Truthwitch (The Witchlands, #1)(38)

He also made sure to snap his cloak’s fire-flap across his nose. The saying that a Carawen monk was prepared for everything was not an understatement—and Aeduan took that phrase to a completely different level. His white Carawen cloak was made of salamander fibers, so no fire could burn it. Though the flap would block his ability to track blood-scents, he only needed to wear it long enough to get through these flames.

Aeduan reached the exit, dropped directly into the fire, and dispatched his first knife. Then, as he rolled through the flames and flipped back to his feet, he dispatched a second.

The Firewitch dove aside, ducking behind a potted plant in the long entrance hall of the palace. The second knife cracked into the clay, shook the azalea bush within.

Aeduan yanked down his fire-flap, and the smell of blood rushed over him. His first knife must have hit the Firewitch. Good. Aeduan threw his gaze down the hall. He saw nothing, yet he sensed the girl was almost to the large doors at the end.

The Firewitch spun around the other side of the pot. Flames roared from his mouth, his eyes—even as blood gushed from a knife in his knee.

Aeduan had never seen anything like it—never known a Firewitch could possess such power.

Yet he could ponder that later. Leaping aside, he propelled himself into a sprint that was impossible to follow. Aeduan could control his own blood, which meant that for spurts of exhausting intensity, he could push his body to an extreme level of speed, of power.

Yet as he raced over the marble floor, more figures materialized before him—from around pots and even dropped on ropes from the ceiling.

Aeduan jolted; his footsteps faltered as he instinctively grabbed for more throwing knives.

But no. As these shadowy shapes ran toward Aeduan, he realized he smelled nothing. No scent, no blood.

The Glamourwitch was still at work here, so Aeduan thrust himself back into his blood-fueled sprint. His toes barely skimmed the marble; the shadows approached; flames thundered—hot and desperate—behind him.

Then Aeduan was close enough to the entrance doors to slow his speed. Gulping in air and throwing all of his Bloodwitchery back into tracking the Truthwitch, he almost forgot to keep an eye out for real people.

A fatal mistake for anyone but a Bloodwitch, and as a gold-hilted knife thunked into Aeduan’s shoulder, a temper he rarely released rumbled to life—then erupted.

With a battle cry, Aeduan ripped his sword from its scabbard and attacked the person ahead—the person’s whose knife was now scraping against his shoulder bone. A man with fair hair.

The Silk Guildmaster, Alix. The tiny, effeminate man was unarmed. He was waiting to die. Willing to die.

But Aeduan never fought the undefended. He barely had time to redirect his aim; his sword whisked past the man’s shoulder, skimmed over his silk robe.

The Guildmaster only spread his arms as if to say, Take me, and his eyes never opened—which meant that the concentrated crease on the man’s brow was one of attention. Of a witchery focused elsewhere.

And Aeduan smelled a blood-scent of tornadoes and silk, of glamours and woven illusions.

This man was the Glamourwitch. A man Aeduan’s own master, Yotiluzzi, had dined with on a thousand occasions. The man who led the Silk Guild wasn’t magically tied to silk at all.

As this realization washed over Aeduan, he also realized he’d lost Safiya’s scent. She had left his hundred-pace range, and he would have to track her like a dog on the hunt. Aeduan launched into a sprint—a natural one—out the door … where twenty city guards waited beneath a glaring white moon.

It was nothing Aeduan couldn’t handle. In fact, it was almost laughable. Twenty men couldn’t stop him. All they could do was slow him, at best. Yet as Aeduan’s sword arced up and his magic reached for the nearest soldier, and as four crossbow bolts chunked into Aeduan’s chest, he realized these men moved with the concerted effort of an army. By the time Aeduan waded through all of these swords and arrows and knives, he might actually be too drained to keep following the girl Safiya.

So he did something he rarely ever did—if only because he hated acquiring life-debts. He pinched the blue opal pierced in his left ear and whispered, “Come.”

Blue light flashed in the corner of his eye; magic shivered down the side of his body. The Threadstone was now active.

Which meant every Carawen monk in the area would come to Aeduan’s aid.





TWELVE

As Safi hurtled through the Doge’s marble entrance hall, Uncle Eron towing her along at a speed she had never seen him run, she had absolutely no idea what was happening.

The lights had blacked out, and then Habim’s hand had slid around Safi’s. She hadn’t known how she’d recognized him—years of grasping those same hilt-roughened palms was all she could figure—but she had known and she’d followed without question.

But the lights had flared into being before she or Habim or Uncle Eron were out of the ballroom. Most gazes were locked on where Safi had just stood, and the few gazes that scanned toward her simply skimmed over.

She risked a peek back—and saw herself. Standing exactly as she had stood. False! her magic frizzed against her spine.

Then Habim towed Safi into the dark hall, and all she could do was try to keep her silver skirts out of the way as she and Eron hurtled through the hall. Habim hung back.

“Faster,” Eron hissed, never looking at his niece. Never offering an explanation for what in the rutting hell was going on. Uncle Eron had hidden things and bent the truth, but he hadn’t outright lied. It was midnight; Safi was leaving.