Aeduan nodded. “In the morning,” he said, fighting the urge to jerk away and dive into the stream after his shirt. “I’ll give you a coin in the morning.”
With a nod of her own, Iseult finally left the stream. The forest folded her in, fireflies lighting her way.
And Aeduan was instantly in the water, paddling fast and praying that the one shirt he owned wasn’t too far downstream to find again.
FOURTEEN
A fog encased the night-darkened streets of Lovats while Merik watched the Linday family mansion. Like all vizerial city abodes, the house stood solemly on the oak-lined road called White Street that traced up Queen’s Hill.
No lanterns lit within the mansion, no shadows moved. Which left only one place a Plantwitch might logically go at night: his gardens.
It took Merik mere minutes to reach the Linday greenhouse. Vapor drifted into the gardens around it, veiling the structure of glass and iron that Merik knew waited within.
Thirteen years had passed since Merik had roamed the jungles of this greenhouse. He’d been a boy then, just seven years old.
It had also been daylight, and more important, he’d been invited.
Yet none of the clumsy guards noticed Merik stalking from one shadow to the next. Twice, Merik almost stumbled upon them, but twice, Merik gusted up a wall of mist to cloak him.
He spun around a bellflower hedge, its violet blossoms in full bloom, and ducked beneath a cherry tree. Such a despicable waste of space, this greenhouse. This garden. And an even more despicable waste of magic. The Linday family could use their resources to feed the starving who crushed against their gates, yet instead they grew ornamental flowers of no use to anyone.
Perhaps Merik could add that to his list of conversation points with the vizer.
Onward Merik stole. Toward Linday, toward the truth about the assassin Garren. Power, power, power. It pumped through Merik, so easy to tap into. So easy to command, even as exhausted as he was.
Ever since Pin’s Keep—ever since he had embraced the name Fury—his winds had come without protest, his temper had stayed calm. Easy.
And easy was good as far as Merik was concerned. Easy let ships sail without fear and crews reach home unharmed.
Easy, however, did not mean trip wires. Slung across the greenhouse’s back entrance, Merik felt the string the instant it hit his shin—and he felt the vibration race outward like a plucked harp.
Oh, hell-waters.
His hands swept up; his winds shot out, a charge of power to counteract the moving line.
Merik watched, breath held, as it stilled. As the whole world stilled, shrinking down to that cursed string and his booming heart. It thundered loud enough to give him away.
Yet no alarm went off. No trap released, leaving Merik to carefully sweep his gaze over every leaf, every petal, every strip of bark in sight. The wire traveled into the shadows, to where iron beams held glass walls upright. Then up the string shot, ending at a brass bell.
Merik’s breath kicked out. That had been too close, for though the bell might have been tiny, it was more than enough to alert someone of Merik’s arrival. The only other sound was a burbling fountain at the greenhouse’s heart.
While Merik wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that young Serrit Linday was a paranoid bastard, there had never been guards or trip wires at the nobleman’s mansion during their childhood.
Which suggested that Linday was meeting someone, and either he didn’t trust that someone or he intended to betray that someone. Had Merik the time, he would’ve crawled into the nearby cherry tree and waited, watching to see who hit this backdoor trap. After all, learning whom Linday feared might be valuable information.
Merik hadn’t the time, though, nor the patience. Plus, he’d abandoned poor Cam back at Pin’s Keep. She was still out there, no doubt panicking over where her admiral had gone.
So after checking his hood was still firmly in place, Merik resumed his approach. Twice more, he found hidden trip wires, and twice more, he bypassed them. It was slow going, slipping through the leaves and roots, yet all the while using his winds to keep the jungle still. To keep the trip wires from activating.
At last Merik reached the center of the greenhouse, where the gravel of the outer paths gave way to sandstone tiles arranged in a complex array of sunbursts. The Linday family sigil. At the center was a fountain, also fashioned into a sunburst.
Before the bubbling water sat Serrit Linday. His frenetic energy clashed with the soft serenity of the scene. He swatted and swatted and swatted again at brilliant white lilies along the fountain’s edge, while his finely slippered toe tapped the pristine grass into mush. Even the lamplight from the streets outside seemed too bright, too pure for Linday’s antiquated black robe.
This was not the arrogant vizer Merik remembered from boyhood. This was a scared man—and scared men were easy men.
Easy was always good.
Merik slipped to the edge of the clearing, to where grass gave way to flagstones. Behind Linday and still out of sight. Then he lowered his hood and offered a rough, “Hello, Vizer.”
The man’s breath punched out. He deflated completely, spine wilting and shoulders dropping over his knees. For half a moment, Merik thought he’d fainted …
Until a weak, “I don’t have it,” whispered out.
Merik stepped from the shadows. “You mistake me for someone else.”
At that, Linday tensed. Then his head swung around. His eyes met Merik’s. Then he gazed up and down, clearly taking in Merik’s scars, his ragged clothes. For half a skittering moment, Merik thought the vizer might recognize him from their brief encounters over the years.
But he didn’t, and Merik almost smiled as warring expressions settled across the young man’s face. Relief mingled with horror and confusion … before shivering back to relief.
Which was not precisely the end reaction Merik had hoped for.
He approached the fountain, and although Linday shrank back, the man didn’t run. Not even when Merik gripped his collar and yanked him close.
“Do you know who I am?” Merik murmured. This close, the man’s face was a mask of fine lines. He looked twice the age Merik knew him to be.
“No,” Linday rasped. He was trembling now. “I don’t know you.”
“They call me the Left Hand of Noden. They call me the Fury.” Power, power, power. “I’m going to ask you a few questions now, Vizer, and I want you to answer quickly. If you do not…” He twisted his fists, tightening Linday’s collar. Cutting off the man’s air.
Linday shook all the harder in Merik’s hands, and that was more the reaction Merik had hoped for. “I’ll answer, I’ll answer.”
“Good.” Merik’s eyes narrowed, his brow stretching. “You bought a prisoner from Pin’s Keep. Garren was his name. I need to know what you did with him.”
“I don’t know.”
Yank. Twist. Linday’s breath slashed out.
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I must, I must.” Linday’s eyes began to cross. “I … must, or he’ll kill me.”
Fresh rage slashed through Merik. He wrung Linday’s collar tighter. “By whose hand would you rather die, Vizer? His or mine?”
“Neither,” the man choked. “Please—the shadow man comes for me. Help me. Please, before they turn me into one of their puppets—please! I’ll tell you everything you want—”
A bell rang.
A soft twinkle to fill the greenhouse.
Vizer Linday went limp, as if his knees could no longer hold him. Merik released Linday, who crumpled to the tiles.
A second bell tolled. Chills raced down the back of Merik’s neck. His spine. He whirled around …
To find a wall of night slithering through the greenhouse. Approaching this way, it slipped and slid and coiled and gripped. Shadow hands that tendriled forward, over the ground, across the foliage, along the ceiling.
Instinct told Merik to run. Told his muscles to flee. Yet som
ething else warred inside him—something hot and not to be trifled with.
Merik let his fury come. It roared to a fiery life right as the darkness scuttled across him.
The shadow man had arrived.
There was no other way to describe what prowled into the clearing—Linday had gotten the title right. Not because the man was made of shadows, so much as he was cloaked by them. Eaten alive by darkness.
The man, the monster towered before Merik, his features impossible to distinguish. What little of his skin was exposed—hands, neck, face—moved like a thousand eels skippering upstream.
Against all Merik knew to be wise or safe, his eyes closed and his arms shot up to block his face. He rocked back two steps, almost tripping over Linday.
The shadow man laughed at that. A sound so deep that Merik could scarcely hear it. He felt the thunder rumble in his lungs, though. Felt the man say, “I respect your attempt at stopping me, Vizer, but alarms and guards are useless now. Give me what I’ve come for, or everyone here dies. Your guards. This friend of yours. And you.”
A whimper split the darkness, forcing Merik to lower his arms. To open his eyes and look at the shadow man, snaking closer. A creature with all the power in the room.
All the power in the world.
Merik made himself watch. Made his mind think, his muscles move, and his own power awaken. It was strangely weak. Strangely cold—a tendril of frost laced with darkness, as if the shadow man had stolen all heat in the room.
“Where is it, Vizer?” The monster’s voice rippled and scraped. Scales rubbing against the sand. “We had a deal.”
“I c-couldn’t find it.” Linday’s teeth chattered, louder than his words. “I-I looked.”
The shadow man laughed again before kneeling beside the vizer—and leaving Merik all but forgotten. Clearly he saw Merik as no threat.
Well, then, that was his mistake.
Immediately, Merik drew more magic to him, backing away as he did so. The wind was still frozen and off, yet it rose all the same. A subtle breeze to curl around him. To build. To expand while the shadow man reached for Linday’s throat. It was an almost loving gesture, were it not for the death hissing between his fingers.
“This was your last chance, Vizer. Now we will be forced to enact the final plan. Your doing, Vizer. Your doing.”
A root punched up from the earth and drove straight into the shadow man’s chest. Linday’s magic.
A scream—human and beastly, living and dead—tore through the greenhouse. Unlike the spoken words, this sound was real. A physical thing, like icy winds, that smashed apart Merik’s skull and flayed the flesh from his cheeks.
Merik had just enough time to lock eyes with Linday before the shadow man’s fist squeezed.
He crushed the vizer’s neck as easily as a grape. Darkness splattered from Linday’s throat. Blood and shadows sprayed from his mouth. Burst from his eyes, and Merik knew, in that primal part of his spine he should have listened to before, that he stood no chance here.
With the little power he’d managed to grasp, Merik sprang backward. Ice carried him. Cold guided him. Winter rushed through him, both soothing and terrifying.
Branches cracked; leaves slapped; bell after bell rang out. The shadow man pursued, but he was hurt from Linday’s root. Merik had a head start.
Merik reached a door. Not the one he’d come in, but an exit all the same that spit him into another part of the outer garden. Night air coursed over him, freeing. Empowering. And finally his witchery, hot and familiar, could truly unfurl.
He flew. Fast and high, winds bellowing beneath him. Yet just as Merik reached the peak of his flight, just as he relaxed his guard and risked looking back, the wall of shadows reached him.
Black erupted over him, frozen. Blinding. Like the explosion on the Jana but cold and darkness that erupted from the inside out. Too much power, too much anger, too much ice.
Then Merik’s magic winked out. He fell. Spinning and choked by death. Until at last he hit something with such force it seemed to snap his bones. To snap his mind.
Yet even then, Merik didn’t stop falling. He simply moved more slowly, sinking.
Water, he thought as his lungs bubbled full of it. Then he was too deep to know anything else beyond drowning and darkness and Noden’s watery court.
FIFTEEN
You’ve been avoiding me, said a voice made of glass shards and nightmares.
Iseult was in the Dreaming again. That cusp between sleep and waking. A claustrophobic place where her mind detached from her body. Where she could do nothing but listen to the Puppeteer.
Esme was her name. Iseult had learned that in the last—and only—dream invasion since the night before the attacks in Lejna. Esme had plucked Iseult’s location right from Iseult’s mind, and then used that information to cleave, to kill.
Iseult had been completely helpless to stop it.
Admit it, Esme said, you’ve been staying away from me on purpose. Iseult didn’t try to argue. She had been avoiding Esme. With every piece of her mind and her body, Iseult had been avoiding the other witch.
Which meant Iseult had scarcely slept in the last two weeks. It was the only way she could guarantee escape from the Dreaming. The only way she could guarantee the Puppeteer’s nightly assaults did not occur.
Dreamless bursts of fitful sleep, plus a mind and body too exerted to properly close down—those were the factors needed to evade Esme. But well fed and unafraid, it would seem, were not.
Don’t do this. Iseult’s dream-voice crackled out, a distant, fuzzy thing that seemed to echo inside the Puppeteer’s skull.
Iseult sounded meek. Whimpering. She hated it, yet she couldn’t seem to stop it—no more than she could stop Esme from raiding. She picked through Iseult’s mind, like a rat atop the trash heap. Don’t read my thoughts tonight, Esme. Not now. Not ever.
The girl seemed to tense up—a heated sensation that locked up Iseult’s muscles in return. I can’t help it, she defended. I’m not trying to read your thoughts. They’re just floating on the surface. Like that dead fish you saw this morning. And yes, I can see the fish and the cold stream and the Cleaved in the clearing. I can see that you abandoned the Cleaved, as well. Why, Iseult? They were there to help you.
They were trying to kill me, Esme.
A jolt of horror flared through Esme—then across whatever magic she used to haunt Iseult’s dreams. No! I would never hurt you, Iseult. I sent them as friends.
Now it was Iseult’s turn for surprise. I … don’t understand.
A pause. Esme was clearly debating how to reply. Then with a rush of warmth over their bond, she declared, They had gifts for you, Iseult. One was a hunter whose gear I thought you could use. The others were soldiers. To protect you.
Nausea spun up Iseult’s sleeping throat. I-I couldn’t … Iseult broke off. Goddess save her, she was stammering. She didn’t even know she could do that in the Dreaming. I … couldn’t … tell, she forced out, that they wanted to help. The Cleaved acted like they would kill me.
But instead you killed them. A splash of flames from the Puppeteer. You led them onto a Nomatsi road and killed my Cleaved.
Iseult’s nausea pitched faster. She hadn’t killed those men … had she? They were Cleaved—already marked for death.
No, Esme said, her displeasure fanning into hot rage. They were men I cleaved for you, since you foolishly intend to cross the Contested Lands. No one crosses the Contested Lands alone and survives, Iseult. But then you led my Cleaved astray, and they died.
Iseult’s lungs clenched tight. She didn’t want Esme to know about the Bloodwitch; she didn’t want Esme to know about anything. So she turned to the distraction of simple arithmetic. She could run through numbers on the surface, but inside her thoughts could run their course.
Multiplying. Iseult liked multiplying. Nine times three is twenty-seven. Nine times eight … seventy-two.
Iseult was too slow. Esme saw exactly what she’d tried
to hide.
Threadless. The girl’s surprise speared through Iseult. Such pure shock, Iseult could almost see turquoise Threads tinting the Dreaming.
Why is the Bloodwitch with you? Esme sounded frantic now. Her panic set Iseult’s breath to choking off. You don’t understand, Iseult—he is dangerous!
I know, Iseult squeezed out. I need his magic, though. I need him to find my Threadsister.
No, Esme cried. I will help you, Iseult. I will help you! He isn’t bound to the world as the rest of us are—you see it, don’t you? He has no Threads!
I … see it. Iseult could offer no other answer, for now shock of her own was winding through her dream-self. You see that too?
Of course I see it! And it means Weaverwitches like us cannot control him. It means he is dangerous, Iseult! You must run fast and run far! Wake up before he kills you in your sleep!
For the first time ever, though, Iseult didn’t want to wake. She didn’t want to be thrust out of the Dreaming. What does it mean, Esme? Tell me. Please.
Later, Iseult. Once he’s gone. Please, I’m begging you—please, WAKE UP.
Iseult woke up.
* * *
Safi had never been more tired. Her knee ached where Lev had kicked it out. Her healing foot ached all the more.
The Hell-Bards had marched all night, a single lantern to light their way. The only breaks had been spent squatting in the woods while Lev kept her crossbow fixed on Safi’s head.
The stars had risen while they trekked ever onward into a changing landscape. The jungle’s canopy gave way to steamy marshes speckled by bursts of trees or lucent marble ruins that cut across the sky. Yet despite the openness of the swamps, Safi preferred the jungle. Here, the ground itself was lumpy, unstable. Grasses as tall as her waist razored and scraped at Safi’s legs, while dark peat suddenly gave way beneath her, sucking Safi down.
She didn’t complain. Not once. Even when the Hell-Bards asked how she felt, she squeezed out, “Fine,” each time.
She wasn’t fine, though. The throb in her knee compounded with each step. The linen-bound ropes at her wrists burned deeper, yet she wouldn’t say a single rutting word about it. She wouldn’t give the Hell-Bards the satisfaction of thinking they had won.