Safi took note of that information for later use—just as she tried to record how the Baedyed territory was laid out and how soldiers roamed, clearly on the lookout for the Hell-Bards. For Vaness. Yet with his height, Zander always saw them coming. He’d lift one hand, and the Hell-Bards would break off onto a side street, Vaness and Safi in tow.
The sixth inn was an old tower repurposed into something livable, each level a different style of stone and wood and shutters. There, the Hell-Bards found a space to hole up, though for how long they planned to stay, Safi had no hint.
The room they rented was small and four stories up. Scarcely tall enough for Zander to walk through without crooking his head sideways. Not that it mattered, for as soon as the Hell-Bards led Safi and Vaness inside, the giant departed.
Two against two. Better odds, but still not great. Especially since Safi was dust from the inside out, and since Vaness immediately curled up for sleep on one side of the lone bed.
It wasn’t the fatigue in Safi’s limbs or lungs that hurt most. Nor even the blisters that had torn open on her heels and toes and ankles. Even the aches in her knee and foot were mostly ignorable.
But the rope-shredded skin beneath the linens, the way Safi could feel every fraying fiber still stuck in her flesh … Each step had sloughed off more skin and spread the wounds higher, higher up her arms and legs.
Safi waited, silent, while Caden eased the helmet from her head and the room’s full scope came into view: a single bed with a tan wool coverlet and a low stool beside it. A table and washbasin against the opposite wall, with what looked like a Waterwitched tap. Two oil lamp sconces above, and finally a window, without glass but with the shutter slats wide enough to let in the day’s breeze and sounds of revelry.
Nothing in the room was useful. At least not that Safi could spot through the exhaustion. There was, however, one interesting piece in the room, and that was a sign above the door that read ALWAYS, ALWAYS STAY THE NIGHT.
Safi had no idea what it meant.
As she stood there, a gentle pressure at her wrists drew her attention back to Caden. He was sawing off her ropes, and against her greatest wish, tears gathered in her eyes. Not from relief or gratitude, but from pain. A burst of it that clattered through her bones. “These need cleaning,” Caden said, and although there was no command in his tone, Lev immediately hopped to.
She left the room. Better odds.
“Sit,” Caden ordered, and Safi stumbled to the free side of the bed. It brought her closer to Vaness than she’d been since their capture. Hell-flames and demon-fire, the empress looked awful. Her shredded feet, her muddied legs and arms, and that colossal collar still locked around her neck.
Dizzy, Safi sank onto the bed’s edge; the empress didn’t stir, and it took all of Safi’s energy to keep her eyes open until Lev finally returned with soap and fresh linen strips.
Then Zander returned too. With food—real food and real bread and real water to wash it all down. The smell seemed to rouse Vaness, and though the fish was too rubbery and so spicy it made Safi’s tongue shriek, she didn’t care. Neither did the empress. They wolfed down the meal, and then before Safi could even try to speak to the empress about, well, anything at all, Vaness was back on her side and asleep once more.
Meanwhile, Lev and Zander scampered off again, and Caden dragged the stool between the bed and the door. Then he removed his armor. Piece by piece. Layer by layer. Gauntlets, brigandine, chain mail, gambeson, and finally his boots. Each item he placed meticulously in a pile beside the washbasin.
The Hell-Bard commander shrank and shrank until he was half his former size and down to nothing more than his underclothes. Then even the undershirt was peeled off and added to the massive pile of gear, revealing someone Safi couldn’t recognize.
Caden was not a Hell-Bard now. That person had been grim and terrifying and quick to attack. Nor was he the Chiseled Cheater, who was sly, charming, quick to quip.
This Caden was lean and scarred and muscled. He was duty, he was darkness, he was … heartbreak. Yes, something about Caden seemed hollow. Lost.
Similar to someone else Safi knew. Her uncle.
With the full washbasin at his feet, Caden soaked a cloth, then scrubbed and hissed and scrubbed some more at the wound on his shoulder. All his blades remained sheathed but within easy reach. So though his pale chest was bared and his face screwed up with pain, Safi didn’t doubt for one moment that he could kill her.
Lions versus wolves, after all.
What would Iseult do? Safi thought numbly. Not get caught, for one. But Iseult would also learn as much as she could. Food might have made Safi more tired, but surely she could conjure something useful from this foggy mind.
She cleared her throat. It hurt, and her next words tasted of black pepper. “What happened to you, Hell-Bard?”
“I was injured.” Caden’s chest shuddered as he dabbed at the bloodied gash on his shoulder. It looked deep, and there wasn’t much depth on his frame to begin with. Ropy muscles were wrapped tightly to the bone.
It brought to mind a different chest on a different man. The first physical characteristic, really, that she’d seen of Merik as he flew through the air of a Veñaza City wharf.
Safi frowned, shaking away thoughts of the past. Of Merik’s bare chest. Those memories wouldn’t help her here.
“How did you get injured, Hell-Bard?”
“A blade.”
“Oh?” Safi’s tone was sharp now. The Hell-Bard commander was as good at dodging questions as she was at lobbing them. “And whose blade would that be?”
“My enemy’s.” For several long minutes, the only sounds were the splash of water when he dunked his bloodied cloth. The drip-drip-drip when he wrung it out. The huffing exhales when he cleaned a wound in need of more than just water to heal.
It turned out, Caden had more than just water. He pulled a clay jar from his pile of filthy gear, yet rather than apply it to his own wound, he soaked a fresh strip of cloth in the basin and crossed the room to Safi.
She refused to cower. Even when he trudged in close enough to grab her. She simply thrust out her chin and braced her spine.
He looked, as he always did, unimpressed. Or Un-empressed, she thought, doubting he would appreciate the joke any more than Vaness had.
“I know you think I enjoy this, but I don’t.” He dropped to his knees. “And I know you think that stubbornly ignoring pain is some kind of victory. But it isn’t. Trust me. It will only injure you more in the long run. Now, let me see your feet.”
Safi didn’t move. She couldn’t take her eyes off the glistening gash running beneath his collarbone. Red webbed out, a sign rot would soon be setting in. Yet that wasn’t what surprised her—it was the scarring below that wound. And above it too, and all across his chest and arms. Jagged streaks, no whiter than his already pallid skin, yet raised and vicious. They covered every inch of Caden’s body, identical to the ones on Lev’s face.
“Your feet,” Caden repeated.
Still, Safi remained frozen, her gaze trapped by the worst scar, at his throat. Just above the gold chain, identical to a chain Uncle Eron wore, this mark was as thick as Safi’s thumb and circled all the way around Caden’s neck.
“Good enough,” Caden said at last. “If you don’t want me to tend your wounds, I won’t. The empress needs tending too.”
“Yes.” The word slipped out. Safi gulped, forcing her eyes away from the Hell-Bard’s scars. “I do want them cleaned.”
“Smart.” He bowed his head, an almost gracious movement. Almost. “You know, I’ve been where you are, Heretic. All Hell-Bards have.”
“Then let me go.”
“So you can run away? Henrick wouldn’t like that.” Then slowly, as if he didn’t want to frighten her, Caden reached for her ankles.
Safi almost fainted from the pain. A punch of heat and light. The world swam. She crumpled in on herself.
She wasn’t stupid, though. She let the Hell-Bard clean
her ankles because Caden was right that her stubbornness had served no purpose. It had only hurt her in the end. Though goat tits, it bruised her pride to admit that. Even to herself.
“Why did you run from the Truce Summit?” Caden asked as he dabbed at her wounds.
“Why,” Safi hissed through the pain, “not? Would you want to marry an old toad who would use you for your magic?”
A chuckle from Caden, though if he smiled along with that sound, Safi missed it. “If you marry him, you could help Cartorra. You could help Hasstrel.”
“They don’t need me.” She barely got the words through her clenched teeth. Caden had moved from her ankles to her soles, and somehow, they were worse. “Why do you even care about Hasstrel?”
“I grew up nearby.”
“Then you should know how awful the Orhin Mountains are—and how small-minded its people. They love living under Emperor Henrick’s yoke.”
“And you should know how callow that sounds.” A hardness laced Caden’s words now. The first flare of anything close to emotion. Good to know. Yet none of his frustration affected his methodical washing of Safi’s feet. “Cartorra has its flaws, Heretic, but it also has safety. Food too, as well as wealth, roads, education. I could keep going, for the list is long. Give me your wrists.”
Safi did, her eyes screwing shut at that first slash of contact. Pain came. Pain receded. “But,” she forced herself to say, clinging to the conversation, “you won’t find freedom on your list, will you?”
“There are degrees of freedom. Complete freedom isn’t always good, nor is the lack of it always bad.”
“Easy for you to say when you’re not the one being held against your will.”
Again, the laugh, and Caden’s eyes—bloodshot, thoughtful—lifted to hers. “You really have no idea, do you?”
“About what?”
But he had already moved on. “There are degrees of everything, Heretic, which I know doesn’t fit well into your true-or-false view of the world.”
“That’s not how my magic works.” Not entirely.
“Then tell me,” he said.
Safi pinched her lips together, hesitating. She’d spent so long hiding her magic from the world. From the very man now kneeling before her … Though she supposed there was no point in hiding her power now. Not when the emperor and the Hell-Bards had already won.
“Everyone lies,” she finally said.
“I don’t.” He popped the cork from the healer salve, and with a clean linen, he scooped some out.
The instant it touched her wrists, the pain receded. Cold fizzed in.
“Of course you lie,” she argued, eyes closing to savor the cool relief. “I told you, Hell-Bard. Everyone lies. It’s in the way we banter with our friends. It’s in the mundane greetings we give passersby. It’s in the most meaningless things we do every single moment of every single day. Hundreds upon thousands of tiny, inconsequential lies.”
Caden’s careful application paused. “And do you sense them all?”
She nodded, eyelids lifting just enough for her to meet his unflappable gaze. “It’s like living beside the ocean. The waves eventually fade into nothing because you’re so used to it. You stop hearing each crash, each swell … Until, one day, when a storm comes along. The big lies—I feel those. But the little ones? They ride away on the tide.”
He offered no reaction, his face utterly still as if he was thinking through each sentence. Each word. Each pause. Yet before he could offer a response, a double knock came at the door.
“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 wit
h 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.
“The meat will spoil.”
“Then you will catch another,” he countered. “We need to get as far as we can before the heat of the day grows too intense.”
“Why?” Iseult asked, but the Bloodwitch ignored her, and in less than a minute, he had cleared the campsite. Everything was gathered, folded, and tucked neatly into Iseult’s satchel. Then he swung it onto his back, ready to set out.
Iseult simply observed. He moved so fast. So efficiently, his witchery clearly propelling him to a speed and grace no man could match.
She itched to know how it worked. Itched to ask him how it felt when such power took hold—and if it was true that his magic was bound to the Void. Instead, though, she said nothing at all.
They hiked for hours, Aeduan always there, paces behind. He refused to walk in front, clearly expecting Iseult to stab him in the back. Or perhaps this was a test to see how much she trusted him.
Either way, Iseult went along with it. For now.
The Bloodwitch used single, hard words to guide her. One moment, they would be tromping through a mucky floodplain, and the next, he would order her to veer right and clamber back out.