Truthwitch (The Witchlands, #1)(20)
Which was impossible.
Everyone had Threads. End of story.
“You want a rug?” asked a carpet salesman, pushing in close to Iseult, all sweat-stained robes and heavy breathing. “Mine are straight from Azmir, but I’ll give you a good deal.”
Iseult flicked up a flat palm. “Back away or I will cut off your ears and feed them to the rats.”
Normally, this threat served Iseult well. Normally, though, she was in the Northern Wharf District, where her Nomatsi skin went mostly ignored. And normally, she had Safi at her side to show teeth and look suitably terrifying.
Today, Iseult had none of those things, and unlike Safi—who would have reacted instantly, who would have run at the first sight of the monk—Iseult only wasted more time evaluating her terrain.
It was in that two-breath pause that the carpet vendor shoved in closer and squinted beneath her hood.
His Threads blazed into gray fear, black hate. “’Matsi shit,” he hissed, swiping fingers across his eyes. Then he lunged, voice lifting as he tore back Iseult’s hood. “Get away, ’Matsi shit! Get away!”
Iseult hardly needed that second command—she was finally doing what Safi would’ve done from the start: she got away.
Or she tried to, but traffic was stopping to ogle her. To close in. Everywhere she turned or jerked, she met eyes locked on her face, her skin, her hair. She jolted back from Threads of gray fear and steely violence.
The commotion attracted the Carawen’s attention. He stopped his forward trek. Swiveled toward the rising shouts of the crowd …
And looked directly at Iseult.
Time stretched out and the crowd shrank back, blurring into a quilt of Threads and sound. For a fraction of a heartbeat that felt like eternity, all Iseult saw were the young monk’s eyes. Red eddied across the palest blue she’d ever seen. Like blood melting through ice. Like a Heart-Thread twining through blue Threads of understanding. Vaguely, Iseult wondered how she’d missed that flawless blue color at the holdup.
As all of these thoughts careened through her brain at a thousand leagues a second, she wondered if this monk would really hurt her like everyone feared …
Then the monk’s lips rippled back. He bared his teeth, and the pause in the world fractured. Time flooded forward, resumed its normal speed.
And Iseult finally ran, bolting behind a gray horse. She chucked her elbow—hard—into its lower rump. It reared. The young woman on its back screamed, and with that burst of high-pitched vocals and the sudden violent, whinnying from the horse, the entire street surged out of the way.
Orange, frantic Threads flared around Iseult—but she barely registered them. She was already shoving and sprinting for an intersection one block back. There was a bridge over the nearest canal there. Maybe if she could cross the canal, she could lose the Bloodwitch.
Her feet thrashed through mud, hopped over beggars, skidded around carts, but then halfway to the bridge, she glanced back—and wished she hadn’t. The Bloodwitch was definitely pursuing and he was definitely fast. The same people who’d been intent on slowing Iseult now cleared out of his path.
“Move!” Iseult shrieked at a Purist with his Repent! sign. He didn’t move, so she clipped him on the shoulder.
He and his sign went spinning like a windmill. But it worked in Iseult’s favor, for even though she lost speed—even though she was forced to dive beneath a passing litter carried by four men—it looked as if she aimed left, for the bridge. And she heard the Purist bellowing to go after her across the canal.
So she didn’t go left as planned. Instead, she slung right on her heel and aimed straight back into traffic, praying the monk listened to the Purist and went left. Praying—desperately praying—that he couldn’t smell her blood-scent through these salamander fibers.
She foisted her hood in place and hurtled onward. There was another intersection coming up—a thick flow of traffic east to west toward a second bridge. She’d have to barrel through, continue straight.
Or not. Just as she pelted behind a woodcutter’s cart and popped around a cheesemonger’s stall, she hit empty air.
Iseult tossed her arms wide, teetering toward an unexpected canal of green, sludgy waters almost as packed with people as the streets.
Then a long flat-hulled pram slid beneath Iseult, and in half a breath, she absorbed the scene below: Shallow deck covered in nets. Fisherman gaping up at me.
Iseult stopped fighting her fall. Instead, she leaned into it.
Air rushed against her. White lacey nets closed in fast. Then she was on the deck, knees bending, hands catching herself.
Something sliced through her palm. A rusted hook, she realized before she scrabbled upright. The pram listed wildly. The fisherman roared, but Iseult was already pumping toward the next passing boat—a low ferry with a frilly red awning.
“Look out!” Iseult shouted, lunging high and grabbing hold of the balustrade. She hauled herself up as wide-eyed passengers reared back. Blood smeared on the railing’s pickets. Faintly, she hoped this burning slash didn’t make her that much easier to follow for the Bloodwitch.
She scooted across the ferry in four bounds—it would seem everyone wanted Iseult off the boat as badly as she did. She topped the railing, sucked in a breath while another pram coasted by—this one covered in the day’s mackerel.
She jumped. Her feet squished and suddenly she was sprawling on silver scales with a face full of gooey eyes. The fisherman shrieked at her—more displeased than surprised—and Iseult hefted herself up to find his black beard bearing down.