Bloodwitch

by Susan Dennard

  The High Council wouldn’t hold her coronation, Stix didn’t want to be near her, and scarcely seven hours ago, her father had stolen the triumph she had worked so hard to earn.

  Now, the Empress of Marstok, with her eight million fancy titles, was offering Vivia a chance. Vivia, not her father. And fool though she was, Vivia had believed Vaness when the woman had said she was impressed by the Foxes.

  No matter how Vivia looked at this, she could see no reason to refuse.

  “All right.” The words fell from Vivia’s tongue like water from an ancient faucet: rusty and strained. “All right,” she tried again, less stilted, and this time forcing herself to nod. “Please write a few more words, and I will do the same.”

  Vaness smiled. A real, rich thing that scrunched her eyes and relaxed the muscles in her jaw. Far too beautiful.

  Several minutes passed with only the gentle scratch of the pencil to fill the air between them. Vivia watched as what Vaness wrote appeared in real time upon her paper.

  This is my handwriting. I am Vaness, the only daughter of Rishra and Alalm and the Empress of Marstok. I look forward to negotiating with Nubrevna.

  She passed the pencil off to Vivia. The sheepskin grip was warm to the touch. This is my handwriting, Vivia wrote. I am Vivia, the only daughter of Jana and Serafin, and the Queen-in-Waiting of Nubrevna. I hope you do not screw me over.

  This earned her a chuckle, and as Vivia handed back the pencil, Vaness waved it aside. “Keep the pencil,” she urged. “I have others.”

  “As do I.” Vivia set it on the table. “We are not that poor, Empress.”

  Another chuckle, another smile, and moments later the meeting ended.

  This time, when Vivia crossed the Empress’s quarters, the imperial wing, and finally departed the palace entirely, she found there was a different spring in her step. She wasn’t so foolish a little fox as to think that anything productive would come out of this talk, but maybe, just maybe, she could get away with a little hope.

  FOURTEEN

  It is overcast on the day the monster wakes up.

  The boy and his black-furred terrier—a gift from his father six months ago, named Boots—play outside the family tent. Their tribe has set up camp in a hot corner of the Contested Lands.

  Boots pants and pants, even though the sun hides behind grim clouds, so the boy takes him to the swampy river nearby. They will swim, he decides, and he tells himself it is for the dog’s sake that he wants to go.

  Dogs do not sweat, his mother once told him. They cannot cool off as we do. The boy thinks he is being charitable, considering his dog’s comfort as he does. It will only be an exciting side benefit if he also happens to see the crocodiles in the water that Alma told him about.

  For hours, he and Boots splash with the fat, slippery catfishes that make their home among the reeds. They hunt grasshoppers as big as the boy’s hands. He tries to catch them; he fails. He tries to teach Boots to catch them, but Boots only stirs up the water and frightens away the bugs.

  The clouds part. The boy forgets entirely about crocodiles. Eventually, he hears his mother calling that it is time for supper. He tromps dutifully back to shore.

  He is halfway there, the water barely to his thighs, when sunlight glints on two specks nearby. Then the reeds begin to move, and the boy realizes something approaches. Something larger than he is. Something that skates and slithers across the water as easily as the quicksilver in his mother’s timepiece.

  Boots starts barking. That high-pitched yip his father says the boy ought never to ignore. The boy doesn’t ignore it. He also doesn’t move, though. There’s nowhere for him to go. The crocodile’s yellow scales coalesce within the reeds—sharper, sharper by the second. Directly between the boy and the shore.

  Before he can formulate a scream, Boots lunges.

  And the crocodile’s jaws snap. Boots yips. The crocodile spins.

  Water churns, and Boots is trapped within the beast’s jaws. No barking now, only water, thrashing and wild.

  Blood dyes the brown marsh red. So dark. So thick. Even the foam riled up by the attack is red, red, red.

  And the sight of it does something to the boy. It pinches at the thumping in his chest. It sends cold walking down his spine. For some reason, his eyes feel hot, and his muscles feel strong. Even his lungs feel different—hollower and bigger than they did only a moment before.

  He inhales.

  And he smells … Freedom. Pure and rich and alive. And alongside the freedom is … Loyalty. Somehow, he knows this scent belongs to Boots. Just as he somehow knows the other scent—the freedom and the ancient, eternal hunger—belongs to the crocodile.

  Without thinking, without even understanding what he does, the boy walks into the fray. His fingers graze the crocodile’s spinning scales. Water thunders around him.

  Stop, he tells the beast. Stop.

  And the crocodile stops.

  Release Boots, he commands, and yet again, the creature obeys. Blood, so much blood—but the freedom and the loyalty somehow still burn strong.

  Hold on, the boy tells Boots, and with a strength he didn’t know he had until right now, he scoops up his bloodied, whimpering best friend.

  Then he aims for shore, and this time, he remembers how to scream.

  * * *

  When Iseult finally returned to the White Alder, a precious scene awaited her. Owl asleep on the bed, Aeduan asleep on the floor beside her—seated, his head lolled back on the mattress.

  The evil Bloodwitch did not look so evil with sunset to warm his sleeping face. Even the demon-child looked sweet in this light. Neither awoke when Iseult crept in with her satchel full of supplies. Nor when she eased down the items and grabbed the pitcher beside the washbasin. Nor even when she left the room to fill said pitcher at the Waterwitched faucet at the end of the hall.

  A man was already there, water splashing as he filled his room’s pitcher and three canteens. His bored Threads shifted to grassy interest at the sight of Iseult. He saw a feminine shape; he was keen. Iseult checked her hood, her sleeves, then she slouched as far back against the wall as she could without risking losing her place in line, should anyone else arrive.

  This was a mistake. It only increased the man’s curiosity. It was so predictable: a man feeling entitled to a woman’s attention. He craned, he rocked, he stretched—all subtle at first, and all with the intent of peeking under her hood. He gave up on subtlety once he had finished getting water, and when he shuffled by, he darted in close, jutting his head low and peering straight into Iseult’s face.

  The result was instant. Iron gray hostility hit his Threads. His face crumpled into a sneer. At least he was blessedly silent as he left, offering no slurs or threats. Yet Iseult didn’t like how she could still sense his Threads, even once he had entered his room—or how the two other sets of Threads with him shivered into aggressive hate. She did not bother filling her pitcher all the way before hurrying back to Aeduan and Owl. And once ensconced in their room again, she checked and double-checked the lock.

  On the bright side, she supposed, Trickster was nowhere near.

  Quietly as she could, Iseult poured the freshly retrieved water into the basin, but when a small cry broke the silence, she snapped toward the bed.

  No one had awoken, though. The cry had come from Aeduan. He flinched and flinched, as if being hit. Over and over. Flinch. Flinch. Flinch. His face …

  Iseult blinked. This was not the curse that struck Aeduan. This was grief. It was despair, as if the one thing he loved most in the world had been taken away from him.

  And it was horrible to watch. Iseult wanted to stop it. She wanted to rush to him and jolt him awake. Wanted to cup his face and tell him it was going to be all right and that whatever ghosts haunted him had now passed. It was a visceral desire, not a logical one, and she crossed the room in two long steps.

  She knelt, reaching for his face. Heat curled off his skin, strong as an inferno. Flinch, flinch, flinch. Sweat sh
one on his brow.

  A fever, she thought distantly, glad she had bought a tonic against that.

  Then Aeduan stopped flinching.

  And Iseult froze, her fingers a hairsbreadth from his jaw. Her breath held. Heartbeat by thudding heartbeat, the lines on his face smoothed away, slipping once more into the innocence of dreamless sleep. Part of her wanted to keep going. A tiny secret corner of her chest, tucked just in front of her left lung—it wanted to keep going, to feel the edges of his jaw and watch as he woke up.

  But that was a part of her she refused to acknowledge, for as long as she pretended it wasn’t there, then she didn’t have to consider what it might mean.

  She drew back her hands. For some reason, they were shaking, as if she had never done this before. As if she had not hovered beside an unconscious Aeduan only yesterday, observing the high curve of his cheeks and the thick frill of his lashes. In sleep, he was so easy to touch. To tend. No crystal eyes to bore into her. In waking …

  This room is too hot. She was the one sweating now, she was the one feeling feverish. And it was not the heat of the Firewitch, either, but something else. Something that made her stomach cinch and her rib cage feel too small.

  Quiet as a cat, just like Habim had taught her, Iseult backed away until she was to the washbasin once more. If she was lucky, Aeduan would not awaken until she had laid out everything he needed to tend his wounds. Then she could tiptoe from the room, and perhaps find a shadowy spot to hide in the common room below. Somewhere she could mull over what had happened with Trickster, somewhere she could order food for Aeduan and Owl without being seen by other guests.

  And without being seen by Aeduan. His command from before still scoured against her ears. No. He did not want her help. No. He did not want her touch. Yet fanciful fool that she was, she had almost done exactly that …

  And still wanted to.

  She could only imagine the horror on his face if he had woken to find her fingers on him. It would have been so much worse than earlier.

  No.

  But the Moon Mother, it turned out, was against Iseult tonight. While Iseult managed to place clean linen strips, two different Earthwitch healer salves, a Firewitch healer powder, and the Waterwitch healer tonic beside Aeduan without disturbing him, when she tried to carry the full washbasin over, water sloshed onto his leg.

  His eyes snapped wide. So blue. So lost. “You are back.” Hoarse words. Scarcely a whisper.

  The temperature in the room doubled. Iseult’s tongue doubled too. “S-sorry to wake you.” She scooted away.

  Or she tried to. Aeduan latched onto her wrist, his grip surprisingly strong. “Stay,” he breathed, and there was that penetrating stare. The one that made her whole world fall away.

  Moments trickled past. His grip weakened; his gaze did not. Iseult could pull free if she wanted to. An easy move, an easy twist.

  She didn’t.

  “Scar,” he said at last.

  She had no idea what he meant. “I don’t—” she began.

  “Scar,” he repeated, more emphatic, and though his gaze didn’t move, his thumb did. It grazed—slightly, slightly—over her wrist. Then onto her palm to where, yes, there was a faint scar. Earned from a fisherman’s hook in Veñaza City.

  “My fault.”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  His thumb moved, back up her palm toward her wrist. His skin was rough. His touch was not.

  And Iseult’s entire body shut down. There was no other way to describe it. No other words for how still everything inside of her went. No breath, no heartbeat, no vision beyond Aeduan’s thumb tracing along her hand.

  “Why?” he murmured eventually, finger finally slowing at her pulse point.

  “Why … what?” She had no idea how she got those words out.

  Aeduan swallowed, the muscles of his neck, his throat strong, even if his body was weak. “Why are you still here?”

  She blinked, surprise briefly shrinking her tongue. Briefly calming her mind. “Where else would I go? Did … did you need me to get something else for you?”

  “No. Not that—” He broke off, coughing, and his fingers finally released Iseult. Suddenly, the skin around her wrist felt too cold. At odds with the rest of her body, which was blistering from the inside out.

  “With Owl,” Aeduan rasped once the coughing had passed. “And … me. Why do you stay?”

  “Oh.” It was the last thing she expected him to ask, and for half a skittering moment, Iseult feared he had somehow seen the note from Mathew in her pocket. Somehow he knew that she had other options before her. Except that this was impossible—she had only just received the message. There was no way Aeduan could know that someone was coming for her.

  And why do you care if he does know? her brain demanded. He knows that you seek your Threadsister. He knows that you have Thread-family and that you cannot stay beside him forever.

  Well, he may know that, whispered the tiny secret corner above her lung. But do you?

  “I … owe you life-debts,” Iseult offered eventually. It was the only explanation she had ever put into words for herself. “Many of them. Why? D-do you want me to leave?”

  So hard to squeeze out those words, and Aeduan offered no response. Instead, he simply stared at her, unblinking and inescapable, and with each passing second, his eyes shed more sleep. Awareness hardened in his gaze.

  All while the room grew hotter and hotter and Iseult’s tongue grew fatter and fatter. Now she realized her heart had never stopped, her lungs had never paused. It was just that they’d been hidden behind the expanse of him. Of his eyes, of his fingers, of his touch.

  Beside her, Aeduan heaved himself into a sitting position. A moan of pain, a spasm of agony, yet Iseult made no move to help him. No. Instead, she simply watched as the seconds ground past and internally chanted, Stasis. A futile refrain really, for once Aeduan had straightened fully and set to removing his shirt, it became too frustrating for Iseult to endure. His pain shivered in the air between them. The urge to yank off his shirt for him—it made her fingers flex against her thighs.

  She was a pot about to boil over.

  Iseult pushed upright. A bit frantic, a bit loud, but no movement came from the bed, no shift in Owl’s Threads as Iseult returned to the now barren table. She gripped its edges, then forced her gaze to the mirror. To her own reflection, where hazel eyes glinted in the lantern light.

  Stasis, stasis, stasis. How many times had Iseult’s mother made her stare in a mirror, forcing her to master her Threadwitch calm? How many times had Gretchya made Iseult observe her own face for every tic, every twitch, every failure to maintain smooth perfection? Iseult had hated it growing up. Now, though, in a room made of flames, she sank into the forgiveness of a cold, methodical lesson from the past.

  She could master her face, and then true tranquility would follow.

  “I could find no clothes,” she murmured at last, no stammer. No inflection. No more Aeduan to devour her senses. “I will try again tomorrow, when shops might be open.”

  “I can get clothes…” A grunt of pain behind her. A savage exhale. Then, “At the Monastery outpost. I can get more clothes.”

  “You still intend to go there?”

  “I … must.”

  Iseult swallowed a sigh, even as her reflection stayed still. She wanted to argue, but knew it to be pointless. This was not the first time she’d encountered behavior that contradicted a story told aloud. Aeduan claimed he disliked the Carawens, that he was not even part of their ranks anymore, yet he’d remained so scrupulous to their rules over the past two weeks of travel. He had meditated upon waking, he had kept his Carawen cloak fastened and clean, and he had regularly recited prayers at dusk.

  Safi had been no different. She had always claimed to despise her uncle, yet she’d also gone out of her way to impress him. Finding reasons to show off her fighting prowess, dropping her latest history lessons into conversation, and twice even pulling heists while he watched
on.

  Iseult supposed it was as simple as rejecting that which might reject us. It hurt less when you were the one to act first.

  She turned away from the mirror, stronger now. Cool, cool all the way through, and she found Aeduan dabbing at the wounds on his belly. Clumsy movements that splattered water to the floor.

  Stubborn fool. It was a wonder Owl slept through all that splashing.

  He dunked. He cleaned. He dunked. He cleaned. He dunked … he fumbled. The linen fell into the washbasin. It sank, and his dull fingers could not get it out again.

  Silently, stoically, Iseult returned to his side and retrieved the linen. She wrung it out before offering it to him. But when his fingers curled around the cloth, she did not let go.

  “Is it truly so awful to let me help you?” The words knifed out louder than she’d intended. Almost petulant in her ears. She wanted an answer, though, so she held on.

  Water dripped to the floor.

  “Your … touch,” he said eventually, “is … too much.”

  Too much? she wanted to repeat. Too much what? There were so many ways that phrase could be taken. Logic, of course, told her that he referred to pain, except one look at the mess around them told her that couldn’t be true. Her touch was defter than his, her fingers gentler.

  Iseult released the linen, released his hand. He had given her an answer; she would press no further—even if that tiny secret corner wanted her to. Even if it nagged her while she returned to the mirror: It is not too much pain that bothers him. It is too much of something else entirely. The same too much that makes your tongue fat and your face hot. The same too much that makes your body shut down.

  And Iseult hated how much she wished that tiny secret corner spoke true.

  FIFTEEN

  The shadows were not kind to Merik. They taunted in a voice that was not Kullen’s. That was amused and probing and in a language he scarcely understood. They pulsed, they boomed, they grasped and coiled—and always, always, they laughed.