Truthwitch (The Witchlands, #1)(25)
For one night, Safi could be Domna of Cartorra. Hell, she would be a rutting empress if it got her back to Iseult, and away from the Bloodwitch.
After tonight, Safiya fon Hasstrel would be free.
EIGHT
Iseult stared at the dark mane of her brindle mare, one hand on the reins and the other held high in a poor attempt to stem her wound’s bleeding.
The canal beside her glowed orange with the setting sun, and the stench of Ve?aza City was finally starting to fade from her nostrils—as was the day’s heat. Soon, Iseult would leave this damp marshland entirely and enter the wild meadows that surrounded her Nomatsi home. Mosquitoes would swarm her, and the horseflies would feast.
The traffic flooding from the guard’s eastern checkpoint had been thick enough for Iseult to slink out of the capital unseen. Then, once the roads had emptied of people, she’d hopped onto her new steed and urged the mare into a full gallop.
The bleeding from the cut on her palm hadn’t staunched, so she’d torn off the olive trim of her skirt and wrapped her hand. Each time the blood soaked through, she’d ripped off more cloth. Bandaged the wound more tightly—and then held her hand even higher.
Only one night, she told herself over and over, a refrain thundering in time to the horse’s four-beat gallop, then the three-beat canter. Finally, two leagues from the city limits, when the mare was dark with sweat, Iseult had dropped to a two-beat trot. One night, one night.
Beneath that percussive reminder pulsed a desperate hope that Iseult hadn’t somehow endangered Safi by pointing her to the old lighthouse. Split-second plans weren’t her strong point—and that’s what the message to Habim had been. Haphazard. Rushed.
Eventually, Iseult reached a telltale copse of alders and slowed the mare to a walk before sliding off the saddle. Her upper thighs seared, her lower back groaned. She hadn’t ridden in weeks—and not at such a speed in months. She could still feel her teeth rattling from the gallop. Or maybe that was the buzz of the cicadas in the whitethorns.
Though it looked like Iseult followed nothing more than a game trail winding through the grass, she knew it for what it was: a Nomatsi road.
She moved more slowly now, careful to read the Nomatsi markers as they came. A stick hammered into the dirt that looked almost accidental—it meant a claw-toothed bear trap at the next bend in the path. A cluster of “wild” morning glories on the left side of the path meant a fork in the road ahead—east would lead to a Poisonwitch mist, west to the settlement.
Following this path would get the Bloodwitch off of Iseult’s tail for good. Then, after a few hours within the settlement’s thick walls, Iseult could set out once more to meet Safi.
Although the Dalmotti Empire technically allowed Nomatsis to live as they pleased—so long as their caravans stayed at least twenty miles outside of any city—they were also declared “animals.” They had no legal protection yet plenty of Dalmotti hatred to contend with. So to say the Midenzis did not take kindly to outsiders was a vast understatement. As one of the only Nomatsi tribes to have settled down and stopped nomadic traveling, the Midenzis had found a safe niche here and clung to it.
The walls were thick, the archers keen, and if the Bloodwitch could somehow navigate this far, he would find a chest full of barbed arrows awaited him.
Yet, just as the Midenzis fought to keep outsiders away, they also fought to keep their own people in. If you left the settlement, you were deemed other, and other was the one thing a Nomatsi never wanted to be—not even Iseult.
When the telltale oaks masking the edge of the settlement’s walls finally appeared, black and menacing in the night’s darkness, Iseult stopped. This was her last chance to run. She could turn around and spend the rest of her life without ever seeing the tribe again—though a short life that might be with the Bloodwitch hunting her.
The moon was rising east of Iseult, illuminating her for all to see. She’d wound up her braid and tied it beneath her headscarf. Nomatsi women kept their hair chin length; Iseult’s fell halfway down her back. She needed to keep that hidden.
“Name,” a voice called out in the guttural Nomatsi tongue. A hostile steel Thread flickered at Iseult’s left along with the faint shape of archers in the trees.
She lifted her hands submissively, hoping the bindings on her palm weren’t too obvious. “Iseult,” she shouted. “Iseult det Midenzi.”
Oak leaves rustled; branches creaked. More Threads shimmered and moved as guards scooted over their trees to confer, to decide. The moments slid past with aching slowness. Iseult’s heart beat against her lungs and echoed in her ears while the mare tossed her head. Then stamped. She needed to be rubbed down.
A shout split the night sky.
Two sparrows took flight.
Then came another shout from a throat Iseult knew—and she felt like she was falling. Plummeting off some mountain peak, losing her stomach as the earth closed in fast.
Stasis, she screamed inwardly. Stasis in your fingertips and in your toes!
She didn’t find stasis, though. Not before the scrape of the huge gate hit her ears. Then footsteps hammered on the ground and a figure in Threadwitch black came sprinting toward her.
“Iseult!” her mother shouted with tears streaking down a face almost identical to Iseult’s. False tears, of course, since true Threadwitches didn’t cry—and Gretchya was nothing if not a true Threadwitch.