Windwitch (The Witchlands #2)v(56)

“Hell-fires scorch you,” the Baedyed spat. His mare stamped anxiously. “We must reach the Purist compound by tomorrow. Do you expect us to wait?”

“If they do not rejoin us soon, then yes.”

The Baedyed swore again, this time in a language Aeduan didn’t recognize. But as he reined his horse back around, he spat, “The king will hear of this. I promise.”

“And I promise he will not care.”

Right after the Baedyed had cantered back toward the front of the marching line, another Red Sail appeared on horseback. Burned hair and smoking flesh. Autumn pyres and mercy screams.

A Firewitch. Aeduan’s skin prickled. Fire … unsettled him.

The leader spotted the Firewitch too. “You are late,” he called. “Go help the others. They are almost to the Falls, I want this Threadwitch caught today.”

Threadwitch. Falls. The words solidified in Aeduan’s mind, and a heartbeat later, he was moving. Scrabbling silently back across his branch.

Until something spooked within the leaves—a dark bird with enormous wings. The rook took flight, squawking into the sky.

The Firewitch looked up. His eyes met Aeduan’s through a gap in the leaves. He smiled. He clapped. The goshorn oak caught fire.

From one moment to the next, the tree ignited, and within seconds, every inch of it crackled and popped and blazed. If Aeduan hadn’t worn his salamander cloak, he’d have erupted too.

He did have his cloak, though, and he managed to leap to the ground. There, he fastened his fire-flap across his mouth, fingers shaking.

Run, my child, run.

He glanced back. A mistake, for the Firewitch approached, hands rising—and the flames building in response. All around Aeduan they licked and spat. A conflagration to bring him down.

Aeduan couldn’t fight this. He could barely think, barely see, much less try to kill the Firewitch before the flames won. Already his legs trembled. Already it was too much like that morning all those years ago.

Without another thought or another glance at the Firewitch, Aeduan reeled about and ran.





NINETEEN

At the sound of the tenth chimes, Merik awoke to Cam tromping about the tenement in her new boots. Merik had placed them by the bed for her before crawling onto the other side and collapsing into a deep sleep of his own.

The girl moved like a newborn colt, stiff and jerky with her stride strangely long as she counted each step.

“Have you never worn shoes before?” Merik asked, his voice grating like a blade on the whetstone. “Or are those too small?”

“Forty-eight, forty-nine.” Cam gave a floppy shrug. “Right size, I think. And I’ve worn shoes before, sir. When I was younger. Just never had much of a reason to keep ’em.”

“So what’s the reason today?”

“Are you fishing for a thank-you?” Cam made a face, her nose wrinkling up—and Merik found himself chuckling.

Which made his throat hurt. And his chest. And his face. But at least his laugh earned one of Cam’s wildfire smiles.

“Thank you for the boots, sir.” She swept a bow. “I am now ready for Shite Street.”

“I’m not.” Merik pushed himself upright, muscles and new skin resisting. The salve had helped, but his sleep had been restless. Filled with dreams of Lejna storms and fallen buildings and Kullen begging, “Kill … me.”

Merik was grateful when Cam slipped into her usual storyteller role over breakfast. He was grateful, too, that she didn’t seem to notice the fresh scabs across his knuckles—nor the fact that he had snuck off while she slept.

“Best entrance to the Cisterns,” Cam explained through a mouthful of too-juicy plums, “is by the Northern Wharf.” On she babbled, as she so loved to do, about the best routes through the underground. The safest tunnels. The gangs that competed for space.

Merik listened, noting—not for the first time—that she rarely told stories about herself. He’d heard endless tales of things she’d seen or of secondhand histories from someone else, yet never narratives from her own life.

The longer he stared at her bright-eyed face, the more the old nursery rhyme sang in his skull.

Fool brother Filip led blind brother Daret

deep into the black cave.

He knew that inside it, the Queen Crab resided,

but that didn’t scare him away.

Merik couldn’t recall how the rest of the song went, and so that one verse kept chanting again and again, in time to each chomp of his plum.

By the time he and Cam, both hooded as always, set off into the streets of Old Town, the eleventh chimes were tolling. Late-morning traffic folded them into its currents, and they traveled east, with Cam leading the way.

A languid fog hung over the streets. Last night’s rain, rising as the sun burned hotter, brighter. Before Merik and Cam had even passed the final decrepit homes of Old Town, sweat seeped from Merik’s skin.

Cam aimed right at a butcher’s bloodied front stoop and then crossed two more busy thoroughfares. As always, she let her gut guide them, swirling back to pluck Merik from traffic whenever soldiers came too near.

Soon enough, they reached the busiest wharf in Lovats. Here, not a single patch of water was visible between the boats. Had Merik wanted, he could skip clear across the harbor, stepping from pram to frigate to skiff and eventually onto a cobbled, shop-lined street a quarter mile away.