Bloodwitch

by Susan Dennard

  The flame hawk screamed, a layered sound that split Safi’s skull. That shook the ground—that shook the very world with its pain. Somehow, Caden remained upon the creature’s back, a torch of black flame, even as the hawk attempted flight.

  Stab. Withdraw. Stab. Withdraw.

  Not until its massive body had cleared the trees did Caden jump. And before Safi’s eyes, he became a man again. A split second later, he plunged into the Well. And a split second after that, the hawk was gone, only smoke and charred remains to prove it had ever been there.

  While Lev and Zander moved to haul out Caden, Safi staggered to the Empress, who was just coming to. Her nose bled, a sign her magic had drained. And now more soldiers coalesced within the smoking cedars.

  Gods below, this battle would never end.

  Safi grabbed for the closest weapon: a saber off one of the fallen, fake soldiers. It was shockingly light. Not iron, Safi realized as she straightened. Nor steel. Which was why Vaness hadn’t been able to control it. Whoever had planned this attack had planned it well, from the ambush to the weapons to the timing.

  Safi reeled about, ready to face the next onslaught of soldiers, when Zander and Lev appeared beside her, a flanking position.

  “Fancy meeting you here!” Lev grinned, her scarred face streaked with blood and ash. She snatched up two swords from the fallen and tossed one to Zander. “Come here often?”

  Safi couldn’t help it. She laughed, a high-pitched, almost neighing sound. And when Caden moved into position on her other side, she said, “I thought you left the city!”

  “Not yet” was all he had time to reply before the soldiers poured out of the trees. This time, though, Safi’s magic had nothing to say. No skittering scritch of lies, because this time, the soldiers were real. And Habim was at their head, bellowing, “Stand down, Cartorrans, or die.” As one, every Marstok behind him fixed their pistols and blades upon the Hell-Bards.

  And the Hell-Bards were left with no choice. Magic they could defeat. Crossbows and cold iron, they could not.

  They stood down.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Iseult had no idea where she was going. What few Tirlan streets she recognized from before were destroyed, buildings collapsed, trees fallen, roads flooded.

  Owl wailed against her, but at least she did not try to flee. She held fast to Iseult, and Iseult held fast to the horse—so well trained, so unflinching in the face of a battle crowding at their heels. The soldiers were giving chase.

  “Left!” a voice bellowed, brilliant Threads approaching from her right. It was the prince, his face bloodied and bruised, atop a Marstoki army roan. “Take the left!”

  “Why?” she shouted. “Where will that go?”

  “Out of the city and away from the soldiers—unless you have a better plan?”

  Iseult did not have a better plan. In fact, she had no plan at all. She always relied on Safi in these situations. While Safi could think with the soles of her feet and sense with the palms of her hands, Iseult only ever managed to shut down. No stasis, no use to anyone. There was too much happening around her right now, too little time to breathe. She had not even processed that Aeduan was gone. That he had abandoned them.

  She felt trapped. Caught on some path she had never intended to take and now unable to change course. If Leopold could guide her off this trail, then she would take it. He had helped her escape the inn; she had to hope he would help her again.

  Especially since alarms were sounding from nearby rooftops.

  “Right!” Leopold barked next, his Threads blazing with a green so dark it was almost black. No fear or panic in him, only intense energy focused on escape.

  He was as well trained and unflinching as his horse.

  They sped onto a wider artery, a view of the lake opening before them. Wharves were half submerged, ships and docks smashed askew. The storm, Iseult guessed, though how it had done so much damage here while scarcely touching the inn, she had no idea.

  She hugged Owl more tightly to her. They rode on.

  Sometimes the lake would appear, its waters a mess of wood and debris. Other times, they would race down streets that their horses could barely fit into. Always, always the alarms blared. Even after they had left the city behind and small farms and thatch huts took hold. Even when the terrain steepened and a forest crowded in. Still, they could hear the horns crowing after them.

  Iseult sensed Threads too. Occasionally, she saw the weary faces attached, brought to their doors by curiosity. Or more often by fear.

  When at last no Threads grazed her awareness and they had seen no signs of habitation for several miles, she towed the gelding to a halt. A rickety bridge spanned a stream frothy with rainwater. Mist clouded the mossy clearing around it.

  Far, far behind, the alarm still echoed, a faint call on the horizon.

  Before Leopold could tow his roan to a stop, Iseult had her right leg over the saddle. She pulled Owl to the ground. The girl had stopped crying, but what replaced it was so much worse. Dead eyes and faint, shrinking Threads of numb white. She was in shock.

  “Owl,” Iseult said. “Look at me. Can you look at me?”

  Owl could not look at her.

  “What is wrong with her?”

  Iseult snapped around, flames awakening. In a whisper of steel, she drew her cutlass and fixed it on the prince. “Stay where you are.”

  “Because I am clearly such a threat.” He glared, dirt thick on his brow, while several paces behind, his stolen mare waited. Sweat glittered, a thick lather across her body. Both horses needed watering and rubbing down. “I did just save your life,” he added. “Twice.”

  Iseult didn’t care. Her fingertips throbbed with heat. Her mind throbbed with the voice. Burn. Him. Burn. Him. And beside her, Owl had not moved at all.

  “Why were you there?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?” Leopold frowned. “You knocked me out, so I had no choice—”

  “In Tirla,” she ground out. Her mouth was too small. Her mind was too small. “Why were you in Tirla?”

  “Again, what do you mean?” Confusion whorled across the prince’s Threads. “I already told you that I am working with Safiya’s uncle.”

  “How do I know that’s true?”

  “You … want proof?” He gaped at her.

  Iseult, however, was entirely serious, and after three long seconds of only the horses’ snuffs to fill the air, the prince finally seemed to grasp this.

  He barked a laugh, an amused sound even as rusty frustration spiraled up his Threads. “Everything I had is back in Tirla, Iseult det Midenzi. Unless you want to return there and face all those soldiers again, then I fear you will have to trust me at my word.”

  She did not trust him at his word. She also did not know what to do. Everything had happened so fast. She needed to tend the horses. She needed to deal with Owl. She needed to interrogate this prince and figure out where she was going.

  And above all, she needed to stop thinking about Aeduan. He was not coming back.

  “I can see you do not believe me.” The prince sighed. His breath fogged. The night had grown cold.

  “Perhaps if I explained everything from the start, then that would help. Shall we sit?” He shifted as if to crouch.

  “If you move again, I will kill you.”

  “Standing it is then.”

  “Silence.” Iseult turned away, dropping to one knee before Owl. Leopold could wait; Owl could not. The girl had not moved, her Threads had not changed. Wherever she was, it was not here. But this night—it was not so different from a night six and a half years ago, and Owl was not so different from another girl on the run, all the ties that bound her shorn without warning.

  Iseult plucked a stone from beside her knee, just as Monk Evrane had done on that night. Then she took Owl’s hand into her own and unfurled Owl’s fingers.

  “Take this.” She placed the rock on Owl’s palm. “Look at it and tell me what you see.”

  Owl did
not look at it, she did not speak. Nor had Iseult all those years ago.

  “There’s silt on it,” Iseult said. “Do you know what that means? It means it’s from the riverbank, but look—do you see how rough its edges are? It has never been a part of the river. And what about this.” Iseult tapped sparkling flecks on the rock’s surface. “Do you see the mica? It looks like starlight. You can even see the Sleeping Giant right here.”

  Owl’s pupils shrank slightly. Her eyes rolled down to Iseult’s hand.

  “And what color would you call this? Gray? Or is it black? I think it’s black in the sunlight, but the Moon Mother’s glow makes it—”

  “Old.” Owl’s voice rustled out, soft as the song of her namesake.

  “Very old,” Iseult agreed. “As old as the Witchlands.”

  “Older.” Owl blinked, and with that movement, the first flakes of color pitched through her Threads. Cyan awareness, jerky at first, like a wave smacking against a ship. Then smoother, gentler, calm. They were not whole yet, but they would eventually build back to it.

  “Gone,” Owl murmured. Still she gazed at the stone. “He is gone.”

  Iseult did not need to ask who Owl meant, and unbidden, the muscles in her legs crumpled. She sank onto her heels. Tired, so tired.

  In Tirla, back at the inn, she had not believed Aeduan when he’d said he would not be joining them. He will follow, she had thought while mounting the gelding. Then while riding into the yard, He will follow. Then again and again, her breath closing off with each beat of the gelding’s hooves. This is a joke, and he will follow. He will follow. He has to follow.

  Please, please follow.

  They had left the inn, pistols firing. Final thunderclaps to fill Iseult’s ears. To fill her heart. But Aeduan had not followed. He had left her, after everything. After she had saved his life, and he had saved hers. After she had cleaved a man for him.

  She had gone back for Aeduan that day in the Contested Lands, but he was not coming back for her. He was never coming for her. No us, no we, only a means to an end.

  “I’m sorry,” Iseult said, and she meant the words as much for herself as she did for Owl.

  “He will come back,” Owl said, a strand of certainty wending through her Threads.

  Iseult said nothing in reply. It was too familiar, that hope. That hunger. That belief that there had been some mistake, and that at any moment, the abandoner would change their mind. Aeduan would not, just as Gretchya had not six and a half years ago.

  Fortunately, Iseult was saved from having to speak. First came burning silver Threads, then the mountain bat himself appeared, a silent silhouette across the moon. Before Iseult could tell Owl to keep the creature away, Blueberry had dropped into a nosedive, aiming toward them.

  The horses bolted.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  When Esme sang, Merik could almost pretend he was somewhere else.

  Curled beside the cold wall of her tower, with only a frayed blanket to offer warmth, he could shut his eyes and let her voice carry him away.

  He did not know the song. He did not need to. As long as she was singing, he was not chained in her tower with no magic. He was not a puppet, bound to her by cleaving Threads.

  She was like a sea fox, Merik decided, singing with a voice from another realm. In the stories, the sea foxes would shed their skins and lull unsuspecting sailors to the shore. Then they would drown them. A nice clean death, really, compared to this half-life Merik was trapped in.

  When the last of Esme’s song trilled out, a vibrato to bounce off the stones, her bare feet padded across the room. Merik was careful to keep his eyes shut, his breaths even. I am still asleep. Leave me alone. I am still asleep.

  “I know you are not sleeping, little Prince.” She sank to the stones beside him. “I can see from your Threads that you’re awake.”

  Merik winced and opened his eyes.

  She grinned down at him, her face closer than he’d realized. Then silver flashed in her hand and she stabbed him in the heart.

  * * *

  The shadows were not kind to Merik. They sang to him from a little girl’s face framed by blond braids, and when she smiled, it did not stop at the edges of her face. It stretched beyond, off her jaw and into the air, singing and giggling forever.

  Merik wanted to wake up, but the shadows wouldn’t let him. There was only laughter and darkness and hate.

  * * *

  Merik awoke to a night sky and rainfall. He did not know how long he had been unconscious. All he knew was that candlelight flickered around the tower, and his chest ached.

  My heart. He scrabbled to a sitting position and gaped down at where the wound should be. There was blood, almost black on his shirt, and there was a hole in the linen …

  But no wound. Only a shadow-tinged pucker where the knife had gone in. And pain—always the pain.

  “Fascinating, is it not?” Esme’s words skated over him, and then the woman herself appeared, slinking around the wall. She wore a different dress now, honey-colored velvet as fine as any noblewoman’s. It was too big, though, dragging as she skipped toward him. Clutched to her chest was the book she’d shown him when he’d first arrived. “You died, Prince Merik! And then came back to life—although not entirely. The Threads that bind you to the Fury are still intact. It keeps you from life, but it also keeps you from death.”

  She dropped to the stones, her gown pooling around her. It shimmered in the candles’ glow. Then she placed the book on the floor and flipped back pages, no gentleness in the movement, even when the pages protested and the binding squeaked.

  “Imagine the implications,” she gushed, once she’d found the page she desired, covered in hand-drawn diagrams. “Imagine the applications! It is very similar in premise to the first Loom Eridysi made a thousand years ago.” She pointed to a sketch on the page that Merik supposed looked vaguely like a loom. “If we did not need the Fury alive, I would try other deaths. Drowning. Burning. Eventually decapitation. But I fear that sort of death might be too much for you in the end.”

  She smiled.

  Merik shuddered.

  “I have more work for you today, Prince.” She searched her book impatiently. Merik thought he heard a page rip. Then she found what she wanted, and let the book fall open. “I need more stones like these.”

  He glanced at them. “Like what I found before?”

  “No.” She traced her finger over a stone with lines coiling around it. Beneath it, in a script that looked like old Arithuanian, were the words Arlenni Loop. “These will have thread wrapped around them, or perhaps yarn.”

  “Why do you need them?”

  Her eyes thinned, and for half a breath, Merik feared he had gone too far. His muscles tensed for pain. The chain scratched against the stones.

  But then a smile rippled over Esme’s cheeks, and she sighed—a contented sound. “You are fun, Prince. No one has ever asked about my magic before. Only Iseult, but she so rarely visits anymore.”

  Iseult? Surely Esme could not mean the same girl Merik knew. There was no time to ask, though, nor time to wonder, for Esme had launched into a detailed explanation of Threads. She poked at pictures on the page, clearly expecting Merik to listen and observe.

  “Threads,” she declared, “are everywhere. They hum in the stone.” She patted the floor. “In the clouds.” She waved to the window. “In the trees, in the birds, in your heart.” A sly smile and she mimicked stabbing him in the chest again. “All magic is nothing more than manipulation of Threads, Prince, and once upon a time, it was only the Paladins who could do so.

  “Except in the Fareast, where my people first lived.”

  Merik frowned. “The ’Matsis?”

  Her lips curled back. Her chin thrust forward. “That is a hurtful word, Prince.”

  Merik recoiled, bracing for the fire. For the pain.

  “It is offensive. Dismissive of who we are. Is it really so hard for you to say the whole word? No-matsi. Or, as we were long ago
, No’A-matsi.”

  “I am sorry,” he tried to say. “I did not know—”

  “You mean you did not care.”

  “No!” His hands rose in apology. Flames, flames, at any moment the cleaving fire would consume him. “I’ve never heard that before—I’m sorry.”

  “You have heard it, but you chose not to listen. All men in the Witchlands are the same.” Her nostrils flared. “Say it.”

  For a moment, he did not know what she meant. Then he realized. “Nomatsi.”

  “The right way.”

  Noden hang him, what had she just told him? Shit, shit. He had not listened, and she was right. In his holiest of conceit, he had chosen not to hear—

  “No’Amatsi!” The word burst from his throat, surprising him and Esme too. She flinched. Then straightened, her fingers tightening to fists upon her knees. He was certain she would attack. With magic, with claws, with blades to slice open his heart.

  Except she did not. The seconds trickled past with the rain, and a slow smile spread across her mouth. Then, almost lazily, she tipped her head sideways. “Good boy, little Prince. Perhaps if you can learn your lessons, then some hope yet remains for the Witchlands. Now where was I?” She cleared her throat expectantly.

  And Merik’s mind raced back. “You … you said that in the Fareast, magic is different.”

  “Onga. Yes. In the Fareast, anyone with training can touch the Threads of power, and long ago, the No’Amatsi people spent their lives devoted to such training.”

  “Why,” Merik asked warily, hoping she wanted questions, “is magic different there?”

  She did want questions. Her smile widened, and this time it reached her eyes. “It is a different goddess who sleeps inside their land, and Her will is different than our Sleeper’s. Oh, I see from your Threads that you are confused. In your mind, there is no goddess—only a god, because of course Nubrevnans would turn a woman into a man. The very concept of a woman with power is too much for your feeble minds to comprehend.”