Windwitch (The Witchlands #2)v(28)

TEN

Safi wished she were dead. At least then she could return as a ghost to terrorize these Hell-Bards.

They hadn’t taken Safi or Vaness into the settlement. They hadn’t even stopped nearby. Only the woman, Lev, had cut off from the group to vanish into the jungle. Which direction she’d taken, Safi couldn’t guess.

One moment, Lev was there, walking silent as a deer behind the commander, who trod behind Safi. Then suddenly Lev was gone, and when Safi glanced back to scan the dense foliage, she earned a blade against her topmost vertebra.

“Keep moving, Heretic.”

Heretic. It was the word for an unregistered witch in the Empire of Cartorra. It was the word for fugitives of the law.

And it was what the Hell-Bards were sworn to recognize and to eliminate. They could sense hidden witcheries. They could hunt hidden witches.

“My feet hurt, Hell-Bard.”

“Good for you.”

“My wrists hurt too.”

“Fascinating.”

Safi offered a sweet smile over her shoulder. “You’re a bastard.”

No reaction from within his helm. Just a metallic, “That’s what they tell me.”

Well, Safi was only just warming up. “Where are we going?”

The commander didn’t answer that one. So onward she pressed: “When will we get there?”

Still nothing.

“What poison did you give the empress? Do you plan to feed us, or will starvation run its course? And do all Hell-Bards waddle like a duck, or is it just you?”

When he still refused to offer a reaction: “I will scream, you know.”

A sigh bounced from his helmet. “And I will gag you, Heretic. That little trick you attempted by folding your wrists? It won’t work with a gag.”

That shut up Safi. Though not because of the threat in his words but rather the lack of anything else. No truth, no lies. None of the Hell-Bards registered with her witchery. How, she wanted to know, was such a thing possible?

It was the only thing Safi had learned about her opponents since capture, and it was of no use for an escape. Nonetheless, when an opportunity finally came, she was ready for it.

Vaness woke up.

It wasn’t a gradual, groggy glide into awareness, but rather a panicked, predatory explosion. One moment, the empress lay limp in the giant’s arms while Zander crossed a low gully. He had to lean forward to climb, his body awkwardly angled.

Meanwhile, Safi had paused ten paces behind, the commander’s sword keeping her still. She watched Zander, impressed by how easily he carted Vaness up a rise almost as tall as he.

Halfway up the hill, though, Vaness became a hurricane.

She kicked. She screamed. She fell to the ground while Zander fought to stay upright.

The empress was on her feet before Safi’s mind had even processed the awakening. And Vaness was running away before the giant or the commander—or Safi too—could chase after.

Vaness didn’t get far, though. Zander’s legs were twice as long, and he grabbed her from behind in mere seconds. She screeched like a Cleaved.

It was enough time for Safi to make a move. More than enough time. She dropped to her knees, spinning backward. With her torso, she tackled into the commander’s knees, then lifted her left shoulder into his groin. Even with a long brigandine on, it had to hurt.

He certainly dropped fast enough, his back slamming into the streambed’s wall.

Then Safi kicked—a hard side thrust of her heel into his exposed throat.

Except she missed and got a leather-clad shoulder instead.

The commander roared. A bellow of pain. Far more pain than the move should have earned, and he released his longsword—as if the muscles in his arm and hand had ceased to work.

He’s hurt, Safi realized. She charged her heel once more into his left shoulder.

He doubled over.

She kicked again.

His knees buckled.

She kicked again and again until he fell back, hands clutched against his shoulder. Head lolling back. His helmet slipped off to reveal his face.

Safi froze.

It took her half a shallow breath to sort out what she saw. He looked so familiar … and yet so foreign.

Maybe it was the stubble that had grown across his jaw, or maybe it was the blood crusted down the left side of his face, as if his ear had been punched and the blood left to ooze for several days.

Or maybe it was simply the fact that the odds of the Chiseled Cheater being here—of him being a Hell-Bard commander …

It was unfathomable. Impossible.

Hell-Bard commander … what had Lev said? Fitz Grieg. Caden Fitz Grieg.

Never, never could Safi have guessed he’d be the Chiseled Cheater. He was the reason she was here. He had stolen her money after a taro game, and it was that trickery that had lit the fuse on all events to come.

If Caden hadn’t stolen her money, Safi wouldn’t have tried to steal it back the next day. If she hadn’t tried to steal it back, she wouldn’t have held up the wrong carriage. If she hadn’t held up the wrong carriage, the Bloodwitch monk would never have gotten her scent. And if the Bloodwitch had never gotten her scent, she’d probably be free right now.

Free and with Iseult at her side.

Never could Safi have predicted that Caden would be the man behind that helmet. She had spit every time she’d said his name, and she’d vowed if she ever saw him again, she’d shred his face right off his high cheekbones.