Windwitch (The Witchlands #2)v(96)

Stasis came so naturally when she had a plan. When she wasn’t simply speeding for her life. Her plan, though, wasn’t a good one—which she realized as soon as she tripped over another dead man. His arm, so brown amid the riverside grass, had looked like a root. She’d hopped … and her heel had planted into ribs.

Iseult went sprawling. Her hands landed on a third corpse—on his leg—and her face zoomed in close to a fourth man’s open eyes.

Flies kicked into her mouth. A crow squawked overhead.

Before Iseult could push upright, the Threads she’d sensed earlier—the vicious ones, the angry ones—scuttled into range. They were cantering for shore. They would reach her soon.

Iseult tried to stand, her fingers clawing into dead flesh. Still fresh enough to resist, but hard. Stiff.

Dead, dead, dead.

Once on her feet, she searched for cover … but there was nothing. No rocks large enough to duck beneath, no branches low enough to climb.

A frantic glance to the river showed a launch approaching, packed with men wearing violent Threads.

Nowhere to run. No time to plan. Yet for once, no panic battered in Iseult’s throat. Nor a desperate wish that Safi were here to intuit a way free. Instead, Iseult’s breaths stayed calm. Her focus keen. Her training at the ready.

With your right hand, give a man what he expects to see.

In a forest full of corpses, the solution was obvious. She dropped to the ground beside the nearest corpse, draped her body across his legs, and went limp.

Her eyes fluttered shut just as the Red Sails hit the riverbank.





THIRTY-THREE

As Aeduan stalked through the oaks of the Contested Lands, his pocket felt light without the arrowhead. He hadn’t realized how accustomed he’d grown to its weight. To its iron presence.

But now it was gone, and that was that. No dwelling on it. Simply moving forward.

His muscles itched. His fingers flexed and fisted in time to his steps, and each time Owl tripped, he had to bite back frustration.

It was not Owl’s fault that she was small and frail. It was not her fault that she demanded constant attention. Her stride was short, her body weak. She shrank, she huddled, she stared hard at anything that wasn’t Aeduan’s eyes.

For every one of Aeduan’s steps, she needed three. For every rise in the earth that he crested easily, she had to crook, to scrabble, to examine thoroughly before each step.

There was nothing to be done for it. This was the path Aeduan had chosen, and it led north. Directly back the way he and the Threadwitch had come. He suspected, in fact, that the scents lingering on Owl’s clothes might lead him to the same Nomatsi tribe who’d left the bear trap that shredded his leg. Like the Truthwitch’s scent, though, the tribe’s blood-smells were far. A week of travel; likely more at Owl’s current pace.

And not in the direction of Aeduan’s coins.

He was surprised by how much he didn’t care about the talers. In fact, Aeduan found himself thinking more about the person who’d stolen his coins than the coins themselves. He wanted to know how the talers had ended up in Lejna. How the man—or woman—who smelled of clear lakes and frozen winters had gotten the money there in the first place. As soon as Owl was safe again, Aeduan had every intention of finding answers to his questions.

At that thought, more tension fretted through Aeduan’s muscles. He wanted to run. To fight. He knew the feeling well by now—he’d encountered it often enough, whenever Monk Evrane had scolded or Guildmaster Yotiluzzi had schooled. It was a wall that hardened around Aeduan’s heart and sent his heels slamming deeper, harder into the soil.

Until Owl whimpered, her hand crushed in his.

Aeduan ground to a stop. He’d been dragging her. Because he was a demon, and that was what demons did. His eyes snapped down to her wide, pitiful ones.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, even though he didn’t need to. She trusted him. Fool child. He couldn’t believe his father wanted her. Why, why—after everything, why?

It was as Aeduan stared into her bloodshot eyes that a cannon boomed in the distance. South. Where the Threadwitch must now be.

Without thought, Aeduan drew in a long, deep breath. His power stretched wide; his witchery latched on to the scent of his own silver taler, still dangling from her neck.

Yes, she was south. Hurry, he thought, for clearly violence was breaking loose.

It always did in the Contested Lands.

Aeduan let his magic subside, spool back in like a length of twine, when new blood-scents crashed against him.

Hundreds of them, rising from the forest, marched this way from the north, some on horseback. Some on foot.

Aeduan could only assume they were the same Baedyed ranks he’d passed yesterday—yet for some reason, they must have turned back. They now traveled south through the pillar-filled gorge.

Aeduan stopped. Right there in the forest with Owl at his side. The men on horseback would arrive soon … He sniffed, letting his magic swell and reach.

More people approached from behind, exactly as Aeduan and Iseult had seen from the ruins that morning. Soon, the two groups would converge.

Aeduan looked down at Owl, who surveyed him in silence. Always silent.

“We have to run now, Little Sister. I’m going to carry you. Will that be all right?” At her nod, he knelt. “Climb onto my back.”