They would hit Merik at any moment. He should move. He should fly.
He didn’t. Instead, he turned his head and watched as, one by one, tentacles of darkness wound into the man striding this way. A tall man. Broad. With hair pale as ash, even as smoky shadows traced and danced across his skin. Even as they licked off his limbs and blackened snow circled around his head.
Kullen smiled. A heartbreaking, familiar smile. “Hello, old friend,” he said. “Have you missed me?”
Merik had just enough time to think, It can’t be, before the flood hit him.
THIRTY-TWO
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to be the girl Cam screaming at Merik to run while Vivia watched numbly.
It wasn’t supposed to be Merik, stolen away by shadows and flood.
But it was like this, and if ever there was a time to keep moving, it was now. “Get to the Keep,” Vivia ordered the girl. “Get help, and keep soldiers out of the underground.”
Then without another word, Vivia jumped into the flood.
The water swept over her. Stole her sight, her hearing, her touch. Friend. Mother. Self. All of it was a part of Vivia, and Vivia was a part of it all.
She felt Merik in the darkness, in the weight of these churning, booming underground waves. Ahead. Her brother was ahead. There was a fork in the tunnels; he was rocketing through. Spiraling right.
So Vivia launched herself, a creature of speed and power. She used her magic and her instincts to careen faster than Merik. Faster than the bone-breaking current.
She was a shark riding the tidal wave. A sea fox on the hunt.
At a tunnel’s fork, she shot right. Her lungs burned, but she knew that feeling. Welcomed it. The water was a mother to Vivia, a tyrant to anyone else.
She slammed into Merik, arms looping tight. If any air remained in his body, she had just punched it out.
But he was conscious—thank Noden—and his arms were around her now, and she was in charge. She could use the foam and the violence to propel them both.
Ahead, the tunnel would widen. She sensed a gap of air above the waves.
She cannoned them upward. They cleared the surface; Merik’s rib cage sputtered against her arms.
Then she dove him back under before the tunnel shrank once more.
Vivia pushed them faster, grateful Merik didn’t fight. That he instinctively elongated his body for maximum speed. It was the Windwitch in him, she supposed. He understood—he became—a creature of least resistance.
It was the one thing she’d always envied about him. So easy, he’d always had it so easy. Yet right now, nothing was easy.
Another fork. This time, Vivia charged left. A shelf waited ahead, and Vivia sensed it only because water sprayed across.
It would have to do.
She tightened her hold on Merik, and he tightened his hold on her—as if he knew that whatever came next, it wouldn’t be nice.
Tide, she thought. A tide to carry us. She imagined the skin-shredding force of a countercurrent. Beneath her and behind.
Then the water was there. It cut under her feet. It grabbed hold of her boots before launching them both upright. The full rage of the current battered them. Fought to flip them down.
Up! Vivia shrieked with her mind. With her witchery.
The tide finally complied.
Up they shot, toward a ceiling Vivia sensed was too close. Any slower, though, and she would lack the momentum to escape these rapids at all.
Head.
Body.
Feet.
Vivia and Merik cleared the water, their arms still anchored to each other. Then the water released them, and they toppled onto the limestone.
Vivia straggled upright. She knew where she was, for she could feel where dampness hit stone, where moisture gathered on walls. Where water had pushed its way into other tunnels, other stairwells—and which passages remained clear. Remained safe.
This was the cave-in, and here, through the spindrift, was a hole in the rubble she’d only just dug through.
She towed up Merik, feeling him strain to push his muscles. Once he was standing, leaning awkwardly on her shoulder, Vivia used the mist to guide her. There was so much she wanted to say as they shambled toward the surface. A thousand questions, a thousand apologies, and a thousand gruff older-sister criticisms. Yet like the water, fast building in the plateau, all these words Vivia yearned to say had nowhere to go. They simply pressed against her ribs, bowed against her mind.
So in the end, she said nothing at all.
Merik lived. She didn’t know how, she didn’t know why. But he lived, and for once in her life—for one single day—she felt as if she’d made the right choices. As if she could forge on, knowing she truly had no regrets.
* * *
Iseult was almost to the river when she came upon the first corpse.
This was not a forgotten skeleton of some ancient war but a new body. A young body.
She had just circled a fallen oak, its exposed roots home to bees that buzzed over everything, drowning all of Iseult’s senses. Which was why she wasn’t expecting to come face-to-face with the dead man.
He slumped against the other side of the oak, his brown skin not yet bloated. A recent death, for though flies buzzed over the gash across his neck, no maggots yet writhed in the wound.
Iseult looked to the sky. Buzzards and crows circled, suggesting more death ahead on the river’s shore.
Iseult knelt beside the man. A boy, really, no older than she. His eyes were open, glass staring straight ahead, even as flies scuttled over. A golden serpent coiled across his belt, which Aeduan had described as the Baedyed standard. He looked nothing like the sailors Iseult and Aeduan had watched from the cliffside, though. This boy bore no saber, only knives and a spyglass.
A scout. Iseult would need to move more carefully. Folding her hand in her sleeve, Iseult reached out to close the boy’s eyes. Not because the Moon Mother demanded the dead be “sleeping” before entering her realm, nor because Trickster was known to inhabit the forgotten bodies of the forest.
No, Iseult wanted to close the dead boy’s eyes simply because it was making her stomach spin to watch the flies crawling. With a sleeve-covered finger, she eased down the boy’s left eyelid.
She moved to the right eye. Yet as the lid sank low, Threads tangled into her awareness. Hungry purple Threads, furious crimson Threads. They moved at the fringe of her magic, a frayed edge to warp around her. Focused blue Threads, hunting green.
Iseult scrabbled upright, and for the first time since finding the body, it occurred to her what it might mean. A dead scout amid an unstable alliance. Could this be an end to their fragile peace?
Doesn’t matter, Iseult decided. For even if the Baedyeds and the Red Sails turned on each other, it wouldn’t change Iseult’s course. If anything, it meant she must travel more quickly.
She hurried away from the body, veering straight for the river. Away from the hunting Threads. Faster, faster she moved, and with much less care. She knew no one followed, and the time needed to hide her trail wasn’t worth it.
More Threads pulsed into her senses, flashing from the river. From the ships she knew sailed there, the ones she had to get past.
The foliage parted; the floodplain gave way to roots and spongy riverbank. Ships and soldiers and Threads. Three massive galleons, six smaller vessels—and more drifting beyond the next bend in the river, where others had already sailed ahead. A charge hung in the air, a shivering in the weave of the world.
Iseult knew that juddering, though she’d never seen it—never felt it—on such a massive scale.
The Threads that bind were about to break.
Without another thought, Iseult punched into a sprint. Her ankles rolled, her knees popped, but she needed to get past these ships, past these armies and these circling birds, before the world around her finally tore. Before the Threads connecting Baedyed to Red Sail finally snapped.
I
seult hadn’t considered that she might find more corpses ahead. In fact, she had already forgotten all the buzzards and crows. Her world had pinpointed down to her feet, her route, her speed.
Stasis came so naturally when she had a plan. When she wasn’t simply speeding for her life. Her plan, though, wasn’t a good one—which she realized as soon as she tripped over another dead man. His arm, so brown amid the riverside grass, had looked like a root. She’d hopped … and her heel had planted into ribs.
Iseult went sprawling. Her hands landed on a third corpse—on his leg—and her face zoomed in close to a fourth man’s open eyes.
Flies kicked into her mouth. A crow squawked overhead.
Before Iseult could push upright, the Threads she’d sensed earlier—the vicious ones, the angry ones—scuttled into range. They were cantering for shore. They would reach her soon.
Iseult tried to stand, her fingers clawing into dead flesh. Still fresh enough to resist, but hard. Stiff.
Dead, dead, dead.
Once on her feet, she searched for cover … but there was nothing. No rocks large enough to duck beneath, no branches low enough to climb.
A frantic glance to the river showed a launch approaching, packed with men wearing violent Threads.
Nowhere to run. No time to plan. Yet for once, no panic battered in Iseult’s throat. Nor a desperate wish that Safi were here to intuit a way free. Instead, Iseult’s breaths stayed calm. Her focus keen. Her training at the ready.
With your right hand, give a man what he expects to see.
In a forest full of corpses, the solution was obvious. She dropped to the ground beside the nearest corpse, draped her body across his legs, and went limp.
Her eyes fluttered shut just as the Red Sails hit the riverbank.
THIRTY-THREE
As Aeduan stalked through the oaks of the Contested Lands, his pocket felt light without the arrowhead. He hadn’t realized how accustomed he’d grown to its weight. To its iron presence.
But now it was gone, and that was that. No dwelling on it. Simply moving forward.
His muscles itched. His fingers flexed and fisted in time to his steps, and each time Owl tripped, he had to bite back frustration.
It was not Owl’s fault that she was small and frail. It was not her fault that she demanded constant attention. Her stride was short, her body weak. She shrank, she huddled, she stared hard at anything that wasn’t Aeduan’s eyes.
For every one of Aeduan’s steps, she needed three. For every rise in the earth that he crested easily, she had to crook, to scrabble, to examine thoroughly before each step.
There was nothing to be done for it. This was the path Aeduan had chosen, and it led north. Directly back the way he and the Threadwitch had come. He suspected, in fact, that the scents lingering on Owl’s clothes might lead him to the same Nomatsi tribe who’d left the bear trap that shredded his leg. Like the Truthwitch’s scent, though, the tribe’s blood-smells were far. A week of travel; likely more at Owl’s current pace.
And not in the direction of Aeduan’s coins.
He was surprised by how much he didn’t care about the talers. In fact, Aeduan found himself thinking more about the person who’d stolen his coins than the coins themselves. He wanted to know how the talers had ended up in Lejna. How the man—or woman—who smelled of clear lakes and frozen winters had gotten the money there in the first place. As soon as Owl was safe again, Aeduan had every intention of finding answers to his questions.
At that thought, more tension fretted through Aeduan’s muscles. He wanted to run. To fight. He knew the feeling well by now—he’d encountered it often enough, whenever Monk Evrane had scolded or Guildmaster Yotiluzzi had schooled. It was a wall that hardened around Aeduan’s heart and sent his heels slamming deeper, harder into the soil.
Until Owl whimpered, her hand crushed in his.
Aeduan ground to a stop. He’d been dragging her. Because he was a demon, and that was what demons did. His eyes snapped down to her wide, pitiful ones.
“I’m sorry,” he told her, even though he didn’t need to. She trusted him. Fool child. He couldn’t believe his father wanted her. Why, why—after everything, why?
It was as Aeduan stared into her bloodshot eyes that a cannon boomed in the distance. South. Where the Threadwitch must now be.
Without thought, Aeduan drew in a long, deep breath. His power stretched wide; his witchery latched on to the scent of his own silver taler, still dangling from her neck.
Yes, she was south. Hurry, he thought, for clearly violence was breaking loose.
It always did in the Contested Lands.
Aeduan let his magic subside, spool back in like a length of twine, when new blood-scents crashed against him.
Hundreds of them, rising from the forest, marched this way from the north, some on horseback. Some on foot.
Aeduan could only assume they were the same Baedyed ranks he’d passed yesterday—yet for some reason, they must have turned back. They now traveled south through the pillar-filled gorge.
Aeduan stopped. Right there in the forest with Owl at his side. The men on horseback would arrive soon … He sniffed, letting his magic swell and reach.
More people approached from behind, exactly as Aeduan and Iseult had seen from the ruins that morning. Soon, the two groups would converge.
Aeduan looked down at Owl, who surveyed him in silence. Always silent.
“We have to run now, Little Sister. I’m going to carry you. Will that be all right?” At her nod, he knelt. “Climb onto my back.”
She obeyed.
Aeduan ran.
* * *
Safi had every intention of following the Hell-Bards and the Cartorran navy. After all, leaving the arena was undoubtedly the next logical step.
It would seem, however, that the gods had something else in mind. For as Safi raced after Vaness and the Hell-Bards, she caught sight of someone familiar.
Just a glimpse in the corner of her eye, and not instantly recognizable. She merely saw the man’s square jaw, and the faintest recognition tickled at the base of her skull.
It wasn’t until she reached the tunnel beyond that the words ’Matsi-lovin’ smut ran down Safi’s spine.
Nubrevnans.
Not just Nubrevnans, but sailors from the Jana. From Merik’s old crew.
Safi slung back on her heel midstride. In ten bounding steps and with water kicking high, she reached the man’s cell.
Somehow, the slaves roared louder now. They clanged at the bars and sloshed water. Free us, free us, free us.
“You!” Safi yelled in Nubrevnan. She advanced on the square-jawed man, who made no move. Offered no reaction. “How did you get here?” When he didn’t answer, she thrust close to the bars. “How did you get here?”
Still, the man held his tongue. His companions, however, did not. A bare-chested boy with braids scurried near. “We’re part of the Foxes, lady. Out of Lovats.”
It meant nothing to Safi. “You are not part of Prince Merik’s crew?”
“No,” said another sailor. An officer, Safi guessed, from his navy coat and the witch-collar strapped to his neck. “We work for Princess Vivia. Our mission is to gather food and seeds and livestock—anything we can take back to our people.”
“Nubrevna has turned to piracy?” called Vaness.
Safi flinched. She hadn’t noticed the empress approaching. Hadn’t seen her sidle close through the dim torchlight and water’s splash.
“Hye,” the officer told Vaness. “But we failed, for our ship was taken by the Baedyeds two days ago. And the crew—we were sold here to the arena.”
“It’s worse than that,” the boy cut in, yelling over the building madness. “They took our ship and filled it with seafire. It’s on its way back to Lovats right now, ready to kill everyone!”
Safi’s jaw sagged, and even the Iron Empress swayed back a step.
“Help us,” the officer begged, looking first to Safi, then to Vaness. “Ple
ase. Just free our Voicewitch. She can send a warning to the capital—that’s all we ask.”
“Please.” The boy’s braids shook. “The pirates killed our prince, and now they’ll kill our families.” As he spoke, his words humming with truth, a new figure shoved through the ranks.
A woman with a collar. The Voicewitch.
Yet Safi hardly noticed. The pirates killed our prince. So explosive in all its simple utterance.
“Prince Merik,” Safi repeated, “is dead?” When the boy didn’t hear her, she slung in closer, shouting, “Prince Merik is dead?”
He reared back, before nodding. “The Jana exploded. Seafire.”
Vaness turned to Safi. “Like my ship,” Vaness said, though no surprise crossed her face. As if she’d already known. The message on the warship. It must have told Vaness of Merik’s death.
Safi didn’t confront Vaness, though—not now. There was no point. Instead, she groped for her Threadstone.
Merik Nihar was dead.
I have a feeling I’ll never see you again. Those had been Safi’s last words to him. Thrice-damn her, though—she hadn’t meant them. She’d just expressed what had been roiling in her gut after their lips had touched. It wasn’t meant to come true. Merik Nihar could not actually be dead.
A click shivered through the air. The collar fell from the Voicewitch’s neck, and instantly, the woman staggered back. Her eyes turned pink as she tapped into the Voicewitch Threads. Her lips began to move.
The slaves nearby rioted all the louder.
“Why,” Safi shouted at the officer, “do the Baedyeds attack Lovats?” Yet either the man could not hear her, or he did not know, for he shrugged. A helplessness hung in his eyes.
“They attack to weaken us.” The answer rumbled out from the square-jawed man. “The Baedyeds and Red Sails march over the Contested Lands as we speak, and Ragnor’s raider armies gather in the Sirmayans. Once Lovats is flooded and dead, there will be nothing to stop them from claiming all of Nubrevna.”
“How do you know this?” Vaness demanded.
“I heard the men who captured us.”