“In that case,” Iseult said, tone final and shoulders sagging, “I think we’ll have to leave the city. We can hole up … somewhere until all of this blows over.”
Safi bit her lip. Iseult made it sound so easy to “hole up somewhere,” but the reality was that Iseult’s clear Nomatsi ancestry made her a target wherever she went.
The one time the girls had tried leaving Veñaza City, to visit a friend nearby, they’d barely made it back home.
Of course, the three men in the tavern who’d decided to attack Iseult had never made it back home at all. At least not with intact femurs.
Safi stomped to the wardrobe and wrenched it open, pretending the handle was the Chiseled Cheater’s nose. If she ever—ever—saw that bastard again, she was going to break every bone in his blighted body.
“Our best bet,” Iseult went on, “will be the Southern Wharf District. The Dalmotti trade ships are berthed there, and we might be able to get passage in exchange for work. Do you need anything from Guildmaster Alix’s?”
At Safi’s headshake, Iseult continued. “Good. Then we’ll leave notes for Habim and Mathew explaining everything. Then … I guess we’ll … leave.”
Safi stayed silent as she towed out a golden gown. Her throat was too tight for words. Her stomach spinning too hard.
It was then, as Safi fastened the ten million wooden buttons and Iseult tied a pale gray scarf around her head, that a knocking burst out through the shop.
“Veñaza City Guard!” came a muffled voice. “Open up! We saw you break in!”
Iseult sighed—a sound of such long, long suffering.
“I know,” Safi growled, sliding the last button in place. “You told me so.”
“Just so long as you’re aware.”
“Like you’ll ever let me forget?”
Iseult’s lips twitched with a smile, but it was a false attempt—and Safi didn’t need her Truthwitchery to see that.
As the girls tugged on their scratchy apprentice jackets, the guard started his bellowing again. “Open up! There’s only one way in or out of this shop!”
“Not true,” Safi inserted.
“We won’t hesitate to use force!”
“And nor will we.” At a nod from her Threadsister, Safi scooted to Iseult’s bed. Then they both dragged the cot toward the door. Wooden feet groaned, and soon enough they had it heaved on its side to form a barricade—one they knew worked well, for this was hardly the first time Safi and Iseult had been forced to sneak out.
Although it had always been Mathew and Habim bellowing on the other side. Not armed guards.
Moments later, Safi and Iseult stood at the window, breathing fast and listening as the front door smashed inward. As the entire shop quaked and glass shattered.
Cringing, Safi clambered onto the roof. First she’d lost all her money, and now she’d ruined Mathew’s shop. Maybe … maybe it was a good thing her tutors were out of town on business. At least she wouldn’t have to face Mathew or Habim anytime soon.
Iseult scrabbled out beside Safi, the emergency satchel on her back bulging with supplies. Iseult’s weapons fit into calf-scabbards beneath her skirt, but Safi could only stow her parrying knife in her boot. Her sword—her beautiful folded steel sword—was staying behind.
“Where to?” Safi asked, knowing her Threadsister had a route spinning behind those glittering eyes.
“We’ll head inland, as if we’re going to Guildmaster Alix’s, and then aim south.”
“Rooftops?”
“For as long as we can. You lead the way.”
Safi nodded curtly before kicking into a run—west, toward the inner heart of Veñaza City—and when she reached the edge of Mathew’s roof, she leaped for the next slope of shingles.
She slammed down. Pigeons burst upward, wings flapping to get out of the way, and then Iseult bounded down beside her.
But Safi was already moving, already flying for the next roof. And the next roof after that, on and on with Iseult right behind.
* * *
Iseult slunk along the cobblestoned street, Safi two steps ahead. The girls had veered inland from the coffee shop, crossing canals and looping back over bridges to avoid city guards. Fortunately, morning traffic had begun—a teeming mass of fruit-laden carts, donkeys, goats, and people of all races and nationalities. Threads with colors as varied as their owners’ skins swirled lazily through the heat.
Safi skipped in front of a swine cart, leaving Iseult to chase after her. Then it was around a beggar, past a group of Purists shouting about the sins of magic, and then directly through a herd of unhappy sheep before the girls reached a clogged mass of unmoving traffic. Ahead, Threads swirled with red annoyance at the holdup.
Iseult imagined her own Threads were just as red. The girls were so close to the Southern Wharf District that Iseult could even see the hundreds of white-sailed ships berthed ahead.
But she embraced the frustration. Other emotions—ones she didn’t want to name and that no decent Threadwitch would ever allow to the surface—shivered in her chest. Stasis, she told herself, just as her mother had her taught years ago. Stasis in your fingertips and your toes.
Soon, the Threads of traffic flickered with cyan understanding. The color moved like a snake across a pond, as if the crowds were learning, one by one, the reason for this traffic jam.
Back, back the color moved until at last an old biddy near the girls squawked, “What? A blockade up ahead? But I’ll miss the freshest crabs!”
Iseult’s gut turned icy—and Safi’s Threads flashed with gray fear.
“Hell-gates,” she hissed. “Now what, Iz?”
“More brazening, I think.” With a grunt and shifting of her weight, Iseult fished out a thick gray tome from her pack. “We’ll look like two very studious apprentices if we’re carrying books. You can take A Brief History of Dalmotti Autonomy.”
“Brief my behind,” Safi muttered, though she did accept the enormous book. Next, Iseult hauled out a blue hide-bound volume titled An Illustrated Guide to the Carawen Monastery.
“Oh, now I see why you have these.” Safi lifted her eyebrows, daring Iseult to argue. “They aren’t for disguise at all. You just didn’t want to leave behind your favorite book.”
“And?” Iseult sniffed dismissively. “Does this mean you don’t want to carry that?”
“No, no. I’ll keep it.” Safi popped her chin high. “Just promise that you’ll let me do all the acting once we reach the guards.”
“Act away, Saf.” Grinning to herself, Iseult tugged her scarf low. It was soaked through with sweat, but it still shaded her face. Her skin. Then she adjusted her gloves until not an inch of wrist was visible. All the focus would be on Safi and would stay on Safi.
For as Mathew always said, With your right hand, give a person what he expects—and with your left hand, cut his purse. Safi always played the distracting right hand—and she was good at it—while Iseult lurked in the shadows, ready to claim whatever purse needed cutting.
As Iseult settled into a boiling wait, she creaked back her book’s thick cover. Ever since a monk had helped Iseult when she was a little girl, Iseult had been somewhat … well, obsessed was the word Safi always used. But it wasn’t just gratitude that had left Iseult fascinated by the Carawens—it was their pure robes and gleaming opal earrings. Their deadly training and sacred vows.
Life at the Carawen monastery seemed so simple. So contained. No matter one’s heritage, one could join and have instant acceptance. Instant respect.
It was a feeling Iseult could scarcely imagine yet her heart beat hungrily every time she thought of it.
The book’s pages rustled open to page thirty-seven—to where a bronze piestra shone up at her. She had wedged the coin there to mark her last page, and its winged lion seemed almost to laugh at her.
The first piestra toward our new life, Iseult thought. Then her eyes flickered over the ornate Dalmotti script on the page. Descriptions and images of different Carawen mo
nks scrolled across it, the first of which was Mercenary Monk, its illustration all knives and sword and stony expression.
It looked just like the Bloodwitch.
Blood. Witch. Blood. Witch.
Ice pooled in Iseult’s belly at the memory of his red eyes, his bared teeth. Ice … and something hollower. Heavier.
Disappointment, she finally pinpointed, for it seemed so vastly wrong that a monster such as he should be allowed into the monastery’s ranks.
Iseult glanced at the caption beneath the illustration, as if this might offer some explanation. Yet all she read was, Trained to fight abroad in the name of the Cahr Awen.
Iseult’s breath slid out at that word—Cahr Awen—and her chest stretched tight. As a girl, she’d spent hours, climbing trees and pretending she was one of the Cahr Awen—that she was one of the two witches born from the Origin Wells who could cleanse even the darkest evils.
But just as many of the springs feeding the Wells had been dead for centuries, no new Cahr Awen had been born in almost five hundred years—and Iseult’s fantasies had inevitably ended with gangs of village children. They would swarm whatever tree she’d clambered into, shouting up curses and hate that they’d learned from their parents. A Threadwitch who can’t make Threadstones doesn’t belong here!
Iseult had always known in those moments—as she hugged a tree branch tight and prayed that her mother would find her soon—that the Cahr Awen was nothing more than a pretty story.
Gulping, Iseult heaved aside those memories. This day was bad enough; no need to dredge up old miseries too. Besides, she and Safi were almost to the guards now, and Habim’s oldest lesson was whispering at the back of her mind.
Evaluate your opponents, he always said. Analyze your terrain. Choose your battlefields when you can.
“Single-file lines!” the guards called. “Any weapons must be out where we can see them!”
Iseult clapped her book shut in a whoof! of musty air. Ten guards, she counted. Spread out across the road with carts stacked behind them to block the crowd. Crossbows. Cutlasses. If this little interrogation didn’t go well, then there was no way the girls could fight their way through.
“All right,” Safi muttered. “It’s our turn. Keep your face hidden.”
Iseult did as ordered and sank into position behind Safi—who marched imperiously up to the first sour-faced guard.
“What is the meaning of this?” Safi’s words rang out, clear and clipped over the constant din of traffic. “We are now late to our meeting with the Wheat Guildmaster. Do you know what his temper is like?”
The guard’s face settled into a bored glower—but his Threads flashed with keen interest. “Names.”
“Safiya. And this is my lady-in-waiting, Iseult.”
Though the guard’s expression remained unimpressed, his Threads flared with more interest. He angled away, motioning for a second guard to loom in close, and Iseult had to bite her tongue to keep from warning Safi.
“I demand to know what this holdup is for!” Safi cried at the new guard, a giant of a man.
“We’re lookin’ for two girls,” he rumbled. “They’re wanted for highway robbery. I don’t suppose you have any weapons on you?”
“Do I look like the sort of girl to carry a weapon?”
“Then you won’t mind if we search you.”
To Safi’s credit, none of the fear in her Threads showed on her face, and she only lifted her chin higher. “I most certainly do mind, and if you so much as touch my person, then I will have you fired immediately. All of you!” She thrust out her book, and the first guard flinched. “At this time tomorrow, you’ll be on the streets and wishing you hadn’t messed with a Guildmaster’s apprentice—”
Safi didn’t get to finish her threat, for at that moment, a gull screamed overhead … and a splattering of white goo landed on her shoulder.
Her Threads flashed to turquoise surprise. “No,” she breathed, eyes bulging. “No.”
The guards’ eyes bulged too, their Threads now shimmering into a giddy pink.
They erupted with laughter. Then they started pointing, and even Iseult had to clap a gloved hand to her mouth. Don’t laugh, don’t laugh—
She started laughing, and Safi’s Threads blazed into red fury. “Why?” she squawked at Iseult. Then at the guards, “Why always me? There are a thousand shoulders for a gull to crap on, but they always pick me!”
The guards were doubled over now, and the second one lifted a limp hand. “Go. Just … go.” Tears streamed from his eyes—which only served to make Safi snarl as she stomped past. “Why don’t you do something useful with your time? Instead of laughing at girls in distress, go fight crime or something!”
Then Safi was through the checkpoint and racing for the nearest fat-hulled trade ships—with Iseult right on her heels and giggling the entire way.
FOUR
Merik Nihar’s fingers curled around the butter knife. The Cartorran domna across the wide oak dining table had a hairy chin with chicken grease oozing down it.
As if sensing Merik’s gaze, the domna lifted a beige napkin and dabbed at her wrinkled lips and puckered chin.
Merik hated her—just as he hated every other diplomat here. He might’ve spent years mastering his family’s famous temper, yet all it would take at this point was one more grain. One more grain of salt, and the ocean would flood.
Throughout the long dining room, voices hummed in at least ten different languages. The Continental Truce Summit would begin tomorrow to discuss the Great War and the close of the Twenty Year Truce. It had brought hundreds of diplomats from across the Witchlands to Veñaza City.
Dalmotti might have been the smallest of the three empires, but it was the most powerful in trade. And since it was neatly situated between the Empire of Marstok in the east and the Cartorran Empire to the west, it was the perfect place for these international negotiations.
Merik was here to represent Nubrevna, his homeland. He’d actually arrived three weeks earlier, hoping to open new trade—or perhaps reestablish old Guild connections. But it had been a complete waste of time.
Merik’s eyes flicked from the old noblewoman to the enormous expanse of glass behind her. The gardens of the Doge’s palace shone beyond, suffusing the room in a greenish glow and the scent of hanging jasmine. As elected leader of the Dalmotti Council, the Doge had no family—no Guildmasters in Dalmotti did since families were said to distract them from their devotion to the Guilds—so it wasn’t as if he needed a garden that could hold twelve of Merik’s ships.
“You are admiring the glass wall?” asked the ginger-haired leader of the Silk Guild, seated on Merik’s right. “It is quite a feat of our Earthwitches. It’s all one pane, you know.”
“Quite a feat, indeed,” Merik said, though his tone suggested otherwise. “Although I wonder, Guildmaster Alix, if you’ve ever considered a more useful occupation for your Earthwitches.”
The Guildmaster coughed lightly. “Our witches are highly specialized individuals. Why insist that an Earthwitch who is good with soil only work on a farm?”
“But there is a difference between a Soilwitch who can only work with soil and an Earthwitch who chooses to only work with soil. Or with melting sand into glass.” Merik leaned back in his chair. “Take yourself, Guildmaster Alix. You are an Earthwitch, I presume? Likely your magic extends to animals, yet certainly it’s not exclusive to only silkworms.”
“Ah, but I am not an Earthwitch at all.” Alix flipped his hand slightly, revealing his Witchmark: a circle for Aether and a dashed line that meant he specialized in art. “I am a tailor by trade. My magic lies in bringing a person’s spirit to life in clothing.”
“Of course,” Merik answered flatly. The Silk Guildmaster had just proven Merik’s point—not that the man seemed to notice. Why waste a magical skill with art on fashion? On a single type of fabric? Merik’s own tailor had done a plenty fine job with the linen suit he now wore—no magic necessary.
A long, silver-gray frock coat covered a cream shirt, and though both pieces had more buttons than ought to be legal, Merik liked the suit. His fitted black breeches were tucked into squeaking, new boots, and the wide belt at his hips was more than mere decoration. Once Merik was back on his ship, he would refasten his cutlass and pistols.
Clearly sensing Merik’s displeasure, Guildmaster Alix shifted his attention to the noblewoman on his other side. “What say you to Emperor Henrick’s pending marriage, my lady?”
Merik’s frown deepened. All anyone seemed interested in discussing at this luncheon was gossip and frivolities. There was a man in the former Republic of Arithuania—that wild, anarchical land to the north—who was uniting raider factions and calling himself “king,” but did these imperial diplomats care?
Not at all.
There were rumors that the Hell-Bard Brigade was pressing witches into service, yet not a one of these doms or domnas seemed to find this news alarming. Then again, Merik supposed it wasn’t their sons or daughters who would be forced to enlist.
Merik’s furious gaze dropped back to his plate. It was scraped clean. Even the bones had been swept into his napkin. Bone broth, after all, was easy to make and could feed sailors for days. Several of the other luncheon guests had noticed—Merik hadn’t exactly hidden it when he used the beige silk to pluck the bones off his plate.
Merik was even tempted to ask his nearest neighbors if he could have their chicken bones, most of which were untouched and surrounded by green beans. Sailors didn’t waste food—not when they never knew if they would catch another fish or see land again.
And especially not when their homeland was starving.
“Admiral,” said a fat nobleman to Merik’s left. “How is King Serafin’s health? I heard his wasting disease was in its final stages.”
“Then you heard wrong,” Merik answered, his voice dangerously cool for anyone who knew the Nihar family rage. “My father is improving. Thank you … what’s your name again?”
The man’s cheeks jiggled. “Dom Phillip fon Grieg.” He pasted on a fake smile. “Grieg is one of the largest holdings in the Cartorran Empire—surely you know of it. Or … do you? I suppose a Nubrevnan would have no need for Cartorran geography.”