Windwitch

by Susan Dennard

  “Due east,” he would abruptly say. Or, “More south.” Iseult never knew if the Bloodwitch changed his course because Safi had changed hers, or if Safi’s scent came … and went … and then disappeared again, leaving Aeduan to follow as best could. He certainly stopped every few minutes to close his eyes and sniff the air.

  Then, when his eyelids would lift, his irises would burn crimson for a breath. Perhaps two.

  After half a day of ruddy bark and dark needles brushing past, the pines grew smaller, giving way to hardwood saplings. Oaks took hold, silver trunked and surrounded by ferns and white asphodel. The Amonra River, wide and dark, churned nearby.

  Iseult knew from the map tucked in her satchel, as well as from her lessons with Mathew and Habim, that soon, the forest would give way entirely. The land would drop into a misty gorge filled with thick underbrush and thicker chimney-stack stones. The river would drop too at the towering Amonra Falls.

  Here, the Marstoks had faced off against the Nubrevnans twenty years before. Here, fire had chased families from their homes, and Nubrevna had ultimately lost. One more nation to add to the list.

  Before Nubrevna, it had been Dalmotti. Before Dalmotti, it had been Marstok. For centuries, this peninsula had changed hands, and for centuries, no one had ever fully won—or ever fully lost.

  Beside Iseult, the Bloodwitch inhaled audibly, his eyes swirling red. “We have two choices,” he said eventually, “either we descend beside the Amonra Falls, which is the safer route into the gorge. Or we travel northeast through the forests—and before you say ‘Falls,’ know that the path is slower.”

  “How far is Safi?” Iseult asked, squinting in the direction of the gorge. Birds circled above.

  “Far.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “No.”

  Iseult’s nostrils flared. Stasis. “How do I know you are even taking me in the right direction, then?”

  “How do I know that you possess the rest of my coins?”

  He had a point—and they’d already established their inevitable betrayals. “How dangerous is ‘dangerous’?”

  “Very.”

  Iseult couldn’t help it now. She sighed.

  No change in Aeduan’s expression, though he did say, “There is a settlement nearby. I can get you a horse. It will allow us to travel longer before you tire.”

  “How near?” Iseult could get herself a horse.

  “An hour north at my fastest pace. I would return by late afternoon.”

  “And I … simply wait?” At Aeduan’s nod, it took Iseult two stabilizing breaths before she felt able to continue. “And the hours lost are worth getting a steed?”

  “Your friend is that direction.” He pointed southeast into the Contested Lands. “She is many, many leagues away—and many, many days. A horse will help.”

  His argument made sense, as loathe as Iseult was to admit it. Use every resource available. Still, the thought of waiting several hours …

  The Bloodwitch took Iseult’s silence as an agreement. He extended his arm. “Return my cloak. Monks get better deals when bartering.”

  Iseult could hardly refuse. It belonged to him, after all. Yet she found herself resisting, moving extra slowly as she slipped it off her shoulders. Air washed over her, cool and exposing.

  She swallowed, watching the Bloodwitch flip the white side outward and shrug it on with practiced ease.

  “I’ll be back soon,” he said gruffly, already turning away. Already sniffing and tensing. “Stay out of sight until then. There are worse things in the Contested Lands than Bloodwitches.”

  * * *

  A horse wouldn’t save much time. Not in the overgrowth of the Contested Lands. While Aeduan certainly intended to find a steed for the Threadwitch if he could, it wasn’t his main purpose for veering off alone.

  Aeduan had caught a whiff of clear lakes and frozen winter. The blood-scent that had haunted him since Leopold’s betrayal. The scent of whoever it was who had partnered with Leopold to stop Aeduan. The scent that had lingered where Aeduan had hidden his coins, the scent he could only assume belonged to the talers’ thief.

  How those coins had ended up in the Threadwitch’s possession—that was just one more answer he would wring from this person’s throat. And he would not be as generous with this person as he had been with Leopold at the Origin Well in Nubrevna.

  Best of all, if Aeduan could find out who this ghost was and where he’d placed his coins, then Aeduan wouldn’t need the Threadwitch anymore. He could leave her to rot in the woods and leave Corlant to rot in his compound.

  That thought spurred Aeduan faster. The trees were thin, the ferns low. All of it easily navigated. The world blended around him. Green and granite and bark, shrouded in endless mist.

  Soon he would have answers.

  After painstakingly tracking the Truthwitch, who was hundreds of leagues outside Aeduan’s magical range, this new hunt took no power at all. He used the extra magic to fuel his sprint faster.

  Until, as it always seemed to be, Aeduan lost the smell. Between one bounding step and the next, it simply vanished. No frozen winters. No clear lake waters.

  Aeduan slung to a stop, hissing, “Not again, not again,” under his breath. Every time, this was what happened. Every time, Aeduan would get so close, only to lose the scent entirely.

  As Aeduan stood there, one foot on a bed of pine needles and the other on a gnarling cypress root, he closed his eyes. He turned his mind and his witchery inward. Breath by careful breath passed. The forest awoke around him, trickling into its usual routine. A wary thing at first, with hesitant skylarks. A cautious pine marten.

  If he could quiet his mind and still his body, then his witchery could rise to its maximum height.

  At least that was the plan until a throaty cackle sounded to his left.

  Aeduan’s eyelids snapped up. His gaze connected with a rook’s, whose black eyes and gray beak were perfectly still. Its scruffy feathers ruffled on the breeze. It didn’t flee, didn’t move. It simply considered Aeduan head-on.

  Which made the hair on Aeduan’s neck rise. He’d never seen a rook on its own. They usually flew in great swarms outside the forest.

  Aeduan sniffed. From fish to fowl, all animals bore the same wild surface scent: freedom. Atop that scent rested … forest fog.

  He coughed, a harsh burst of air that rattled through the clearing. The rook blinked. Aeduan repeated his cough, and this time the rook took the hint. It hopped into flight, carrying its freedom and its fog away from Aeduan’s as fast as its wings could go.

  Except now a new blood coiled into Aeduan’s nose. His witchery jerked to life. Blood. Magic. Hundreds of people. So many scents mingled together. All ages. All types. All of it straight ahead.

  Pirates, no doubt. But which faction? And why this far inland? Both the Red Sails with their vast fleets, and the Baedyeds with their stealthier seafire attacks, kept their invasions close to shore.

  Yet both slaughtered, both enslaved. Like war and rainstorms, there was no escaping the dominance men asserted on each other. There was, however, attempting to sneak past it, which was why Aeduan skulked onward. It was simple self-preservation. He needed to know whom he and the Threadwitch might encounter in the Contested Lands. He needed to know which route these pirates might be taking out of the valley beyond.

  Especially if the Red Sails were involved.

  So after reversing his Carawen cloak just as the Threadwitch had, he hurried around pines and saplings before finally clambering up a massive goshorn oak. There, he hunkered onto a branch to watch who passed the mud-trampled earth below.

  It was not the Red Sails that came clipping into view. The advance rider wore drab clothes, but his auburn mare was strapped with a distinctly Baedyed saddle, a tasseled cloth style from their native Sand Sea.

  After the first scout, two more Baedyeds on horseback ambled by. Then came foot soldiers—something Aeduan hadn’t known the Baedyeds possessed within t
heir ranks. Yet here they marched, man after man after woman in a long single-file line. Small steps, but strong. Sabers clanking at their hips.

  And more than a few witches in their midst; Aeduan smelled storms and stones, fires and floods.

  Aeduan sniffed harder at the air, just in case. But no, the clear waters and frozen winters were lost again. He should have known by now that hunting that ghost would never lead him true. A futile errand, every time. A distraction.

  While Aeduan toyed with the idea of divesting one of these beautiful steeds from his Baedyed rider, he caught sight of twenty men on horseback clomping into the line. No order to their steps, no organization to their cluster. They had whips, and their horses bore open sores on flank and limb.

  Red Sails.

  Instantly, Aeduan’s hackles rose. Though no man wanted his village or tribe hit by pirates, at least the Baedyeds followed a moral code. The Red Sails, Aeduan knew firsthand, did not.

  What left Aeduan frowning—what sent him straining forward to gain a better view—was why these two factions were traveling together. They were enemies, constantly at war for more territory, more slaves, more coins. Yet here was an entire contingent of them marching as one.

  An answer came moments later, for right as the Red Sails ambled below Aeduan’s spying branch, a Baedyed trotted back to meet them.

  “Where are the rest of your men?” The Baedyed spoke to the foulest Red Sail of them all.

  Of all the wickedness below, this man delighted the most in the horror. It was there, in the furrows of his blood-scent. Broken knuckles and torn-off fingernails.

  This man’s blood marked him as a monster; his red saddle marked him as the leader.

  “We caught wind of our bounty,” the man said with complete disdain and disinterest.

  Whatever alliance was happening here, it was not a strong one.

  “Hell-fires scorch you,” the Baedyed spat. His mare stamped anxiously. “We must reach the Purist compound by tomorrow. Do you expect us to wait?”

  “If they do not rejoin us soon, then yes.”

  The Baedyed swore again, this time in a language Aeduan didn’t recognize. But as he reined his horse back around, he spat, “The king will hear of this. I promise.”

  “And I promise he will not care.”

  Right after the Baedyed had cantered back toward the front of the marching line, another Red Sail appeared on horseback. Burned hair and smoking flesh. Autumn pyres and mercy screams.

  A Firewitch. Aeduan’s skin prickled. Fire … unsettled him.

  The leader spotted the Firewitch too. “You are late,” he called. “Go help the others. They are almost to the Falls, I want this Threadwitch caught today.”

  Threadwitch. Falls. The words solidified in Aeduan’s mind, and a heartbeat later, he was moving. Scrabbling silently back across his branch.

  Until something spooked within the leaves—a dark bird with enormous wings. The rook took flight, squawking into the sky.

  The Firewitch looked up. His eyes met Aeduan’s through a gap in the leaves. He smiled. He clapped. The goshorn oak caught fire.

  From one moment to the next, the tree ignited, and within seconds, every inch of it crackled and popped and blazed. If Aeduan hadn’t worn his salamander cloak, he’d have erupted too.

  He did have his cloak, though, and he managed to leap to the ground. There, he fastened his fire-flap across his mouth, fingers shaking.

  Run, my child, run.

  He glanced back. A mistake, for the Firewitch approached, hands rising—and the flames building in response. All around Aeduan they licked and spat. A conflagration to bring him down.

  Aeduan couldn’t fight this. He could barely think, barely see, much less try to kill the Firewitch before the flames won. Already his legs trembled. Already it was too much like that morning all those years ago.

  Without another thought or another glance at the Firewitch, Aeduan reeled about and ran.

  NINETEEN

  At the sound of the tenth chimes, Merik awoke to Cam tromping about the tenement in her new boots. Merik had placed them by the bed for her before crawling onto the other side and collapsing into a deep sleep of his own.

  The girl moved like a newborn colt, stiff and jerky with her stride strangely long as she counted each step.

  “Have you never worn shoes before?” Merik asked, his voice grating like a blade on the whetstone. “Or are those too small?”

  “Forty-eight, forty-nine.” Cam gave a floppy shrug. “Right size, I think. And I’ve worn shoes before, sir. When I was younger. Just never had much of a reason to keep ’em.”

  “So what’s the reason today?”

  “Are you fishing for a thank-you?” Cam made a face, her nose wrinkling up—and Merik found himself chuckling.

  Which made his throat hurt. And his chest. And his face. But at least his laugh earned one of Cam’s wildfire smiles.

  “Thank you for the boots, sir.” She swept a bow. “I am now ready for Shite Street.”

  “I’m not.” Merik pushed himself upright, muscles and new skin resisting. The salve had helped, but his sleep had been restless. Filled with dreams of Lejna storms and fallen buildings and Kullen begging, “Kill … me.”

  Merik was grateful when Cam slipped into her usual storyteller role over breakfast. He was grateful, too, that she didn’t seem to notice the fresh scabs across his knuckles—nor the fact that he had snuck off while she slept.

  “Best entrance to the Cisterns,” Cam explained through a mouthful of too-juicy plums, “is by the Northern Wharf.” On she babbled, as she so loved to do, about the best routes through the underground. The safest tunnels. The gangs that competed for space.

  Merik listened, noting—not for the first time—that she rarely told stories about herself. He’d heard endless tales of things she’d seen or of secondhand histories from someone else, yet never narratives from her own life.

  The longer he stared at her bright-eyed face, the more the old nursery rhyme sang in his skull.

  Fool brother Filip led blind brother Daret

  deep into the black cave.

  He knew that inside it, the Queen Crab resided,

  but that didn’t scare him away.

  Merik couldn’t recall how the rest of the song went, and so that one verse kept chanting again and again, in time to each chomp of his plum.

  By the time he and Cam, both hooded as always, set off into the streets of Old Town, the eleventh chimes were tolling. Late-morning traffic folded them into its currents, and they traveled east, with Cam leading the way.

  A languid fog hung over the streets. Last night’s rain, rising as the sun burned hotter, brighter. Before Merik and Cam had even passed the final decrepit homes of Old Town, sweat seeped from Merik’s skin.

  Cam aimed right at a butcher’s bloodied front stoop and then crossed two more busy thoroughfares. As always, she let her gut guide them, swirling back to pluck Merik from traffic whenever soldiers came too near.

  Soon enough, they reached the busiest wharf in Lovats. Here, not a single patch of water was visible between the boats. Had Merik wanted, he could skip clear across the harbor, stepping from pram to frigate to skiff and eventually onto a cobbled, shop-lined street a quarter mile away.

  It was precisely the sort of challenge he’d have loved as a boy. He and Kullen both.

  Kill … me.

  Cam beckoned Merik onward to a slant of steps underground. Once, it had been a market, where goods fresh off the river were sold—Merik remembered visiting in boyhood. Before Jana had passed. Before Vivia had transformed forever.

  While some brave merchants still attempted to hawk their wares, Merik saw more homeless and hungry than anything else as he followed Cam into the shadows. Almost all sconces affixed to the damp flagstones were empty, candles long stolen or lanterns long smashed.

  The racket from above softened, morphing into higher voices. Children’s. Women’s. Merik’s eyes adjusted, and families materialized in
the gloom. Water dripped from the curved ceiling to gather in puddles underfoot that splashed as Merik and Cam marched by.

  Unacceptable. This tunnel, these families, this life that they were all resigned to. Help is coming, Merik wanted to say. I’m working as fast as I can.

  “This way, sir.” Cam veered right. Two old men playing taro separated just enough for her and Merik to weave through. Then the girl vanished into a slice of darkness where no fire’s glow reached.

  They walked through the darkness for fifty-six paces (Cam counted, as she always did) before a pale yellow glow sparked ahead. Another fifty-two paces, and they reached it: a lantern, Firewitched, illuminating a sharp right turn in the tunnel. Then more darkness—this time for a hundred and six steps, with water dripping the entire way.

  At last, though, he sensed a shift in Cam’s step. The girl was slowing with a rustle, like fingers brushing a wall, before she vanished.

  Just disappeared.

  One moment, Merik heard Cam’s tired breaths and clomping bootfalls. The next, there was nothing but the plopping of water droplets.

  So Merik did as Cam had, skimming the tunnel wall with his palm and proceeding onward …

  Power frizzed over him.

  It lasted a single breath, the temperature dropping low. The air sucking from his ears and lungs. Then he was through. The light returned, uneven but bright. A low brick tunnel stretched side to side, while sounds rolled into Merik from all directions—men’s shouts and thumping feet.

  And the roar of waters channeling through some distant tunnel every few moments.

  Cam fiddled with her hood for a moment, towing it so low her face was completely hidden. “Should’ve warned you about the old ward-spells. They’re meant to keep people out, I suppose, but clearly they ain’t working so well anymore. Oh, but pardon me, sir. Where are my manners?” She opened her hands wide. “Welcome to my second home, sir. Welcome to the Cisterns.”

  * * *

  It was nearing midday before Vivia had a chance to return to the underground. Time was short; she had much to do. Check the lake, search the tunnels. The words recited, a beat to jog by. Her lantern swooped and sputtered. Check the lake, search the tunnels.