She was sprinting by the time she reached the lake, and she gave no thought to her uniform as she tore off boots and coat, breeches and blouse. There was something wrong—she could see it rippling over the shimmering lake surface.
“Extinguish,” she murmured. Then in she dove.
Too much water. That was the first thing she felt as she kicked beneath the surface. There was water she’d never met before, twisting and twining through the rivers and into the Cisterns. Vivia needed to find out why. She needed to find out from where.
While yesterday’s tremor might not have left significant surface damage, Vivia feared the same could not be said for below.
She hit the lake’s center, where the crystalline waters were cold enough to grip. Where the rocks were keen enough to cut. But only here could she wholly connect with what the lake wanted, with what the lake felt.
Deep, deep beneath its waters, where the plateau’s roots fed into the Sirmayans and grew up from ages past, Vivia sensed new water dripping in. It wasn’t from the recent storms but from the tremor, and it wasn’t limited to the plateau but rather had wormed its way under the valley and into the mountains.
There, currents leaked up from a crack in the earth. A new spring, icy and fresh, it was adding volume to these tunnels and to the River Timetz as well—abovestream. Above the dam.
Up, up, the water moved like bees humming in a hive. Out, around, and under too. If it wasn’t diverted soon, the dam would overflow. The city would flood. It would be a slow thing. Months, perhaps even years, in the making, for these new springs were small. Mere fractures in the rock. Yet if these fractures ever became rifts, if another quake rattled through the Stefin-Ekart valley, then the water might expand too quickly to counter. The city could flood in days.
Or worse, if the dam finally broke, it could flood in hours.
At that thought, Vivia’s latest Battle Room argument with Linday echoed out: Our people could be safe, even beyond Nubrevna’s borders, if the need arose.
No. Vivia couldn’t do it. Binding Nubrevna to the Purists was not a solution.
Yet … Serrit Linday. Why did everything keep circling back to him? Since the crack had first appeared in the dam three years before, he was the one who had resisted fixing it. Now he was the one treating with Purists, and he was the one with a door to the underground hidden in his greenhouse.
That door was what had brought Vivia here today. She intended to find it from the underground, and she suspected it was just on the other side of the cave-in.
By the time Vivia dragged herself from the lake, she was frozen to the bone. Her breaths were harsh as she shivered back into her clothes. Yet as she turned to snatch up her dark lantern, a quivering glow caught her eyes.
Like a cloud rolling across the moon, the nearest stretch of foxfire blinked out.
Three of the six glimmering spokes were now dead.
Whatever happens over, happens under too. Fast on that thought’s tail came another: The Fury said I must find the missing Origin Well.
Vivia swayed. No, no—Linday couldn’t be right. Except … each Well had six trees around it, and here instead were six stretches of burning foxfire. Each Well was also a source of magic, and Vivia couldn’t deny the immense power thrumming through these waters.
Long ago, Vivia’s tutors had taught her that the five Origin Wells chose the rulers of the Witchlands. It was somehow connected to the Twelve Paladins, and though she couldn’t remember precisely how, she did recall that the Water Well in southern Nubrevna was what had kept her nation autonomous for so long, even in the face of three growing empires.
Perhaps, though, the history books had missed something. There was, after all, one Well not accounted for. One well for an element no one believed existed.
The Void Well.
Vivia wasn’t a Voidwitch, though—nor had her mother been, nor her grandmother before that—so how could their family’s power stem from here? It couldn’t be an Origin Well.
It couldn’t.
But if it was … Then she could heal her father. That was the ultimate power of the Origin Well. The power to cure any ailment. Why, she could bring him down here to test it. If he healed, then she’d know.
At that thought, the empty space behind Vivia’s breastbone filled. Clogged. Almost as if she didn’t want to bring her father down here.
No regrets. Keep moving.
Vivia grabbed the lantern, snapping, “Ignite,” and squinting into the sudden light. There were too many questions, not enough time. She would have to mull all these ideas, all these possibilities while she searched—for the under-city wouldn’t find itself.
Nor would the over-city save itself.
* * *
Alone.
Iseult was alone again and wondering what could possibly be worse than Bloodwitches in the Contested Lands. Aeduan had left her beside an overgrown gully. It was decent terrain, in case anything unexpected arose. The sight lines were good; the cover was better, with fat mossy trunks and thick upthrusting slabs of dark granite.
After finding a flat crag to stretch out upon, Iseult dropped her gear and finally turned her attention to the rabbit she’d caught that morning. All day, it had flopped limply from the satchel on Aeduan’s back, and each time Iseult had glanced at it, its dead eyes had stared right back.
She stretched the rabbit across the stone. Its body was stiff and cold, exactly as she’d told Aeduan it would be. She just hoped the meat hadn’t spoiled.
Only one way to learn.
She rolled up her sleeves. Aeduan’s coat was far too big, and the wool itched. But she felt safer with it on. It smelled like smoke and old sweat. Not a bad smell, just … there.
After she’d rinsed her hands from water in the canteen, she freed her cutlass. While the blade was excellent for cutting off the rabbit’s feet at each joint, it was not good for the second step: a tiny incision across the rabbit’s back.
So absorbed was Iseult in not cutting too deeply and puncturing an organ (thereby guaranteeing that the meat would spoil) that she didn’t feel the Threads approaching until they were almost upon her.
In fact, if she’d waited two breaths longer before reaching out to sense the world’s weave, she would not have noticed the men until it was too late. But thank the Moon Mother, her habit was stronger than her attention on the rabbit.
Six sets of Threads crept toward her, purple tinged with steel gray. A hunger for violence, a desire for pain—and close. Mere seconds away.
Iseult’s mind blanked out. No time to react, no time to plan. The only option before her was flight, so Iseult gripped her cutlass and leaped into the gully, where the substrate was flat and the undergrowth sparse.
The Threads flared with pink excitement and green determination. They moved faster too, launching into sprints behind her. But why, why, why? Who were they and why were they hunting her? Unlike the men Esme had sent, these hunters were definitely not Cleaved. Their Threads were whole and thoroughly focused on hurting Iseult if they caught her.
She kicked her knees higher. Time blurred, the forest streaked. All Iseult saw and all Iseult was, was the gully’s mud floor and the placement of ferns. Of stones. Of anything at all that might slow her.
A man behind her roared something in a language she didn’t know. The Threads flared hotter. Hungrier. A battle cry to cow enemies.
It certainly cowed Iseult. She almost tripped, but somehow her balance prevailed. She punched her heels faster and gripped her cutlass tighter.
Ahead. Trees ending. Sky opening up. The thoughts slashed through her brain, one after another. Unbidden and with no time to examine. No time to plan.
She reached the end of the forest. Her feet pounded onto exposed stone, where water sprayed up. It was the Amonra River, foamy with speed, black with cold. The sort of rapids that even a Waterwitch would avoid—and there was no crossing it.
Iseult veered right. The shore was brutal, rocks and logs and undercut riverbank. She looked
back.
A mistake. The men were closer than she’d realized. Close enough for her to see pockmarks and scars and toothless smiles. To see binding Threads oozing between them—a sign they all followed the same command. A sign they were comrades working as one.
Iseult pushed herself harder, her breath coming in short fog-choked gasps. The Amonra Falls hummed ahead. First, a mere tickle at the base of Iseult’s spine. A mist to linger on the horizon. It grew louder with each step, expanding into a heavy rumble in Iseult’s gut, a rain that coated everything in fat droplets.
Stasis, Iseult! Stasis in your fingers and in your toes! But she couldn’t reclaim it. She couldn’t slow, she couldn’t plan. She was against a wall, and it was made of violent men and violent rapids.
This was a wall that Safi would hurdle in a heartbeat, though. No preparing. No worrying. Just action. If Safi were here, she wouldn’t wait. She’d see opportunity and she’d take it.
Stupid as it might seem, Safi had once told Iseult, stupid is also something they never see coming.
Yes, Iseult had answered at the time, and it’s also why I always end up saving your skin.
But hey! A sharp Safi grin. At least there’s a skin to save, Iz. Am I right?
She was right. Moon Mother save her, but Safi was right. Stupid was sometimes the best.
And sometimes, stupid was all that remained.
Iseult tipped her head left as she ran, letting her gaze shoot ahead to where river pounded against the shore. No debris rushed on that choppy surface, for the power of these rapids was too much. The Amonra yanked sticks, leaves, and life down; it did not spit them back up.
Goddess, it would be stupid to go in that river. So stupid.
Act now. Consequences later. Initiate, complete.
It was time. The hunters were lurching out of the trees.
Iseult initiated. Iseult jumped. As the muddy bank fell away and damp air kissed her cheeks, shouts clamored from the forest. Threads collectively brightened with turquoise surprise, crimson rage. Then Iseult reached the peak of her arc and began to fall.
A single sharp thought hit her in that moment. It wasn’t a tangible thought, it wasn’t carved in words to score across her mind, but rather it was a feeling that brightened every piece of her as the black river closed in.
You’ve been here before, the feeling said. And you know what to do.
Her hands moved instinctively to her wool coat. A tug of stiff fingers against the collar, then Iseult’s feet hit the waves. Cold, cold, cold, cold—and ripping her under. Punching all breath from her chest. Tearing all sight and sound and senses.
The Amonra dragged Iseult down.
As she sank below, she wrestled free from the coat. It unfurled above, a distraction as well as a shield to hide Iseult while she flew downstream in a world without breath. A world without control.
TWENTY
After bathing under Lev’s watchful eye, Vaness and Safi were forced to don their filthy, torn clothes.
Lev shot them each an apologetic look at the bathhouse exit. “Zander went to find clothes for you,” she said, then she took up position behind the women and sent them marching back to their fourth-floor room.
They found Zander waiting inside, his face turned down to his toes. “I got several gowns. I wasn’t sure what ladies like you might want to wear.”
Safi didn’t need her magic to feel the honesty shivering off Zander’s proclamation. Against her better judgment, she caught herself smiling. “Thank you, Hell-Bard.”
Then she and Vaness were left alone, while Lev and Zander began a hushed conversation in the hall. Caden was nowhere to be seen.
“Two against two,” Vaness murmured in Marstoki as she glided for the bed. “Had I not this collar on”—she jiggled it, the wood darkened with water—“then there would be no contest.”
Safi, meanwhile, shot for the window. The shutters were open, and while four stories was undoubtedly a long drop, hell-flaming goat tits, she was willing to try.
She reached the window. The Pirate Republic spanned before her, the arena thrusting up in the distance. She tried to dip her head through …
A burst of warmth and light lashed out. Safi’s forehead hit solid air—and her heart surged into her throat. Magic. Wards, Safi realized, although what they protected against or how Hell-Bards could even do magic, Safi had no idea.
She tried again, and again, but her skull simply smacked an invisible wall each time. Light flashed, shimmering along the edges with golden dust.
“So that is what the wards do,” Vaness said from her spot at the bed. “It is good to know.”
Safi grunted, scowling, and finally turned away from the sunny seascape outside. At the bed, she made quick work of her ruined gown, stripping it off in one move. Vaness, of course, was undressing more patiently, carefully removing her dirty gown and folding it neatly on the bed.
Safi’s heart panged. It was such an Iseult-like thing to do. Such a familiar balance of Safi charging ahead, heedless and hurried, while her companion lingered, contemplated, gathered her thoughts.
Safi wavered, fingers gripped tight around a hunter green gown while her free hand moved to the Threadstone. The leather thong it was looped on now rested damp against her collarbone. She pulled it out.
And horror shoveled through her. The stone was blinking. Iseult.
“What does it mean?” Vaness asked quietly.
“It means my family is in danger.” Safi’s voice sounded so far away. She swiveled about, trying to gauge in which direction the Threadstone would lead. In which direction Iseult might be. “Somewhere … that way.” She faced northwest.
All exhaustion was gone now. Safi wanted to move. She wanted to run.
The empress seemed to understand, for she said in Marstoki—and with a false layer of nonchalance overtop—“I have a plan to get us out of here.”
Safi blinked, rounding on Vaness. “Earlier. You lied about the Baedyeds wanting to kill you.”
“I did.” Vaness eased a mustard gown from the stack and draped it against her body, checking the length. “Just before the Truce Summit, I came to an agreement with the Baedyed Pirates. I will return much of the Sand Sea to them, and in return they will become an extension of the Marstoki navy. So you see, they are not my enemies at all but are in fact my allies.”
Safi’s magic purred, True. “So they will help us?”
It took Vaness three yanks to get the neck of her gown past the wooden collar, and by the time it was on, Lev had poked her head in the room. “All ready?”
“Almost,” Vaness trilled. Then, in a hurried whisper from the side of her mouth, she added, “Be ready, Safi. For soon, the Baedyeds will come for us.”
“Good.” Safi couldn’t resist a dark, triumphant grin while she tugged on her forest green dress. It was a loose in the bodice and the skirt barely made it mid-calf, but she preferred it that way. There was room to move. Room to fight.
I’m coming, Iz.
The door whooshed wide, and Caden strode in. He aimed straight for Safi, eyes flying over her gown—and chin dipping ever so slightly in approval. He too was clean and freshly clothed. His armor, however, was absent. No chain mail or brigandine, no gauntlets or steel helm.
Yet a sword still hung at his waist, and his shoulder appeared leagues sturdier than it had an hour before.
“Heretic,” he said, coming to a stop before Safi, “don your boots.”
Safi arched a cool eyebrow. “Why, Hell-Bard?”
“Because you and I are taking a little trip, and there’s a reason the locals say the streets of Saldonica are paved with shit.”
* * *
Though Caden didn’t tie up Safi, he did keep a dagger out, and he forced her to march directly before him. Within grabbing distance, should the need arise.
The need wouldn’t arise, for Safi had no desire to bolt. Her Threadstone might have stopped flashing, but that didn’t change her need for escape—and her odds of survival were much h
igher with an entire contingent of Baedyed Pirates coming to her aid than all alone on the streets of Saldonica.
Which were indeed layered in shit and trash, something she noticed as soon as they left behind the clean corners of the Baedyed territory.
“Where are we going?” Safi asked, her head dipped back so Caden could hear. They were once more in the open market, but there was no missing the Red Sails’ scarlet banners flapping ahead. “I thought you said the Red Sails would kill us all.”
“They will,” Caden said, pitching his voice over the noises of the afternoon. “They’ve a vow to kill all Cartorrans on sight, which is why we won’t be speaking in Cartorran—and why we won’t be staying long.”
Staying long where? Safi wanted to press. And why bring me at all? But she didn’t get the chance, for they were approaching a massive archway, where men waited, armed with more blades than they had teeth.
The men watched Safi and Caden saunter past. Bad men. Wrong men. The shivers against her witchery told Safi all she needed to know. At least none made a move to follow Safi and Caden into the world of torpid swamp that was the Red Sails’ territory.
The Baedyeds might have cleared the land and established a proper city on their claim of the peninsula, but the Red Sails had left the jungle to its own devices. Theirs was a world like Safi had imagined, a world like Habim had described. Dilapidated huts sank against massive roots or nestled beside vine-covered ruins. Haphazard. No organization. And almost all of it built on stilts, as if this soggy earth flooded during storms.
Rope bridges were slung between buildings, and as often as Safi saw laundry dangling from a crooked window she saw corpses hanging as well. Some were bloated, fresh; others were decomposed all the way to gleaming skull.
This was what complete freedom allowed. This was what men did in the absence of rules or an imperial yoke.
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.