Windwitch (The Witchlands #2)v(53)

“S’me, sir,” Lev called.

Caden pushed to his feet, the duty and the focus instantly returning to the slant of his shoulders. He handed Safi the jar and the salve-covered linen before stepping to the door.

Lev strode in. “Zander and I finished checking the bathhouse behind the inn, sir. It’s safe for me to take the ladies for washing up.” She swung a thumb toward the window. “Then you and Zander can set the wards and look for the ship while we’re out.”

“Good enough.” Caden swooped up his undershirt and shrugged it on. “I’ll help you escort the women down … what?”

Lev had her eyebrows high. “I was just thinking that … that maybe you and Zander could manage a bath today too?”

“I just washed off.”

“Not well enough, you didn’t. And we’re the ones who gotta suffer through your stench.”

It was too good for Safi to resist. “She means to say you smell like the inside of dead dog’s bum.”

“Noted,” Caden declared at the same time Lev exclaimed, “Why, listen to that mountain accent. You sound worse than he does!”

A flush roared up Safi’s cheeks. Shit clogging up the storm drain. It had been so long since she had spoken Cartorran. The Orhin accent must have crept onto her words, and now Caden was smiling while he fastened his sword belt to his waist. A real smile, like the Chiseled Cheater she’d met over a card game. Sly, private …

And reminding Safi that he was the enemy. That he was the reason her life had turned to ash. She couldn’t let herself forget that. These people were her oppenents, and escape was all that mattered.





EIGHTEEN

Iseult awoke to find her left hand completely numb. She’d slept in miserable spurts ever since her encounter with Esme, but the last spurt had melted into several awkwardly posed hours with her arm pinned beneath her hip.

She shifted her weight, using her right hand to move her left … and then to heft her body around. Gauzy pink light filtered into the mossy overhang that she and the Bloodwitch had shared. The air was moist with yesterday’s rain, but warm, and Aeduan’s soft, steady breaths puffed mere paces away.

Heat flashed in her chest. How could the Bloodwitch be sleeping? He should have woken Iseult so she could keep watch.

You traveled two weeks without anyone to stand guard, her conscience nagged.

Yes, she argued with herself as she massaged feeling back into her arm, but I don’t have to do that anymore. She could use every resource available now, and the Bloodwitch was exactly that: a resource. A tool.

A gift.

Iseult shuddered, recalling Esme’s words. The Puppeteer had killed those men to “help” Iseult, and not for the first time, Iseult wished she had someone to help her fight Esme.

Goddess, she would take anything at this point—surely someone out there knew about the Dreaming and Puppeteer-controlled Cleaved.

Weaverwitches like us, Esme had said—and Iseult rubbed her numb arm all the harder. She was not like Esme. She was not like Esme.

Stasis, she commanded herself. Stasis in your fingers and in your toes.

Once her arm felt human again, Iseult scooted out into the dawn, relieved she had a task to keep her occupied. After checking that her cutlass was strapped on and her salamander cloak—or rather, Aeduan’s salamander cloak—was fastened tight, she slipped between the nearest groaning pines. While she walked, she clutched at her Threadstone.

I’m coming, Safi. For several breaths, while she gripped the ruby tight, the frost that lived in Iseult’s shoulders melted. Crumbled beneath a wave of something warm. Something that expanded in her stomach and pressed against her lungs … Hope, she realized eventually. Faith that she and Safi would be reunited.

On Iseult’s next footstep, a silver taler clinked against her knuckles, bound to the same leather cord as the Threadstone. Aeduan had poked a hole in the stained silver as easily as if it were paper, and the double-headed eagle was now warm against Iseult’s fingertips. Her hand fell away. She walked faster, her footsteps squishing on the damp earth.

By the time she returned to the mossy overhang with a rabbit from her snare, the Bloodwitch was awake and sitting cross-legged on the rock. His eyes were closed, his hands resting on his knees as he meditated.

Iseult had read about the practice in her book on the Carawen Monastery. The silence and the stillness allowed a monk to separate his mind from his body.

Iseult had tried it once, but with absolutely no success. She already fought so hard to separate herself from her emotions—if she got rid of her thoughts too, what would be left?

When Aeduan gave no indication he’d noticed Iseult’s return, she slipped quietly into the overhang. She shrugged free of the salamander cloak and rolled up her sleeves, ready to start skinning the rabbit.

“No time.”

Iseult flinched. She hadn’t heard the Bloodwitch approach—yet unlike what he did when caught unawares, Iseult went very still. The bruise at her throat, just above the collarbone, was all the warning she needed to never startle him again.

When Aeduan had said he would kill her in Lejna, she hadn’t believed him. When he’d said he would kill her last night, she had.

“It’s easier to skin the rabbit while it’s fresh—”

“It can wait a few hours.” His Dalmotti was hoarse with sleep.