Truthwitch

by Susan Dennard

  He reared back both arms … Then Merik loosed his air. A great funnel of wind erupted outward across the waves.

  And Merik waited. Waited and watched with Safi at his side. He was grateful she was there. Her squared shoulders and fearless gaze kept him from thinking too hard. From leaping off the cliff and flying straightaway to his Threadbrother …

  The wind-drum stopped, and Merik readied himself for whatever message Kullen would send. When it finally came though—when the combination of beats and pauses finally thrummed into Merik’s ears—he found his teeth grinding and fury rising.

  “What is it?” Safi asked, clutching his arm.

  “The Bloodwitch follows,” he croaked.

  Safi’s grip tightened on his arm. “We’ll go back to Noden’s Gift—”

  “Except he follows us from behind. And the Marstoks sail to Lejna—ahead of us.” At those words, Merik’s rage flamed into being—real anger, that sent him stalking away two steps.

  He had to keep this fury contained, though, for it wasn’t with Safi that he was angry. It was these thrice-damned circumstances that were out of his thrice-damned control. How did the Marstoks even know where Merik was headed?

  “I’ll fly to the Jana,” he said at last, his chest boiling. “You, Iseult, and Evrane can ride east. To Lejna. As fast as the horses will go.”

  “Why not fly us to the Jana and sail to Lejna?”

  “Because the Marstoks will reach Lejna first, and Kullen isn’t strong enough to fight them. He shouldn’t even be sailing.” Merik threw a terrified glance to sea. To the Jana.

  Cursed fool of a Threadbrother.

  “Our best chance is to catch up to the Marstoks,” he continued. “If Kullen and I can at least distract them, then you might still be able to reach Lejna by land. Go to the seventh pier, and then get the Hell out of there.”

  “How will you find us? After … after that?”

  “The alert-stone. Evrane can ignite it, and I’ll see its light from sea.” In two long steps, Merik was to Safi. “Ride east, and I’ll find you. Soon.”

  Safi shook her head, a sluggish side to side. “I don’t like this.”

  “Please,” Merik said. “Please don’t argue. This is the best plan—”

  “It’s not that,” she cut in. “I just … I have a feeling I’ll never see you again.”

  Merik’s chest split open, and for half a second, he was at a loss for words. Then Merik cupped her face and kissed her. Soft. Short. Simple.

  She broke the kiss first, biting her lip as she reached for Merik’s shirttails. She tucked in the edges, smoothed the cotton front. “I lied to you, you know. You aren’t the last person I’d choose.”

  “No?”

  “No.” She grinned, a mischievous flash of teeth. “You’re the second to last. Maybe third.”

  Laughter swelled in Merik’s stomach. Up his throat. But before he could summon a worthy retort, Safi glided back and said, “Safe harbors, Merik.”

  So he simply replied, “Safe harbors,” before walking to the cliff. Then Merik Nihar stepped off the edge and flew.

  * * *

  Safi did not watch Merik go. The need for haste spurred her to action—as did the all-too-fresh memory of the Bloodwitch. The way he’d locked her in place … The way his eyes had swirled with red.

  It lifted the hairs on Safi’s arms. Sent fingers walking down her spine.

  Safi wove through the forest, accelerating … accelerating until she jogged, until she sprinted. Fern tendrils lashed her arms, spores tumbled down. To think she and Merik had only just rushed through this same jungle.

  Safi stumbled into camp to find it already struck and the horses saddled. Evrane was roping the bedrolls to the saddlebags and Iseult was adjusting the girdle on the roan. The horses tossed their heads—ready to ride, despite their long journey from the day before.

  At the crunch of Safi’s boots, Iseult’s attention whipped to Safi.

  “Leaving … without me?” Safi panted.

  “We heard the drums,” Iseult explained, tack jingling as she tugged the girdle tighter. “Evrane told me what the message said.”

  “But where is Merik?” Evrane asked, moving away from the mare’s saddlebag. Her cloak was in her hand, her baldric cinched tight to her chest.

  “He flew to the Jana,” Safi said. “He’ll try to head off the Marstoks.”

  Iseult gave the slightest frown. “We aren’t riding north, then? We aren’t going to flee?”

  With a quick headshake, Safi shuffled to the campfire. “We can still reach Lejna before the Marstoks.” She kicked dust and ash over any remaining embers. “Then we can flee north.”

  “Mount up, then,” Evrane ordered.

  “Safi, you can ride with me—”

  “No. You each get a horse.” Evrane shrugged on her cloak, fastening the buckle with efficient, mechanical movements. “I will wait here and stop Aeduan.”

  A taut pause. Then Iseult: “Please don’t do that, Monk Evrane.”

  “Please,” Safi agreed. “We’ll outrun him—”

  “Except you cannot,” Evrane interrupted, cutting her voice over Safi’s. “Aeduan is as fast as any horse, and he will catch up to you no matter where you go. I can find a defensible point in the path, though, and do my best to slow him.”

  “Slow,” Iseult repeated. “Not stop?”

  “Aeduan cannot be stopped, yet he can be reasoned with. Or, if necessary, these”—she patted her only two remaining knives; the buckles clanked—“are not just for show.”

  “You’ll get yourself killed,” Safi argued. The demand for speed breathed down her neck, yet she couldn’t let Evrane do something so profoundly stupid. “Please, just do as Merik ordered and come with us.”

  Evrane’s face stilled, and when she spoke, her tone was knifed with impatience. With offense. “Merik forgets that I am a monk trained for battle. I will face Aeduan myself and you two will ride to Lejna. Now, mount up.” She offered a stiff hand to Safi, and though Safi hardly needed it, she accepted.

  After helping Iseult mount as well, Evrane stepped purposefully to the gelding’s saddlebag and rifled out the quartz alert-stone. It glimmered gray, like the predawn sky above, and as she murmured “Alert,” a brilliant blue light flared within.

  “Now Merik will find you.” She offered the stone to Safi. “Keep it out whenever your path goes by the sea.”

  Safi stared at Evrane, her silver hair rippled in the dawn breeze and flickered with sapphire from the stone. Safi unfurled her fingers to accept the heavy quartz.

  Evrane gave a mollified nod. Then she removed her sword belt. “Iseult, take Merik’s cutlass. It’s strapped to the roan’s saddle. And Safi, you take this.” She laid her sheathed blade over Safi’s lap. “Carawen steel is the best, after all.”

  Safi gulped. That small attempt at a joke had reeled her back to the moment—back to the heavy truth that many people were risking their lives to ensure Safi got to Lejna and that Merik got his trade agreement.

  Safi would not let them down.

  “Iseult,” she said, drawing the words from her core—from the very center of her witchery, “we’re going to Lejna now. We won’t stop, and we won’t slow.”

  Iseult met Safi’s gaze, her hazel eyes a vivid green in the alert-stone’s flare. The fierceness was there—the one that always made Safi feel stronger—as she lifted her chin and said, “Lead the way, Safi. You know I’ll always follow.”

  At those words, Evrane’s lips twisted up. “You have no idea how long I have waited to hear those words. To see the two of you, astride. Alive.” There was an odd gleam in her eyes. “I know my words mean nothing to you now, but they will soon.

  “After I face Aeduan—after I show him what he stands for—I will find both of you in Lejna. Thank…” Evrane choked on the word, and more laughter sputtered in her chest. “Thank you for giving me hope, girls. After all these centuries, Eridysi’s Lament is finally coming true; I have found the Cahr Awen and you
have awoken the Water Well. So now, as my vow demands, I will protect you with everything I have.” She bowed, a somber movement that set Safi’s magic to singing with the truth behind it.

  Then Evrane Nihar turned and marched away.

  “Moon Mother protect us,” Iseult whispered. “Wh-wh … what was that?”

  Safi swung her gaze to Iseult, who had regained her Threadwitch mask, though not complete control of her tongue. “I don’t know, Iz. Does she think we’re the…”

  “Cahr Awen,” Iseult finished. “I … I think she does.”

  “Gods below, I can’t handle anymore surprises today.” Safi reined the horse toward the sunrise, punching down her confusion and doubt—deep, deep, out of reach.

  And, as she guided her horse to the trail, she was pleased to see the mare drag at the bit. The horses were ready for speed, Iseult was ready for speed, and Safi was ready to end this.

  Digging her heels into the mare’s ribs, Safi launched into a scudding gallop and set off for Lejna of the Hundred Isles.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The Jana was in an uproar when Merik finally touched down on the main deck. They sailed west now, the rising sun an angry thing behind the ship.

  When Merik squinted at the tiller—right into the sun—he found Kullen. A hunched, wheezing shape who somehow kept a wind hauling in the sails. Kullen. Merik pushed off across the deck, thunder rolling over the wind-drum’s boom.

  An entourage streamed behind.

  “Admiral,” Ryber called.

  Merik waved her off. “Hermin,” he panted, trying to jog, speak, and catch his breath. If he was already tired, he could only imagine Kullen’s exhaustion. “What’s happening?”

  Hermin hobbled alongside Merik. “Yoris found Prince Leopold unconscious by the Origin Well. Apparently the Bloodwitch attacked and betrayed him.”

  Merik’s footsteps stumbled. Leopold was here now too? What the Hell was he going to do with a blighted prince?

  He mentally swatted that aside for later.

  “Admiral!” Ryber shouted again. “S’important, sir!”

  “Not now.” Merik hopped the steps to the quarterdeck, where the wind whipped louder, harder. As he approached Kullen, slumped at the tiller, he wondered why Ryber had allowed her Heart-Thread to push himself this hard.

  “Stop this boat!” Merik roared. “Stop your wind!” He grabbed hold of Kullen’s coat and yanked the man upright.

  Kullen’s face was gray, but his eyes were sharp behind his wind-spectacles. “Can’t … stop,” he panted. “We’ve got to catch up … to the … Marstoks.”

  “And we will, but we don’t need so much speed—”

  “But that’s just it!” Ryber shouted, shoving up to Merik. “We do need speed because the Bloodwitch is here.”

  For half a breath, Merik could only stare at Ryber. Bewitched air stung his eyes, screamed in his ears. Then he bolted for the bulwark and yanked his spyglass free.

  “Where?” he breathed, heart lodged in his throat.

  “More east.” Ryber gently aimed the spyglass right, until Merik saw it: a lone blur of white streaming down the seaside road.

  Merik slid the glass farther east until … There. Two figures, one in white and one in black, on horseback. They coursed down the same road, and the Bloodwitch was no more than a league behind them. He would be upon Safi and Iseult before Merik could even fly back to shore.

  Merik snapped down the glass and forced himself to inhale—in through his nose. The heavy scent of oncoming rain. Then out through grinding teeth.

  It helped nothing. “How the Hell,” he ground out, “did that monster get here so fast?”

  “By all that’s holy,” Hermin swore, peering through his own spyglass. “Is that white speck him?”

  “His powers are straight from the Void,” Ryber said gravely. Then she cried, “Kullen!” and lurched from the bulwark.

  Merik bolted after, and with Ryber’s help, he peeled Kullen’s white-knuckled hand off the tiller. Then he slid his arm beneath his Threadbrother’s.

  Kullen was too cold to the touch, his clothes too damp with sweat. “You have to stop this!” Merik shouted. “Stop your winds, Kullen!”

  “If I stop,” Kullen answered with surprising strength, “then we lose your contract.”

  “Your life is worth more than a contract,” Merik said, but Kullen started laughing then—a hacking, gulping sound—and he lifted a weak arm to gesture south.

  “I have an idea.”

  Merik followed Kullen’s finger, but all he saw there were dark skies and the flickers of distant lightning.

  But then Ryber breathed “No,” and Merik’s stomach bottomed out.

  “No.” He towed Kullen around to face him. The first mate’s hair was so plastered by sweat, it didn’t even move in the wind. “That is not an option, Kullen. Ever.”

  “But it’s the only option. Nubrevna needs this … trade agreement.”

  “You can barely stand.”

  “I don’t need to stand,” Kullen said, “if I’m riding a storm.”

  Merik shook his head, frantic now. Panicking, while Ryber whispered over and over, “Please don’t do it, please don’t do it, please don’t do it.”

  “Have you forgotten what happened last time you summoned a storm?” Merik looked at Ryber for support, but she was crying now—and Merik realized with a sickening certainty, that she had already resigned herself to this course.

  How, though? How could she give up so easily and so fast?

  “We don’t need the trade agreement,” Merik insisted. “The Nihar lands are growing again. Growing, Kullen. So as your Admiral and your Prince, I command you not to do this.”

  Kullen’s coughing subsided. He sucked in a long, vicious breath that sounded like knives and fire.

  Then the man smiled. A full, frightening smile. “And as your Threadbrother, I choose not to listen.” In a clap of heat and power, magic sizzled to life and Kullen’s eyes shivered. Twitched. His pupils were shrinking … vanishing …

  A wind ripped over the deck—collided into Merik and Ryber, almost knocking them flat. It left Merik with no choice.

  He ripped off his coat, and Ryber moved to take it. The wind battered them, but they both bent into it—she aiming belowdecks with his jacket and he staggering for the tiller.

  As he moved into position at the helm of his father’s warship, Merik prayed once more to Noden—but this time he prayed that Kullen and everyone else in his crew survived the night.

  Because the storm was on its way now, and Merik could do nothing to stop it.

  * * *

  Safi had never pushed a horse so hard. Sweat streaked her mare’s sides, foamed on Iseult’s roan. At any moment, they might throw a shoe or twist a leg, but until that happened—until the creatures gave out from exhaustion—Safi had little choice but to keep galloping down this cliff-lined road.

  The girls’ long shadows galloped beside them, the dawn sun a pale flame over the Jadansi that lit up a bay so wide, Safi couldn’t see its end. Bare rock islands of all shapes and sizes speckled the glowing tide waters.

  The Hundred Isles.

  The road followed a descending curve, eventually reaching sea level—and Lejna too. After green for half a mile, they’d suddenly galloped back into a wasteland. It was all too quiet. Too dead. Safi didn’t like how the alert-stone pierced the sky from its spot tied to her saddlebag. They were literally asking to be noticed.

  “Anyone here?” Safi shouted over the four-beat hammer of hooves.

  Iseult’s eyes squeezed briefly shut. Then burst wide again. “No one. Not yet.”

  Safi’s grip tightened on her reins. One hand moved to her sword hilt. Just get to the pier. That was all she had to do.

  “Sign!” Iseult barked.

  Safi squinted ahead. What had once been an ornately stamped sign now dangled atop an iron column. It was the fourth like it they’d seen.

  LEJNA: 1 LEAGUE

  One league—that wa
s minutes away. Despite the tears in Safi’s eyes from the wind and the dirt, despite the fact that her heart might rip from her throat with fear, and despite the fact that she and Iseult could be cut down by a Bloodwitch at any moment, Safi grinned.

  She had her Threadsister beside her. That was all that mattered—all that had ever mattered.

  Her horse rounded a bend. The ghost forest opened up to reveal a city ahead. Lejna’s crescent shape hugged the shore, and the row-buildings that lined its streets might have once been colorful and crisp. Now they crumbled and their roofs caved in. Only three docks still stood, the rest reduced to abandoned posts jutting up from the waves.

  Safi spurred the mare faster. Harder. She would get Merik his thrice-damned trade agreement.

  “Is that Merik?” Iseult asked, blasting apart Safi’s thoughts.

  Safi searched the sea, hope soaring into her skull … until she spotted the Nubrevnan warship coasting into Lejna’s crescent bay. It moved at a breakneck speed, sails glowing orange in the sun.

  And with green-clad sailors crawling the decks.

  Safi’s hope plummeted to her toes. She shouted for Iseult to break, and she reined her own mare to a stop.

  Iseult’s roan pulled up short, dust pluming, and both girls walked their horses alongside the cliff, squinting into the sun. The horses huffed their exhaustion, but their ears were still high.

  “I think that’s the ship we left to the Marstoks,” Safi said at last. “Princess Vivia’s ship.”

  “It certainly looks like their uniforms. Which means we could be dealing with Firewitches.”

  Safi swore and ran a hot hand over her face. It was gritty with dust. Everything was gritty—her throat, her eyes, her brain—and more dust kept gusting in. “Why are there so many soldiers on a single ship? Surely they’re not all me.”

  Thunder boomed from the south, brief and all-consuming. Safi twisted her head toward it … and a fresh slew of oaths fell off her tongue.

  Storm clouds were rumbling in fast, and at the mouth of the bay were more ships. Marstoki naval galleons, waiting in a row as if to guard the Hundred Isles.

  Or to keep the Jana out.

  “Merik won’t be able to sail in.” Safi pushed the mare into a slow trot. The path veered inland; maybe the dead pine forest would offer some protection from the quickening gales and the eyes of Marstoki sailors.