Liza and the Bargain That Kept the War Going

Liza and the Bargain That Kept the War Going The part of Liza's story I kept coming back to is her deal with the Wizard. He's torturing witches, she wants revenge, and somehow they find a way to make both of their ambitions work together. His own men end up locked in a barn so she can burn them. He gets to keep living, and she gets a safe place for the coven. It's a horrible arrangement, and it explains a lot about what Avril walks into centuries later. Spoilers for Coven, including Liza's ending. Liza's past includes genuine suffering. In the Salem flashback, another captive uses her shapeshifting ability to save Liza from drowning. The woman tells her to admit what she is so she'll survive and, someday, bring her back. Liza does eventually resurrect her. Tyrea returns after more than three hundred years, and Liza has work for her immediately. That's something I find unsettling about Liza. Helping somebody and finding a use for them are so closely tangled together. Tyrea's return becomes an opportunity for infiltration and revenge. Later, Avril's survival is valuable because Liza wants to absorb what she carries. Other witches can matter to her while still becoming things she intends to spend. The Wizard's examination of Liza is revealing too. He doesn't think she fits the prophecy. She can't do everything he expects the promised witch to do, even though she's the strongest he's seen. But he can use her. He gives her a lost spellbook and offers freedom and revenge, with an exception for himself, in exchange for immortality until the next cycle. Liza takes the deal. The Wizard makes sure his own men can't expose what he's done, and she burns the barn with them inside. This isn't a situation where the people supposedly leading opposite sides are unable to understand one another. They understand the arrangement perfectly well. The people who trusted them are the ones paying for it. Afterward, Liza argues that trying to make peace has failed. She wants witches to strike first, possess and transform children, and terrify anyone who might oppose them. Baba Yaga initially joins her. By the present-day story, Baba has come to see how much of the problem they helped create, but Liza is still convinced that greater power will solve it. Avril gives her a new chance at that power. Liza renews the bargain with the Wizard, then privately plans to become strong enough to overcome him even with his immortality. The long alliance has always contained that possibility. Neither of them is choosing trust over self-interest. When Liza starts consuming Avril, it doesn't go the way she expects. Avril is too powerful. Liza has to turn back to the ancient book and find a stronger spell, while Avril challenges her about protecting witches by killing one. She doesn't persuade Liza. Being told the cost of her plan isn't the same thing as giving her a reason she considers important. Liza is still dangerous when force stops working for her. After Avril suppresses her powers with the rifle, she uses the surrounding crystals to appear as Baba Yaga and tricks Avril into surrendering it. She gets the weapon and shoots her. For a moment, she has turned losing into another advantage. Then she changes the setting without understanding what it does. The rifle's effect is reversible, and she gives Avril her power back. Avril kills her rather than accept another offer. I think that ending fits Liza better than a sudden confession would have. She's still bargaining, deceiving, and trying to keep the next advantage right up to the end. What makes her interesting to me is that the persecution in her past was real. The people who hurt her were real. Somewhere along the way, she made that suffering into permission to decide what everybody else should be willing to lose.