Truthwitch (The Witchlands, #1)(15)
“Under control?” retorted a male voice with a sharp accent. “I just saved your lives!”
“Are you Cleaved?” Safi cried—and Iseult winced at the poor word choice. But of course, Safi was venting her grief. Her terror. Her explosive Threads. She was always like this when something bad—truly bad—happened. She either ran from her emotions as fast as her legs would carry her or she beat them into submission.
When at last Iseult popped out beside her Threadsister, it was just in time to see Safi grab a fistful of the young man’s unbuttoned shirt.
“Is this how all Nubrevnans dress?” Safi snatched the other side of his shirt. “These go inside these.”
To his credit, the Nubrevnan didn’t move. His face simply flushed a wild scarlet—as did his Threads—and his lips pressed tight.
“I know,” he gritted out, “how a button operates.” He knocked Safi’s wrists away. “And I don’t need advice from a woman with bird shit on her shoulder.”
Oh no, Iseult thought, lips parting to warn—
Fingers clamped on Iseult’s arm. Before she could flip up her hand and snap the wrist of her grabber, the person flipped up her wrist and shoved it against her back.
And a Thread of clayish red pulsed in Iseult’s vision. It was a familiar shade of annoyance that spoke of years enduring Safi’s tantrums—which meant Habim had arrived.
The Marstoki man shoved Iseult’s wrist harder to her back and snarled, “Walk, Iseult. To that cats’ alley over there.”
“You can let me go,” she said, voice toneless. She could just see Habim from the corner of her eyes. He wore the Hasstrel family’s gray and blue livery.
“Voidwitch?! You called me a Voidwitch?! I speak Nubrevnan, you horse’s ass!” The rest of Safi’s bloodthirsty screams were in Nubrevnan—and swallowed up by the crowds.
Iseult hated when Safi’s Threads got so bright they blazed over everything else. When they seared into Iseult’s eyes, into her heart. But Habim didn’t slow as he guided Iseult around a one-legged beggar singing “Eridysi’s Lament.” Then they’d reached a narrow slip of space between a dingy tavern and an even dingier secondhand shop. Iseult staggered into it. Her boots kicked through unseen puddles and the stench of cat piss burned in her skull.
She shook out her wrist and spun back to her mentor. This behavior wasn’t like the gentle Habim. He was a deadly man, certainly—he had served Eron fon Hasstrel for two decades as a man-at-arms—but Habim was also soft-spoken and careful. Cool and in control of his temper.
At least he was normally.
“What,” he began, marching at Iseult, “were you doing? Pulling your weapons out like that? Hell-gates, Iseult, you should have run.”
“That cleaving Tidewitch,” she began—but Habim only stomped in closer. He was not a tall man, and his eyes had been level with Iseult’s for the past three years.
Right now, those line-seamed eyes were rounded with his ire, and his Threads glittered an irate red. “Any Cleaved are the city guards’ problem—and the guards are now your problem. Highway robbery, Iseult?”
Her breath hitched. “How did you find out?”
“There are blockades everywhere. Mathew and I met one on our way into the city—only to learn that the city guards are looking for two girls, one with a sword and one with moon scythes. How many people do you think fight with moon scythes, Iseult? Those”—Habim pointed at her scabbards—“are obvious. And as a Nomatsi, you have no legal protection in this country, and simply carrying a weapon in public will get you hanged.” Habim pivoted on his heel to march away three steps. Then back three steps. “Think, Iseult! Think!”
Iseult compressed her lips. Stasis. Stasis in your fingertips and in your toes.
In the distance, she could just hear the growing roll of snare drums that meant the Ve?aza City guards were on their way. They would behead the Tidewitch’s body as required by law for all cleaved corpses.
“A-are you done screaming at me?” she asked at last, her old stammer grabbing her tongue. Distorting her words. “Because I need to get back to Safi, and we n-need to leave the city.”
Habim’s nostrils fluttered with a deep inhale, and Iseult watched as he pushed aside his emotions. As the lines of his face smoothed out and his Threads turned calm. “You cannot go back to Safi. In fact, you will not leave this alley by the way you came in. Guildmaster Yotiluzzi has a Bloodwitch in his employ, and that creature is straight from the Void with no mercy or fear.” Habim shook his head, and the first hints of gray fear twined into his Threads.
Which only made Iseult’s throat clog tighter. Habim was never scared.
Blood. Witch. Blood. Witch.
“Safi’s uncle is in town,” Habim went on, “for the Truce Summit, so—”
“Dom fon Hasstrel is here?” Iseult’s jaw slackened. Habim could have said a thousand things, but none would have surprised her more. She’d met the battle-scarred Eron twice in the past, and his sloppy inebriation had instantly verified all of Safi’s stories and complaints.
“All Cartorran nobility are required to be here,” Habim explained, falling back into his three-step pace. Left. Right. “Henrick has some grand announcement to make, and in his usual fashion, he’s using this summit as his stage.”