NO! Iseult squeezed out. With far too much emphasis. But striking a balance was always so hard in the Dreaming. Especially after the ease of the ghost ruins.
A long pause settled then, suggesting Esme pondered and mused. The seconds blended into minutes, and all Iseult could do was wait. Alone. In a world of endless, choking shadows.
Until at last, Esme spoke again—and Iseult’s traitorous dream-lungs shuddered with relief.
Perhaps you are the Cahr Awen, Iseult. Or perhaps you are not. Either way, you should not need the Bloodwitch to save you anymore. Four men is easy for the likes of us. Simply cleave them and be done.
Look, I will show you how.
A flash of light. Then they were back in Esme’s tower, but this time Iseult was trapped in Esme’s mind. Forced to see through Esme’s eyes.
The girl was at her window, seemingly unconcerned by the candle flames winking so near or the wax melting onto her gown. She pointed into the darkness, squinting until the rows of the Cleaved—the same rows Iseult had seen two weeks before—came into focus. Shady silhouettes in the darkness.
“There is a man in the front,” Esme said. “Do you see him, with the apron? He used to be a blacksmith.”
Iseult did see the man—there was no way to avoid it when Esme fixed her eyes on him. The man’s gray apron was stained black with blood.
“He was a weak Ironwitch,” the Puppeteer explained, her voice quite cool. Quite calm. “In his village, he had a Threadbrother. An elementally powerless man. When I cleaved the blacksmith, the Threadbrother tried to intervene. I don’t know what he thought he could do. When a man is cleaving, there is little to heal him save the Moon Mother … and me, of course.” Esme spoke matter-of-factly—no sign of vanity as she declared her power equal to that of their goddess.
“For some reason, though,” Esme continued, fatigue creeping into her tone, “I didn’t let the blacksmith attack his Threadbrother. I suppose I still felt generous in those days, and I called the blacksmith away before he could kill anyone. But look—do you see the pink Threads? They shimmer inside the Severed Threads. They still remain even when all other Threads have vanished.” Esme scrutinized the Threads spinning over the cleric’s body, waiting for Iseult to answer.
So Iseult made her Dreaming self say, Yes, Esme. I see the Threads of friendship.
“That is how I control them. I sever all their Threads save one, then I bind that final Thread to the Loom. But that is complicated. A technique I will teach you another night. For now, all you need to know is how to kill them.”
With that declaration, the Puppeteer’s hands lifted, her wrists so fine, her forearms so fragile. This close, though, there was no missing how similar her fingers were to Iseult’s: thin to the point of knobby, and widely spaced when flexed.
The Puppeteer reached out, fingers curling and stretching like a musician at the harp.
Or a weaver at the loom.
The blacksmith’s Threads—the sunset-colored strands that still bound him to his distant Threadbrother—floated ever so slowly toward Esme’s hands, stretching thinner and thinner as they moved … then sliding into the gaps between her fingers.
Once the Threads had strained so thin as to be almost invisible, and had gathered so thickly around Esme’s fingers that they looked like a glowing ball of pink yarn, she drew her hands to her face. “Now all it takes is a little snip.”
Esme’s face dipped forward, and Iseult had the sensation of her mouth opening, of her teeth baring and the Threads slipping between …
Esme snapped her jaw shut. The Threads cracked like a misstep on a frozen lake. In a flash of light, the strands shriveled inward, shrank backward, vanished entirely.
The blacksmith started convulsing. He fell to his knees as fresh pustules rippled and popped across his body. Then Esme turned away from the window, and Iseult lost sight of him.
“The cleaving will burn through him completely now.” Esme dusted off her hands as if bits of Thread still clung. “He will be dead in seconds.”
Iseult had no response. Heat was rising in her chest. Boiling in her throat. This was not Thread magic. This was not Aether magic. This was not something Iseult could do.
She was not like Esme. She was not like Esme!
“What is wrong with you, Iseult?”
N-nothing, she tried to say. She needed to escape. She needed to wake up. I … want to try what you showed me, she lied. Anything to escape the Dreaming.
It worked. Esme smiled—Iseult felt the smile spread across a face that was not her own. Then Esme nodded, sending the view of the tower lurching. “Good, Iseult. Practice, and before long, we will be together.”
Esme clapped her hands.
The world went black, and Iseult finally toppled into true, dreamless sleep.
* * *
The Threadwitch made too much noise.
Aeduan never would have expected it from her. She was so stoic, so hard. Yet here they were: Aeduan attempting to finish his morning routine, and the Threadwitch constantly interrupting.
He had moved from the inner rooms of the ancient fortress at first light, finding an open area on one of the higher steppes. Fire had burned through here, recently enough to have cleared away saplings and underbrush in a storm-struck burst of flames. It happened often in the Contested Lands, almost as if the gods swooped through from time to time, clearing out the old. Making space for the new.
It was like the Nomatsi skipping rhyme.
Dead grass is awakened by fire,
dead earth is awakened by rain.
One life will give way to another,
the cycle will begin again.
That was the tune the Threadwitch sang this morning. She crooned wildly off-key, and it was wildly distracting for Aeduan, who meditated cross-legged atop a fallen column.
She cut off once she’d realized he was there, but it was too late. His concentration had been disrupted.
He would have cursed at the girl if he’d thought it would make a difference. It wouldn’t, though, and the instant he rose and slipped free of his Carawen cloak, she resumed her tune—a soft humming while she assembled a campfire with practiced ease.
Aeduan attempted to begin his morning warm-up instead, rolling his wrists and swinging his arms, but he couldn’t focus. Not with all her noise.
“Quiet,” he snarled at last.
“Why?” she countered, defiance in the lift of her chin.
“You distract me.”
The defiance expanded, moving from her face to her shoulders. She straightened. “I thought you were a monk no longer. So why are you meditating or … whatever this is?”
Aeduan ignored her and shifted into warming kicks, his legs loose as he flung them high.
“What was it like, being a monk?” She stepped closer.
Three more kicks, and he moved to squats. One, two—
“Anyone can become a monk,” she went on, striding in front of him now. “Regardless of their background or their”—she waved at him—“witchery.”
“No.” Aeduan knew he ought to leave this conversation and the Threadwitch alone, but he couldn’t let her words—false as they were—hang between them. “Trust me, Threadwitch,” he huffed between squats, “monks can be as cruel as the rest of humanity. They simply do it in the name of the Cahr Awen.”
“You left because of cruelty?”
Aeduan paused at the top of his next squat. The girl’s face was blank, and even her expressive nose was completely still.
He sighed. “Simply because I have lost faith in the cause doesn’t mean the training has lost all of its usefulness.”
Her head tipped sideways. “And why don’t you believe in the cause?”
What had Aeduan stepped into? One question begat another hundred, and now the girl had landed on the last subject Aeduan wished to discuss. Ever.
“Enough.” He turned away from her. “Leave this area or be quiet.”
He moved for a shaded patch in the cle
aring, where the grass was the shortest and no crumbling fortress could get in the way. Where he could spin and roll, kick and curl.
For some unfathomable reason, the Threadwitch followed.
“You can avoid answering me for now, but I intend to keep asking.” There was an urgency in her voice. Not a stammer, like he’d caught slipping in a few times. This was a hot intensity.
And she was standing much too close. Entering his personal space in a way no one ever dared. “Back away,” he warned, “or I’ll assume you wish to join the training.”
“I won’t leave until you answer.” She moved another pace, and the challenge was there. In her eyes, in her stance, in her jaw.
A thrill rose in Aeduan’s gut. Then he swept her legs out from under her.
She saw it coming—she was ready for it—but Aeduan was too fast to stop. His foot swung out, and she fell.
Yet before her back could hit the grass, Aeduan caught her and eased her down. She grabbed his shirt in two white-knuckled fists as her back settled onto the dewy earth.
“You shouldn’t waste energy,” she said flatly, “on showing off.” No fear in her yellow Nomatsi eyes, just a slight flush on her cheeks.
Aeduan almost laughed at those flags of color—and at her words too, for this was not showing off. This was merely the most basic of Carawen training. To prove that point, he gripped her wrist with his opposite hand, dug his fingers into her tendons, and twisted inward. Her joints had no choice but to follow.
She released his shirt, but to his surprise, she didn’t shrink away or buck her hips in panic. She simply kicked her feet wide, hooking with her heels. Trying to pin him to the grass. Too slow, she was too slow. A beginning grappler facing a master.
Aeduan squeezed tighter, twisting harder and forcing her to roll sideways. In half a breath, she had pivoted completely onto her belly, her head swiveled back. Now there was no missing what burned in her eyes. No Threadwitch calm remained.
She had asked him for this; she knew it and she was furious.
“Why do you care,” Aeduan said, “if I left the Monastery?”
“I don’t … care … that you left.” The strain was back in her words, a sound Aeduan was a beginning to recognize as a sign she fought off a stutter. “I care … why. Do you not believe in the Cahr Awen anymore?”
Aeduan hesitated, caught off guard by her pointed question. Then he remembered.
“Ah. Monk Evrane has filled your held with nonsense, and now you think you are the Cahr Awen.” He released her, rolling off her back and hopping to his feet. He offered her his hand.
She didn’t take it. Just pushed onto her hands and knees, staring down at the grass. “Why … is it nonsense?”
“You are not a Voidwitch.” His words were inflectionless, yet they seemed to hit her like stones.
She flinched. Then said, “B-but … I … we healed the Well.”
Aeduan’s head tipped sideways. He inhaled a long breath of the humid, morning air while crickets whistled from the forest and, again, distant thunder rolled.
“Yes,” he admitted eventually, “someone healed it.” He had seen the waking Origin Well himself, yet it had not seemed fully intact—nothing like the Aether Well that Aeduan had spent most of his childhood living beside.
He said as much, adding, “It was as if the Well was only partially alive. As if only half of the Cahr Awen had healed it, and I do not think, Threadwitch, that you were that half.”
Now it was the girl’s turn to exhale, “Ah.” She scrabbled upright. Her body wobbled, her gaze jumpy and unfocused.
Aeduan could see right away that he had made a mistake. He should have said nothing. He should have let her keep hoping for a pointless, fruitless fantasy.
After all, an unhappy Threadwitch would only slow them.
“First lesson of a Carawen novice,” Aeduan offered, acting as if nothing had just passed between them. “Do not challenge someone more skilled than you.”
Iseult’s nostrils twitched. Her face hardened. The defiance, the determination—they were back, and against his will, Aeduan’s lips twitched upward.
“I didn’t challenge you,” she said coolly.
“Getting too close is considered a challenge in most cultures.”
“Then teach me.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“What you just did, pinning me like that. Teach me, so I won’t make the same mistake again.”
“We don’t have time for that.” He shook his head, and then with great deliberation, he turned his back on the Threadwitch.
She attacked.
And Aeduan smiled.
TWENTY-SIX
Despite her strongest attempts not to, Safi had fallen asleep. All through the night and into the next day, she’d slept. Food, a bath, and a taro game—it had been too much for her body, and she’d curled up beside Vaness on the bed. Her eyes had seared shut. Then the Hell-Bards and the empress and the Pirate Republic of Saldonica had drifted away.
Until the knock sounded at the door.
That jerked Safi awake so fast that she fell from the bed. Her limbs tangled in the new silk-wrapped ropes that Lev had, quite apologetically, tied around her ankles after the trip into Red Sails territory.
The Hell-Bards had knives and hatchets drawn before Safi could right herself, and by the time she did struggle to her feet, Lev—the only one in full armor—was creeping toward the door with a blade outstretched.
A second knock. Efficient, determined. Safi glanced at the empress, who sat calmly near the close-slatted shutters. Hands folded upon her lap, posture perfect atop the lone stool.
“You should not have come here!” shouted a man in Marstoki.
The empress’s nostrils flared with a poorly concealed smile—which meant this must be part of her plan. If Safi only knew what it actually entailed.
The Hell-Bards were clearly as lost as she, for Lev and Zander ogled Caden, waiting for a command that wasn’t coming.
“Do you speak Marstoki?” the empress asked, so prim. Too prim. She pushed to her feet, the collar at her neck seeming light as dandelions for all it slowed her rise. “They said that we should not have come here.”
Caden lifted one hand, a knife flashing. Then he sniffed at the air, his narrowed eyes fixing on the window. “Smoke,” he said.
As one, everyone’s heads yanked toward the shutters, where sure enough, gray was just starting to trickle through.
“Hell pits,” Lev swore at the same moment Zander rumbled, “I warded against Firewitched flames!”
“Yes, but these are not magic flames,” Vaness inserted, beaming now. A hungry smile. “They are alchemical, for that is Baedyed seafire.”
“But we’re not at sea,” Lev muttered. “And why burn the entire inn? I thought they wanted only you.” She threw a look at the empress.
“Do you not want the Empress of Marstok?” Caden shouted, still using Cartorran. “She will die if you do not let us free.”
“She deserves no less!” came the muffled reply. Then an impassioned, “Why should we take only pieces of the Sand Sea when we could have all of Marstok instead?”
A moment of crackling silence while the blood seemed to drained from Vaness’s face.
Then a choked cry split her lips. She lurched from her stool and to the window. Before anyone could stop her, she had the shutters yanked open. “Stand down!” she shrieked as smoke billowed in. “As your empress, I order you to stand down!”
“For the Sand Sea! For the Sand Sea!”
A flash of light tore through the room, rushing over Safi in a burst of magic. Three more flashes, and then Zander was hauling the empress away from the window. Squinting through the bright onslaught, Safi realized crossbow bolts flew against the wards and ricocheted backward.
The protective magic was working—at least against the attack outside. Smoke, though, was coiling in. Hot, choking, and all too familiar. Too recent and too fresh, it set Safi’s throat to tightening. Smoke. Flames. D
eath.
“Expand the wards against real fire,” Caden barked at Zander. He turned next to Lev. “We need to keep the smoke out as long as possible.” Then together, he and Lev tore the wool coverlet off the bed and with a practiced speed set to billowing it like a topsail.
White light cracked through the room, and smoke burned in Safi’s tear ducts. She dragged herself to the wall where Vaness cowered.
None of the empress’s perfect mask remained now. Through the haze and the blasting lights, Safi found a wide-eyed empress. Her fingers were white-knuckled around the collar as she tugged it, arms shaking. Everything shaking.
“They betrayed me,” she mumbled, her quivering eyes fixing on Safi. “They betrayed me.” It was all she would say, over and over again, “They betrayed me.”
Abruptly, the flashing light stopped. No more bolts cracked against the ward, and Caden and Lev had reached the window with their waving banner. Safi hardly noticed, for now Vaness was wrenching at her collar with such desperation that her nose had begun to bleed. A downward seep from one nostril.
“Stop.” Safi scuttled in close, grabbing the empress’s wrists. “You can’t break through this.”
Vaness’s eyes flicked up, thinning into violent slits. “Do you not see, Safi? The Baedyeds have betrayed me. They were the rot in my court all this time—and they were the ones who destroyed my ship and killed my…” Her voice broke, and she pushed unsteadily to her feet. “Free me,” she flung at the Hell-Bards in Cartorran. Blood trickled from both nostrils now.
“Our wards will hold,” Caden answered. Yet as soon as that statement fell, stony and unyielding, Zander turned away from his spot at the door and said, “I can’t expand the wards, sir. Not while we’re under attack—the flames below are rising too fast.”
Lev swung toward Vaness. “How would you get us out?”
“I can snuff out the flames. I have done it before.”
“She has,” Safi offered, scrabbling upright. “It’s how we survived the attack on our ship.”
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