense expression made me feel like a dirty pot.

  “Dmitri,” Marten called jovially. “It’s good to see you again. Bianca, this is Dmitri, the Ambassador for the Southern Network. He and I have worked together for almost twenty years. Dmitri, this is Bianca, my Assistant.”

  Dmitri’s small eyes slid over to me in question. I held his gaze, but couldn’t suppress a shiver down my spine. His frigid st
are rivaled the freezing temperature.

  “Velcome, Miss Bianca,” Dmitri finally said, pronouncing his words with the exaggerated, crisp accent of the Southern Network. “You are daughter to the great High Priest Derek, are you not?”

  “I am.”

  “Hmm. Vat are you here for?”

  “To meet with Mikhail,” I said before Marten could answer for me.

  Dmitri’s lips puckered into a sour frown. “This is an … unexpected surprise.” He lifted an eyebrow in accusation, his eyes falling to Viveet beneath my heavy, fur-lined cape. “His Highness does not like surprises.”

  “She’ll be no problem, Dmitri,” Marten said. “She’s here to learn, not negotiate.”

  The rounded, wooden door behind Dmitri swung open with the heavy thud of a falling lock. A wave of heat flooded over us. “Vatever you say,” Dmitri drawled, indicating for us to follow him into the main corridor.

  We stepped into a long hall filled with white and blue banners depicting a snarling polar bear—the Southern Network flag. A fire roared in a great hearth to the left, and a sweeping staircase led up a pair of unlit steps to the right. Unlike Chatham Castle, which never stopped moving and breathing and living, this castle sat in austere quiet. Not a worker or a Guardian or a politician broke the unnerving silence. How could the center of a Network, the very heart of a vast land, be so calm?

  “Come,” Dmitri said. “Ve von’t keep him vaiting. He vill entertain you in the throne room.”

  The narrow hallway led us deeper into the castle. We stopped at a set of broad double doors decorated with sparkling gems on the hinges and the doorknob. The citizens of the Southern Network had never been known for their humility. Or their height.

  “His Highness vaits inside,” Dmitri announced with one lingering, uncertain look at me. He grasped both golden handles and pushed the doors open wide, spreading them into a dim room of war.

  Paintings of battle scenes filled every nook and cranny of the room, leaving little wall space. A detailed tapestry displaying a particularly gory fight spread across the back wall. Chipped axes. Broken swords. A shield encrusted with diamonds. I could barely take in the sparkling, deadly glamour. Greatest of all the many decorations was Mikhail himself, the High Priest of the Southern Network.

  “Your Highness,” Dmitri declared. “You have … visitors.”

  Dmitri left us on a furry white rug of polar bear fur, standing before the terrible glare of Mikhail’s calculating eyes. What I could see of his eyes, anyway, which were almost lost in the folds of his face, so small as to be mostly slits. Mikhail, a squat man, boasted the same compressed face shared by most of the witches I’d already seen here. His legs weren’t long enough to touch the ground from where he sat, so they dangled freely, like a child’s. A shaggy mane of reddish-brown hair stood straight out from his head. Dangling gems swayed on his red beard, where they’d been braided in. A bright opal the size of my fist hung from the longest braid of all, nearly touching his barrel chest.

  “Velcome, Marten,” Mikhail boomed. His eyes disappeared into his face when his forehead ruffled. “You have brought a voman. Vy vould you do this thing?”

  The malice in his voice reverberated through his chamber. I put my hand on Viveet under my cloak. Dmitri had vanished. No Assistant, servant, or other stirring of life attended to Mikhail except for a scantily clad woman wearing gold fabric and an apron of gems. She lingered behind his left shoulder with haughty disregard, her face half-hidden behind a veil drawn across everything but her eyes.

  “My Assistant, Bianca,” Marten said without apology. “Bianca, this is His Highness Mikhail of the Southern Network.”

  I inclined my head and curtsied, but didn’t say a word. Mikhail continued to glare at me. I tightened my grip on Viveet.

  “I don’t care who she is! Get her out of my castle. The only vomen I allow are my vife and concubines.”

  “She stays with me.”

  Marten’s firm, stubborn tone made me wonder if he had other reasons for bringing me. Putting up a strong front in the face of Mikhail’s demands, for one. Or setting Mikhail on edge for another. A display of fearlessness, perhaps? Marten’s prowess with both magic and politics couldn’t be understated, which was only one of the reasons Papa considered Marten one of his most trusted advisors. No doubt he had some angle behind bringing me.

  Mikhail glowered from his throne of gold. His wealth—or perhaps obsession with it—came from extensive mining in the summer months. The Mansfeld Pact forbade trade and travel between Networks, which meant that all the precious stones they harvested remained within the Southern Network. They used to have metals in abundance, but either they’d mined them all or couldn’t reach them anymore. Their desperate need for new metal for swords had likely pushed them into a forbidden alliance with the Western Network, something Marten wanted to get to the bottom of today. If Mikhail’s desperation ran deep enough to form an illegal alliance with the Western Network, war would follow.

  “It’s good to see you again, Mikhail,” Marten said, bowing at the waist. “I trust you’re willing to discuss Derek’s concerns with us.”

  Mikhail scowled, but must have sensed that he wouldn’t get his way. “Begin. Vat do you vant?”

  “We’ve come to ensure that the Mansfeld Pact still stands. Rumors have surfaced lately that you are forming an alliance with the Western Network. That, of course, cannot be true.”

  “Rumors from vhere?” Mikhail demanded, planting his hands on the side of his throne and leaning forward. The opal in his beard swung back and forth. “Vhere do you hear this?”

  “Everywhere.”

  Mikhail leaned back. “They lie.”

  “Is talk of your shortage of metals a lie also? Without metal, one cannot make a trustworthy sword.”

  “A lie! Ve are fine!”

  “I didn’t ask how you were doing,” Marten countered. “I asked whether you needed metals to forge weaponry for your Guardians.”

  Mikhail flung his hand in the air. “You ask too much questions. Ve have broken no laws. The Southern Network is stronger than all Networks!”

  My eyes fell on a smaller seat, one carved of wood, looking painfully bland next to the sparkling opulence of Mikhail’s gold and ruby chair. I stared at the two words in the Yazika language of the Southern Network inscribed across the top of the chair. I’d seen the writings of the South before but only knew a few words. The inscription on the chair said, Second Greatest. Likely the less-than-impressive throne of Mikhail’s voman.

  Mikhail watched me take in the details of his war room with the same insolent expression Dmitri had given me. Too annoyed to be frightened, I stared back until he looked away with a mutter.

  “Derek simply wants your reassurance that you won’t turn to Dane in the Western Network for metals to forge more weapons. Doing so would break the century-long agreement that’s existed between the Central, Eastern, Western, and Southern Networks. It would also bring a war upon you from our Network that you could never prepare for.”

  Marten’s tone had dropped, sounding not just confident, but certain.

  “You insult me!” Mikhail said, throwing his hand in a rude gesture. “Vhy vould I need anyone else? No! Ve need no one. Ve are strong and healthy. Tell Derek to leave us alone, and take this voman out of my house! She’s not allowed. You insult me!”

  The concubine behind Mikhail shifted, causing tiny bells along the bottom of her pants to tinkle. Marten didn’t respond, so neither did I, although my fingers itched to show Mikhail exactly how powerful a woman could be. I’d chop the opal right out of his beard and take it home to show Merrick.

  “It’s always good to have your reassurance,” Marten said. “For we are always watching, and always aware of all borders.”

  Mikhail shifted in his seat. “Go. My time is precious and not to be vasted on you. I can’t stand the voman. She’s smug and annoying. You insult me!”

  I winked.

  “Leave!” Mikhail screamed, lea
ping to his feet. “Leave my house! You are not velcome back! Leave the voman next time. If I see her again, I kill her!”

  Dmitri appeared at our side.

  “We trust in your continued goodwill toward the Mansfeld Pact,” Marten said with a steely tone that startled Mikhail into silence. “Breaking such a powerful oath would shatter you. Not a witch in your Network could do magic for the rest of his life. Not even Dane and the West Guards can protect you from Derek’s wrath if you combine forces with the West and try to wage war on the Central Network. That much I can promise you. Derek will not be bullied.”

  Mikhail swallowed and seemed to think over what Marten said for the briefest moment before he exploded again.

  “You think I don’t know?” he screamed. “I know the Pact! Now go! Leave! You’ve insulted me by bringing a voman, and now you insult me by assuming I have no brains. LEAVE!”

  “Go now,” Dmitri said under his breath. “Or he’ll curse you beyond recognition.”

  “He’ll die if he tries,” Marten said, and Dmitri shrunk away. While I wanted to give Mikhail the opportunity to try to hurt me—if I didn’t get my own revenge, Papa would kill Mikhail with his bare hands—Marten didn’t seem inclined to be hostile in another Network. He grabbed my arm.

  “Come, voman,” he said quietly. “Let’s go home.”

  A Unique Position

  The next day I faced a far more formidable foe: My old teacher Miss Scarlett and a one-on-one private etiquette lesson. I preferred Mikhail’s less-than-cordial hospitality to Miss Scarlett’s love affair with rules, but I went because Marten had asked—even insisted—that I perfect my manners.

  Miss Scarlett eyed me with disapproval when I eased into the room with thirty seconds left to spare. Had I been late by even ten seconds, she would have locked me out and forced me to reschedule. I knew by experience. Explaining to Marten that I’d missed my first class because of a ten-second fluke had been downright embarrassing.