Second landing, and Vivia was practically running now. Keep moving, keep moving.
“I could send soldiers to search the tenement, sir.”
“No,” Vivia panted. “I don’t want to risk spooking this man. If he’s got the power to kill like … like that”—she motioned down—“then we can’t put all those civilians at risk. But I do want eyes on the house. If the boy shows up, I want him followed. If we can arrest him, then maybe we can lure out this beast calling himself the Fury.”
“Hye, sir!” Stix popped a rough salute as they jogged onto the highest landing. Yet Vivia made it only ten steps before her feet slowed. Before she had to stop and bend and catch her heaving breath.
For a sickening thought had just set the hairs on her arms to rising. “Stix,” she huffed. “If that corpse … down there … wasn’t a guard”—she paused, gulping in breaths—“and he was in fact one of the Nines, then what was he doing here? And what was the Fury doing here?”
Stix tossed up her hands, a helpless gesture. “I … I don’t know, sir. Did you check the stores?”
“No … Curse me, no.”
As one, both women dove back for the stairs. Down they sprinted, twice as fast as they’d come up. Then Vivia was at the fifth level and shoving past guards, Stix right on her heels as they aimed for the closest bags of foreign grain.
Vivia knew what she’d find, though. She felt it roiling in her abdomen. A certainty that sickened, a certainty that hurt.
She tore open a sack of Dalmotti barley.
Black, all of it—coated in the same shadowy, charred oil that coated the corpses. Completely inedible. As was the next sack and the next sack after that.
Everything Vivia had worked for was gone. Months of secret piracy without sufficient weapons to protect her men … Months of furtive loading and unloading into the storerooms … And months of hiding and lying and praying it would all pay off. But for what? So all of it could be ruined by the foul taint of corrupted magic.
She should never have listened to her father. She should have trusted her own instincts and used this food at Pin’s Keep.
And she should have never, never gotten those thrice-damned weapons from the thrice-damned Marstoks and left Merik behind.
Vivia couldn’t help it. Even though Stix stood right there and another hundred soldiers too, even though she knew this tale would get back to the High Council, Vivia clutched at her head and screamed.
* * *
In the furnace-like heat of midafternoon, Cam ferried Merik through back alleys and side streets to a public bathhouse in Old Town. It was as run-down as everything else in the area, but at least the waters inside were clean.
Better yet, no one visited it at this time of day, and the attendant within scarcely roused from her nap to take Merik’s coins. If she noticed their stink or their grime, she gave no hint of it.
“We need new clothes,” Cam blurted, mere seconds after entering the dark wooden hut. “Leave it to me, hye? I’ll bathe when I get back!” She didn’t wait for a response before hastening back into the sunlight.
Merik let her go. He understood her need to protect the Camilla secret, and in the end, she was right. They did need new clothes.
Merik bathed alone, reveling in the pain of the soap against raw skin. In the hot, magicked waters sweeping past his waist. How much scrubbing would it take, he wondered, to clean away the rage?
Or to clean away the shadows.
He had hoped that he’d imagined the lines at dawn, when he’d applied the healer salve—that the streaks on his chest had been illusions of the light. But now … there was no ignoring the black lines that radiated from his heart like shattered glass.
Were this a month ago, Merik would have asked his aunt what the hell was happening to him. As it was, though, Merik had no one to turn to. Only Cam, who knew less about magic than a frog in the well knows the sea.
As if summoned by his thoughts, the room’s wood-slatted door rasped open. Cam’s dark head popped through. “Clothes, sir.” She dropped them to the floor, along with a pair of rough leather boots. Then she backed out, the door squeaking shut.
“Boy!”
The door paused.
“Are the wind-drums still pounding?”
“Hye, sir,” came the taut reply. “But no soldiers in Old Town.” Yet, Merik thought before the door closed entirely. He rushed through the rest of his bath. Shadows and dead men—he’d deal with it all later.
By the time he found Cam in the bathhouse’s entryway, counting planks in the wall, the girl’s skin shone, her black hair looking downy as a gosling’s. Like Merik, she wore a plain white tunic and baggy tan pants, but they were huge on her, even rolled up and belted. Unlike Merik, she lacked shoes or a hooded cloak, but then again, Merik supposed she didn’t need them. Her face wasn’t lined by scars, and she wasn’t the one for whom the wind-drums sang.
“I think,” he said, coming to her side, “I still reek of sewage. And I am certain it’s burned in my nose forever.”
Instead of the grin he’d anticipated, all Merik earned was a grunt. It was so unlike the girl that he gave her a double take. She had already turned away, was already planting a hand on the exit.
The city stewed with humidity and humans and heat, but Cam had no commentary on that either—nor on the soldiers she had to rush Merik past. Nor even on the massive puddle of only Noden knew what that she planted her clean heels directly into.
The grim slant to her lips never parted. The furrow on her brow never smoothed away.
It wasn’t until she and Merik were firmly back in Kullen’s tenement that Cam’s silence finally broke.
She stalked to the window’s hazy glass, gazing outside for two breaths, and then rounded on Merik. Her cheeks flushed with what Merik hoped was heat but suspected might be anger.
“I’ve thought long and hard about it, sir, ever since we left those storerooms. I’ve decided that we need help.”
“Help,” Merik repeated, easing off his new cloak—much too large—and draping it across the bed. “With what exactly?”
“Dead men comin’ back to life.” She thrust out her chin, as if preparing an argument. “Whatever that was—whatever we saw in the storerooms, it wasn’t right. It was … unholy!”
“And I’m sure the guards will deal with it.”
“What if they don’t? What if they can’t? Or what if they didn’t even see what we saw? Someone needs to know there’s dark magic happening in the Cisterns, sir.”
“Someone?” he asked carefully, though he already saw where this was headed.
“The Royal Forces. Or … or the High Council.”
“Ah, right.” Merik laughed a dry, cruel sound. “You mean the Royal Forces and the High Council that are led by my sister. Who, in case you’ve forgotten, tried to kill me.”
“We don’t know she did that. Not for certain.”
“Don’t we, though?” A hot, charged breeze scraped through his chest. Merik fought it. He wouldn’t let it loose—not on Cam. “We know she left us for dead at sea.”
“She did that for the Foxes, sir. I ain’t saying it was right, but she got those weapons for the Foxes, and we just saw, plain as rain, that her piracy is working.”
For half a shallow breath, all he could do was stare at Cam. Then, with lethal slowness, he said, “What we saw was Vivia hoarding food. For herself. Are you taking her side, Cam?”
“No!” Cam’s hands shot up. “I just … we can’t face corpses that wake up, sir! Not on our own! And what if,” she pressed, “the princess didn’t try to kill you? What if it was … well, what if it was someone connected to that dead man in the storerooms?” She stumbled two steps toward Merik.
But he turned away. He couldn’t look at her. The one person he’d trusted, the one person who’d stood by him through everything … Now she was turning on him too.
He fixed his eyes on Kullen’s books. On The True Tale of the Twelve Paladins. His lungs were expanding, press
ing against his ribs with a rage that begged to be used. To pummel and break. To go head-to-head with his sister, once and for all.
“Vivia,” he forced out, “is the one who tried to kill us.”
“No,” Cam snarled. “She ain’t. Look at me, sir.”
Merik didn’t look at her, and his winds were spinning now. Small, turbulent chops.
Cam stomped in closer, her shirt flapping like sailcloth the instant she got close. “Look at me!”
“Why?” Merik had to pitch his voice over the building winds. The cover of The True Tale popped wide open. “What do you want from me, Cam?”
“I want you to see the truth! I want you to face it, sir. I ain’t blind, you know—I’ve seen the marks on your chest, and on your arms! Just like the dead man in the cellar. We need answers, sir, and I think I know where—”
“And I ain’t blind either, Cam.” Merik finally turned toward her. “I can see blighted well that you’re a girl.”
For half a windswept breath, she gawped at him. Surprised. “Is that what you think I am? All this time, and you still haven’t sorted it out?” Then she barked a hollow laugh. “Why am I surprised? You didn’t notice me when we were on the Jana. You couldn’t even remember my name back then, so why should I expect you to understand—to see me for what I am now!”
Cam thrust in closer, until there was nothing but her face mere inches away. Too close for Merik’s hot winds to even spiral between. “You think you’re so selfless,” she spat. “You think you’re working to save everyone, but what if you’re going about it all wrong? At least when I live as a boy, no one gets hurt. But you pretendin’ to be a martyr? Pretending to be the Fury? That hurts everyone.”
Too far. Merik’s winds launched up, sweeping between them. Knocking Cam back and kicking books in all directions. But she wasn’t finished. She wasn’t even fazed.
She just stretched to her fullest height and roared, “Stop seeing what you want to see, Merik Nihar, and start seeing what’s really here!”
Then she launched past him, aiming for the door. It slammed, leaving him alone with his winds, his rage, and books scattered everywhere.
TWENTY-FIVE
The Dreaming was different tonight. Vastly so.
Iseult found herself in Esme’s tower, a decrepit, crumbling thing in Poznin that she’d seen once before—except that the last time, it had been through Esme’s eyes.
This time, Iseult saw the tower through her own. She was in Poznin, in her very own body, and staring at the back of a girl she could only assume was the Puppeteer.
Iseult had no idea how she was here. She had drifted off just a few moments earlier, while the Bloodwitch stood guard nearby. Then she had awoken—if it could even be called that—in this tower. Her vision had been fuzzy at first, the bricks of this top floor blurring into a gray mass, the darkness of the night outside like a black blob in the middle. Iseult had recognized it anyway.
She had recognized the Puppeteer too, even though she’d never seen the girl. Esme sat on a stool, facing a desk on which books were piled. Candles shimmered on the desk, on the windowsill, on jutting stones in the wall, casting the entire space in a flickering warmth.
Esme’s long black hair was divided into two braids, and as Iseult’s vision cleared, she realized the bright bursts of color within Esme’s hair were actually strips of felt. Strings of beads. Dried flowers too.
When at last the girl turned, it was clear from her soft cry and widening hazel eyes, that she hadn’t realized anyone was present.
Then her pale Nomatsi face lit up. “It’s you,” she whispered, before racing across the uneven floor toward Iseult.
Iseult’s dream-body reeled back two steps. The room turned foggy, unraveling around the edges. Esme reached her. Everything sharpened to a perfect, crisp focus as if Iseult were truly standing in the room.
Except that when Esme reached for Iseult, her hands cut right through.
The girl laughed, an easy, lilting sound. “It’s as if you’re standing here with me! You look so clear. How?” She scurried left, circling Iseult. Her eyes raking up and down.
“I … I don’t know.” Iseult’s dream-tongue felt fat. Her throat too tight.
“You’re taller than I thought you’d be,” Esme chimed, clapping her hands. “And more muscled.” She grabbed for Iseult’s biceps, but of course, her fingers whispered through.
Another delighted laugh. She pranced back in front of Iseult, and this time her attention fixed on Iseult’s face.
A frown knit down her forehead. “You have a scar beside your eye. Like a red teardrop. When did that happen?”
Lejna, Iseult wanted to snap. The Poisonwitches that you cleaved. But she swallowed her dream-words. If Esme had been angry about Iseult’s treatment of those Cleaved on the Nomatsi road, how would she feel about the ones Iseult and Aeduan had decapitated in Lejna?
Fortunately, Esme didn’t noticed Iseult’s silence. Instead, she was opening her arms and asking, “Do I look as you expected?”
Iseult forced herself to nod, even though it wasn’t true. The Puppeteer was much prettier—easily the most beautiful Nomatsi woman Iseult had ever seen, with her delicate jaw and lucent white skin. The flashes of color in her long hair enhanced the beauty, as did the dimple in her right cheek that flashed whenever she smiled.
“You’re … smaller than I imagined.” That, at least, was true. Esme’s petite stature simply didn’t align with the enormous magic she controlled.
“What a wonderful surprise to have you here.” Esme’s dimple sank deeper. “I was studying, as I always do at this hour. Night is the only time I have for myself.” The dimple vanished—but just for a moment. Then her grin rallied, and she traipsed off toward the desk.
“You must be in one of the old places,” she called over her shoulder. “Somewhere like my tower, where the walls between this world and the Old Ones is thinner. But which place, I wonder?” She grabbed a ragged tome off her desk, setting the nearest candles to guttering.
Then she spun toward Iseult. “OPEN YOUR EYES.”
The strength of the command—and the surprise of it—slammed over Iseult. She couldn’t resist, not before the tower scene dissolved and the ruins where Iseult slept coalesced.
Esme exhaled more glee. Somehow, she stood beside Iseult, her book clutched tight, and Iseult was hovering above her own sleeping body. Ice splintered through Iseult’s dream-self. She’d never seen magic like this. Never heard of it either.
Esme didn’t notice Iseult’s distress. The Puppeteer was, for once, fully separate from Iseult’s mind. No reading of Iseult’s thoughts, no stealing of Iseult’s secrets.
“This is definitely a palace from the old days. Those statues give it away. But are they owls or are they rooks?”
Owls? Iseult looked to where Esme motioned. Starlight poured over the eroded monoliths in each corner of the room; they looked like nothing but stone slabs covered in yellow lichen to Iseult. Not owls or rooks or anything else.
“And of course,” Esme continued, “the ease with which we can speak also shows this place for what it is.” She was talking to herself now, and after kneeling at the center of the room, she opened the book. There was no light to read by, but Esme didn’t need it. It was as if the candles in Poznin transferred here.
Iseult crept closer to Esme, her eyes bouncing from whatever it was the Puppeteer inspected to her own sleeping self. Wrong.
Iseult’s body never stirred, and Esme’s pages made no sound. Wrong, wrong. In fact, nothing but Esme’s voice carried here.
“I don’t see this place,” Esme said, sitting cross-legged. “Eridysi’s notes don’t mention it.”
“Eridysi?” The name blurted out before Iseult could stop it. Before she could even let the name sink in—for of course Esme couldn’t be referring to Eridysi the Sightwitch who’d written the famous “Lament” centuries before. Just as Iseult’s old rag doll hadn’t been named after that Eridysi either but had merely been a
name she’d found pretty as a little girl.
Except that Esme did indeed mean the famed Sightwitch. “Yes,” she said simply. “Ragnor gave me the old Sightwitch Sister’s journal a few years ago.” She tossed a sideways smile at Iseult. Almost coy. “Everything I know is from these pages. From cleaving to reanimating to binding puppets to the Loom. And you can learn it all too, Iseult.”
Or maybe I could unlearn it. Before Iseult could ask how to avoid this … this dream-walking, Aeduan entered the room.
He prowled like a caged animal, passing directly through Esme. His nostrils fluttered as he sniffed, yet whatever he might have sensed, it was obvious that he could not see Esme or Iseult hovering like ghosts in the middle of the ruins.
Esme pushed to her feet, glaring knives at Iseult. “You’re still with him. I told you he was dangerous, Iseult.”
“He saved my life.” Iseult scarcely heard her own words. Her attention was captured by the Bloodwitch—whose attention was captured by the sleeping Iseult.
No sniffing. No prowling. Just staring at her, expression unreadable.
“He saved your life from what?” Esme demanded. She pushed in front of Iseult, blocking the view of Aeduan. When Iseult still didn’t answer, she repeated, “Saved your life from what?”
Esme’s free hand swept up, fingers splayed, and she charged it into Iseult’s skull.
The Dreaming took hold. No more ruins, no more shadow selves, no more Bloodwitch. Iseult was trapped, and Esme controlled her mind once more.
Nothing was private. In seconds, Esme had the memory she sought. Oh, goddess bless me. Her words echoed within Iseult’s skull. Those men almost caught you—and the Bloodwitch did save you.
More rummaging. Worms in Iseult’s brain. Nine times four, thirty-six. Nine times fifteen, one hundred and thirty-five …
Iseult’s multiplication didn’t stop Esme.
These men work for … Corlant? Who is he? A Purist priest, but … Esme trailed off, and hints of blue understanding lanced through the Dreaming. I know that man, she continued at last. But by a different name. If he hunts you, Iseult, then that means you … It means he … Esme’s surprise kicked over Iseult. Oh, this is unexpected. And surely a mistake! You cannot possibly be the Cahr Awen, can you?