“Well,” the girl said, glancing behind, “she’s already doing better than Kullen. When I found him, he couldn’t remember his name or position or anything.”
“But First Mate Ikray had already cleaved, right?” The second speaker moved into view, coppery brown skin with paler patches over his right cheek. He held a bandaged hand to his chest. “First Mate Sotar doesn’t look like her magic has gone corrupt.”
“It’s … Captain Sotar.” Stix tried to sit up; her stomach muscles very much disapproved, pushing a grunt from her abdomen. “And I’m not … corrupted.”
The boy scooted closer, easing his good hand behind Stix’s back and helping her to sit up. “Be careful, Captain.” He offered a bright smile, so at odds with the dark and dank that surrounded them.
“How,” Stix asked roughly, “do you know who I am?”
“We were in the Royal Navy, sir. Stationed on the Jana before…”
“Before it blew up,” finished the girl. She strode closer and knelt on Stix’s other side, setting the lantern nearby. Then she unlooped a canteen from her belt and offered it. “I’m Ryber. He’s Cam.”
Stix accepted the canteen, which only made the boy beam wider. A comforting smile, she had to admit while she gulped cool water. She also had to admit that he and Ryber did look vaguely familiar.
“What is this place?” she asked, after sucking back a final gulp. “How did I get here?”
“This is the Past,” Ryber responded, as if this was a perfectly reasonable answer. She pushed to her feet and seized a bulging satchel off the ground nearby. “As for how you got here, I have a pretty good guess. But we don’t have time to linger, so either you get up and come with us, First Mate … I mean, Captain, or you stay here.”
“Don’t stay here,” Cam inserted. “There are raiders behind us. We don’t know when they’ll get here, but you don’t wanna be around when they do.”
Ryber and Cam might as well have been talking to Stix in another language for how little their words made sense. “Why are you two even here?” she asked. “What is this place and what raiders are you talking about?”
Ryber wagged her head. “I told you. There’s no time. I can try to explain while we walk, but we can’t wait another second.” Ryber extended a hand. “Are you coming?”
Stix didn’t see many other options before her, so she clasped Ryber’s hand and said, “I’m coming.” Then Ryber pulled while Cam braced an arm behind. Together, they helped her stand, and Noden curse Stix, but she needed every bit of their aid.
Before she could pull free from Cam’s support, her eyes caught on a low pedestal nearby. On it lay a broken sword and a broken looking glass. Death, death, the final end.
Gooseflesh slid down her neck, her arms. “What are those?” She took a step toward the pedestal. “I … know them.”
“Those,” Ryber said, moving in front of her, “are dangerous for people like you. Did you pick them up?”
“I … think so?” Stix blinked. Then rubbed her eyes. Death, death, the final end. “What do you mean by ‘people like you’?”
“I’ll explain”—Ryber laid a firm, but not unkind hand on Stix’s shoulder—“once we’re walking.” Together, she and Cam angled Stix away from the table and away from the calls for a final, final end.
The room was an endless streak of darkness beyond the lantern, no end in sight. No change in the rough flagstones beneath their feet or the shadows wavering in from all sides.
And still Stix remembered nothing.
The tunnel beyond the low door was too thin for Cam to keep supporting Stix, so after checking she could move on her own, he moved into step behind Ryber. They vanished into the maw.
Stix took up the rear, ready to follow. Except her feet didn’t quite move as they ought to.
Death, death, the final end.
She glanced back.
Figures floated behind her. A hundred of them, all shapes and sizes, suspended like dead men from the gallows. They stared at her—she felt them staring, even if she saw no eyes within the shadows.
They aren’t angry anymore, she thought, even though she didn’t know what that thought meant. All she knew was that the ghosts didn’t mind if she left, so she hurried after the fading lantern’s glow.
And Stacia Sotar did not look back.
THIRTY-ONE
Heat roars. Wood cracks and embers fly.
“Run.” Blood drips from his mother’s mouth as she speaks.
It splatters his face.
With arms stained to red, she pushes herself up. She wants him to crawl out from beneath her. She wants him to escape. “Run, my child, run.”
But he does not move, just as he did not move when the raiders first ambushed the tribe. Just as he did not move when his father drew his sword and ran from their tent.
Or when the raiders reached their doorway, loosed their arrows, and then his mother fell atop him. She hid him with her body until the raiders moved on.
“Run,” she whispers one last time, pleading desperation in her silver eyes. Then the last of her strength flees. She collapses onto him.
* * *
“Get up, Bloodwitch.”
Aeduan’s ribs shrieked. Pain punched him awake. Water rushed into his mouth. It shocked. It choked. His eyes snapped wide, and sunlight burned in. Water too. He must have fallen into the creek when he passed out.
He was freezing.
“Get up.” The pain erupted in his ribs again. Although the touch was nothing more than a gentle toe nudging, it felt like one of Evrane’s knife-toed boots. Aeduan angled his head back. A face swam into view. Brown skin, black plaits, a Carawen cloak gleaming bright.
“Monk Lizl,” he tried to say, but that was not what came out. All that came out was coughing. Speed and daisy chains, mother’s kisses and sharpened steel. Her scent was there, if weak.
She grabbed his shoulders and hauled him upward—enough for him to get his own arms under him. Enough for him to sink into a four-legged crouch. The coughing continued, although at least upright, he could drink instead of drown. One gulping splash became four; the coughing finally subsided.
Not the pain, though. Never the pain.
As if following his thoughts, Lizl dropped to a squat beside him. Dangling from a stiletto in her hand—his stiletto—was Aeduan’s Painstone. A drained, useless chunk of rose quartz. “Want to explain this to me, Bloodwitch? I thought you healed from everything.”
“I do.”
She sniffed. “Then why is this creek red with your blood? And why have you not healed yet? Somehow you look worse now than when you were unconscious.” She whipped the knife sideways. The Painstone flung into the woods. “You’re also shivering. Thirteen years we trained at the coldest place in all the Witchlands, yet I never saw you quake.”
“There are colder places in the Witchlands.”
“Ah.” She pushed upright. “Good to know you’re still a contrary prick. Now get up.”
Aeduan wagged his head. The forest dipped and swam. “Can’t,” he ground out.
“In that case”—she yanked a fat leather rope from her belt—“I will have to make you.” Before he could stop her, before he could even comprehend what she intended, she had looped the leather around his neck like a hunting dog’s leash.
She yanked. Aeduan moved.
He had no choice. Stars exploded across his vision, his breath slashed off. He couldn’t even cough anymore, and if he did not rise, he would pass out again. So somehow, though he had no idea where he found the strength, he pushed to his feet.
The pressure at his neck relaxed.
He tried to fix his gaze on Lizl, but her face bled into the forest around them. He tried to say, I am a fellow monk. We do not treat each other this way, but all that came out was “I … monk.”
“No you’re not,” she said flatly. Then she whistled once, and a sturdy chestnut mare ambled from the trees. Following behind on a lead was a saddled gray donkey. “Monks do not conspire w
ith their targets, you see, and monks do not betray their own kind.”
It took Aeduan a moment to understand those words. Long enough for the horse and donkey to approach. Long enough for Lizl to say, “Mount up.” And long enough for her to tug at the rope again when he did not obey.
He grabbed for the donkey’s pommel, gasping. Blinking. Then suddenly Lizl was behind him, shoving him upward. In a blur of color and pain, he climbed on. Then he slumped forward, bracing against the donkey’s neck.
The rope slackened slightly, and Lizl grinned up at him. “I never thought I would see this day, Bloodwitch. You, trapped by me.” She laughed, a hearty sound, before withdrawing something from within her white cloak—so clean, so unmarred.
A Painstone, new and fresh, winked in the sun. “You would probably like to have this, wouldn’t you?” She glanced at it, brow knitting in mock consternation. “Why, I bet it would make you strong again. Get rid of all that torture and blood. Maybe, Bloodwitch, if you’re well behaved, I will let you have it. Not your weapons, though. Those, I am keeping.”
“What do you want from me?” he forced out.
“I told you already. Back in Tirla.” She dropped the stone into her cloak and turned away. The rope tightened as she aimed for her horse. “I want that ransom.”
“What … does that have to do with me?”
“Do not play a fool.” She vaulted into the saddle. “I want the Raider King’s head, Bloodwitch. I told you that, and as far as I can tell, there’s no easier way to get it than to kidnap his son and hold him hostage.”
THIRTY-TWO
The following morning, Safi’s unknown Adders guided her to a part of the palace she had never seen before, deep within the bowels of the island. The long hall of sandstone cells stood empty, save one at the end.
“Oh gods,” Safi breathed, thrusting past her Adders into the cell. The Hell-Bards hung there, bound to the wall by iron. Lev was the only one whose eyes fluttered at the sound of the opening iron gate. Caden and Zander remained limp and unresponsive.
“Lev? Do you hear me?” Safi rushed to the woman and cupped the Hell-Bard’s scarred face. Two lines of salt cut through the dirt on her cheeks.
Lev’s eyelids wavered up at Safi’s touch. Her pupils pulsed and swayed, as if she knew Safi was there, but couldn’t quite find her.
“What have they done to you?” Safi whispered.
Lev laughed, a drunken burst of air. “You … should see the other guy.” It was all she got out before her eyes lolled shut again. Her body sank into the chains.
Footsteps pattered behind Safi. She whirled about to find an Adder slinking in—one who had regularly stood sentry outside her bedroom. At first, relief dissolved through Safi’s limbs. This man she knew; this man could help her with the Hell-Bards.
Then she caught sight of the poison darts in his left hand. The famed tool of the Marstoki Adders, no larger than sewing needles, with small tufts of black on the end.
And just like that, Safi remembered all the stories she had heard growing up, of Adder Poisonwitches so powerful they could corrupt a person’s blood directly in their veins. Of wicked assassins who would stop at nothing to protect their empress. Of darkness and torture and pain.
“You … poisoned them.”
The Adder bowed his head.
And Safi rocked back a step. “Will they die?”
“Pain and sleep,” he said. “That is all I gave them.”
“Gave them?” She gaped at the tear tracks on Lev’s face. “That is not a gift. They saved your empress’s life. Mine too, and probably a lot of other people’s in Azmir—so you repay them with pain?”
No reaction in the Adder’s posture. The poison darts rested unwavering upon his gloved hand. “Please step aside, Truthwitch.”
“No.” Safi squared her shoulders toward him. “Does the Empress know you’re doing this? I cannot believe she would allow it.”
“I have orders.” He claimed one step toward her. “I must follow them.”
Still, she stood her ground. “Whose?”
“Stand aside.” Warning sharpened his tone now.
“Whose?”
“Mine.” Habim strode into the cell. Startling, unannounced, and with a grim slant to his jaw. “Leave,” he ordered Safi, a general through and through. “This is no place for children.”
Safi did not leave. In fact, she could do nothing but stare. This was not the man she knew. On the surface, he might wear the same face, same frown. But underneath …
I don’t know you anymore.
“Why is she here?” Habim asked the Adder.
“The Empress wants her to use her magic upon the Cartorrans.”
“It will not work.” Habim flipped a dismissive hand her way. “Hell-Bards are resistant to magic.”
I don’t know you. I don’t know you. The urge to scream grated down Safi’s spine. But all she said was: “How could you torture them?”
For three long heartbeats, she did not breathe. She simply held Habim’s gaze, willing him to answer. She didn’t care about his plan, she didn’t care about their roles as court Truthwitch and Firewitch general. The world was upside down, and now he had to make it right again.
At last, Habim said, “I would command him to torture you, Truthwitch, if I thought it necessary.”
A lie, a lie, a lie. Also not an answer.
“Take her away,” he ordered the Adder. “And tell Her Majesty that I already have all the answers I need.”
“No,” Safi snarled before the Adder could move. “I won’t go until I’ve seen them freed.”
“Then you will wait a long time. Take her.”
The Adder advanced, and Safi dug in her heels. They would have to poison her too if they wanted her to leave.
Two more steps and the Adder reached her. Still she did not move—and when he grabbed her wrist, she flipped up her arm—an easy yank Habim had taught her so that no man could ever keep hold.
The Adder grabbed again, and this time, he raised a dart toward her neck—
“Enough.” Habim stalked across the room, and for the first time since arriving in Azmir, his careful control frayed. Flames glittered along the tips of his fingers.
“Wake the commander,” he barked at the Adder. Then, while the man slid away, Habim stared—hard—into Safi’s eyes. “These people are not your friends. They are your enemies, and torture is no less than what they would do to you.”
Habim’s voice trembled with belief that fluttered warm and true against Safi’s magic. But he also didn’t know these Hell-Bards as she did.
She turned her back on Habim, watching in horror as the Adder pulled two darts from the back of Caden’s neck. Two breaths later, Caden’s eyes opened. He gasped like a drowning man, gaze flying around the room. Safi reached his side in an instant. Like she had done with Lev, she gripped his chin and held it high.
“Safi,” he choked out, wobbly pupils finding hers. “Are you hurt?”
“Hush,” she murmured, even as she felt her heart fishtail and writhe. “I’m sorry they did this to you, Caden. I’m so, so sorry.”
“We waited for you,” he murmured. He did not slur as Lev had, yet despite this small feat, he was not truly here. His mind remained trapped somewhere desperate, somewhere scared. “We waited for you, Safi, and when we saw the attack, we went in through the hole in the wall. We wanted to build wards to protect the city, but there was no time—”
“Stop.” Habim’s command bounced across the room. “That man is dangerous. Step away.”
Safi did no such thing—and Habim’s patience frayed a bit more. He stalked to her, but without pushing her aside, he wound his fingers through Caden’s noose, the gold chain all Hell-Bards wore.
“What do you think this man is, child? What do you think the Hell-Bard’s noose does to them? Whatever Emperor Henrick wants, Emperor Henrick gets. All their master must do is pull the leash, and then the dogs obey.” He jerked at the chain; a groan broke from Caden’s
throat.
“They have no choice. Their magic—their very Aethers—have been severed from them and bound to the Emperor. If they disobey a command, they die. If they remove the noose, they die.”
“I know,” Safi said, and she did know. Caden had explained what Hell-Bards were. He had told her that their magics had been severed from their souls. Although, admittedly, she hadn’t realized that Henrick could kill them if they did not obey.
But that doesn’t change anything here.
“Tell me, Hell-Bard.” Habim pulled the noose tighter, towing Caden’s face up. Stretching his neck long. “What will happen to you if you return to your master without his Truthwitch? What will Henrick do to you? I have heard tales of his displeasure.”
“No.” Caden coughed that word. His eyes found Safi’s. “That … isn’t why … we stayed.”
“Do not lie to her.” Habim yanked at the chain. Caden hissed, eyes rolling. “If you really cared for the Truthwitch, then you would have traveled as far away from her as possible. As long as you are near her—or the Empress—then you are a liability. As long as you live, then you are a liability.”
Tighter, tighter he pulled. Until it was too much. Safi snatched at Habim’s wrist and tugged. “Stop, Habim. Please, let go of him.”
To her surprise—and relief—Habim did. He released the chain. Caden’s head fell back and hit the wall.
Then Habim fixed the Adder with a purposeful stare. “Finish this.”
Before Safi could react, Habim swung his arms around her and hauled her toward the door.
Finish this. Finish this. It took two dragging steps and a sharp inhale before she realized what those words meant.
“NO.” Safi clawed. She fought. She tried, tried, tried to break free, but this was the man who had trained her. She stood no chance. I don’t know you anymore. I don’t know you anymore.
Yet right before Habim could get Safi through the door, Caden’s voice rang out, strong and true: “We stayed because of your uncle, Safi! We stayed because he was arrested for treason and he will hang within the week.”
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