Truthwitch (The Witchlands, #1)(113)

She decided it wasn’t—right as the spiky mass of death flew at her head.

Safi ducked sideways. The flail zoomed past her forehead. A single barb slashed across her skin. Blood gushed into her eyes, and for the smallest fraction of a moment, the contract’s words blazed behind her eyeballs: All negotiations will terminate should the passenger spill any blood.

Then the Adder’s boot was kicking at Safi’s face and she had no more space to think.

Safi smacked the foot with her elbow, successfully tipping the Adder’s balance—and also successfully bringing down the flail.

Safi met the iron chain with her blade. Yet where she thought the ball’s momentum would carry the chain around her sword—and allow her to yank the flail from the Adder’s grip—the iron seemed to melt apart … to slide over the steel … and to re-form on the other side.

Safi blinked blood and rain from her eyes, thinking surely she had mis-seen. But no. The woman was shifting chain link after chain link down to the iron ball—making the flail even bigger, the spikes even larger.

Oh, shit. Safi was facing an Ironwitch. Oh, shit, shit, shit. She had severely misjudged her opponent. She couldn’t fight this woman alone. Carawen steel was still iron, so her only chance would be to lose the sword, get past the Adder, and then run like the Void was at her heels.

So that was exactly what Safi did. She flung her sword sideways—silently apologizing to Evrane—and when the Adder snapped out her flail, aiming for Safi’s thighs, she jumped as high as she could.

Not high enough, though. The flail zoomed for her ankle, spikes and iron to crush her bone.

Instinct took over. Midair, Safi twirled and punched out her right heel. It crunched into the Adder’s throat.

She didn’t get a chance to see what happened next. A charged wind exploded behind her, and the next thing she knew, she was flipping over the Adder, carried by the cycloning storm. Then cobblestones were careening toward her face—much too fast—and Safi crashed down. Pain jarred through her.

Rain fell now. Lightning crackled and hissed, carried on this raging wind.

Safi scrambled up, blinking away water and teeth-shattering aches. Then she set off, stride determined, for the second pier. As before, she took four steps onto the slick wood before racing back to the quay.

To where the Adder had caught up to her.

So Safi did the only thing she could conjure: she tossed up her hands and shouted, “You can have me!”

But the Adder didn’t lower her flail. “Allow me to shackle you, Truthwitch, and I will believe you!”

“Truthwitch?” Safi called, shrugging innocently. “I think you have the wrong girl!” False, her magic scraped. “I’m only a domna, and not even from a good estate!”

“You can’t trick me,” the woman roared. Her uniform rippled in the wind. Her scarf was unwinding, a black flag that flipped and flew.

For some reason, Safi couldn’t stop staring at that black flap of fabric … and she couldn’t push past her witchery. False, false, false! it shrieked over and over. Wrong, wrong, wrong! It was far too great a reaction for a simple lie.

Then Safi understood. Then she recognized.

Cleaving.

As soon as that word sifted through her consciousness, the sky exploded.

A blast of heat and light erupted from the clouds. It blanketed all sight, swallowed all sound, masked all feeling.

Safi’s knees gave out. She toppled forward, blinking and reaching and straining for some sense of where she was, where the Adder was …

And above all, who was cleaving.

A fuzzy image coalesced—the Adder. On her knees. Staring at her arms in horror—arms that Safi noticed hazily had the sleeves ripped back.

Was this woman cleaving?

Safi pushed all her strength into sitting upright, into fighting the wind and the static so she could search the woman for signs of black or oil …

Then she realized the Adder’s scarf was missing. It had unwound completely and now the woman’s black hair sprayed in all directions, framing a bronze, sharp, beautiful face.

Safi was staring at the Empress of Marstok.

*

The Airwitched storm had disrupted Aeduan’s magic—blocked Safiya’s scent from his blood. Or maybe she wore more salamander fibers. Either way, he’d had no choice but to push his power aside and simply follow the Marstoks by sight through Lejna, hoping they led him to Safiya. When he’d realized the sailors were converging in a courtyard, he ascended to the rooftops, for a better view—and hopefully better speed.

Yet by the time Aeduan had reached the courtyard, he’d spotted the sailors sprinting back toward the sea … And the Nomatsi girl with no blood-scent standing beside a statue of the Nubrevnan god. She had duped them all. A decoy.

Aeduan cursed, instantly flinging out his magic to search for the Truthwitch. He would deal with the Nomatsi girl later. But then Aeduan caught the scent of something familiar: Black wounds and broken death. Pain and filth and endless hunger.

Cleaving.

Aeduan’s witchery fell into the background, briefly dulled by surprise. By revulsion as the Marstoks ripped at their uniforms. As black oil bubbled beneath their skin. As the Nomatsi girl squared off to fight them.

Aeduan knew he should leave—now. Yet he didn’t. He waited. He watched … Then he decided.

A snarl broke through his lips. This was the Puppeteer’s doing. Aeduan recognized her work by now. She must have figured out where the Truthwitch was—and now she tried to help Aeduan in her own twisted, cleaving way.