Truthwitch (The Witchlands, #1)(108)

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 was 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.

“That’s the least of our worries,” Iseult said, increasing her roan’s pace. “That first ship is almost to the Lejna piers. This is clearly an ambush—” She broke off as a fresh burst of wind pounded into her—and into Safi.

They both turned their faces away, blocked their eyes and mouths. The air tangled in their clothes and hair, clattered at the horses’ tack, and then rattled through bone-dry branches ahead. The only thing that didn’t bend to the wind’s will was the alert-stone’s light—which, Safi realized, she should probably put away. No need to attract the Marstoks.

As she untied the stone from her saddlebag, Iseult called, “Which pier do you need to get to?”