Windwitch (The Witchlands #2)v(21)

He has won, Safi thought, dumbfounded. Emperor Henrick had destroyed her ship, and now he’d captured her too.

The Sun card taken by the Emperor in a single poorly placed hand. The Empress card is still in the deck.

But it wasn’t. The Empress had been drawn too, and that truth pummeled into Safi mere minutes later. The rain had eased into a gentle sprinkle when a new figure entered the clearing. With a crossbow in hand, the third Hell-Bard was by far the smallest of the three.

“Commander Fitz Grieg,” the Hell-Bard said, her voice female. “We retrieved the empress.”

Then came the giant. Zander. Across his arms hung a limp Vaness, a thick wooden collar locked around her neck.

Safi knew that collar. She’d seen it enough times growing up, and terror of it was as much a part of her childhood as the Hell-Bards were. The heretic’s collar is what Hell-Bards put on their prisoners, Uncle Eron always said. The collar cancels out dangerous magic. Even wolves can be transformed into rabbits.

For half a humid breath, panic set in. There was no escape now. No fighting, no running. Safi had gotten herself in a mess, and there was no one to come to her rescue.

What would Iseult do?

She had her answer immediately. It was Habim’s favorite lesson of all: Iseult would learn her opponents. She would learn her terrain, and then she would choose her battlefields where she could.

“How long will the empress be unconscious, Lev?” The commander addressed the smallest Hell-Bard while he bound Safi’s wrists behind her back with a wet, chafing rope. She didn’t resist, she didn’t fight.

But for all her seeming pliancy, Safi kept her fists curled inward, her wrists as wide as they could be.

“It was a large dose,” said the Hell-Bard named Lev. Her voice was husky and slurred. An accent of the Pragan slums. “And her majesty’s a small woman. I’d say she’ll be out for at least a few hours.”

“Can you carry her that long?” the commander asked, now pitching his question toward the giant as he gave a final testing tug on Safi’s ropes.

Pain lanced up Safi’s arms. Her fists were already aching. But she wouldn’t release. Not until the commander had moved away.

“Yes, Commander,” Zander replied. His voice resounded so low, it was almost lost to the subsiding rain. “But we did pass a settlement an hour back. We might find a horse there.”

“Or at the very least,” Lev chimed in, “shoes for the ladies.”

“Good enough,” the commander agreed, and he finally—finally—moved away.

Safi relaxed her hands. Relief, small but there all the same, sang up her arms. Blood began to pump once more into her fingers.

A settlement meant a stop, and a stop meant an opportunity. Especially if Safi could learn something about her opponents before then. She hadn’t initiated this, but she sure as hell-fires could complete it.

So when the commander barked, “Stand, Heretic,” Safi stood.

And when he barked, “Walk, Heretic,” Safi walked.





EIGHT

After leaving the Purist compound, Aeduan retraced his steps through Nubrevna’s pine forests. He had no destination in mind, but since Corlant had two men tracking him, Aeduan needed to look as if he had a purpose.

He let them follow for a time before pushing his witchery to its full power. Faster, faster he ran until the men vanished from his senses entirely. Until at last he was far enough away to know he could pause undisturbed in a clearing where underbrush grew thick but shafts of cloudy light streamed in. Here, Aeduan examined the arrowhead.

Nothing. No blood-scent, just as the Threadwitch had no blood-scent.

There were different smells, though. Faint and mingling, as if others had handled the arrowhead. Corlant’s scent hovered deep beneath the bloodstains. And then, lacing over the top, was a smell like hearth fires and teardrops.

Yet nothing for the Threadwitch Iseult.

Aeduan wanted to know why. Did she lack a blood-scent entirely, or was he simply unable to smell it?

He ran his thumb over the arrowhead, and a memory unfolded. Hazy at first. A face made of moonlight and shadows. An ancient lighthouse and a sandy beach. A night sky, with the Threadwitch’s face at its heart.

She had outwitted Aeduan that night, distracted him long enough to ensure her friend got to safety. Then she’d leaped off the lighthouse in a jump that would have killed her if Aeduan hadn’t followed. Yet she’d known he would, and he had ultimately broken her fall.

After, when she’d spared Aeduan’s life on the beach, her face had been cinched with pain and blood had bloomed on a bandage at her biceps.

An arrow wound, Aeduan knew now, and one that somehow connected her to Corlant. To a foul Purist priest in his father’s employ.

Aeduan’s breath loosed. His fingers curled over the arrowhead.

He was left with two choices, two ghosts he could try to hunt: the girl with no blood-scent or the talers with no trail.

Then the decision was made for him. He smelled his silver talers.

Before Aeduan had abandoned his iron lockbox in the hollowed-out tree, he had spilled his own blood across the coins. For his own blood he knew; his own blood he could always follow. Yet until this moment, he’d been unable to even sense those stained coins—much less track them down and reclaim them. It was as if they had been hidden beneath salamander fibers, and only now could Aeduan smell them.